Myriad interwoven textural fractures from Grace & Delete - aka no-screen laptop wizard James Dunn and bass clarinet boss Chris Cundy. In The Screwtape Letters C.S Lewis defines music as a "meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience," but it can also be a sped up inferno complete with the alien cries of the damned. Either way, the cat cannot get enough. She rolls on her back and flashes her claws in the air when this music plays. She is blown away by the concept of a bass clarinet; the longer a note lasts, the more she purrs; it seems to stretch her actual perception of time. She wriggles with pleasure; she twists and switches her tail; she forgets to close her mouth over her thirsty pink tongue. "Tinnitus!" she mews, "I have it! Come closer!" "Dunn’s electronics are a masterclass in the resources of outdated technology. After being exposed to so much laptop texturing, the ear appreciates its limits. The electronics give Cundy’s contributions a jagged starkness, like coming upon a crude screenprint in an exhibition of digital printouts. The musicians are fully in control of their pitches and the music often proceeds by finding a harmony and then forcing it into crisis, unbearable tensions resolved into rhythmic exchange. Cundy also uses a Tinnitus Analyser to detect noises and elevate them into audibility. This provides the musicians with a stimulating randomness - the difference between the unexpected shapes generated by looking and drawing rather than simply doodling and reproducing habit, the eversame." - Ben Watson  --- Chris Cundy / bass clarinet, alien toy James Dunn / electronics, tinnitus analyser ---   --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Paul Skinner on Friday 9th June. Mixed & mastered by James Dunn. Words by Patricia Lockwood - Priestdaddy

Screenprinted on thick, quality paper printed by Tartaruga. Design by Han Bennink Limited to 100 numbered copies  “Han Bennink is an international treasure, a towering catalyst bringing sparkle, humour and character to an art form that too often is dull.” – London Jazz News In the fields of experimental and outsider music, the word "legendary" can be applied far too liberally, but for Han Bennink no other word will do. Celebrating a three-quarter century this year, the Dutch drummer and percussionist has had a colossal impact and influence in the fields of free jazz and improvised music, from his seminal and varied work with the likes of John Tchicai, Peter Brötzmann and Derek Bailey in the 60s and 70s, to a still restlessly inventive collaborative output with artists as wide-ranging as The Ex, Pat Thomas and Eugene Chadbourne in more recent years. Cafe OTO has had the privilege of playing host to many of the greats of improvised music since its inception in 2008, but one artist who never seems to have performed here enough is Han Bennink. This residency – his first shows here since 2013 – aims to go some way in redressing that balance, with a packed line-up of duo and trio performances alongside collaborators old and new. Combining equal parts virtuosity and anarchic irreverence, Bennink has never rested on his laurels, and this should be an enthralling and thrillingly unpredictable three days “What ultimately makes Bennink special is his manifest love for the music, a love that inclines him to tear down the cardboard walls that too often separate different schools of jazz. At his best, with colleagues who share his all-encompassing stylistic embrace, Bennink plays the continuum of jazz as an instrument unto itself.” – Drummerworld

Metaphoric, historical but also just as easily enjoyed without any context at all, Laura Cannell's approach to fiddle and recorder has echoes of medieval tradition with a folk vernacular. Recorded on the first night of her series ‘Modern Ritual’, her set framed an evening which evoked both real and fictional landscapes and explored ideas of ritual through music and words. Singling out tracks from her first and third records (Quick Sparrows Over The Black Earth and Simultaneous Flight Movement respectively), Cannell draws a chapter from her work based on ritual - both natural and supernatural. Overbowing the fiddle and dual blowing recorder, she blurs fiction with history and conjures a new kind of Black Hour - a melodic two tone drone which is both tame and wild, and the image of a Sacristan drowned in his own font. --- Laura Cannell / fiddle, recorders --- Tracklisting: 1. Simultaneous Flight Movement - 1:48 2. Winter Saltings - 3:09 3. A New Theory of Eclipse - 3:52 4. The Happiness of Both Worldes Part 1 - 2:58 5. The Drowned Sacristan - 3:10 --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on Friday 17th March 2017. Mixed by James Dunn & Laura Cannell. Mstered by James Dunn. Lino print by Laura Cannell. 

Screenprinted on thick, quality paper printed by Tartaruga. Design by Maja Larsson / Organ studio. We're delighted to present a four-day residency with one of the greatest living UK-based improvisers - Pat Thomas. Criminally unheralded, Pat is a fearless and uncompromising player who – despite coming from a background of free improvisation and new music – can feel as close to the worlds of noise and experimental music. His performances range in approach and texture from fearsome cacophony that can sound like a piano having its guts ripped out, with Pat thumping discordant clusters of keys with his fists or rattling the exterior wooden frame; to delicately soothing passages where his fingers glide over the keys, creating microscopic tones and resonant melodies that can hold an entire sonic landscape. The residency coincides with the release of Pat's new LP - The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari - on our own in-house OTOROKU label, which comprises four typically genre-defying and sonically dexterous pieces from one of the UK's most extraordinary pianists. "I can't quite think of anyone else who sounds quite like this: it is in a class of its own." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery "Thomas runs the gamut of techniques, splashing clusters, weaving contrapuntal lines and building elaborate structures from the inside out. Despite their variety, they share a fundamental quality – they truly sound like spur of the moment creations, not the final draft of ideas mulled over for weeks, if not months on end." - Bill Shoemaker, Point of Departure 

Joe McPhee: B-flat and E-flat alto clarinet, Roland MC202 Micro Composer synthesizer Bryan Eubanks: Open-circuit electronics (sinetones) What constitutes an unidentified sighting, the rarely heard ‘alien’ clarinet playing of Joe McPhee and the ineffable electronics of McPhee and Bryan Eubanks? Penultimate Press is extremely proud to produce My Undocumented Alien Clarinet: a strange sensual addition to the ever inquisitive McPhee canon. My Undocumented Alien Clarinet is a beguiling document of a performance held at Alternative Books, Kingston, NY, Sunday, August 6, 2006 under the auspices of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation’s New Vanguard Series. My Undocumented Alien Clarinet captures a unique intimate improvisation exploring the outer reaches of the form. Joe McPhee, (b.1939 USA) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, conceptualist and theoretician. He has collaborated with Pauline Oliveros, Graham Lambkin, Peter Brotzmann, Evan Parker, Raymond Boni among many others. With a career spanning nearly 50 years and over 100 recordings, he continues to tour internationally, forge new connections and reach for music’s outer limits. .. His magical take on avant-garde sax remains one of the wonders of the scene. He still has one of the most beautiful tones on the planet, even when he’s reaching for jazz’s outer limits.” – Time Out NY Bryan Eubanks (b. 1977, USA) is a musician composing electronic and acoustic works for small ensembles, solo instruments, and custom generative software; improvising in collaboration; and working with acoustic holography, a stereophonic recording and diffusion technique. Artwork by Jerry Starpoli Liner notes by Joe McPhee In memory of Jerry Starpoli  

Kye is proud to present Seattle Symphony, the new LP by Poughkeepsie’s Joe McPhee. “Seattle has become my home away from home, my second city, since first being invited to join trombonist Stuart Dempster for duets in 1984. When the opportunity for a solo concert arose, I learned of the passing of Bill Dixon and Fred Anderson and decided to make the focus of the performance a celebration of the lives, and music, of these two legendary heroes, who both passed away in June of 2010, within 8 days of each other.” (Joe McPhee). Seattle Symphony arrives in a full color high gloss sleeve in an edition of 300 copies.