I first heard this Trio on the occasion of Brötzmann's 70th birthday celebration, called Long Story Short, on the 5th of November 2011 at the Schlachthof Wels. It was a Brötz of beauty. And like William Hogarth's "Analysis of Beauty" from 1753 tells us to learn how to see, especially how to see Beauty in the Line of Beauty, the S-shaped line of the serpentine, this recording of the meeting of Peter Brötzmann, Sabu Toyozumi, Jason Adasiewicz at the Shenzhen OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival on October 18th, 2015, teaches us how to listen.  Brötzmann first played with Sabu in Tokyo in the early 1980ies, he first met with Adasiewicz in the early 2010s in Chicago. You are listening to 30 plus years of solid cosmopolitanism, invention and improvisation forming a distinct language of its own in front of an audience that loved "Uncle Peter". So close your eyes and hold your breath, a beautiful storm is coming, it takes you right into the eye of the hurricane where time stands still as witnessed by the silences between Sabu's mighty toms and the whirlwinds of crystal-shaped vibraphone ringing of Jason and the existential roar of you know who. Enjoy the essence of making great music. 马库斯·穆勒 Markus Müller FMP-Publishing

“Dec. 2015: I received an invitation from Old Heaven to participate with FaUSt to the 3rd edition of “Tomorrow Festival” at B10 Live, Shenzhen, China! A few months later, May 2016, we were on our way to the most exciting concert experience. A loooong flight-haul and then, such a warm welcome, such a perfect organization… the most charming, dedicated, competent crew around us… the largest cement mixer I ever used on stage, and an audience so vibrant, so focused. I was and still am in memory, overwhelmed by the endless energy of all the people I met: technicians, promoters, music fans, the so-creative Knitting Ladies, my old-time friend Keiji Haino, and my comrade Maxime. The music we created together had been accurately recorded. As Old Heaven proposed to release this concert, I immediately was enthused by the idea. Even more so when I heard the perfect mix of Liu Ying. Two tracks were beautifully post-produced, edited and mixed by Amaury Cambuzat. I loved the B10 Live performance and place it in my top ten FaUSt concerts ever and I love this album, I do. ” —— JHP / art-Errorist --- Recorded at the 3rd Tomorrow Festival on May 14, 2016. B10 Live, Shenzhen, China. Published by Old Heaven Books & B10 Live, Shenzhen 2022. Tomorrow Festival Series OH 036 录音 Recording：曾君 Zeng Jun；罗绿野 Luo Lvye混音 Mixing & 母带处理 Mastering：刘英 Liu Ying编辑 Editing & 混音 Mixing：Amaury Cambuzat（track 06/C2 & 08/D1）制作人 Producer：涂飞 Tu Fei统筹 Coordinators：李书琴 P.G，尹思卜 Yin Sibo设计 Design：Nino摄影 Photography：艾飞 Effy，大米，惠子@DAFA，肖蔚鸿 Xiao Weihong，子弹，左氏文化特别鸣谢 Special Thanks：黄可 Huang Ke，李秭林 Li Zilin，邹佳伟 Zou Jiawei Jean-Hervé Péron - 人声 Vocals / 贝斯 Bass / 原声吉他 Acoustic Guitars / 小号 Trumpet / 水泥搅拌机 Cement MixerWerner “Zappi” Diermaier - 鼓 Drums 特邀嘉宾 Very Special Guests：Maxime Manac’h - 键盘 Keyboards / 吉他 Guitar/ 煤气罐 Gas Cylinder / 手摇风琴 Hurdy-Gurdy灰野敬二 Keiji Haino - 人声 Vocals / 电吉他 Electric Guitars / 电子设备 Electronics魏籽 Wei Zi, Tina, 郦亭亭 Li Tingting - 针织行为表演 Knitting PerformanceB10 Live, Shenzhen, China!

Pavel Eremeev: drums, electronics & feedbacks, mixing & mastering Artёm Galkin: guitars, bells, shankha, cover art Katya Shirshkova: harmonium on track 4 Wu Yilin: cassette design

Tracklisiting: Side A - Raga Chandrakaush 21:57 Side B - Raga Khamaj 30:34Nikhil Banerjee was an Indian classical sitarist of the Maihar Gharana. A student of the legendary Baba Allauddin Khan, Pandit Nikhil Banerjee was known for his technical virtuosity and execution. This very special release is a live recording of his performance at KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California, on the 9th of July, 1967. It is the first time Banerjee has been released on record and published in China. The original recordings were on two reel-to-reel tapes. In 1988, American record label Raga Records released the recordings on both CD and cassette. By chance Old Heaven's producer Tu Fei came to possess the reel-to-reel tapes and decided to release this vinyl version, hoping to present the contents to the audience as authentic as they are and pay tribute to the great musician Nikhil Banerjee. Special thanks to Chen Yun, professor Tejaswini Nirajana and her friends Deepak Raja and Meena Bannerji, for it would not be possible for us to contact with Nikhil Banerjee’s daughter Mita Tagore and get her authorization without their kind introduction. Mita has been very supportive of this release in China and has given us important suggestions during the process. We would also like to thank our friend from Morocco, Habi (Habib Rkha). He is an enthusiast and expert of Indian classical music who cleared up much confusion for us.  The woodcut artwork on the cover is by long-term collaborator of Old Heaven, artist Liu Qingyuan. Released by Old Heaven Books, 2020.

