NULLA 0, a monolith is a rich collaborative oral archive & publication - a record and artefact of an otherwise ephemeral assembly of 9 participants and their English speaking voices who identify across non-binary, womxn and women (cis/trans), and were either born in London or moved to the city for a duration of time. The book and the project it was born from is about agency - amplifying voices that are often othered while sharing narratives which have typically been omitted from our collective histories. Together, contributors challenge the word ‘neutral’ - a term regularly associated with whiteness, middle class and binary voices, casually employed to flatly describe the voices of AI personal assistants who maintain their coded interactions in a master/slave role play. Initially meant as a series of in-person group workshops, the pandemic changed the landscape of the project by shifting discussions onto a digital platform. Here, strangers launched into an incredibly intimate and vulnerable subject - the voice. Following the first exchange contributors attempted to write a manifesto which could hold and celebrate our difference. The result is the publications of NULLA 0, a monolith. --- Participants: Adèle Morand / Geaola Oluwakemi Adeyemi / Sven Ironside / Jasmin Kent Rodgman / Ruari Paterson-Achenbach / Kendall Perry / Shannon Latoyah / Joanna M Ward / Hannah Doucet Project collaborators: Publication - Samantha Whetton, Design. Print. Bind. Preface - Lola Olufemi Sculpture Design - Grace Woodcock in collaboration with Lola de la Mata Sculpture Maker - Grace Woodcock Glass Design - Lola de la Mata Glass Blowing - Marcin Manzur and Jahday Ford

The Mermaid Cafe's music arrives at the curious intersection between British song-based experimentalist practices. Tipping towards the tender minimalism of Jane and Barton and Young Marble Giants, as well as the contemporary composition of Mica Levi and Neil Luck, the group explore the awkward space where melody, harmony, sound and outré weirdness meet in tryst. In this debut release by them, moods and tone palettes blend and shift, taking clouds of synthesis, ruffled tape work, scrapes of guitar and field recordings along with them as they lead us inward. Like the music, spoken refrains and diaristic laments arrive and disappear, providing signposts to their maze: intersections that gradually lead way to a romantic, melancholic core. A pleasure to put out a new release by this exciting young group who are bursting full of ideas.

"Minton spins the dial across the spectrum of vocalising. At points it feels as if semantic meaning is under the skin - a Beckettian monologue is close by - but then it skitters away. Minton wants us to find meaning in sound rather than the other way around." Louise Gray, The Wire, 2021 "But the Acoustic Chicken is tame beside Woke Up At 8, a free range download from Torquay vocalist Phil Minton. This thirty minute one-take outburst showcases the octogenarian’s unfailingly ability to make unexpected sounds come out of his mouth, often inhuman, often all too human, and owing as much to Beckett’s Not I as to the sacred tablets of improvised music. Panic, terror, social embarrassment, primordial energy and existential awe break the barriers of Minton’s all-consuming and physically exhausting soundscape. "  Stewart Lee, 2021 "Minton immediately triggered the flux of temperamental vocalism he’s renowned for. Shards of verbalization beyond the human, preposterous implosions, deranged emulations, triturated syllables... Thirty minutes of incredibly natural virtuosity summarize an entire existence." Massimo Ricci - touching extremes, 2021 Fished from a dream and dispelled through his contorted and bewitching vocal chords, long-time OTO-favourite Phil Minton shares with us a stunning new one-take solo recording. Phil turned 80 last November and was due to celebrate it with a residency at OTO, but as it couldn't happen we're happy to share this instead, and look forward to having him back in the venue soon... "I had never tried recording myself before, but since the dreaded youknowwhat I’ve been stuck at home, like most people. There's been some music zoomups with colleagues in various parts of the world which I’ve really loved, practicing the trumpet, some far out voice improvising with my grandchildren to keep my chops bouncing, walking our dog Molly, an occasional puff now and again and a glass of vino or two, but no travel and singing in front of people like there has been for the last sixty or so years. Putting out the recycling every Wednesday evening was no substitute, so when Fielding asked if I would like to record a solo for Otoroku, I thought great yes, i’ll give it a go. A new departure. I've always had a problem with technology, I can’t drive among other things, and the practice of improvising and button pushing etc all on the same day is difficult for me: my brain sort of curdles into a white noise custard, whistling and walking no problem. I've had some recording tips from other musicians and have a not so difficult recording program, so when I see that the sound waves are not going into the red when I get loud, all I have to do is press start and off we go - all pretty straight forward. I recorded *woke up at eight* in the morning after not sleeping that well, before any breakfast. I had a lot of fast sounds and images from half remembered dreams only just below conciousness. I’ll leave it to the listener to imagine a narrative if needed. As it is with most dreams, I remember nothing now, just an abstract sense of speed going nowhere…. If you do listen to the recording, please do it in one take like it was recorded and I really do hope you enjoy or whatever. *Also on Fontana records circa 1965, last line. "Because I new that my basal metabolism was not so demanding” A beatnik observation for the time, the producer requested the American accent." - Phil Minton -- Phil Minton - voice & recording -- Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

