Wind Tide is a multidisciplinary art presence inhabiting the sonic, visual, and conceptual realms of Gretchen Korsmo and Andrew Weathers. Wind Tide also functions as their recording space in Texas, while extending to off-site locations in the field, as both artists have a relationship with nature and landscapes. “Blue Breaking Brown” is both sprawling and focused, with mysterious drifting vocals emerging and receding along swathes of resonant guitar drones. Room tone, bells, synthesizer, lap steel, and percussion elements drift over one another like transparent textiles, or variants of light and shadow on distant surfaces. Gretchen and Andrew are both involved in the Full Spectrum Records collective, whose supportive energy is present here: sounds exist as singular entities, yet coalesce to create two beautiful, intense, and engaging side-long documents of performance. Andrew Weathers / synthesizer, lap steel, recorder, electronicsGretchen Korsmo / voice, electric piano, synthesizer, percussion Recorded, mixed, and mastered at Wind Tide, Littlefield TXSome components recorded live at Chapter, Denver CO

Camilo Ángeles and Joanna Mattrey present a striking set of pieces culled from an improvised live set at Museo Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City, recorded and filmed February 2022, with a dual recording and video release presented here as “Hailstone Temple”. Both musicians have fascinated Notice Recordings for quite a while, and both exhibit deep relationships with their instruments: flute and viola, respectively. Ángeles originally caught our attention via the TVL REC label, which he co-directs with Violeta García and Carlos Quebrada. Originally from Peru and now based in Mexico City, his non-traditional approach to flute involves extended techniques, electronic alterations, and microtonal textures. Working also as composer and producer for film, dance, and theatre, curator of music festivals, playing in various ensembles, and collaborating with such artists as Ka Baird, Anaïs Maviel, and Mabe Fratti, it is truly rewarding to hear a such a raw and cathartic set with NYC's Joanna Mattrey, a Notice Recordings alum, having been involved in two past releases (her third solo album, "Soulcaster", was released earlier this year). We’ve been following Mattrey’s viola explorations for years now, and her honest, playful, intense, unpretentious, and dedicated solo and collaborative performances have consistently floored us. A 2021 ISSUE Project Room and 2022 Roulette resident, and graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, Mattrey continues to exist in both established music worlds and also on the very fringes of outsider art, with her heart clearly in the avant-garde. This recording exemplifies that: Ángeles and Mattrey perform in the former Santa Teresa la Antigua church and monastery complex which is now home to the Ex Teresa Arte Actual contemporary art space, a venue dedicated to contemporary performance and installation. The contrast of their unconventional, strange, and often cutting playing reverberating throughout the towering 17th century building is indeed poignant. 

"4CD homage to 4 drummers who have been a constant inspiration since the day I bought my first drum set back in 1972 - they are H = Han Bennink, E = Ed Blackwell, M = Milford Graves, P = Phil Seamen. It is a series of solos and duos with Alex Ward, Gabriel Wonck, Alan Wilkinson and James Allsopp." "My homage to the four drummers I came across on the day I bought my first drum kit and who have remained a constant source of inspiration to this day.  I am not trying to be them - just trying to convey what they have inspired in me over the last five decades. For each I have put together a specific drum and cymbal set up, attempting to get close to the sound I associate with each of them, and likewise chose the musicians for the duets accordingly.  The photgraphs are the first images I saw of them - hearing them came later.  I saw Blackwell and Graves live a couple of times, Bennink many times (and played with him on four occasions). Seamen? Not live - he passed away on Friday 13th October 1972 - but one of the first concerts I attended in London was the Phil Seamen Tribute concert at 100 Club on 31st May 1976 (when I saw John Stevens, Ginger Baker and Brian Spring for the first time).  Thanks to Alan, Alex, Gabriel and James and to all at OTO for their support in helping me realise this project. And especially to Shaun Crook who recorded, mixed and mastered all the material."  

OTOroku is delighted to present 'not bad', an intricate and intensely galvanizing release from Breathing Heavy, the saxophone and sampler duo of Sam Andreae and Ciaran Mackle. Careening straight out of the blocks with a wildly invigorating immediacy, the duo scarcely seem to take a breath over the next thirty electrifying minutes. Myriad interweaving woodwind lines whirl and reel in convulsive fashion, overlapping patterns weave and dance like reflected light from water, and a dizzying array of motifs are conjured and discarded as if the pair were concerned about leaving any scrap of energy unspent. All the listener need do is to simply bask in the joyful tumult. Andreae's alto saxophone playing ranges widely from fluttering trills and an almost whinnying lyricism, to hefty squalls that seem to revel in a raw physicality. Alongside this (around, over, under, through), Mackle creates a densely swirling cataract of stuttering, tumbling sonic fragments that continuously reflect the entire entity back on itself like a collapsing hall of mirrors. There is obviously a level of deeply attuned interplay at work here that seems long-honed, but any attempt to discern the source of any given sound is rendered utterly moot. A duo performance this may be, but the end result is an undeniably symbiotic, fully-realised whole. -- Sam Andreae: alto saxophoneCiaran Mackle: sampler Recorded by Breathing HeavyMixed by Rory SalterMastered by Oli BarrettArtwork by Mio Ebisu  Thanks to Ash and Flora, Mio and Suzume and to Rory!

