Brand new book featuring photos of Peter Brötzmann at Cafe OTO taken over the past decade by Dawid Laskowski. With text by John Chantler, Hamish Dunbar, Heather Leigh and Seymour Wright.  64x240, 96 pages, 1+1, 150 gsm G print,  2 cover with 4 pages 1+1, 300 gsm munken pure rough, sewed book, with open spin.

Super happy to have dug this out of the archives - the final night of the great French double bass player, improviser and composer, Joëlle Léandre's 2015 residency. Léandre was joined by Scottish improvising vocalist and dancer, Maggie Nicols, and drummer Roger Turner for both nights, and the second of the two saw sparks fly. Solo, Léandre is formidible - melodious, angry, rousing. Her voice breaks through the bass like McPhee's through a trumpet - there's joy, there's humour, and it's 100% intense. Léandre and Nicols have a long history together - 1982's Live at The Bastille with Lyndsey Cooper still stands strong - and their trio with Irène Schweizer as 'Les Diaboliques' is totally unique. Here, both performers are totally at home with with each other and with their sounds - there's depth, unpredictability, intensity and delirious humour. A treasure to share all five pieces, and we hope for another Léandre residency some day soon!  “A true, real artist. Stubborn. Visionary. Uncompromising. Intense. Tender and poetic at moments, raw and angry with the world at other times. She is unconcerned by style, and definitely stays far away from stylistic and formal mannerisms that are needed to placcate the reviewers and the hip audiences. She integrates music as music, and delivers it as music, using elements from tribal rituals over classical finesse to jazz expressionism and avant-garde search for new approaches, yet turning it all into something else, something more authentic, more innovative and - interestingly enough - also more universal.” – The Free Jazz Collective --- Joëlle Léandre / double bass, vocals  Maggie Nichols / vocals Roger Turner / percussion --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Wednesday 18th March, 2015 by Mark Jasper. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Photo by the wonderful Dawid Laskowski. 

Textures Festival returned to OTO back in April, opening with a ferocious new quartet featuring Swiss composer and saxophonist Antoine Chessex together with free music giants Pat Thomas, Steve Noble and John Edwards. Dissonance dominates and condenses the quartet to near saturation, then respirates - chopped up by Thomas' hammered clusters and shaken down by Steve Noble into a grinding tenor saxophone and double bass texture. This is a wonderfully paced and fierce first meeting.   --- Antoine Chessex / saxophone John Edwards / double bass Steve Noble / drums Pat Thomas / piano --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on Sunday 12th December, 2016. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Photo by Dawid Laskowski. 

DUCTUS is the latest solo project by Paul Abbott, featuring 51 minutes of audio, across 12 tracks, and a 42 page booklet featuring new writing. DUCTUS was written and recorded in Edinburgh and Porto in 2019.DUCTUS presents a playful weave of collapsing time through a number of speculative elements and fictional characters. Abbott feels his way through learning drums, rhythm and writing as fleshy research technologies. DUCTUS is the latest stage in a process considering sound, the body, imagination, and language through music. This features as part of ongoing investigations using real and imaginary drums, synthetic sounds, performance and writing.DUCTUS is an organic environment, a comedy of vibrations and signs, featuring the fictional characters DETECTIVE ENGINEER, QOSEL, and STRIKE.Moving (dancing) through DUCTUS, DETECTIVE ENGINEER and QOSEL work (play) together to attempt to learn about pulse (the wobble edge). DETECTIVE ENGINEER takes measurements, while QOSEL responds intuitively. They make 12 journeys at different angles. They listen and read, recording each journey in soot marks on fish glue (glass paper) sheets. Their notes are reproduced inside the accompanying booklet. STRIKE attempts to inscribe a single event of non-contact: a stick falling from a hand to a drum head.* Recorded 16-18 January 2019 using: Bass Drum: Yamaha Custom Absolute Maple (Blue Sparkle); Batter Head: (unknown, clear); [resonant head removed]; Dampening Foam—Snare Drum: Yamaha Custom Absolute Maple 14”x5”; Batter Head: Remo (unknown, coated); [resonant head removed]—Hi Hat Cymbals: Sabian XS 14”— &—Bass Drum: Sakae PAC-D 14” Cherry/Mahogany; Batter Head: Sakae (unknown, standard coated); [resonant head removed]; Snare Drum: Sakae 12”x5 1⁄2” Cherry/ Mahogany; Batter Head: Sakae Standard (unknown, standard coated); [resonant head removed]—Roland SPD1W; Nord Drum 2; MOTU Ultralite mk3; JHS Kill Switch; Sensory Percussion; Live, Max4L; PureData ‘Orbit Pulse Generator’; **‘3D Snare’ code by Alberto Torin; Recorded with—Microphones: DPA 4060, EV RE20, Neuman KM140, Senheisser MD421, DPA 4060, Neuman KM140, Fishman V100, Radial PZ-DI; Monitor Speaker: Genelec 1031A.•"Paul Abbott's Ductus is intelligent, complex, ludic and stern. 
As with his earlier solos - Vagus [201x] and Sphuzo [201x] - Ductus continues a study of the natural, speculative and synthetic worlds qua real and imaginary drums. Its drum ducts are durable, mysterious and revealing. Prone, the drumkit is sessile in quintessence, fixed around the drummer-on-stool-sat, increasingly stickily stuck, as music and the world (have) move(d) around it. Paul offers a possible solution through several lines of simultaneous enquiry – a gripping detection of rhythmic fact and fiction. A sleuth of several instruments, the Paul/drum/tech-kit times, beats and grows the skin and frames and stands and symbols and stuffs that stretch and swing between these facts and fictions. 
 He stories our imaginations and senses toward a progressive independence: back (in time (history near and far)); forward (in time (futures more and less speculative)); somatic (insides and on-skin) and prosthetic reach (stick, strike, spike). This pursuit and construction of events in time, through fact and fiction, realizes fictional fact. At its heart beats a new time for new times. 
 — Seymour Wright, London 2019 

