Pat Thomas returns to OTOROKU for his fourth collection of solo piano improvisations, this time recorded in a studio setting at London’s Fish Factory.  For 25 years now, beginning with Nur (Emanem) and continuing through Al-Khwarizmi Variations (Fataka), The Elephant Clock of Al-Jazari (OTOROKU), and now The Solar Model of Ibn Al-Shatir, Pat Thomas has drawn on the Arabic world for titles for his solo piano work - specifically the long-standing Islamic tradition of astronomical invention. For Thomas, the work of the polymaths he dedicates his music to has been sidelined by Eurocentrism, just as the Arabic origin of “jass” and the scalar, intervallic and polyphonic contributions made by Arab musicians have been routinely overlooked. Islamic innovation is at the heart of Thomas’ solo projects and draws a direct link between his Sufi faith and a totally unique style of playing. Each of his solo piano records is a dedication - not just to the innovators Thomas names but to the beauty of the universe in all its complexities.    Starting standing up with one hand inside the piano and one on the keys, ‘The Solar Model’ begins with single staccato bass notes appearing like chondrites in the darkness, occasionally tumbling towards a rhythm and then falling out of it. Metallic string work starts to pull towards an unseen centre and eventually notes from the upper registers appear, clear and light. With both hands drawn to the keys, Thomas builds towards scintillating beauty, carried through “The Laws of Motion” and propelling us towards the A-side closer, “For George Saliba”. Notes fall rapidly, colliding to form a crowded core with a warped sort of bebop in its middle - distinctive Pat with a nod to the Duke’s groove. The whole landscape of the A side swings with this one movement, until its energy is spent on one last sweeping rotation.  On the B-side, “The Oud of Ziryab” notes to the instrument maker who added a 5th pair of strings to the Oud. The single bass notes of the first side are swapped for clusters, bursting together and decaying in space. Making use of the sustain pedal and the silence of a studio setting, it’s one of the most open, lush recordings of Thomas at the piano we’ve heard - more Muhal Richard Abrams than Monk, the lower end thundering under rapid, crystalline blues.  “For Mansa Musa” brings back a swing instantly recognisable as Pat, with a huge euphoric lift halfway that crowns the record but the album’s end title “The Birds are Singing” is more celestial, more chromatic - a reminder that the spiritual matters just as much as the physical for Thomas. --- Released in an edition of 500 LPs and 500 CDsRecorded at the Fish Factory, London on Wednesday 6th March, 2024 by Benedic LamdinMixed by Benedic Lamdin Mastered by Giuseppe Ielesi Photographs by Abby Thomas Pressed at Vinyl Press UK

Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long time collaborator Alan Licht.  Celebrating thirty years of collaboration, Loren Connors and Alan Licht performed for two nights at OTO on May 5 and 6th, 2023. On the second night, with the stage lit in blue, Connors took up a seat on the piano stool whilst Licht picked up the guitar. What followed was the duo’s first ever set with Connors on piano - one of only a few times Connors has played piano live at all - here captured and issued as The Blue Hour. Its spacious warmth came as a total surprise live, but makes complete sense for a duo whose dedicated expressionism takes inspiration from a vast spectrum of emotion. Both opening with single notes to start, it doesn't take long before a surface rises and begins to shimmer. A run up the keys, the drop of a feedback layer on a sustained and bent note. The two begin to exchange notes in tandem and brief touches of melody and chord hover. After a while, Connors picks up the guitar, stands it in his lap and sweeps a wash of colour across Licht’s guitar. Sharp, glassy edges begin to form, open strings and barred frets darkening the space. When his two pedals begin to merge, Licht finds a dramatic organ-like feedback and it’s hard not to imagine Rothko’s Chapel, its varying shades of blue black ascending and descending in the room. When Connors goes back to the piano for the second side, the pair quickly lock into a refrain and light pours in. It’s a kind of sound that Licht says reminds him of what he and Connors would do when the duo first started playing together 30 years ago. It’s certainly more melodic than some of their more recent shows, and the atonal shards of At The Top of the Stairs seem to totally dissolve. What is always remarkable about Licht is that his enormous frame of reference doesn't seem to weigh him down, and instead here he is able to delicately place fractures of a Jackson C Frank song (“Just Like Anything”,) amongst the vast sea of Connors’ blues. Perhaps it's the pleasure of playing two nights in a row together, or the nature of Connor’s piano playing combined with Licht’s careful listening, but the improvisation on The Blue Hour feels remarkably calm and unafraid. There’s nothing to prove and no agenda except the joy of sounding colour together. Totally beautiful.  --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Saturday 6th May 2023 by Billy SteigerMixed by Oli BarrettMastered by Sean McCannArtwork by Loren Connors Layout by Oli BarrettScreenprint by Tartaruga Manufactured in the UK by Vinyl Press.  Edition of 300 standard LPs, 100 LPs with screenprinted artwork by Loren Connors printed as inserts. Also available on a limted run of 200 CDs. 

