Out today on Feedback Moves, ‘Two Movements’ by Conal Blake, Regan Bowering and Li Song. This is the trio’s second release and extends the ideas which underpinned their first outing, ‘Music for Snare Drums and Portable Speakers’ (Infant Tree, 2023), by incorporating motion in two distinct ways. The two sides, ’Swinging’ and ‘Oscillating’, were recorded live at Cafe Oto and Hundred Years Gallery, London.Recorded by @billy_steiger and @hbrownsoundMastered by Taku UnamiAvailable digitally and on cassette now via Bandcamp.

I wasn’t questioning what I thought was happening though. I also thought I knew the extent of it: the voice. Thought that the ghost might on some days be something that attached itself physically like a node on my vocal chords, or was vocal chords, the extra thick ones I’d need to produce that sound, like in films about puberty you get shown in science classes in school.Roy Orbison in Ruins stages an imagined correspondence between a young hospitality worker on a road trip, and the musician David Berman. Unfolding over a series of four unanswered letters and karaoke interludes, we learn that our narrator has been possessed by the voice of Roy Orbison. Accompanied by her chorus of Roys, she slowly transforms into his image as she writes about dreaming, leisure time, haunting and ventriloquism from the rest stops, bars and motels of Florida.

Moving through time and across oceans, writer Sam Moore takes us on a poetic journey of self-discovery through queer history, pop culture and (auto)biography in this deeply personal encounter with queer identity a generation after the AIDS crisis.    Examining the violent political legacy of right-wing governments, the search for liberation through art and the endless quest for self-discovery, All My Teachers Died of AIDS serves as both eulogy and rallying cry, asking us to mourn the dead while lighting a torch to help guide us through grief towards a brighter queer future. 

A sequence of piano and tenor saxophone free improvisations recorded in concert at the Appleby Jazz Festival in 2004.

This recording from the earlier years of Cafe Oto documents the impossible pairing of four contemporary giants. Its one of those miraculous one off groupings that reminds us why the venue opened in the first place.’ “The magic of the first minutes – an alto solo by Joe McPhee of true purity – soft-spoken, masterful and accomplished – brought back to mind the blissful Coleman/Haden duet last year at the Royal Festival Hall. ‘Ornette gave me freedom to move in a certain way,’ said McPhee. He searched hesitantly and carefully for his words, all the more surprising from such an articulate musical (or, as he might say ‘muse-ical’) practitioner and campaigner. Coleman’s 80th birthday coincided with McPhee’s stint at Cafe Oto. McPhee and his co-musicians delivered an intense performance which was both creative and restrained. With Evan Parker ‘s tenor in tow – a collaboration going back to the late 70s – and Lol Coxhill, sitting with head bowed intently, a soprano master – it could have gone anywhere, yet they worked off each other, often in the higher registers, building up almost bird-call like interactions and trills. Earlier, Chris Corsano‘s drumming presented a dense bedrock for McPhee to play against, and his solo spell was a crisp exercise in sonic curiosity. McPhee picked up his soprano mid-way through the second set, heightening the lyricism of the three saxophones. Then, being a devotee of Don Cherry, he switched to pocket trumpet, allowing him to interject, and punctuate the concentrated sound layers built up by the quartet, and lead the music out through a different door”- Geoff Winston (londonjazznews.com) Recorded 10th March 2010, this is also a document of the only time Lol Coxhill and Joe Mcphee shared the stage. The recording is a little rough, but hey, so was your birth! Limited to 500 copies packaged in mini gatefold sleeve.

This book is dedicated to the history of the music label Free Music Production (FMP), which from 1968 to 2010 achieved incomparable things as a Berlin platform for the production, presentation and documentation of music and decisively shaped the musical development of the '70s and beyond. Based on many conversations from over thirty years with key protagonists such as Peter Brötzmann or Jost Gebers, Markus Müller tells the success story of a musicians' initiative that emerged in the context of the 1968 ideas of self-organization and self-determination and worked successfully in an international network for over 40 years. Thematic focal points include the Total Music Meeting and the Workshop Freie Musik, the production of recordings, relations with GDR musicians, FMP and women, the internationally groundbreaking collaboration with Cecil Taylor. The book builds on the major FMP exhibitions in Munich and Berlin, but in many aspects goes far beyond them. Thanks to unrestricted access to the FMP-Publishing Archive in Borken, many first-published documents and photographs from the history of FMP can be found.