In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, visionary author Ursula K. Le Guin tells the story of human origin by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon of domination. Hacking the linear, progressive mode of the Techno-Heroic, the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution proposes: ‘before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.’ Prior to the preeminence of sticks, swords and the Hero’s killing tools, our ancestors’ greatest invention was the container: the basket of wild oats, the medicine bundle, the net made of your own hair, the home, the shrine, the place that contains whatever is sacred. The recipient, the holder, the story. The bag of stars.  This influential essay opens a portal to terra ignota, where the possibilities of human experience and knowledge can be discovered anew. 

"Since my childhood I have been interested in listening under water. That's exactly what we do every summer in Bern, when we dive into the river Aare. A universe of sounds opens up." Edition of 200 vinyl, all copies numbered and signed by the artist. His work explores the relationship between sound, silence and action in space. He studied music in Basel, Paris and Zuerich, with a concentration in experimental music and improvisation. Kobi performs and creates with various musicians, composers and artists in context of long term partnerships with artists such as Phill Niblock, Jürg Frey, Taku Sugimoto and Keith Rowe. Since 2004 he curates the „zoom in“ festival for improvised music at the Minster of Bern. Christian Kobi teaches improvisation at the Bern University of Arts (HKB).2004 Founder and artistic director of »zoom in«, a festival for improvised music at Berne Minster.

Musician, writer and filmmaker, Sunik Kim follows up ‘The Bent Bow Must Wait to Be Released’ (Takuroku 2021) with their second LP - a deadly serious dismantling of the limits of contemporary computer music, delivered with playful dexterity and a touch of slapstick humour, a la Henry Cow.  Enlisting General MIDI to create frenetic, vital patterns of dis-organisation made up of gleeful synthetic trumpets, wry orchestral sweeps and brutal key clusters, Sunik Kim explodes a kind of simplistic sound into complex, beautifully uncertain structures. Rather than attempting to overwhelm or stun the listener into subjectivity, ‘Potential’ is ever shifting; regularly breaking form and unfolding, discreetly nibbling at the concept of the Spectacle and un-doing fatally closed systems of cyclic music.  On first listens we recalled Cecil Taylor’s Unit Structures, Stockhausen’s Gruppen, and even those weirdo attempts at making music from inside the world of Animal Crossing, Lil Jürg Frey. The overflowing ideas of Henry Cow (to which Kim dedicated a fantastically blended mix for the Wire in 2021) never drift too far from view, but contemporary counterparts lay few except for Yorkshire's most eminent polyceleratrix, Gretchen Aury, who we asked to write the liners. Gretchen’s words are unsurprisingly as extraordinary as the record itself, so we’ll close out the call to elicit a Media response to possibly the wildest OTOROKU yet with their words: “Potential reads as a rare honest response to the disaster capitalist era of the apparent nearing end of the anthropocene, a cyborg music which is not hopelessly psychotic like so much contemporary and especially computer-requiring music, but lucidly possessed with rapture, pain, madness, empathy, ecstasy, torment, fragility; all those vital feelings and incentives which our atrociously depressing times seem engineered to quash and bleed out of us. This sound is a blistering Electro Magnetic Pulse wave of revolutionary hope, exclaiming defiantly that History is not over, that the future is not ‘history,’ that there is still a vast multitude of ideas and identities burning brightly and resiliently, despite the fact that they are inconceivable to the tyrannical Hegemonic axis of global capitalist tech-culture. I ask of you, listener, if you truly wish to plunge beyond The Known, give yourself over in full to this record.” — Artwork by Sunik Kim Layout and design by Jeroen Wille  Liner notes by Vymethoxy Redspiders Mastered by Anotine Nouel at Sound Love Studios Track 1 edited by John Wall —

Jem Finer's album Hrdy-Grdy is the first physical release for Thanet Tape Centre:C52 blackberry purple cassettes with white, onbody printing on both sides, clear cases with two sided j-cards. Written, performed, recorded and produced by Jem Finer with a hurdy-gurdy and a small collection of electronic devices. & The Long Unbroken Short Now: A5 32 page full colour booklet with Essay by Jonathan P Watts and images by Benedict Drew

A masterclass in sound and texture from the Stockholm-based duo of John Chantler and Daniel M Karlsson, recorded at OTO in December 2023, following on from their ‘Hell or High Water’ release on Chantler’s 1703 Skivbolaget label the same year. From a dual synthesiser setup, the pair craft an incredibly naturalistic atmosphere - electronics not so much imitating organic sounds as creating their own little pocket of life, fully realised. The set slowly awakens like frozen ground thawing in the first spring sun; little sonic tendrils budding and reaching and gradually coalescing together in symbiosis. Ebbing and flowing, the momentum builds inexorably in ever-intricate patterns of tension and release; fractal forms unfurling and intertwining with a density that never collapses into aimless blowout even when the volume reaches a tumultuous peak. Finally, energy expended all at once, the piece falls back into a last cluster of sighing tones, and the day is done. -- Recorded by Billy Steiger Mixed and mastered by Daniel M Karlsson

Hyperdelia is happy to present Sun Kit’s debut record All The Patterns Inside. Sun Kit is an experimental band, formed in Berlin. The band consists of Jules Reidy (guitar) and Andreas Dzialocha (bass) and fuses both artists' singular sounds. Their debut album All the Patterns Inside is a moody and ecstatic ride that navigates distance and closeness, breaking and re-forming.The record was produced completely self-sufficiently at home, the two sending each other recordings and sketches back and forth, mostly as direct input signals. These layered interactions gradually turned into songs which increasingly were abstracted through electronics, filterings, effects, autotune and a whole lot of distortion. As a result, the album holds song-like structures with vocals (such as the title track, “Vain” or “Red”), electronically powered hyper-ballads (as on “Springtime Rain” or “Tunnel Vision”) as well as more grainy tracks which highlight the band’s experimental side (“All In”, “Release”).Sun Kit started as a friendship project of two musicians who traverse similar musical communities in Berlin. Hyperdelia has provided a home to both artists before through the Serenus Zeitblom Oktett (HEX 001), Andreas Dzialocha’s solo record For Always LP (HEX 005) as well as Stellan Veloce’s Complesso Spettro (HEX 006). All The Patterns Inside now shows Andreas’ and Jules’ different instrumental aesthetics in a band context. Consequently, Sun Kit teases out both musicians’ sonic sensibilities, highlighting the spectral complexities of their two instruments, an admiration for the engulfing power of distortion and a deep fascination for sound detail. Paired with Jules Reidy’s lyrical conjuring of seasonal change – its emotional intensity and healing powers –, Sun Kit at times takes inspiration from Low’s edgy mellowness, Cocteau Twin’s ethereal echoes or reminds of My Bloody Valentine’s blurred inwardness. All The Patterns Inside is the result of a friendship becoming band, a debut record thick with twists and turns and one bursting with feels.  --- Music by Andreas Dzialocha and Jules ReidyLyrics by Jules ReidyMixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture --- Thank you Arthur Janssen, David Walker, Johanna Markert, Malte Kobel, Marta Forsberg, Sarah Saviet, Shusha, Silvia Maggi