Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on Saturday 18th November, 2023. Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielesi. Artwork by Norman Wilcox-Geissen. Layout by Maja Larrson.First meeting of two incredible talents - Tyshawn Sorey on drums and Pat Thomas on piano. Recorded live back in 2023, we’ve sat on this for an inexcusably long time, and yet the music is as just fresh and explosive as we remember it in the room. Just a few hours prior to the duo, Tyshawn Sorey had given a deeply meditative solo piano performance in total darkness, windows boarded up and the piano in the centre of the room, Sorey directly facing the audience as he played for almost two hours. A reflective mood set into the room, and the prospect of him being replaced on the keyboard felt a bit off. “When I’d heard he was doing a solo piano set first I thought, well, that’s it,” laughs Pat Thomas. “I’m really going to have to play”. It doesn’t take long for the intensity to rise. A run of the right hand on the keys gives a warning, like the first few drops of rain before a thunderstorm. As Thomas’ left hand joins to plumb the bass notes, Sorey calls his metallics into play, whipping up the air around them before the humidity in the room breaks and the duo drop into momentary silence. Thomas reaches into the body of the piano - sounding some of the familiar language of Elephant Clock of Al Jazari before dropping some of those immense key clusters we’ve grown to know so well through his work in [Ahmed] and stacking them up into dense, rotating rhythms. Sorey mixes light brush work with aeolian tones, at some points striking just the air to meet Thomas’ palm muted rhythms. Midway through the set the two players are joined in percussive pursuits, Thomas’ string slides totally enmeshed with Sorey’s clinical snare work. When Thomas lifts off into more celestial territory as the set builds, Sorey marshals his shuddering field drum towards one extraordinarily clean clasp of the hi-hat - a sort of musical gasp which the crowd can’t help responding to. The pair are wildly dynamic, beautifully precise and in possession of innumerable talents. As Sorey’s mallet rush crescendos and fades, Thomas adds two single bass notes, as if to wryly say, ‘Ta-da!” You have to laugh - it’s ridiculously good stuff from two of the best at the peak of their powers.

Tracklisting: 1. Variation 1 - 4:162. Variation 2 - 4:553. Variation 3 - 7:334. Variation 4 - 8:055. Variation 5 - 5:036. Variation 6 - 1:277. Variation 7 - 6:128. Variation 8 - 4:549. Variation 9 - 5:4710. Variation 10 - 1:56Working both inside and outside the instrument's body, Pat Thomas presents a compelling vision of what the piano can do in the 21st century. At times playing with recognisable musical material and at others going deep into sonic abstraction, Pat's playing encompasses massive extremes: solidity and flow; seriousness and laughter; uproar and imperturbability. A major solo statement, Al-Khwarizmi Variations traverses the history and the physicality of the piano. Pat rules. "Thomas runs the gamut of techniques, splashing clusters, weaving contrapuntal lines and building elaborate structures from the inside out. Despite their variety, they share a fundamental quality – they truly sound like spur of the moment creations, not the final draft of ideas mulled over for weeks, if not months on end. Their impact is enhanced by one of the more effectively engineered piano sounds in recent memory, one that puts the piano right in your lap. The value of this is felt immediately, as the first variation is brimming with above-the-staves clusters that are wincingly bright. Conversely, Thomas creates china-rattling thunder when he plunges into the bass register." - Bill Shoemaker, Point of Departure  ---  Pat Thomas/ piano --- Recorded and mixed by Rick Campion at City University Music Studios on 19 June 2011. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray's Inn Road. Artwork from a 15th century Mamluk tile, adapted for print by Paul Abbott. With thanks to Trevor Brent  ---

A deeply atmospheric set from multifaceted Irish artist, Vivienne Griffin, accompanied by cellist Oona Lowther and recorded as part of a bill co-curated with Nyahh Records at OTO in April 2026. From the coiling smoke of the mirrored incense burners on the cover (an image adapted from a sculpture created by Griffin themselves) the tone is immediately set for something ritualistic, and the scrape-struck clusters of clarsach harp notes that begin the recording seem to lean into this feeling of a rite being initiated. The lines between ancient ritual and modern realities are instantly blurred however, by the fact that these notes are in fact coming from a purpose-built, self-playing harp, with a 3D-printed metal motorised armature drawing sounds from the instrument. This shifting between ancient and modern - myth and technology - is something something that Griffin builds on to thrilling effect. Shortly after the initial harp notes are established, a heavily distorted kick drum booms into life - seeming to not so much hit the listener's chest as somehow erupt from inside it - and it is clear that we're immersed in a very special sound world indeed. Soon the harp settles into an insistent pulse and Oona Lowther's languorous cello notes rise up to meet it, providing the water for Griffin's seeking, questing vocals to sail across. All the while that jagged kick drum thrums and thuds, never letting anything quite settle, pushing everything ever onwards. This sense of restless momentum never flags across the set's 26 minutes, with Griffin constantly changing and mutating each new sound as if constantly seeking something that always remains tantalisingly just ahead. Cello notes snag and distort, biting tones dart and flicker, until the whole assemblage seems to spiral in on itself. We are left back with the single, unadorned notes of that mechanised harp, but we are not where we started out. As Griffin sings in the stark, haunting middle section, "nothing was ever meant to be this way". We live in an imperfect world, yet by immersing ourselves within it as openly and honestly as is apparent here, we may still emerge with something precious. -- Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli Barrett