Please note this is a ticket and 2LP order. You will receive your LP on the night of the launch (5th December)  https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/ahmed-lp-release-show/ أحمد [Ahmed] – the quartet of Pat Thomas, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Seymour Wright – make music of heavy rhythm, repetition and syncopation set deep into an understanding of jazz and the obscure depths of its history. Across the 2 LPs which make up ‘Super Majnoon [East Meets West] ’the group work and rework the music of the late musician Ahmed Abdul-Malik to create a stamping, swinging, relentlessly propulsive record where profundity and physicality root right back to ecstatic feeling.  Abdul-Malik was a NYC bassist, oudist, composer, educator and philosopher who fused aspects of American, Arabic and East African thought, ethics, meanings and beliefs in open and experimental ways to make vital, forward leaning jazz. [Ahmed] reimagine the notes of Malik as they push for new ground. Melodies respirate, swell, escalate and combust in a driving jazz which yes is technical, yes is accomplished, but ultimately just foot-to-the-floor swings.  ‘Super Majnoon [East Meets West]’ is a title fused from the leader of the Master Musicians of Jajouka Bechir Attar’s description of [Ahmed] after hearing them in Switzerland last year (Majnoon is the arabic slang for ‘crazy’), and Abdul-Malik’s 1959 album East Meets West. Arriving as a double LP, the first comprises studio recordings of [Ahmed] at Hong Kong’s Empty Gallery in 2018 and the second a scorched live recording at OTO from August 2018. The record features photos by Bert Glinnand Taku Unamiand ‘in and out’ liner notes by James G. Spady – historian and journalist from Philadelphia, the author of books on Marcus Garvey and the trilogy of groundbreaking books on hip hop (Nation Conscious Rap, Street Conscious Rap, The Global Cypha).  --- [Ahmed] are: PAT THOMAS / piano  ANTONIN GERBAL / drums  JOEL GRIP / bass  SEYMOUR WRIGHT / alto saxophone  --- LP 1 recorded by David Sum at Empty Gallery Hong, March 31, 2018. LP 2 recorded by Paul Skinner at Café OTO London, August 25, 2018. LP1 mixed by David Sum. LP 2 mixed by Pat Thomas. Mastered by James Dunn. Liner notes © James G. Spady. Cover photo © Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos. Design by Maja Larsson. Produced by John Hawthorn, Jens Löwius and Seymour Wright.  

Please note this is a pre-order. Records are due with us at the end of November. أحمد [Ahmed] – the quartet of Pat Thomas, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Seymour Wright – make music of heavy rhythm, repetition and syncopation set deep into an understanding of jazz and the obscure depths of its history. Across the 2 LPs which make up ‘Super Majnoon [East Meets West] ’the group work and rework the music of the late musician Ahmed Abdul-Malik to create a stamping, swinging, relentlessly propulsive record where profundity and physicality root right back to ecstatic feeling.  Abdul-Malik was a NYC bassist, oudist, composer, educator and philosopher who fused aspects of American, Arabic and East African thought, ethics, meanings and beliefs in open and experimental ways to make vital, forward leaning jazz. [Ahmed] reimagine the notes of Malik as they push for new ground. Melodies respirate, swell, escalate and combust in a driving jazz which yes is technical, yes is accomplished, but ultimately just foot-to-the-floor swings.  ‘Super Majnoon [East Meets West]’ is a title fused from the leader of the Master Musicians of Jajouka Bechir Attar’s description of [Ahmed] after hearing them in Switzerland last year (Majnoon is the arabic slang for ‘crazy’), and Abdul-Malik’s 1959 album East Meets West. Arriving as a double LP, the first comprises studio recordings of [Ahmed] at Hong Kong’s Empty Gallery in 2018 and the second a scorched live recording at OTO from August 2018. The record features photos by Bert Glinnand Taku Unamiand ‘in and out’ liner notes by James G. Spady – historian and journalist from Philadelphia, the author of books on Marcus Garvey and the trilogy of groundbreaking books on hip hop (Nation Conscious Rap, Street Conscious Rap, The Global Cypha).  --- [Ahmed] are: PAT THOMAS / piano  ANTONIN GERBAL / drums  JOEL GRIP / bass  SEYMOUR WRIGHT / alto saxophone  --- LP 1 recorded by David Sum at Empty Gallery Hong, March 31, 2018. LP 2 recorded by Paul Skinner at Café OTO London, August 25, 2018. LP1 mixed by David Sum. LP 2 mixed by Pat Thomas. Mastered by James Dunn. Liner notes © James G. Spady. Cover photo © Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos. Design by Maja Larsson. Produced by John Hawthorn, Jens Löwius and Seymour Wright.