李带菓 Li Daiguo：古筝 Guzheng, 低音提琴 Double Bass, 大提琴 Cello, 塔不拉鼓 Tabla, 模拟合成器 Analog Synthesizer, 中国鼓 Chinese Drum, 锣 Gong, 踩镲 Hihat, 地鼓 Bass Drum 录制于2021年11月 云南·大理Recorded in Dali, Yunnan in November 2021 录音/混音 Recording & Mixing: 李带菓 Li Daiguo母带 Mastering: 刘英 Liu Ying制作人 Producer: 涂飞 Tu Fei统筹 Coordinator: 陈铁梅 Chen Tiemei / 尹思卜 Yin Sibo封面木刻作品 Front Cover Woodcut Artwork: 刘庆元 Liu Qingyuan设计 Design: 林溪 Lin Xi（来信收悉工作室）

David Murray — 萨克斯 Saxophone Kahil El'Zabar — 打击乐 Percussion / 卡林巴 Kalimba / 人声 Voice 录制于第十届 OCT-LOFT 国际爵士音乐节，深圳 B10 现场，2023 年 10 月 27 日 Recorded at the 10th OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival, B10 Live, Shenzhen October 27th, 2023

Digital will become available 31st OctoberSLIP is Paul Abbott’s response to his 3 day residency at OTO in 2023. It’s a continued exploration of the acoustic-digital hybrid drum setup Abbott has been developing for some time, which involves drum kit and synthetic sounds combined closely—through an entanglement of limbs and cables—in an intimate but strange relationship with each other. Paul Abbott hasn’t had any formal musical training, but has a long history of making music, having collaborated for years with Seymour Wright, Pat Thomas, Michael Speers, Cara Tolmie, Anne Gillis and many others. Eventually, led by a profound suspicion of what is fixed or limited, Abbott began finding other ways to organise sound - or what he calls ‘material’: “I wanted a way to 'persuade' or guide the possibility of something happening - my activity or the events of an algorithmic composition - for example, but without certainty or formalism. It felt to me, during playing, that certain ideas had a particular sort of shape, but more than the form of a line. I began to write alongside (before/after) playing the drums, and ‘characters’ began to enter the scene as a more wobbly, and therefore appropriate option [to notation]. Working with these characters allowed me to simultaneously approach body, imagination, language and music: without dividing things up or separating these aspects from each other. It allowed me to leave things messy and entangled, whilst trying to deal with form and specificity: wanting to have some things feel or respond differently to other things at other times.”  In approaching his residency, Abbott developed a fixed cast of characters - crystal, lleaf, reiy.F, reiy.C, strike, nee, qosel, sphu and aahn. They each communicate using different kinds of movement and drum kit/s, and Abbott choreographed them as ‘dances’ based on different feelings, or outlines of behaviours suggestive of ways of moving (body, drums, sounds). He then arranged these characters into ‘compositions’: one for each performance day, with each composition featuring multi-layered activity - options for behaviours, ways to move around the rooms, play drums, develop synthetic sounds, change the lights or re-distribute the sound in the space. After the performances, Abbott took home 9 hours of recordings split into up to 28 multitrack channels for each day, and re-organised his cast once more into a performance for 2LP, CD and digital. It’s an enormous amount of work - but Abbott is activated by the process. For him, the pleasure of unstable edges, possibilities, slippages, is the vital attraction. Like all living organisms, Abbott’s characters have malleability and responsivity.  They stimulate a bundle of possible behaviours, a tendency to act a certain way, a temperament, a boundary of respective limits or affordances. It’s an affective way of working, inclusive of Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra, Nathaniel Mackey and Milford Graves. In ‘Pulseology’(2022), Milford Graves reminds us, ‘Breath varies, so cardiac rhythm never has that (metronomic) tempo. It’s always changing. All the alignments of the heart are determined based on the needs of the cells, specifically tissues and organs. The heart knows if it needs to speed up.’ In SLIP, to slip, in a heartbeat, is to descend not into the grid of the even metre accorded to the heartbeat, but into a play of mutability and modality. To change is the condition of the heart.

New release from South Korean sound artist, Suk Hong 홍석민, following on from his Pedigree album on the label in 2024. Listeners familiar with Pedigree's intricately multifaceted layers of texture and meaning will find much to love here, but Comedy! immediately establishes itself as an altogether more unsettling work. Recorded over an eight month period from October 2024 to May 2025, the album's title and its three parts represent Hong's sentiments over the crisis precipitated by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's declaration of martial law and its subsequent withdrawal at the end of 2024. From the album's outset it is clear that we too, are in uncharted territory. Taking the same serpentine, collagic approach used to such great effect in Pedigree, the layered and juxtaposed sounds here walk a consistently fine line between soothing and discomforting, eerie and familiar; seemingly blurring the lines between exterior and interior reality in a heady miasma of dream and memory. Soft, muted piano refrains run up against chittering, chattering repetitions both synthetic and mechanical; animal noises - human and bestial - are interwoven with fragments of voice and action but seemingly never enough to allow the listener to create a full picture. It's clear that something significant is happening, but it is outside our ability to make an objective assessment, let alone affect the outcome. As with Pedigree, Hong moves restlessly from one sonic environment to the next, revealing details so intimate that at times it seems that the recording device must have been not so much a physical microphone as a disembodied presence, flitting from place to place; an endlessly curious eavesdropper finding hidden meanings in every encounter. Through it all, ebbing and flowing, runs a calm, strangely distant tone-wash, halfway between blissful reverie and fretful disorientation. By the album's close, we may find ourselves a great distance from where we set out, consoled and unnerved in equal measure. Yet just as our thoughts begin to coalesce, the album ends as abruptly as it began. There is to be no easy resolution here, instead we must live with the ceaseless puzzles and contradictions of life as it unfolds.