Severin Black and Owen Pratt explore the rhythms within earth-borne sounds on their debut LP, following on from their Untitled cassette that birthed the Archaic Vaults label in 2020. These seven tracks exist both as duets and as momentary respite from the isolation both musicians faced during the pandemic. Ritual routine visits across two years of solitude. Long nights spent in dim lighting as negronis gradually dilute in the heat. Much of this album was recorded amidst a backdrop of townships with murky histories of sectarian religious conflict, labour shortages and abandoned properties, against the common notion of southern France solely as a tourist destination. A duet can imply certain rules of engagement. Not all recordings on this album, however, are a duet between two people. VII (Black Metal) consists of two microphones left to surveil the streets below a third floor window, feeding directly into magnetic tape deeper in the recesses. IX (Snares) is an improvised dance between a bass amplifier’s sub frequencies and an activated snare drum. II (Subterranean River) captures limbs as they shift the gravel terrain below a weary cavernous stream. The recordist turns performer, the environment becomes performer too. Either could and often does serve as a duelling partner amongst these documentations.

Sophie Agnel plays the whole piano. Its body matters as much as its strings. The keyboard's lid is just as good closed as it is open - in fact it’s best slammed open and closed rapidly. Joined by bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble, Three on a Match explodes the piano trio - each player sparking off the other so quickly that it’s impossible to figure out who lit the flame.  Recorded at OTO in 2023, this was the second two night residency for a trio that has fast become one of our favourite improvising groups. Each individually brilliant, Agnel, Edwards and Noble’s enduring connection is in their seriously playful approach to their instrument - in their way of looking at it as a whole and then tearing it apart, breaking it down into its raw materials - wood, brass, steel.  Born in Paris in the 60’s and playing her parents piano as soon as she could stand up, Agnel is classically trained and had a turn in modern jazz. What frustrated her was the strange disconnect between the frame of the piano and its keyboard - a weird boundary that seemed to form some hushed code of etiquette. “The first thing I put inside the piano was a plastic goblet. I’d seen a few pianists do it: Fred Van Hove, for example, put rubber balls inside his. But what didn’t appeal to me was that there seemed to be no link between the piano’s outside and inside.” If you see Agnel play now, the body of her piano is littered with fish tins, ping pong balls, wooden blocks - not that you’d recognize their sounds. Steve Noble surrounds his drum kit with whistles, tubes and towels alongside gleaming brass cymbals and gongs. Their stage is a heady mix of high and low - the grand piano and the gong alongside rubber balls and tiny bells; players half stood up, reaching in, bending toward - relentlessly working their instrument to unburden its sound from genre.  Free improvisation is always a leap of faith, a test of commitment, and these three players are completely unafraid. The music switches deftly from super taut string manipulation to extremely loud percussive collisions. The trio can play microscopic mutations on a bass note and then scale up on the turn of a pin to plunge into huge, black chords and ricocheting sonority - dissolving the boundary between body and sound. The crescendo of Part Two is shaped by such cumulative repetition that it feels like a confrontation - a controlled test for breaking point. What happens if we keep going?   As so we left Part Three as the last encore of the residency. It’s a totally exhilarating, skittering reprise - short and energetic - delivered with the kind of grounded abandon you hope to see improvisers play with but rarely do. 

After the album Calques recorded live during a concert, Novembre returns with Encore, a double studio album,the result of a long maturation in terms of form, composition and playing. As they have been doing for more than ten years, Romain Clerc Renaud and Antonin Tri Hoang have constructed a complex poetic form, made up of multiple back-and forths between simple and gentle themes (Encore, Petit Matelot) or very fast ones (LetCo, Klaxon); between very short pieces (Miniatures) and large developments (Continuum). Everything is arranged by the play of contrasts and resonances: a piece is interrupted to be continued later (Please wait), a motif is metamorphosed by dint of repetition (Encore), a piece is played again, but as quickly as possible (Letco Flash). The second CD of the album illustrates another side of the art of montage. Marc Baron recorded Novembre while they were working on Encore, using the most varied materials and techniques (tape recorder, hydrophone, boom box, spring, tape loops). With this harvest he has constructed an electroacoustic piece that diverts, amplifies and transforms the music of Novembre. --- CD1 Compositions by Romain Clerc-Renaud and Antonin- Tri HoangRecording: Antony - July 2021Engineering and mixing: Erwan BoulayMastering: Pierre Luzy, Music Unit CD2Electro-acoustic piece by Marc Baron, produced in the studio in the summer 2018 from recordings of the band Novembre.Design: Galilée Al Rifai

Under the name SBATAX, Bertrand Denzler and Antonin Gerbal continue their exploration of flow, speed and patternsby exacerbating the sound of their saxophone-drums duo. The furrow they dig ends up forming spirals thatgradually migrate towards regions where movement becomes a texture that floats in the wind. Bertrand Denzler and Antonin Gerbal have been working together since 2011, both as a duo and with bands and projects such as Zoor, Denzler-Gerbal-Dörner, Onceim, Horns+, CCP3 or Protocluster, whose albums have been released by labels such as Umlaut Records, Confront Recordings and Remote Resonator. --- Music by Bertrand Denzler (Suisa) and Antonin Gerbal (Gema-Sacem)Recorded at Curved Pitch, Saint-Ouen, France, June24th 2022Engineered by SbataxMastered by Jean-Pierre Bouquet, L'Autre StudioPhoto by Benjamin DenzlerDesign by Erica Saïdah