Includes 16 page booklet and 30 day free MUBI subscription. AGON is the directorial debut of Giulio Bertelli. It follows a triptych of female athletes as they prepare and then compete in LUDOJ 2024, a fictional Olympic Games, in their personal disciplines - judo, fencing, and rifle shooting. Informed by the historical figures of Cleopatra, Joan of Arc and Nadezhda Durova, these women are portrayed against the political, social, technological and physical contexts that dominate the highest level of sports competition and performance.AGON explores a contemporary account of the contradictions of these sports, which began as peacetime practices for war, as their disciplines are institutionally sanitised, recast as wholesome global entertainment, and ultimately dematerialised altogether in new digital arenas. The events at LUDOJ are conducted not in sports arenas but on soundstages, with no live audience. These spartan spaces are populated only by athletes, sports officials, and film crew, capturing every audio-visual layer of information. Within this environment, every mat crash, sword clash and gunshot is experienced in exacting detail.Tom Wheatley’s score began as a conceptual mirror to this. He took three musicians, each with a singular approach to their instrument, each instrument having a language of articulation that relates to each sport: percussion for judo, cello for fencing, saxophone for rifle shooting. Added to this were claustrophobic analogue electronics, and bagpipes, to represent a state beyond competition: war. The rich, detailed signals from these players underwent extreme processing live in the studio, at times moving the music into a grey area between score, sound design and foley.“I saw a material parallel between the sportsperson and the musician. That you have these tools which you carry through life, which hold complex histories of use. These techniques and traditions are studied, and combined with contemporary technologies to unlock new potentials. As Alex Sokolov is to her gun, Jean-Luc Guionnet is to his saxophone.From this model sprung many ideas, which lay the foundation for the score: applying the gestural language of the fencing epee to Ute’s bow; the ‘tuned air’ of both the rifle and the saxophone; taking the judo concept of barycentre and applying that to a form of rhythmic gravity with Seijiro. It was a rich seam”– Tom Wheatley“Where realism and fiction are blurred in the world of AGON, Tom accomplished the same for the score, obfuscating the boundary between the acoustic landscape of the film and the music, respecting the theoretical framework of the film itself.”– Giulio BertelliAGON premiered at Venice Film Festival 2025, was awarded the Luciano Sovena Award for Best Independent Production, and the FIPRESCI Award (International Federation of Film Critics). It is a MUBI/Match Factory production.  Written & composed by Tom WheatleyFeedback Synthesizer by Grundik KasyanskyBagpipes by Harry Górski-BrownPercussion by Seijiro MurayamaCello by Ute KanngiesserSaxophone by Jean-Luc GuionnetRecorded by Matt Jaggar at Konk Studios, LondonAdditional mixing by Matt Jaggar and Tommaso BarbaroAdditional editing by Tommaso BarbaroMastered by Rashad Becker

Tomeka Reid - celloJason Roebke - bass, cassetteMary Halvorson - guitarTomas Fujiwara - drums

Wonderfully visceral, deeply trippy set from Berlin-based polymath, Eleni Poulou, recorded at OTO as part of a bill with longtime friend Dave Huismans and Scottish artist, Fergus Jones in May 2026. Sometimes live performance can bring a new meaning to the present, sometimes it can elevate that present to a whole new level. And sometimes, perhaps more rarely, a performance can bring you through into a new reality entirely. Such is the case here. "It will be" proclaims Poulou at the start of this 37-minute long set, and straight away we're slipping through the cracks to some other place.. Tape loops warble and a ravelling tangle of synth notes growl and thrum, whilst in the background some seemingly mechanical apparatus ticks and flickers to an unknown purpose. Through the murk and hiss, Poulou's voice exhorts the audience as if with some vital knowledge to share, yet the meanings seem warped and distorted in the telling, with fragmented phrases repeating and circling back on themselves. There's a clear sense of urgency, an almost subconscious understanding that something profound is being shared, but the logic is that of a dream. Whatever the parameters of this dreamscape - and it is a dream that Poulou always deftly manages to keep tethered both to the room and the audience within - it's clear that the rules of this reality are subtly askew. The effect is deeply hypnotic and strangely transcendent. To get the most from a dream we must meet it on its own terms, surrendering ourselves to what it has to offer. It is no easy task, yet if we can do this the hidden messages contained within can seem not only revelatory but inevitable. It can be. It shall be. It will be. -- Thanks from Eleni to Dave Huismans, Fergus Jones and Felt Records for the invite, plus Tara Clerkin, Beth Arzy, Egidija Circaite, Mo, Thea, Dave and Oli. -- Recorded by Kevin ShoemakerMixed and masterd by Oli BarrettCover photo by Eleni Poulou

Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on Saturday 18th November, 2023. Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielesi. Artwork by Norman Wilcox-Geissen. Layout by Maja Larrson.First meeting of two incredible talents - Tyshawn Sorey on drums and Pat Thomas on piano. Recorded live back in 2023, we’ve sat on this for an inexcusably long time, and yet the music is as just fresh and explosive as we remember it in the room. Just a few hours prior to the duo, Tyshawn Sorey had given a deeply meditative solo piano performance in total darkness, windows boarded up and the piano in the centre of the room, Sorey directly facing the audience as he played for almost two hours. A reflective mood set into the room, and the prospect of him being replaced on the keyboard felt a bit off. “When I’d heard he was doing a solo piano set first I thought, well, that’s it,” laughs Pat Thomas. “I’m really going to have to play”. It doesn’t take long for the intensity to rise. A run of the right hand on the keys gives a warning, like the first few drops of rain before a thunderstorm. As Thomas’ left hand joins to plumb the bass notes, Sorey calls his metallics into play, whipping up the air around them before the humidity in the room breaks and the duo drop into momentary silence. Thomas reaches into the body of the piano - sounding some of the familiar language of Elephant Clock of Al Jazari before dropping some of those immense key clusters we’ve grown to know so well through his work in [Ahmed] and stacking them up into dense, rotating rhythms. Sorey mixes light brush work with aeolian tones, at some points striking just the air to meet Thomas’ palm muted rhythms. Midway through the set the two players are joined in percussive pursuits, Thomas’ string slides totally enmeshed with Sorey’s clinical snare work. When Thomas lifts off into more celestial territory as the set builds, Sorey marshals his shuddering field drum towards one extraordinarily clean clasp of the hi-hat - a sort of musical gasp which the crowd can’t help responding to. The pair are wildly dynamic, beautifully precise and in possession of innumerable talents. As Sorey’s mallet rush crescendos and fades, Thomas adds two single bass notes, as if to wryly say, ‘Ta-da!” You have to laugh - it’s ridiculously good stuff from two of the best at the peak of their powers.

Hardback, 304 pp (full colour), 1.85kg Art Yard Records, 2nd Edition, 2026Twenty years after its first publication, fully revised 2nd edition of Hartmut Geerken's long unobtainable Omniverse Sun Ra, a definitive hitch-hiker's guide to the Sun Ra galaxy. The new, completely revised edition features:- unpublished photographs of Sun Ra and the Arkestra by Hartmut Geerken and Val Wilmer;- fully revised discography by Chris Trent, co-author of The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra;- articles by Geerken, Amiri Baraka, Chris Cutler, Robert L. Campbell, Salah Ragab, Gabi Geist and others;- new full colour images of hundreds of Sun Ra album covers, posters, handbills and ephemera, including reproductions of rare hand drawn and coloured LP sleeves.   For five decades, Sun Ra brightened planet Earth with his unique, provocative and esoteric musical philosophy. Touring the world with his formidable Arkestra, he represented and affirmed a new vision of Black history and culture, embodied and spread a new and powerfully influential Black philosophy, and revolutionised music with sounds from beyond the purple star zone. Ra accepted no limitation imposed on him by earthly powers: his vista was the universe, his travel was interplanetary, his music borne along the spaceways as he delivered messages of light to a sleeping world. Now more than ever, the value and radicalism of his protean musical inventiveness, his socially collective self-determination, and his philosophical and poetic profundity can be seen. Where Ra went, we are slowly going, and we will find his message for us waiting there. The new edition of Omniverse Sun Ra is a major contribution to Sun Ra studies, and a dazzling overview of its subjects astonishingly productive career on Earth the definitive companion to the many worlds of Sun Ra.

Paperback, 104pp Divided, London, June 2026Waiting at Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport, in the city of Le Lamentin, Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro browses the airport kiosk. Alongside books by Césaire, it offers titles by Frantz Fanon, Maryse Condé and Patrick Chamoiseau. She picks up a copy of Nègre je suis, nègre je resterai, a conversation between Françoise Vergès and Césaire published in 2005, and embarks. In Another Sun, Rodríguez Castro and Vergès revisit that seminal conversation, resulting in an eclectic text shaped by ongoing struggles.With poems by Danielle Legros Georges, Wole Soyinka, Ishion Hutchinson, Clarisse Baleja Saïdi, Aimé Césaire and Jean Érian Samson.