"أحمد [Ahmed] are crucial listening for anyone intrigued by the fertile space between free jazz, Arabic music and West African modes." - Boomkat "Pianist Pat Thomas, bassist Joel Grip, drummer Antonin Gerbal and alto saxophonist Seymour Wright push the source material to new musical planes that are nonetheless framed by a limitlessly wide history of black music." - Jazzwise   سماع [Sam'aa] (Audition) arrives in a gatefold, reverse board sleeve with liners by Fred Moten and designed by Maja Larrson. Recorded and mixed by Benedic Lamdin on February 28th, 2025 Fish Factory Studios, London. Mastering and lacquers cut by Andreas LUPO Lubich. Cover photo ‘Arteries, New York, 1964’ courtesy of the Estate of Evelyn Hofer. Produced by Seymour Wright/OTOROKU with the support of PRS Foundation. Known for their exhilarating live-to-record albums such as last year's critically acclaimed Wood Blues and Giant Beauty, سماع [Sama'a] (Audition) is the first of two releases that will surface after [Ahmed]’s first studio recording sessions at North London’s The Fish Factory in early 2025.  Since 2014, [Ahmed] أحمد have excavated and re-imagined the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, in an ever ongoing search for future music. Over a decade on, the group were given the opportunity to set up in the studio for the first time and, with the aid of meticulous engineer Benedic Lamdin,  سماع [Sama'a] (Audition) is the quartet's most detailed work to date.  Fastidious fans may recognise the album's tracklisting as that of Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s Jazz Sahara. After his success collaborating with the pianists Thelonious Monk and Randy Weston, Jazz Sahara was the first record Abdul-Malik made as a leader and was released in 1958. It used the flame of late Fifties jazz to light the wick of North African folk music and acted as a reminder of the Arabic origins of jazz, creating a distinct, unique sound that was far beyond its time. In Malik’s Jazz Sahara, there is no piano. The ongoing work of each member of [Ahmed] then is to think differently, to wonder how the music will work and to take a risk on trying it out - an extraordinarily compelling feat of imagination. Using group improvisation strategies and recording in single takes, سماع [Sama'a] (Audition) tackled the full suite of Jazz Sahara in just one session, with ‘Ya Annas [Oh, People’] and ‘Isma'a [Listen’] being previously unrecorded. 'Farah 'Alaiyna’, also released on 2019’s Super Majnoon, sounds unrecognisable - the slow, heady stomp and repeated phrasing of 2019’s embryonic [Ahmed] having been blast furnaced and sped up four-fold. The result is four kaleidoscopic, relative miniatures that move, unfold and re-imagine at a very different scale and proportion than [Ahmed]’s previous records. It’s a dizzying, euphoric music and an extraordinary record of a group moving through space-time like no other.

“In a concert, I show something with a beginning, a middle and an end. But, there is no end. Of course, there is no end. Because I am the music, and I am still here.” - Sophie Agnel  ‘Learning’ - Sophie Agnel’s first solo LP, feels like the dark, physical inversion of her excellent ‘Song’ which came out on Relative Pitch earlier this year. Sinking her unique sound into vinyl for the first time, the LP arrives as Agnel recovers from a brain tumour - a shocking discovery that will require Agnel to start again with the piano. It’s a terrifying prospect, but Agnel has been here before, having reorientated herself almost entirely away from her early classical training over the last 4 decades of her work.  ‘When I was young I had very good ears, oriole absolute. Then later I began to make strange sounds with my piano, to do different kinds of music. I was more interested in the sounds than the melody, for example. I remember once I sat down in a shop to try to read the scores of Schubert and there was a light [emitting] a very strong bzzzzzzz. And I couldn't listen to my oriole internal - I couldn't read the score. I was entirely subjugated by the sound of the light. And I understood that something had changed. Ten years before I could read and not hear the light. Now I understood that my ears were completely different. I was more open to the sounds of life.”  Born in Paris in the 60’s and playing her parents piano as soon as she could stand up, Agnel quickly grew tired of the classical world. 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 pianos 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. Having absorbed the language of the European avant-garde, Agnel is known for pulling the piano’s interior outside of itself by tipping her handbag into it. But these ‘strange sounds’ don’t just come from Cage - they also share the poetic force of Cecil Taylor and ‘Learning’ demonstrates that Agnel’s work on the piano's keyboard is just as important as what she’s littered on its strings. The record lets loose her ability to unleash a formidable sound mass and then rope it back to one single, clarifying note. With one hand, Agnel plays 88 tuned drums and on the other an enormous guitar - with the LP rotating through oncoming trains, and blues harmonica and feedback. It’s single minded stuff, borne out of a dedication to a wholly personal language of gesture, accumulation and deft reduction. “Maybe when I’m 80 I will not need anything,” Agnel says in a recent film made at her home. “I will do the same but with one note, and one finger. Maybe it's enough.” — ‘Learning’ arrives in a reverse board sleeve designed by Jereon Wille. Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on 6th June 2023 and 4th June 2024. Mixed by James Dunn and Benjamin Pagier. Side B edited by Benjamin Pagier. Mastered and cut by Loop-O. Front photograph by Aimé Agnel. Typography and layout by Jeroen Wille.

