We can’t say that these two musicians are traveling parallel ways. John Butcher’s experiments with feedback, amplification, microtonality and multitracking are pretty far from the studies in rhythm and texture developed by Paal Nilssen-Love. The British saxophonist is one of the top names in the ranks of the new guard of free improvisation (even if he’s been around since the Eighties and played with the old guard – people like Derek Bailey, John Stevens, and Phil Minton). The truth is, Butcher started the radical process of reinventing his sax playing during his tenure with those players, while the Norwegian drummer made his fame in the new wave of free jazz (his partnerships with Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson, for instance), and only that condition of being “new” in their respective scenes seems to be common to them. That, and the improv factor, and this is precisely what enabled the existence of this duo.