The Dalmarnock Tapes is a collection of previously unreleased tracks by Cucina Povera. They were recorded in 2017 during snowstorm flurries in Dalmarnock, in the east end of Glasgow, Scotland. Cucina Povera is the alias of the Glasgow-based sound artist Maria Rossi, who is originally from Finnish Karelia, the European region that borders Finland and Russia. Cucina povera refers to a style of southern Italian traditional cooking evolved out of precarity and making do. Rossi’s music shares that same ethos of simplicity. Her experimentations with voice and field recordings create gossamer loops – heavenly repetitions and soporific undulations; an utterly sublime and ethereal language that is all her own. This new series features stunning, celestial vocalisations from Rossi over eight tracks. The recordings were made in the dark, winter months when she was briefly renting a very cheap, rundown studio space in a damp, old warehouse in Dalmarnock. She made it there every day despite bad heating in the building. The snow piled high that year. It was also a period in Rossi’s life when she was moving house every couple of months. The tracks reflect that mildly disturbed and displaced feeling, with a sense of aloneness at their core. Layering her own harmonies to create a mystical solo choir, Rossi builds an echoey wash of soft sound, using her dreamlike voice as the main instrument and Finnish as the main language. They are spontaneous vocalisations, recorded on the cuff, riffing on a very simple idea or pair of words, such as ‘I hear the floor creaking next door’ or ‘Alone at night’. Her stripped back, ultra soothing meditations take on an almost spiritual quality, ebbing and flowing in waves of warmth and purity. The lapping, lilting motion of her cycles of song has a gentle, comforting quality despite the sense of isolation that inspired them. Hypnotic shimmers of sound wrap around rhythmic samples of clanking metal in ‘Kahleet’ (‘Shackles’’) creating a ritualistic or ceremonial feel. Elsewhere in ‘Yksin yöllä’ (‘Alone at Night’), her gentle refrains become an otherworldly lullaby. Much like simple Italian cooking, the minimalist approach generates powerful results, distilled with depth and intensity. --- Eight previously unreleased tracks recorded among 2017 snowstorm flurries in Dalmarnock, Scotland.Music, recorded and mixed by Cucina Poveracucinapovera.bandcamp.comCover by Krzysztof Marczakinstagram.com/ycszwText design by Awe Ixquantumnatives.comMastered by Adam Badí Donovalabdonoval.comWords by Claire Sawersclairesawers.comCassette photography by Zoltan Czakó