"Vibrating the piano’s strings and manipulating the soundboard, Agnel spends a good portion of the live concert as often inside the instrument as on the keyboard. Moving from cord-strumming and  outside wood raps, backed by ratcheting bass string scrapes, irregular drum ruffs and gong resonation, she creates a dynamic introduction backed by irregular drum ruffs and below-the-bridge double bass rubs. “Part 2” captures the heart of the matter as Agnel’s opposite end keyboard slides emphasize both gentle plinks and pedal point thickness with the repeated and nearly identical patterns often interrupted by glissandi and string reverb. Meantime Edwards’ buzzing arco stops and Noble’s sharp cymbal cracks follow a parallel line. Occasionally there are brief Edwards-Agnel duets involving elevated keyboard emphasis and low-pitched string abrasions. But her piano command is such that elsewhere she creates call-and-response between her own strings and keys from opposite edges of the keyboard. A mid-track silent interlude leads to rhythm section intensification with Noble’s door-stopper-like reverberations and chain rattles making more of a impression than Edwards’ constant string swabbing. Meantime Agnel’s processional strokes and stopped piano keys preserve the exposition until she winnows the narrative down to isolated single note stabs. Double bass string shakes and drum hand patting similarly descend until the pianist’s key slapping signal the finale. A terse encore allows a patina of swing to peek through the otherwise bumping variations from all as a final cymbal splash marks the concert end." - Ken Waxman https://www.jazzword.com/ 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.

Available as a 320kbps MP3 or 24bit FLAC or WAV. Edition of 300 standard LPs, 100 LPs with screenprinted artwork inserts and 200 CDs 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.

2. otta - tonsättarcentrum123456789 (18:40) otta’s performance unfurled like a conversation with the piano, building on motifs and altering the layout of the preparations inside the piano to suit each individual exploration. Preparations that otta utilised include Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban’s ‘I never held emotion in the palm of my hand’ (a keyring holding locker keys, a plastic surfboard and dolphin and a small Lotto game, used as a rattle and to dangle over and between the strings), Alia Hamaoui’s peachskin velvet I & II (plastic name tags with pewter cast peach pips attached), Natalya Marconi Falconer’s Between Debris and Thing (an aluminium cast of a fennel husk), and one part of Pheobe riley Law’s shape placing (a unique morph of steel and rubber coating, laser cut into interesting flat shapes). Ellis Berwick’s Electreight (a bike bell sat on its own inverted base) is often returned to by otta as a flourish to mark beginnings and ends of different phrases. A large section of the performance involved bringing Joe Moss’ vibrating Loot Box up to one of the stereo microphones hanging above her head to create a consistent buzzing, whilst she continued to improvise on the piano below. The playful performance felt like an evolving improvised dialogue with the materials at hand, with otta adapting to the effects the preparations made to each refrain. 3. Gentle Stranger - just enough dirt (22:18)  Gentle Stranger’s performance differed from the other two in that there were three musicians or “six hands”  playing on the piano, with Alex McKenzie taking over the high end melodic section of the piano, Josh Barfoot  staying towards the lower end, controlling the majority of the percussive rhythm section of the piece, and Tom  Hardwick-Allan using extended piano techniques, singing and moving the preparations around the inside of the  piano whilst the other two played the keys. Hardwick-Allan began the performance on a tiny red toy piano  (prepared with Olivia Albanell’s Fat Wasp and Ellis Berwick’s Piammer) a metre or so stage left of the grand. The  two pianos were connected by a group phone call that echoed and fed back inside the body of the piano, with  Barfoot and McKenzie’s phones sat inside Hayett Belarbi-McCarthy’s Dear Obsolescence (antique silk) & Verity  Coward’s Wodge (a fake wodge of £20 notes) respectively. The phones were the first of many objects the trio  secretly brought to Cafe OTO that broke the rules for Preparations initially laid out by Joseph Bradley Hill. The  objects included a megaphone, a metronome, a cassette tape and mini-amplifier, an electronic mouse deterrer  and, technically, Hardwick-Allan’s shoes which fell off as Barfoot and McKenzie carried him from one side of the  piano to the other, dropping him onto the piano keys in the process. The performance moves through roughly  eight stages using these objects and the 23 already inside, with each section a different take on the prepared  piano’s possibilities. The performance reaches its end with a wail by Hardwick-Allan into the resonant body of  the piano (the sustain held down by a weight placed their earlier), followed by a ‘wedding song’ sung through a  megaphone from underneath the piano. Hardwick-Allan’s first touch of a key on the grand piano then became  the performance’s last. Three live performances from the third iteration of Late Works’ prepared piano event, Preparations, that took place at a sold out Cafe OTO on 23rd June 2025. For the event, 23 artists were asked to create a sculpture / ‘preparation’ each for the grand piano (shown on album cover above). Three pianists/groups  then had to construct individual live performances with the adaptable unit of preparations. Featuring artist and multi-instrumentalist Stanley Welch, singer and producer otta and experimental ‘post-clown’ trio Gentle Stranger, the playful live album shifts from a vaudevillian theatricality (Welch) to a motif-driven dialogue (otta) to dynamic, rule-bending episodes (Gentle Stranger), together demonstrating the diverse musical range of the  prepared piano. For this third iteration of Preparations, the pianists performed on the grand piano with preparations made by artists/musicians Olivia Albanell, Fan Bangyu, Hayett Belarbi-Mccarthy, Ellis Berwick, Zoe de Caluwé, Patrick Cole, Verity Coward, Mandeep Dillon, Natalya Marconini Falconer, Alia Hamaoui, Ellen Poppy Hill, Joseph Bradley Hill, Louie Isaaman-Jones, Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban, Pheobe riley Law, Vita Lerche, Joe Moss, Eleni Papazoglou, Alexandra Phillips, Gillies Adamson Semple, Thirza Smith & Dominic Watson. The concept (by Joseph Bradley Hill) looks to the piano as an exhibition space, inviting the pianists to activate the sculptures as musical instruments/noise objects. The artists were given two main instructions: the preparation must sit comfortably on an open palm and not damage the piano in any way. Other constraints were organised with Cafe OTO based on their piano, which included using non-perishable materials. The pianists were given one hour each with the piano to work out how they would prepare it for the performance, and were encouraged to use as many of the sculptures as possible. The open nature of the event allows the audience to approach the piano in between sets and explore the effects every sculpture had on the piano for themselves. You can find out more about the rules at www.lateworks.co.uk/preparations 1 - Stanley Welch - Mothers, Dogs and Clowns (27:34) Stanley Welch’s set opened and closed with a tribute to David Bowie, or more specifically Bowie’s nose, the subject of Dominic Watson’s preparation David Bowie (Market Square, Aylesbury) (a pewter cast of the nose of a David Bowie statue). Welch then continued playing almost non-stop through the nearly 30 minute set, shifting through section after section of percussive, theatrical, almost vaudevillian sounds. Throughout, Welch used Joseph Bradley Hill’s Roller (With Hidden Paolozzi) to dampen the bass strings, and the main preparations that punctuated the performance were the lid of Joe Moss’ Loot Box slamming open and shut, and Vita Lerche’s Piano Bell sliding along the strings. A brief whistling interlude added to one of the more romantic refrains in the centre of the piece, and as Welch rattled towards the end, works by Vita Lerche, Gillies Adamson Semple, Patrick Cole, Eleni Papazoglou and Zoe de Caluwé were shifted onto the bass strings to provide him with a dense padding that converted to a loud thumping noise he used to great effect (and to close his performance).

