A pair of solo sets from two of the most individual voices exploring new forms of percussion. Both artists transgress the boundaries between acoustic and electronic, analog and digital, and find themselves in a curious midway between various forms of radical music - free-jazz, footwork, and music concrete.  --- Paul Abbott / real and imaginary drums Jake Meginsky / electronics --- Tracklisting: 1. Paene (Paul Abbott) - 35:282. Live at Cafe OTO I (Jake Meginsky) - 6:233. Live at Cafe OTO II (Jake Meginsky) - 39:28 --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Monday 9th April 2018 by Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Artwork by Oli Barrett. 

In 1976, Joe McPhee recorded the landmark album Tenor, kicking off a solo period of finding and refining the distinctive voice that continues to inform his music to this day. Solos : The Lost Tapes (1980 – 1981 – 1984) is a collection of material from McPhee’s personal archives that shines new light on the legendary multi-instrumentalist’s work during this time. “Wind Cycles,” for tenor saxophone, explores the permutations of breath on reed and brass, from quiet whispers to full-throated cries and back again. With “The Redwood Rag,” McPhee takes a jaunty melody and gives it a swinging workout with Steve Lacy-like precision. The free-blowing alto excursion “Ice Blu” is, in McPhee’s words, “a sound which evokes an image, which asks a question ‘What is that?’ and the answer is, a sound which evokes an image which asks a question.” “Voices,” one of his signature compositions, gets a particularly haunting treatment here on soprano, with McPhee incorporating various electronics to mesmerizing effect. All together, Solos : The Lost Tapes (1980 – 1981 – 1984) is the distilled essence of one of the most important creative improvising musicians of our time. “Whether it’s amplifying keypad pops or finding harmonics that split his notes into a mass of complex, unfurling tones, he gets you with a feeling as well as a sound… Although McPhee’s music is without compromise, he’s always struck me an excellent gateway figure for people trying to get a handle on free improvisation because the connections between his confrontational and approachable sides is never too hard to find.” – Bill Meyer, Still Single --- Joe McPhee / saxophones, electronics --- Artwork by Judith Lindbloom 

Debut of the now classic duo of Corsano & McPhee, recorded at Les Instants Chavirés. “With a career now spanning over 40 years and more than 100 recordings, Joe McPhee has shown that emotional content and theoretical underpinnings are thoroughly compatible — and in fact, a critically important pairing — in the world of creative improvised music. Since recording The Hated Music with Paul Flaherty in 2000, Chris Corsano has been hyper-active in far-reaching corners of the free improvised world. Under A Double Moon, recorded live in Paris during a spring 2010 tour of Europe, is their first album together (and, given how phenomenally simpatico a partnership they’ve forged, we hope it’s not the last).” “Both Corsano and McPhee share an autodidactic approach to jazz, using anything from thriftstore miscellany to customised electronics to explain the white heat of their creativity. Both have almost unquantifiable discographies that extend well beyond the confines of ‘jazz’; McPhee studied Deep Listening techniques with Pauline Oliveros and Corsano has sparred with everyone from Jim O’Rourke to Björk. Both have lived in Europe, enjoying the hospitality extended to innumerable US free jazz expats that had eluded them in their native terrain. Most impressively, both are lavishly gifted musicians. If McPhee’s 1969 album, Underground Railroad, represented a watershed in high velocity, second generation free blowing, then Corsano’s debut with Paul Flaherty, The Hated Music, saw the drummer pick up the baton, skewer a bouncing ball with it and rub it against a cymbal until it sang like a sea lion. Suffice to say Under A Double Moon goes beyond the scorched-earth Fire Music you might expect. The two long tracks that comprise side one, “Dark Matter: Parts 1 And 2”, shows Corsano at his most flexible as he switches from gamelan-inflected tuned percussion to subtle brushwork to omnivorous hard bop, providing a multiplicity of textures for McPhee’s assorted reeds. McPhee is dominant in the mix, which can obscure the sheer multi-dimensionality of Corsano’s drumming, but both players leave ample room for the other to solo. In fact, both use silence like a weapon – loading the pauses with dramatic intent before unleashing another blizzard of ideas. “For Giuseppe Logan” is an exuberant tribute to the underrated ESP-Disk alto player and is probably the most melodically engaging piece, while album closer “In Lieu Of Flowers” is a beautifully ponderous, starspangled soprano workout that shows yet another dimension to their repertoire. This is an intricately detailed set by two titanic players, spanning two generations. The fire ain’t out yet, baby.” – Alex Neilson, The Wire