Over the last decade, Toronto-based composer Nick Storring has become well known for his unique, painstaking compositional style of layering performances on a plethora of objects and musical/electro-mechanical instruments to deeply moving effect. ‘Newfoundout’, his seventh album, follows last year’s lush and nocturnal ‘My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell’ (Orange Milk Records) with more rhythmical material and an almost theatrical, phantasmal sensibility. The music here doesn’t just evoke imagined landscapes or unique sonic worlds, but it seems to be toying with the idea of a protagonist or a narrative. The pieces move with intent, unravelling in their course moving tales, haunting ancient stories and whispered rumours. There is an underlying aura of mystery and ghostliness which is also reflected in the track titles: all are named after ghost towns around Ontario, Canada. ‘Newfoundout’ is a truly fascinating new entry in Storring’s discography; one which not only highlights his strengths and refines his approach, but also showcases the breadth of his vision. It’s an album where hyperrealism meets psychedelia, where strange dreams meet cinematic grandeur. - Adam Badi Donoval --- All selections are named after ghost towns around Ontario, Canada.Dome is dedicated to the memory of Noah CreshevskyComposed, performed, recorded, produced, and mastered by Nick Storring using acoustic and electromechanical instruments/ treatments, and only the minimum of effects processing.nickstorring.caPhotography by Nick StorringArtwork and layout by Richard Čechoinstagram.com/riko_ceko/Words by Eric Chenaux and Adam Badí Donovalericchenaux.comabdonoval.comSpecial thanks to: Nathalia Sanches, Colin Fisher, Katrina Orlowski, Yvonne Ng, Peter Hatch, Noah Creshevsky, Seth Graham, Keith Rankin, Jakub Juhás / mappa, and John Farah (for the continued use of his Rhodes and Pianet).

"Stumbling into the Age of Loneliness I carry cloudy glass bottles to the edge of the Pacific. After 100 years in dirt beneath San Francisco they breathe fresh ocean air, fill with the energy of breaking waves. Microphones inside, ear to conch, I hear shadows: scurrying, wing flaps, chirps and chatters, whimpers and bellows. So many creatures, once emerged from the sea, now gone. How many vessels would the disappeared fill? What is the weight of a lost species? I make an offering of listening to help me carry all these ghosts we made." ⟶ Cheryl Leonard Life through the computer. We all have had to grapple with it over the past year, as we attempt to wring as much meaning, intimacy, experience and variety as we can from our shiny boxes of electronics. Concerts, plays, ballet, meetings, dates, dinners, coffees and conferences all became just a click away. Some of us cocooned ourselves in soundscapes lost, from old streams from noisy bars, to recordings of natural locations we could no longer get to. It was by turns revelatory, empty, full, sad and comforting. In Schism’s title track Cheryl E. Leonard treats us to her own imaginings of the world within her laptop; a pulsating, flickering, stuttering morass of coil pick up recordings, set amid the co-mingling of crickets, squirrels, birds, bats, and sounds played on natural-object instruments. She asks: “What does it mean when our mediating technologies have both the power to connect us to and distance us from the ecosystems we are part of?” Certainly this is a question which predates the pandemic, but it is one which we grapple with now with a set of new knowledges which speak to both the possibilities, and the shortcomings of a life lived digitally.In addition to her laptop recordings Leonard also turns to mics placed inside bottles to render the second piece on this release, Eremozoic. In the context this simple gesture takes on new resonances; a separation, enclosure, limitation which captures and reverberates particular tones, while missing others entirely. When I think of the computer in this era, I think of it like this, it exists as both echo chamber and conversation; alienation and hope. I think many of us have felt the last year, a little like life was lived inside a bottle. With this release Leonard reminds us of what we lost during the pandemic, but more profoundly what we might lose more permanently as we continue into the climate crisis. - Kate Carr --- Composed, performed, and recorded by Cheryl E. Leonard Mastered by Thomas Dimuzio at Gench Studios   Liner Notes by Cheryl E. Leonard Words by Kate Carr  Artwork and design by Juliána Chomová  Stone composition and photography by Ester Sabik  Risograph print by Kudla Press  Photography by Zoltán Czakó Dedicated to Patty Chen-Wei Liu Released by mappa as MAP026 in 2021