Available as a 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC download. Tracklisting: 1. With Claude Cossette NY April 6, 1989 - 24:262. With Elisabetta Vittoni NY April 13, 1989 - 19:43   A major figure in 20th century arts and music (and beyond), Philip Corner studied with Henry Cowell and Olivier Messiaen, and was one of the original Fluxus conspirators, among other highlights of his long and storied career. As part of the body of his 'Metal Meditations' work, Gong/Ear is a decades-long series of improvisations with dancers. Utilizing his favorite Paiste tam-tam, these two recordings from Corner's NYC Leonard Street loft in 1989 are a feedback loop of perceptions between gong and dance: 'the initiating sound (or is it the dancer's posture?) is made physically audible. Responsive movement is turned back into sound. Musical attentiveness sends it back and it continues.'  It’s 1989 in NYC. Public Enemy is winding them up for “Fight the Power” and Philip Corner is elsewhere, with dancers. He bangs a gong and they get it on. Two long, meditative tracks of nothing but gong and the stray om chant, but what a sound this makes – these are ostensibly cassette recordings but they explore the resonant frequencies of Corner’s favored Paiste tam-tam within the kind of loft space that artists in the city can’t get anymore. These documents allow you to access, against the tension of tape hiss, the entire surface of the instrument, the physicality of playing it and the measurement of that response. Here’s where I’d tell you about Corner’s history in the arts but let’s skip that for now and concentrate on the gong show at hand, a beatific sound that seems to go beyond the realm of meditative and into the connections between our atoms. You can feel this. Edition of 305 with a metal gong mounted on the cover with silkscreened calligraphy. Seriously, you need to experience this.” – Doug Mosurock, Still Single “Recorded at his New York City loft on two separate dates in April 1989, Gong/Ear: Dance-ing, 1 & 2 forms part of Corner’s continuing metallic meditations exploring the reverberating qualities of bells and other metal objects. Unfolding over many decades, the Gong/Ear series explores the spontaneous feedback between a gong player and a dancer, interacting with each other as they perform together. “Responsive movement is turned back into sound,” he notes of these sessions. “Musicianly attentiveness sends it back and it continues.” The two performances preserved here, one with Claude Cossette and the other with Elisabeth Vittori, convey with direct simplicity the physical intensity of the sounds produced. Corner’s favourite Paiste tam-tam becomes a sounding board for the entire room: the natural timbre of the instrument is intensified not only by the often vigorous tempi with which he keeps pace with the individual dancers but also by the unpredictable distortions produced as the recording device becomes overloaded by the extreme volume levels produced. These, as Corner specifies in the short sleevenotes to this LP, “are inherent and desired”. The tape machine becomes in effect a third participant in the performance: everything it picks up is accepted as part of the finished piece. There is a wonderful moment near the start of the Vittori session when a telephone rings somewhere in the room, the metallic chimes of its bell contrasting neatly with the resonant swell of the gong; rather than stop the recording and start again, Corner briefly answers the call, barely missing a beat before he continues playing. This acceptance of the complete and unedited performance as it was recorded is indicative of Corner’s rejection of those aesthetic distinctions that separate music from noise, unanticipated occurrences or the movements of the body.” – Ken Hollings, The Wire

"Long-time collaborators and iconoclastic improvisers, drummer Eddie Prévost and saxophonist John Butcher, met at All Hallows Church, in High Laver, Essex in 2023, using the natural ambience of the space to capture these three improvisations, Prévost playing primarily on a drum kit and both in a more jazz-oriented sax and drum duo, extended by both players' exceptional technique." All the music played one afternoon in All Hallow's Church, High Laver, Essex 2nd June 2023. Recorded by Daniel Blumberg. Edited and mixed by John Butcher. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux.  Design by Myah Chun Grierson

Adam Bohman / amplified objects and stringsSue Lynch / tenor sax, clarinet, fluteCrystabel Efemena Riley / drums, metallics --- Recorded and mixed by Billy Steiger on 31st January, 2025. Mastered by Taku Unami. Artwork by Adam Bohman. Liner notes by Seymour Wright. Photographs by Crystabel Efemena Riley. Layout by Jeroen Wille.  ‘Me, you and Sue’ - the triangulation of improvisers Adam Bohman, Sue Lynch and Crystabel Riley, and the original name for the hand-picked three way of drums, wind and amplified objects responsible for Lynboril Lisinopril. The informality of their original name belies the groups origins - three players naturally drawn to each other via London’s longstanding Horse Improvised Music Club, each of them more concerned with the action of playing than the naming of their sounds.  However, the occasion of their first trio release forced a title, and Lynboril Lisinopril works perfectly - a play on the words Lyn(ch), Bo(hman) and Ril(ey), searched for and spat back at you. “The second word is what you get if you Google the made-up first word” remarks Seymour Wright in the liner notes - the second word being the name of a drug taken for lowering your blood pressure. And although probably not prescribable for hypertension, the music on Lynboril is approached with such a generosity and tenderness that it feels properly airy and light; as equally positive and playful as it is eccentric and uninhibited. Riley’s bouncy drums keep the trio in a state of permanent uplift, as if being buffeted along by a pleasant tailwind, each player perfectly unhurried in their turning over of a new sound. Alternating between tenor saxophone and clarinet, Sue Lynch is crystalline calm, blowing beautiful lines across the metallics of Riley and Bohman. When the trio dials up for their second half, the intensity lifts but the clarity remains - swirling skin patterns subverted with precision by each scratch and scrawl of the table and the punctuation of the saxophone. Grounding tonic from some of the best free musicians we know.