The new trio of John Butcher, Werner Dafeldecker, and Roy Carroll unites three singular voices. Butcher and Dafeldecker previously collaborated in Polwechsel, a group that redefined the boundaries between composition and improvisation through radical reduction and sonic precision. Carroll and Dafeldecker’s work as Paroxysm delved into dense, timbre-focused explorations and psychoacoustic interplay. In this new formation, the trio combines forensic attention to sound with visceral intensity—fracturing time, form, and material. Their music unfolds as a tapestry of glistening details, unstable structures, and shifting acoustic perspectives.

Born in Brighton and living in London, John Butcher is a saxophonist whose work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback, unusual acoustics and non-concert locations. He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with a sense of place. Resonant Spaces, for example, is a collection of performances recorded during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands. 

Werner Dafeldecker was born in Vienna in 1964 and studied the double bass which he plays with passion. As a musician, composer and sound artist he takes advantage of the manifold possibilities offered by electro-acoustics. His musical projects are often inspired and deduced by outside influences such as architecture, science, photography and film - partially resulting in the creation of graphical scores for various ensembles and instrumental performers.

Roy Carroll is a musician / composer working with electroacoustic media, which is broadly a set of materials and processes that includes amplification, transducers, synthesis, feedback, audio recordings, software, - auditory and psychoacoustic phenomena even. Feedback, the horror of an instrument hearing itself, is a recurring component of Carroll's work, creating multi-layered forms that continually renegotiate the transformation of electrical audio signals into disturbed air. Roy is based in Berlin.

Photo credit for John Butcher: Sean Kelly