A vital, utterly cathartic set from the trio of Camila Nebbia (saxophone), Andrew Lisle (drums) and Caius Williams (double bass) recorded at OTO in April 2025. Convened as a group at short notice, after pianist Kit Downes had to pull out of the original line-up alongside Camila Nebbia and Andrew Lisle, the trio nevertheless display the kind of instant symbiosis that feels honed over many years. Nebbia’s playing doesn’t let up for a second, showcasing her astonishing range on the saxophone from deeply sonorous exhalations, to delicate textural work, to a full-throated caterwauling that pins you back in your seat. Andrew Lisle’s highly dextrous, intricate drumming spans the whole gamut from skirring, scampering percussive clusters to the kind of forceful, unruly assail that borders on the rambunctious. And beneath it all, Caius Williams demonstrates exactly why he’s one of the most in demand bassists working today; crafting seeking, probing lines that provide the foundations whilst tipping the entire structure above off into new directions at the same time. The three of them cover a huge amount of ground, ricocheting from skittering downhill runs to a sort to bruising melodicism, to the kind of gleeful clatter that would have had Ayler sitting up. When all three get going it’s the kind of jubilant cacophony that can’t help but lift you off your feet, and in places it really swings, albeit the kind of swing that might require a swift trip to the chiropractor afterwards. The sheer, unbridled energy on display here might sometimes leave you gasping for breath, but this is no one-note onslaught. At times the trio pull it down so low you could almost here a Kernel bottle-top drop, with scattered harmonic notes weaving in and out of a raft of sighing, sloughing cymbals, the bass drawing out the atmospherics from down low. By the end, it's clear that the three of them have left nothing in the tank. Here's hoping it's not long before we see them back here. -- Recorded by Rory SalterMixed and mastered by Andrew Lisle

Delighted to present a hallucinatory offering from Ciaran Mackle, recorded as part of a bill of similarly mind-expanding artists at OTO in September 2025, that featured Rory Salter, Regan Bowering and Vespertilio folia ferens - aka the duo of Luciano Maggiore and Seymour Wright. In this set, performed entirely on a Bastl Microgranny granular sampler, Mackle contorts two parallel lines of highly-processed monophonic guitar samples, with each seemingly trying to clamber on top of the other at the same time. With the drama of a coat-tailed concert pianist, Mackle begins with a single chord, which immediately proceeds to unravel in a staggering, punch-drunk procession of woozy mellotron-infused notes. Melodic sequences circle back and forth, over and around each other in a way that would seem to evoke a kind of sonic amnesia, if not for the relentlessly insistent way that these sequences seem to be clamouring for our attention. Despite the spiralling, intertwining paths that each melodic line treads, there seems to be an inherent urgency for both to reach their destination. Each new phrase barrels forward with a dogged persistence that initially seems at odds with the many backtracks and digressions, but slowly but surely carves out its own inherent sense of logic. All too soon the destination is reached, and with a final emphatic flourish we find ourselves some distance from where we started out. -- Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli Barrett

A live document of Elvin Brandhi, Kenichi Iwasa, Microcorps and Ziúr’s improvised set, recorded at OTO during Brandhi’s 2024 residency. Between 15-17 August 2024, improvising lyricist, producer and sound artist Elvin Brandhi brought three nights of unfolding, spontaneous and mind-bending world building to her Café OTO residency, bringing together collaborators from across the globe to take part in multifarious live actions and exploding group improvisations. On day three, Brandhi combined the quartet of Kenichi Iwasa, Ziúr, Microcorps and herself, for an expansive set, knitting processed voices, electronics, horns and percussion. This live recording from the night captures the group moving through choral bursts of atomised group vocalisations that melt into strands of interwoven electronics and live percussion, where automatic compositions spring fourth to be regurgitated into new mangled forms. -- Elvin Brandhi / voice and electronicsKenichi Iwasa / bass clarinet, trumpet, electronics and voiceMicrocorps / modular system, electronics and voiceZiúr / voice, percussion and electronics Recorded at Cafe OTO 17/07/24Mixed by ZiúrCover assembled by Elvin Brandhi from artworks by the whole group.

