2011: John Butcher

More and more I value serendipity when listening. The best thing I've heard this year is Mike Osborne, Paul Rogers and John Stevens playing "Summertime" at "The Plough" in South London in 1979. It's on a CD I bought from Ayler records. People write with varying degrees of sense and nonsense about Outsider Art. This feels like it is genuinely that, and more. There's a wonderful Vanishing Point just after 3 minutes when Osborne's attempted altissimo evaporates into the aether, only to be magicked back by Stevens' tom-tom rolls just before the end.