Captivating and deeply felt new audio work by Blanc Sceol, aka the duo of Stephen Shiell and Hannah White. Originally commissioned for broadcast on the deep sea 'Radio Amnion' sound project, the piece is written for and performed on the bespoke, one-of-a-kind Orbit instrument, designed and made by Stephen and Hannah in collaboration with master luthier Kai Tönjes. Over the course of thirty minutes the piece drifts and unfurls in an entrancing, enveloping flow, utilising the instrument's unique sonic qualities to create something truly special. This recording is Blanc Sceol's response to a commission from Jol Thoms to create a new audio work for the June edition of his deep sea sound project 'Radio Amnion', where, each month at the time of the full moon, the abyssal waters of Cascadia Basin resonate with the deep frequencies and voices of invited artists, relayed in the sea through a submerged neutrino telescope experiment’s calibration system. Through the duo's sound and ecology work with Surge Cooperative on the Channelsea river they have found connection to Abbey Mills pumping station, Joseph Bazalgette’s Victorian ‘cathedral of sewage’, his overground homage to the underground network of pipes, an operational site that still moves water and humanure beneath the city today. This audio work captures the spinning frequencies of the Orbit, recorded in the chambers of the sewer substation, to be played out to the depths of the deep sea, creating a poetic resonance between these sounds and spaces, a spell of connection between the clear, linear, progressive features of our engineered water networks and the dark, wet, yielding, cyclical unknowns of the deep sea, where the sub station searches for neutrinos and on the full moon translates human-made frequencies into light and vibration for the seafloor. The words in the piece are a series of ‘one word poems’ created by participants from Blanc Sceol's ‘Sonic Meditations with the Full Moon’ sessions over the last year. Working with moon time through our deep listening practice, and the tidal phases of the Channelsea river, Orbit coordinates these cyclical flows in celebration of the fullness of the cosmic body that holds the tension between the earth and its inhabitants, and gives us all rhythm. Orbit the instrument:The Orbit consists of a red cedar decagon body, the resonating chamber, which is spun by one set of hands, bringing rhythm and flow with the changing pace of the orbit, as the other hands hold a bow to the ten strings, seeking out the varying chords and harmonic frequencies. As the two work together so the orbit begins to sing and soar, a myriad of changing, whirling pitch shifting drones. In 2017 Stephen created a prototype instrument, inspired by Uakti’s ‘torre’ and Walter Smetak’s ‘Ronda’, a plastic barrel strung with ten strings and played by two people - one who turns the barrel, and one who holds a bow to the strings. Many years and many tweaks later, in early 2023 we finally collaborated with master luthier Kai Tönjes to create an upgraded version, and ‘Orbit’ was born. -- Mixed and mastered by Ian ThompsonCover design by Oli Barrett from photos by Joe Thoms Originally commissioned by and broadcast on Radio Anion: https://radioamnion.net/

Otoroku presents a daedal, multifarious set from artist, Patrick Ward, recorded on a bill alongside Moritz von Oswald at Cafe OTO in September 2024. Ward begins with a deep sub-bass rumble that seems to almost physically rise up out of the floor; a weighty mass that slowly but inexorably draws other sonic fragments into its own gravitational field, quivering and contorting as they orbit around it. The pressure builds, before abruptly the disparate elements coalesce around a single, urgently repeated refrain that snaps and slices in a persistent staccato that appears loaded with meaning but in a language unknown. This sense of warped and fractured vernacular continues, as stilted, stuttering voices spark and falter amidst the sonic debris tumbling around them; speech untethered from language, language severed from meaning. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that these voices are in fact overladen with significance; an abundance of spoken signs and symbols in a complex lexicon whose implications always remain tantalisingly out of reach. The voices shift, from an isolated repeated refrain, to multiple raised shouts that become engulfed by a growing wall of distortion that builds and erupts into a scattered and corrupted breakbeat before it too unravels, leaving behind only the gentle buzzing and intimate whirring of unknown apparatus.