The release includes a short film created by Matthew Revert especially for this set, now synced with the mixed audio and available to download as an MP4 file.Phenomenal, preternatural solo set from Melbourne-based writer, musician and designer, Matthew Revert, recorded at Cafe OTO in April 2025. Performing as part of a heady lineup alongside longtime collaborator, Vanessa Rossetto and Tom Betteridge, Revert conjures an eerie, crepuscular atmosphere halfway between the Brothers Quay and The Black Lodge, layering up looped chimes and tones, shimmering scrapes and scratches, twittering electronics and low, discordant hums, which all tumble together with a ceaseless momentum. Through it all a muffled voice provides a through-line, with repeated phrases that stumble and cycle back on themselves with hypnotic insistence. References to things both mundane and profound emerge from the murk, with the nagging potency of a half-remembered dream. The cumulative effect is at once disorientating and uncanny in its specificity, leaving you under the distinct impression that this message is being addressed directly to you; that it would, in fact, hold great meaning to you alone, if only you could remember how you got here. Note to self... -- Recorded by Rory SalterMixed and mastered by Oli BarrettCover image by Matthew Revert

Ghanaian sculptor, inventor, and avant-garde multi-instrumentalist Nii Noi Nortey performs solo and in trio with Mark Sanders and David Panton. Nii Noi’s solo soundscapes a vivid journey through West Africa using traditional instruments, before adding his own adaptions and afrifon inventions in the trio. Although this is the first time Nii Noi and David have improvised with Mark the trio immediately find an unerring natural groove that moves effortlessly through free-improvisation, free-jazz, world music and African inspired melodic and percussive patterns.   ---Nii Noi Nortey / nu waterpipe, atenteben flute, gonje fiddle, algaita oboe, ngoni harp/lute, afrifon reedsDavid Panton /  piano (keyboard & strings), soprano saxophone, bagpipe (without drones)Mark Sanders / drums, percussion---Recorded on Sunday 3rd January 2016 by Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn.An edited version of a separate recording made by Panton Music of this performance is scheduled for release in June 2016 on disc as PM3116 Nii Noi Nortey with David Panton & Mark Sanders. See details on the Panton Music website

Limited run of very special Chen Tiemei (Old Heaven Books) designed tea towels, in collaboration with Dusty Ballz - purrfect for serving dinner and managing spillages. Screenprinted using Chen Tiemei's design from our 2025 OTO Billboard in Dalston, showing some of the highlights you can look forward to here in 2026! 5oz heavyweight 100% cotton tea towel w/ hanging loop. Printed in the UK. Please place any Christmas orders by 10am on the 19th December to ensure delivery by Christmas - Royal Mail have advised us that is the last day for the 48 hour tracked service. We will be open for collection / last minute shopping through to 5pm on 22nd December, and then we'll close until the 27th.

Edition of 100 four-colour screenprints. Print adapted from Chen Tiemei's design for our 2025 OTO Billboard in Dalston, showing some of the highlights you can look forward to here in 2026! Printed on heavyweight Takeo Satogami Mouse Gray 198gsm paper by www.tartaruga.co.ukSize: 59cm x 29 cm

Printed on the Stanley / Stella Creator 2.0 tee -- nice unisex cut on fairwear black organic cotton. Set-in sleeve1x1 rib at neck collarInside back neck tape in self fabricTwin needle topstitch at sleeve cuff and hem CompositionShell: Single Jersey, 100% Cotton - Organic Combed Ring Spun / Heather Haze: 70% Organic Cotton - 30% Recycled Cotton, Combed Ring Spun, Fabric washedWe have collaborated with long term Cafe OTO friend Han Bennink to design the first ever OTO t-shirt. These are made on good quality fair trade Stanley/Stella tees - more info under the design detail.  The Dutch drummer and multi-instrumentalist Han Bennink has had a colossal impact and influence in the fields of free jazz and improvised music - not just as a percussionist but also as an organiser, designer and visual artist. Bennink trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterda and was strongly influenced by the anti-art of Dada. Out of what he calls 'a kind of involvement with things', Bennink reuses seemingly worthless objects from his immediate environment, such as broken drum skins and sticks. They are given a second life in his sculptures and installations. For his drawings and collages, Bennink draws on his personal memories and intuition. Birds and airplanes often return in these, symbols of the same freedom that he personifies during his performances. His artwork graces the covers of several corner stone recordings released on FMP, ICP, Incus, hat ART, psi and more. "It simply has to be beautiful and preferably appeal to an emotion as well. In [Bennink's] case that emotion doesn't have to be very dramatic or deeply hidden. You could rather call his art, his visual art anyway, light-footed, the way poems by Rutget Copland and Hans Verhagen can be." - Hans Sizoo, Jazzwereld nr 16. Photo by Corral

