Review By Glen Parkes
With Meet Me In The Wayback Field, Grammy-winning saxophonist and sonic visionary Johnny Butler has conjured not just an album, but an experience—one that unfolds like a dream painted in motion. Set for release on July 11, 2025 via Hi4Head Records, this 13-track opus is an awe-inspiring continuation of Butler’s genre-defying trilogy that began with Thirteen Dances (2020) and The Sunbather (2021). Where those records expanded jazz into new dimensions, Wayback Field collapses the walls altogether, offering a fully immersive soundscape where composition, choreography, and technology move as one.
From the opening shimmer of “Prelude” to the final echoes of “Annabelle,” Meet Me In The Wayback Field is dripping in atmosphere—ethereal, surreal, but always human. Working once again with producers Franky Gonzales and Julian Picado, Butler stretches the bounds of audio storytelling. But the real magic lies in how Wayback Field literally moves: created alongside dancers equipped with wireless microphones, the album captures the raw, kinetic energy of the human body in motion. Each exhalation, each footfall, each pivot is translated into texture, making the album feel not merely performed, but lived.
Butler’s musical range is staggering. Across the album, he commands tenor saxophone, flute, synths and electronic treatments with effortless fluidity. Tracks like “Swimming” and “May” glide between ambient serenity and rhythmic urgency, while “Straight Jacket” pulses with fractured jazz tension, like Sun Ra scoring a Kubrick dream sequence. “Wolfman” howls with processed saxophones morphing into something primal and unnameable, while “DEMERO” grooves like a late-night fever dream in a neon-lit cityscape.
Yet, for all its complexity and sonic innovation, the album never loses sight of emotional resonance. The aching, minimalist beauty of “Missing You” pulls you inward, its soft phrasing and spatial silence cutting deeper than words. Meanwhile, “In A Sentimental Mood,” Butler’s sole nod to a jazz standard, is reimagined with reverent distortion and dreamy improvisation—Ellington through a kaleidoscopic looking glass.
What’s most impressive is how the album coheres. Despite being composed for three separate dance works—Meet Me in the Wayback Field, Annabel Lee, and The Lighthouse—each track weaves into the next with hypnotic grace. “Hellscape” bleeds seamlessly into “It Burns,” the former a haunted, shifting terrain of dissonance, the latter a cathartic release that erupts with percussive clarity and melodic fragments that seem to rebuild the body from the ruins. The sequencing is immaculate, building a circular narrative arc that reflects the lunar metaphors Butler has embraced throughout the trilogy.
The spiritual core of the record may be “Aberi Fantasy,” divided into three parts (though curiously absent from the current track listing—perhaps it’s evolved into newer forms within the suite). These movements, referenced in Butler’s vision for the lunar cycle, embody the album’s deeper philosophical thread: light and shadow, fullness and absence, movement and stillness—all coexisting in harmony.
The collaborative ethos here also deserves spotlighting. Butler didn’t just compose for dancers—he danced with them. Alongside artists Alex Oliva, Annie White and Caleb Patterson, Butler entered the physical space of performance, making this not only a sonic exploration but a physical one. The boundaries between composer, performer, and dancer dissolve. The music breathes, stretches, contorts—it sweats and sighs.
Technically, the album is a marvel. Gonzales and Picado’s mixing and mastering are surgical yet lush, capturing every harmonic overtone, every rustle of movement, with cinematic precision. There are moments that recall the atmospheric grandeur of Vangelis, the experimental pulse of Caribou, and the emotive textures of Robert Glasper. But ultimately, Butler’s voice is singular. He is equal parts composer, sculptor, and conjurer.
Butler’s discography has long leaned toward the avant-garde, but Wayback Field might be his most accessible work to date—not because it sacrifices depth, but because it offers so many entry points. Jazz lovers will find nods to tradition wrapped in futuristic packaging. Electronic heads will vibe on the manipulation of texture and spatiality. Classical fans will appreciate the through-composed form and performance-art devotees will recognise the blend of stage and studio.
The track “The New Old Piece” perhaps sums it up best. It’s nostalgic without being derivative—forward-looking yet anchored in musical lineage. Butler isn’t just pushing boundaries; he’s inviting listeners into a space where boundaries are irrelevant.
With Meet Me In The Wayback Field, Johnny Butler has not only delivered one of 2025’s most visionary albums, but one that challenges how we think about recorded music itself. It asks: What if an album could dance? What if a saxophone could whisper the language of limbs? What if motion, emotion, and sound could exist on the same plane?
This record doesn’t just answer those questions—it lives them.
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