Friday 13 March 2026, 7.30pm
Glasgow's Greater Lanarkshire Auricular Research Council, or GLARC for short, have been producing rigorous cassette-based periodicals for 10 years now. Acting as a springboard for the dazzling academic careers of enumerable luminaries, they pride themselves on producing high impact globally distributed research output. As part of their anniversary they have organised a couple of plenary showcases in Glasgow and they are also coming to London with seasoned and promising new scholars:
Masa Nazzal - Masa spent three months working in Bihać, Bosnia between October 2023 - January 2024 with a no-borders activist group where she collected testimonies of violence happening to people on the move to seek asylum in the European Union. It is in this space where Masa and Ilyas first met. Ilyas was staying at the transit camp and Masa was doing aid distribution work, when Ilyas spotted a guitar in Masa's hand, pointed at it, grabbed it and started playing. This is where their friendship and sonic journeys began. Her release on GLARC, Slovenia Inshallah, is an experiment in what borderless solidarities, borderless friendships, sounds like. It is an abolitionist sonic ethnography, through the contemporary violence of the EU border regime. She will bring a version of this mixtape to life at Cafe Oto
Able Noise - With GLARC 000000000000012, George and Alex were coerced into finally committing their somewhat legendary and until then exclusively live performance practice to tape. A duo composed of Baritone guitar and drums drifting over from The Hague and Athens, they have since released High Tide via World of Echo in 2024 to relentless acclaim and toured all over the place. It's a meditative sound, fractured by the stereo skew and pitch fluctuations of cassette tape, utilising imperfections and building whole songs from fragments of decay.
L - L are “probably the most magnetic, outrageous, crazed, dadaist, inventive group in Glasgow.”* and My Sister’s Baby was L's third release following "Marilyn Monroe - All of Us" on Radical Documents (GLARC 0000000000000000000000000000000000000026). The tape was born by immaculate conception: GLARC released this tape without listening to it. Eoin Anderson reviewed it without listening to it. L wrote and recorded their parts individually and assembled it - without listening to it. It was mixed, mastered and messed up by eyeball and sent to tapeline - without anyone listening to it. On the 24th of October 2025- underneath the M8 - L listened and played it - for the first time. Named as one of the best cassettes of 2025 by The Quietus, they described it as "wild and chaotic, yet whether through kismet, fluke or clairvoyance it never sounds disjointed". Seasoned from a recent European tour, they will bring joy and chaos.
* in review from Michael Kasparis
https://marilynmonroeallofus.bandcamp.com/album/marilyn-monroe-all-of-us
https://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Sisters-Baby-completely-heartbreaking-ebook/dp/B0CMP25F85
Propan - Propan was formed in 2011 by Norwegian vocalists Ina Sagstuen and Natali Abrahamsen Garner. They released their third album, Loom on GLARC in 2022 (GLARC000000000000000000000000015) , following Baby (Va Fongool 2016), Trending (SOFA 2019). The premise of this release was to construct semi-composed improvisations, layered in time, where timbre, texture, rhythm and form become layers in a sonic weaving. In contrast to their previous works where electronic manipulation was foregrounded, Loom stood out with its roomy acoustics. It is music which breathes with its surroundings, and consequently it feels alive, coarsely grained and warm. As described by the Quietus, Propan make “simple vocal patterns punching far above their weight”. Propan make a rare appearance in the UK at Oto as part of these 10 year celebrations so catch it!
