Co-written, performed (synths, drum machine, sampler), arranged, produced & mixed by Pouya Ehsaei Co-written and performed:Koroleko Moussa (Balafon, Djembe)Sam Warner (Trumpet)Hammadi Valdes (Drums, Congas, Bongos)Tamar Osborn (Bariton Sax, Clarinet)Parham Bahadoran (Duduk)Kareem Dayes (Cello)Yelfris Valdes (Trumpet) Spoken Word:Tara FatehiMA.MOYOMaureen OnwunaliNomakhwezi BeckerTim EtchellsOluwaseun OlayiwolaNisha RamayyaTasneim Zyada Cover Artwork by Farhad QashqaiDesign and Layout by Nahal MarzbanMastered and cut by Frank Merritt at The CarverySound Enginner: Dave HolmesRecorded by Dave Holmes at Lightship 95 StudioArt direction by Pouya Ehsaei & Tara FatehiCreated in Peckham, LondonThe exact number of times one needs to walk on an untrodden mountain for a path to start to appear. All the vibrations that remain from the first time a word is uttered. A flood from another planet, approaching Earth. When you look at a tree and all the ones who looked at the same tree appear for a blink of an eye. A thing you can only fully see from the moon: so scattered, so fluid, and always shifting. Created by London-based Iranian duo Pouya Ehsaei and Tara Fatehi, From the Lips to the Moon brings together a cast of London’s fierce, current, and transcultural voices, fusing live electronics, performative poetry, unearthly melodies, noise, and twisted beats. Their debut album delves into four years of live encounters, remembered as much for their spontaneity as for their unity. This is a record defined by its contrasts: gritty, sharp-edged electronics, raw vocalizations, and organic instrumental textures give way seamlessly to moments of soft, profound tenderness.

Pouya Ehsaei Eurorack, Rytm, Octatrack, FXs, words (No Door)Tara Fatehi Vocal, WordsTamar Osborn Clarinet (A1, B5) Baritone Sax (A3, A4, B2, B3, B4)Afla Sackey Percussion (A1, A3, B1, B2, B3, B5)Cover Artwork by Aylar DastgiriDesign and Layout by Nahal MarzbanMastered and cut by Frank Merritt at The CarveryMixed by Pouya Ehsaei and Dave HolmesRecorded by Giles Barrett at Lightship 95 StudioProduced by Pouya EhsaeiSupported by Horniman Museum and Gardens, Masoud Azizpour, Nahal Marzban, Arman Nouri, Siamak Shojaee and Shayan Mortazavi.Thanks to: Ahmad Jafari, Sedākhāne, Rudi Schmidt, Saava Benjamin Busenze Balagadde & Mazdak Ayari.  An epic whirlwind of heavy sub-bass, stormy woodwinds, and uncanny vocals, conjuring ghosts of the old and new, the intimate and the alien, the literary and the chaotic. Fusing post-industrial, dub techno, avant-garde jazz, African drumming, and experimental hip-hop into a dark, captivating sonic experience. A thrilling new collaboration led by the trailblazing Pouya Ehsaei (live electronics/ Ariwo, From the Lips to the Moon, Parasang), the project features the untamable force of Tamar Osborn (Collocutor, Flock, Unknown to Known) on wind instruments, and the kaleidoscopic voice of Tara Fatehi (From the Lips to the moon, Mishandled Archive). Inspired by the journey of Zar — possession-trance healing rituals rooted in dance, percussion, and song — People of the Wind draws the listener on a sea voyage, from the shores of East Africa to the haunted coasts of Iran. They weave together experiences of displacement and migration, deep-rooted musical traditions, and futuristic soundscapes. People of the Wind moves with the traditions of Zar – healing music and dance brought to southern Iran by communities displaced from East Africa. With deep respect for those who endured the Indian Ocean Slave Trade, the chants on this album are renditions of traditional Zar chants. The work is also connected to the book Ahl-e Hava (People of the Wind) by Iranian writer Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi.

‘May Spring Last a Lifetime’ is the first duo release from improvising tenor saxophonists Tom Challenger and Evan Parker. The album emerged after years of informal practice sessions; then, following two live performances, the duo recorded this session at Arco Barco in Ramsgate. The album is Evan Parker’s fifth appearance on the False Walls label.Extracts from the CD booklet conversation between Tom and Evan:Evan: “Duo is the simplest form of group playing. And so it’s the simplest, the purest in a certain sense, and the most challenging. There’s nowhere to hide, really. It’s about the exchange. With two tenor saxophones, they have a shared language as instruments and I think we both have a relationship with the saxophone which is about: what does this thing do, what can it do? And then I’ve learned things from Tom that he has discovered: you can do this and can I approximate that? Can I incorporate that into my language or my relationship with the output of the instrument?”Tom: “I mean, as much as there is just two of us and you can tell there’s two of us, there are moments where there’s no one [laughs], and then there’s moments where there are four or five. This duo has challenged the way that I listen, or the way I don’t listen sometimes. But there are these weird moments where there might be three perceivable, four perceivable things going on, you know, in terms of what you might call a voice.”

