If you die with unfinished business, there’s a good chance that means you were living right up to the end. That’s what Peter Brötzmann did. Despite declining health that made him especially vulnerable during the pandemic, he was performing until three months before the end, and when he died on June 22, 2023 at the age of 82, this record wasn’t quite done. There’s no word about whether it was the German reeds player or Norwegian percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love who gave its eight tracks names like “Bubble Butt Trouble” and “Boots Licking, Boots Kickin,” but no matter what you call ‘em, these weren’t the utterances of a man who was going out quietly.
Butterfly Mushroom is the second of two albums sourced from a studio session that the pair recorded in 2015. While they had worked together in a variety of contexts over the last couple decades, they’d never done a studio session as a duo. Each had new instruments on hand that they were eager to try out; Brötzmann played contra-alto clarinet, bass saxophone and tarogato (a middle-European straight horn), and Nilssen-Love brought a massive set of gongs as well as his drum kit. Each was curious what might happen without an audience to challenge. But since they were both inveterate road dogs, they didn’t get back to the recordings they made until COVID sent them to their respective abodes in Wuppertal, Germany and Oslo, Norway.
It can’t be said that Butterfly Mushroom is a retiring performance. Brötzmann opens with a tunneling blast of bass sax, affirming that he could still summon his trademarked, full-steam-ahead energy. Nilssen-Love matches him with an equally familiar series of battering surges. But instead of chasing ideas as far as they could run, they carve out a rough, imposing shape and leave it at that. There’s enough blammo action to get your heart pumping, but also some more reflective pieces.
The low, breathy clarinet on “Frozen Nose, Melting Toes” projects stern dignity, which is underscored by Nilssen-Love’s undulating toms and barely there metallic sonorities. On “Spill The Beans And Tell The Truth,” the drummer’s clave seems to first sound out the space, then trace its boundaries before shifting to a polyrhythmic groove that ratchets up the tension as it gains density. All the while, Brötzmann’s tarogato issues long, baleful tones, building tension of his own. The piece explodes not with the parties’ typical massive blast, but a masterfully orchestrated spray of sharp strikes and staccato bursts.
The two musicians wield brevity and space as deftly they do harshness and intensity, making Butterfly Mushroom and its companion volume, Chicken Shit Bingo, worthy additions to the duo’s uncompromising oeuvre. [Trost]
—Bill Meyer