The Dutch drummer and multi-instrumentalist Han Bennink has had a colossal impact and influence in the fields of free jazz and improvised music - not just as a percussionist but also as an organiser, designer and visual artist. Bennink trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterda and was strongly influenced by the anti-art of Dada. Out of what he calls 'a kind of involvement with things', Bennink reuses seemingly worthless objects from his immediate environment, such as broken drum skins and sticks. They are given a second life in his sculptures and installations. For his drawings and collages, Bennink draws on his personal memories and intuition. Birds and airplanes often return in these, symbols of the same freedom that he personifies during his performances. His artwork graces the covers of several corner stone recordings released on FMP, ICP, Incus, hat ART, psi and more. "It simply has to be beautiful and preferably appeal to an emotion as well. In [Bennink's] case that emotion doesn't have to be very dramatic or deeply hidden. You could rather call his art, his visual art anyway, light-footed, the way poems by Rutget Copland and Hans Verhagen can be." - Hans Sizoo, Jazzwereld nr 16.  Reprint of the now classic OTO tote, designed by Han Bennink and screenprinted onto a heavyweight canvas. Available in natural or black.  100% Cotton Canvas - 270gsm (8oz/yd²)Can be carried by hand or over the shoulder39 x 42 x 13 Double sided print - back says Cafe OTO - Han Bennink Photo by Corral

The Dutch drummer and multi-instrumentalist Han Bennink has had a colossal impact and influence in the fields of free jazz and improvised music - not just as a percussionist but also as an organiser, designer and visual artist. Bennink trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterda and was strongly influenced by the anti-art of Dada. Out of what he calls 'a kind of involvement with things', Bennink reuses seemingly worthless objects from his immediate environment, such as broken drum skins and sticks. They are given a second life in his sculptures and installations. For his drawings and collages, Bennink draws on his personal memories and intuition. Birds and airplanes often return in these, symbols of the same freedom that he personifies during his performances. His artwork graces the covers of several corner stone recordings released on FMP, ICP, Incus, hat ART, psi and more. "It simply has to be beautiful and preferably appeal to an emotion as well. In [Bennink's] case that emotion doesn't have to be very dramatic or deeply hidden. You could rather call his art, his visual art anyway, light-footed, the way poems by Rutget Copland and Hans Verhagen can be." - Hans Sizoo, Jazzwereld nr 16.  Reprint of the now classic OTO tote, designed by Han Bennink and screenprinted onto a heavyweight canvas. Available in natural or black.  100% Cotton Canvas - 270gsm (8oz/yd²)Can be carried by hand or over the shoulder39 x 42 x 13 Double sided print - back says Cafe OTO - Han Bennink Photo by Corral

NEW OTO tote, designed by Han Bennink and screenprinted onto a heavyweight canvas. Available in natural or black. Only done 100 each of these!  100% heavy cotton canvas10oz / 283gsm canvas420mm x 370mm x 110mm / 16.5in x 14.5in x 4.3inLong Handles: 600mm / 24in

Tracklisting: A. Part 1 - 22:44B. Part 2（Featuring ここ）- 16:33C. Part 3 - 25:42D. Part 4 - 22:37The Meaning of Blackness, More Decorous than DutyHaving become faster than everything A smile that was never birthed into the light (Live at the 3rd Tomorrow Festival 2016 @ B10 Live) This release from Shenzen's Old Heaven Books documents a blistering live performance, recorded in B10 as part of the 3rd Tomorrow Festival. Over the last fifty years few musicians or performers have created as monumental and uncompromising a body of work as that of Keiji Haino. Through a vast number of recordings and performances, Haino has staked out a ground all his own, creating a language of unparalleled intensity that defies any simple classification. Haino lets loose a 90 minute performance maelstrom, marrying the immersive echo-fields of kosmische music to the rough and ready hands-on feel of classic wall of noise intensity that he's known for. This is both an essential historical document and a classic performance in its own right. Keiji Haino considers this live album as an integral work that cannot be separated. Released by Old Heaven Books, Dec 5th 2019

pre-order, arriving late december / early jan Amazing duo perfromance by Hamid Drake and Piano, recorded at the Shenzhen Jazz Festival in China, during late Cotober of 2019, issued by the always amazing Shenzhen based imprint Old Heaven.  Hamid Drake - 鼓 Drums / 打击乐 Percussion / 框鼓 Frame Drum / 人声 Vocals Pat Thomas - 钢琴 Piano 录制于第九届 OCT-LOFT 国际爵士音乐节，深圳 B10 现场，2019 年 10 月 20 日 Recorded at the 9th OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival, B10 Live, Shenzhen, October 20th, 2019