The 4LP boxset version holds nearly all the music performed over the two nights, minus 5 minutes we were forced to cut to fit the music onto 4 discs. It will arrive in a handcovered and screenprint boxset, limited to 250 copies and will include a full booklet of photographs from the residency by Dawid Laskowski. Please note the artwork may differ slightly from the mock up.  Your order will be packed with care and delivered via a tracked service.  The 2LP version is an edit of the music played on both nights. It will arrive as a gatefold 12" printed in reverse board outersleeves and will include a pull out with photographs from the residency by Dawid Laskowski. The 2CD version contains both sets from both nights. The discs will be housed in a digipak on reverse board and will include photographs from the residency by Dawid Laskowski. It is a huge honour to publish Peter Brotzmann’s final concerts on OTOROKU. When we invited Peter to do a residency at Cafe OTO back in February 2023 we had no idea these would be his last ever shows and he played with such power it would have been hard for anyone present to believe he would never play publicly again. Recorded over two nights this grouping of Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone, John Edwards on bass and Steve Noble on drums feels especially resonant and personal to Cafe OTO. The first time Peter performed at the venue back in 2010 it was in a trio with John and Steve, (released as The Worse The Better kick starting our in-house record label) so it feels fitting that the last shows he ever played here should also have that trio at its core. The quartet last played together at OTO back in 2013, (released as Mental Shake on OTOROKU), and Brotzmann humbly opened the return of the group saying, "it's a pleasure to be back” before launching straight into a long blast on the alto sax, swiftly met by the relentless energy and engagement of Adasiewicz, Edwards and Noble. There are moments of tenderness to Brotzmann’s playing that feels specific to this small group - one that cuts across three generations - and in a space that’s come to feel like home. Of course, there is dizzying, forceful, singleminded playing, but even amongst a relentless chorus of cymbal splashes and busy vibraphone clusters the lyrical, spacious moments are savoured and held onto. As he remarked after at the end of the group's first visit to OTO, “the Quartet is, for us, a great adventure.” Peter clearly wanted to play to the end. Did he know these might be his last shows? We will never know. What is clear is he wanted to go out in style and on his terms. For anyone in the room at the time or listening to these recordings it’s clear he achieved that. It was Peter’s wish that these recordings should be made public and he was due to finalise the cover design on the week he passed away. We would like to thank Peter’s family for working with us to fulfil Peter’s wishes to release this material but more than anything we would like to thank Peter for all the extraordinary memories, his generosity and all he has given the music. On a personal level for us, like so many, he meant a huge amount and we miss him deeply. --- Peter Brotzmann / reeds John Edwards / double bass Steve Noble / drums Jason Adasiewicz / vibraphone  --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on 10th and 11th February 2023. Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielesi. Photos by Dawid Laskowski. Pressed in the UK by Vinyl Press. Artwork by Peter Brötzmann. Design by Untiet.

Play Monk arrives in a gatefold, reverse board 2CD designed by Maja Larrson. Cover photograph of Thelonius Monk at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco in 1968 by Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. Inside photographs of حمد [Ahmed] by Stefan Lacandler. Recorded and mixed by Benedic Lamdin on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd March, 2025 at Fish Factory Studios, London. Mastered by Andreas LUPO Lubich. Produced by Seymour Wright/OTOROKU. After 6 albums re-imagining the work of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, أحمد [Ahmed] turn to the material of Malik’s bandmate Thelonious Monk in the group's ongoing search for future music.  Before going on to develop his own groundbreaking approach to jazz, Ahmed Abdul-Malik worked in Thelonious Monk’s late 1950’s quartets - appearing on seminal Monk recordings: Thelonious In Action (1958) and Misterioso (1958), and the more recently unearthed Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall (2005). Abdul-Malik and Monk share a critical engagement with time - specifically in challenging its linear trajectory and offering sites and modes of synthesis and rupture instead. In their music, fragments of time are scattered and re-arranged in the present, an idea central too to the project of أحمد [Ahmed]. Over several decades, all four members of أحمد [Ahmed] have engaged with Monk’s standards in various individual and collective ways, but Play Monk, recorded in the same three-day London studio sessions as Sama’a (Audition), is the first released documentation of the group's versions of Monk’s music which began with a spontaneous interpretation of ‘Evidence’ in Novara, Italy, 2023.   Across 2CDs, أحمد [Ahmed] atomize Monk’s ‘standards’ - transforming each composition into a shifting quantum time artifact. The melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and spatial gestures of each piece become complex vernacular forms, creating a dialogue in time and a (red)shifting lens through which to view our material present. Into the fissures of Monk’s form, أحمد [Ahmed]  pour their own play - colliding and dancing with Duke Ellington, Cecil Taylor, Caribbean diasporic music, European improvisation and Jah Shaka in their pursuit of future music. “Monk’s music is not played so much as grasped, condensed and catapulted through the vagaries of time,” writes Fielding Hope. “Monk famously used to dance in circles. In flight from the numerical bind, أحمد [Ahmed] make music that sounds like it could float on forever.”

A masterfully expressive solo Oud set from improviser and composer, Kareem Samara, recorded at Cafe OTO in February 2026 as part of a bill with Abdullah Miniawy Trio. Starting with a deceptively stark cluster of notes, Samara lays out his palette before leading us on. Gentle, probing motifs are intertwined with lyrical flourishes, conjuring a quiet, irresistible momentum. He weaves these threads together in an intricate, spiralling pattern whose lines seem to shift and recombine with every subsequent listen. There is a generosity to Samara's approach; nothing is hidden or overly adorned. He moves unhurriedly from one facet of the Oud to the next, presenting each in turn with a transparency that cannot help but draw you in. But, like a clear body of water, it takes a little while to adjust to this clarity before you can perceive the layers of depth below. When you do, you realise that there's a whole other world here, stretching out beneath the surface. Two thirds of the way into the set, the expanse of this world stretches out further still, with a sudden trilling of high-pitched notes, sounding like nothing so much as a flock of Blaise Bontems' singing-bird automata. But in this "birdsong" we can also hear echoes of the Oud and its amplification, both; its sound expanded and refracted into something new. So deftly does Samara incorporate the technological augmentation of the instrument that it's almost a shock when the unprocessed Oud is reintroduced. But it is immediately apparent that this is a dialogue not only between the instrument and itself, but with past and present also. In such a way Samara honours the traditions of the instrument whilst also giving us a brief glimpse of the future. -- Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli Barrett