In a country and a musical domain where you have someone like Evan Parker, it’s difficult for any emerging sax player to establish himself, but John Butcher managed to do it and with his own personal style, very different from Parker’s. Now, he’s one of the main figures of the United Kingdom free improvised scene and his name crossed frontiers. “So Beautiful, it Starts to Rain” is a transnational enterprising, and another product of the British / Scandinavian connection, reuniting the tenor and soprano saxophonist with one of the top drummers in Norway, Ståle Liavik Solberg. When you have a saxophone and a drumset together, with no other instruments around, you usually expect one more derivation of the pioneering album “Interstellar Space” by John Coltrane and Rashied Ali, but both Butcher and Solberg are experienced duet practitioners and their references are wider. The collaborations with non-drummers like Andy Moor, Okkyung Lee, Matthew Shipp, Rhodri Davies of the first one are just some examples of that kind of investment, and the other is no stranger to the format, with partnerships developed with John Russell and Fred Lonberg-Holm. In consequence, the music is different from the sax/drums cliché, with an economy of notes not very usual in free form territory and a relaxed decision making during the improvisations. That’s why this record is so special…