Paul Metzger continues to pile up the plaudits from critics and peers alike for his virtuosic string-slinging, gaining notice through his CD on Chairkickers and his split LP with Ben Chasny and Chris Corsano on Roaratorio. Metzger’s modified banjo is tricked out with additional sympathetic raga strings, although the compositions onGedanken Splitter are informed by much more than Eastern drone music alone. Recorded in the same period as 2007’s Deliverance on Locust Music, this is a more jagged and aggressive (although no less accessible) affair. Metzger winds these improvisations around thornier threads than on his previous releases, and while never turning completely abstract, Gedanken Splittermoves even further away from anything resembling typical banjo fare. This is mesmerizing and singular playing.“Gedanken Splitter is ferocious, frantic, yet entirely on-course — easily Metzger’s most aggressive waxing yet.” – Bill Meyer, Signal To Noise “Metzger’s furious banjo virtuoso returns for another perplexing, yet rewarding set of avant-tantrums. Taking on percussive qualities as well as sounding like a mutation of sitar, steel acoustic, and banjo just, he’s restrung and modified his instrument to take on tasks it was never designed for, so his composition accounts for what he’s allowed himself to do as much as where his head is to bring it across. Since nobody else has ever written for this variation of the instrument before, a lot of what you hear on Metzger’s recordings takes this innovation into account, tempering clawhammer playing styles with what he’s been able to create outside of it, applying an atonal, clashing chord structure across prickly rhythmic playing. Use of space seems to be frowned upon, and few notes are allowed to ring out as Metzger thrashes away at his monstrosity, playing in uncharted territory and shaking up the audience in the process. Engaging but quite uneasy.” – Doug Mosurock, Dusted “If Paul Metzger’s last album Deliverance evinced his yearning to free the banjo from the shackles of convention, Gedanken Splitter shows what comes after the chains hit the earth… Metzger’s attack is unmatched in the new American Primitive camp.” – Bill Meyer, The Wire “His music can remind you of a raga with its long introductory sections and spiraling modal fretwork, or suggest a careening detuned front porch blues, but it’s often hard to relate what he’s doing to any familiar musical style.” – Clifford Allen, Signal To Noise “A stellar little record” – Patrick Marley, Bixobal --- Paul Metzger / banjo, guitar --- Recorded by Dave Onnen. 

The Al Maslakh label (translation: The Slaughterhouse) has been documenting far-thinking sounds from the small but vital Lebanese scene since 2005. The “A” Trio’s first release, Music To Our Ears, was one of the most startling debuts of 2011; now, Roaratorio is proud to present their second album (and first vinyl release): Live In Nickelsdorf, recorded at the Konfrontationen Festival in 2012. While far from the first to employ extended techniques on their respective instruments, Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet), Sharif Sehnaoui (acoustic guitar), and Raed Yassin (doublebass) create a music that bears little relation to others who traffic in the same outer realms. Heavily textural, frequently perplexing, sometimes unsettling but always suffused with a provocative intelligence, this is the sound of a collective ur-mind that favors the long gesture over pointillistic strokes. Their capacity for generating aural illusions – one would be hard-pressed to identify the instrumentation as three acoustic instruments, with no electronics or overdubs whatsoever – is astounding, but it’s their skill at harnessing these uncanny tones into a consistently engaging and powerful sound-world that elevates the “A” Trio into the front rank of contemporary improvisational groups.  “Having taken their exploration of acoustic extended techniques even further on again from their 2010 debut, so little remains of the traditional sound of trumpet, guitar and double bass that it feels like the relevant traditions have been passed through a mincing machine. It’s so oppressive and frequently unnerving in its insistent and uncompromising intensity that when traditional instrument sounds do poke their heads up through the subterranean grittiness, they serve as a reminder of how remarkable the trio’s unedited, overdub-free approach really is.” – Richard Pinnell, The Wire --- Sharif Sehnaoui / acoustic gutarRaed Yassin / double bassMazen Kerbaj / trumpet --- Recorded live at the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf on Saturday 21st of July 2012 during the 33rd Konfrontationen Festival. Photography by Tanya Traboulsi. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Michael W. Huon.

"These rehearsal tapes are anything but demo recordings. They are the building blocks for live performances, extended arranged samples. Sun Ra's constant rehearsals were more than just practice. The music here is meditative, soul nurturing medicine." - Mark Corroto, All About Jazz One might think, with a discography as extensive as the one Sun Ra boasts, that the scope of his work has been fully apprehended by this point, but The Intergalactic Thing demonstrates its seemingly bottomless depths. This is not a complete surprise: anyone who saw Ra and the Arkestra perform will remember the sight of the band quickly shuffling through an imposingly thick stack of sheet music, when Sunny would call the next tune on the program with an encrypted hint on his keyboard. Band members tell stories of spending long hours practicing a newly-written composition, only to never play it again. Here, we have a taste of what’s been hidden: drawn from rehearsals at the Sun Ra house in Philadelphia from 1969, The Intergalactic Thing introduces a dozen never-before-heard pieces from Ra’s songbook – tunes that may have never even made it to the bandstand, let alone the recording studio – along with a handful of reworkings of such Ra classics as “Spontaneous Simplicity” and “The Exotic Forest.” Without a doubt, this is one of the most important augmentations to the Sun Ra catalog in many a moon.  --- Danny Davis / saxophone, flute, percussionMarshall Allen / saxophone, oboe, flute, percussionDanny Ray Thompson / saxophone, percussionAlex Blake / bassKeno Speller / congasRashid Salim IV / congasLex Humphries / drumsNimrod Hunt / drumsSun Ra / organ, clavinetJames Jacson / percussionCharles Stephens / trombone, percussionAkh Tal Ebah / percussion, trumpet, mellophone --- Recorded August - November 1969, Sun Studios, Philadelphia, PA