Yara Asmar’s new album, “everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much”, presents 11 pieces recorded over the past year between the small town of Alfred in upstate New York and Beirut. These sometimes fragile and tentative sound sketches reflect the times as Yara steps out, as if onto ice, into a new life on a new continent. She works with unfamiliar instruments, new materials and new sounds to build on her intimate style; homemade mechanical music boxes and a personal archive of family recordings form the backbone of its delicate textures. Asmar explores the peculiar resonance of the metallophone and her collection of deconstructed toy pianos, and guides her music into ever more surreal territories. The result is a work that is dreamlike, fragmentary and strangely timeless. “Most recorders were one track. The one I have has 4 tracks. I slaved away for so long before I could afford it! I dreamt of it for so long. Every time I passed in front of the store, I would look at it. One day, we were recording outside on the microphones. We were recording using the condenser microphone. I had two so I could record in stereo. They ended up recording both the sound of birds and the music we were trying to actually record. When we finished, we started listening and realised the sounds of the birds were much louder than the actual songs. The sounds ended up being blended. There were all kinds of birds in these recordings. Lovebirds. They sounded like bicycle horns. Their legs and beaks were red. There was also the cut-throat finch. A bird that looks like its throat had been slit because of the red line there. Remember it? They died during the war. Their ears exploded. Every morning we’d wake up and find 7-8 dead birds. Because of the shelling and the sounds of the explosions.” This is one of the last recordings I have of my grandfather, telling me about how he accidentally recorded hours and hours of birdsong onto his reel-to-reel recorder. On my recorder, you’ll find hours and hours of conversations: My grandmother proudly telling me about how she scared off a man who was threatening her with a gun during the war, my grandfather telling me I could come by any time and pick any herbs from his garden, our first lunch after my grandfather’s funeral, the first time that house that had grown quiet was suddenly animated with laughter and song. They are files all labelled by date. January 1, 2025, midnight. An explosion of sound: Fireworks, screams, gunshots, laughter, sirens. I am standing on my quiet balcony, against the city that unfurls like a big sonic carpet. There is a betrayal to being alive because it means to have outlived. I don’t know what it means to constantly be recording out of fear of loss, only that it has been the only way forward, and the only thing that makes sense to me. I have spent the past year in a bit of isolation, between Alfred, New York and Beirut, Lebanon, working with the sounds and objects that have long fascinated me. Being in New York meant finally having access to objects I’d only been able to dream of before. One of them being the symphonion, or disc-playing music box. The mechanism is pretty straight-forward: A motor drives the disc and the holes in the disc pluck the corresponding tooth on the music box comb, producing the sound. These machines use perforated discs, a kind of rotational script, a translation of information into sound through a binary system of absence and presence. Once I started making the discs, I had the idea of engraving text into the discs to listen to the resulting music. I spent a good portion of that year disassembling some old symphonions and mounting the mechanisms onto resonance cases I would build. The boxes got increasingly bigger until I eventually made a box I could sit inside. So I could “sit inside the sound”. I started making my own discs for the boxes, eventually arriving to a point where I engraved poetry into these discs in order to have the music boxes “translate” the text. I also continued working on the disassembled toy pianos I’ve been working with the past few years, which I find particularly fascinating because of the range of overtones they can produce, specifically when they are bowed. When I first released home recordings, it had felt to me like a bit of a mess of sound and seemingly disconnected instruments. With the years that followed and more experimentation, I started slowly closing all the open loops, and understanding what it was about this mess of sounds that I operated in the middle of. For starters, the objects were all metallic, with the exception of the accordion(which I could also say, creates its sound through the vibrations of metallic reeds). And so if the years that followed confirmed anything, it was that I truly was compelled by metal and its sonic properties, and whatever I did, I found myself coming back to it. I’ve tried to pinpoint exactly why - especially in the past year. One of my earliest memories is that of my cousin telling me how viscerally the sound of a fork scratching on a plate disturbed her. The metallic sound is one that irks and haunts. It can, in an overwhelming blanket of noise disturb the listener, but can also nestle itself in the peripheral ear, noticeable only when it is interrupted. In “of the always puzzle” I use the rods of two toy pianos I found at the Sunday market a few years apart but that somehow seemed connected through a wonderful sort of temporal thread. What I find so wonderful about toy pianos is how each one is tuned a little differently. Maybe it’s the rust, maybe it’s because they were “just toys” and so it wasn’t very important to have them all be tuned the same. But these two sets of rods I found had such a strange relationship to each other sonically; I built a little resonance case for them and installed them onto it. One of the sets of rods sounded completely different when it was bowed from the top and when it was bowed from the bottom. I spent hours bowing the same rod and it sounded different every single time. This recording might initially sound like it’s built through loops, but it was really just me bowing incessantly, over and over again. A while back I was having a conversation with one of the professors in the expanded media department at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (and an artist whose work I truly admire), Andrew Deutsch, about vibratory potential and what it means to listen for what metal itself might articulate when set into motion. I told him I’d always been fascinated by metal and its sound properties, the different timbres that can be extracted from the material through bowing, plucking, rubbing, striking. He said that Tony Conrad might have called this “sitting inside the sound”. In another conversation with Andrew, I expressed my frustration working with music boxes at their tendency to instantly and irrevocably direct the attention towards melancholia; I wondered if it was hopeless working with an object that has such a strong nostalgic affect. The sound of a music box is immediately familiar, embedded in the collective sensorium. It is a sound that arrives pre-encoded, its fragility linked to nostalgia, its timbre already burdened with sentimentality. “You want to take the nostalgia out of the music box?”, Andrew asked, “Well then, set it on fire”. I laughed, to which he insisted “No really. Set it on fire”. (I didn’t). This record is not a nostalgic record, though it may be easier to frame it that way. There is no future to yearn for and the past does not exist as fas as I’m concerned. There is a big, sprawling, horrifying present that eats everything in its path. This collection of recordings is very deeply rooted in the present, in the sounds that make their way into my home that I work so hard to keep quiet, the voices that I carry in my pocket, and the sounds I find refuge in. It has been a year of grief and a year of exploration. A lot of questions have been asked and I don’t think I’ve managed to answer any. This is a collection of recordings for anyone who would like to sit inside the sound with me. And if you’re ever in Alfred, New York, you are welcome inside the box. Yara Asmar, August 2025, Alfred, New York

Harkening back to his days in Slapp Happy, Anthony Moore returns with his latest brilliant song cycle for Drag City  On Beacon Hill: at twilight we find Anthony Moore, roots winding backwards to the halcyon days of Slapp Happy and the ‘70s progressive art rock scene, at guitar and piano. With the atmospheres and accompaniments of AKA & Friends, he breathes infernal new life into songs from his six decades of multivarious music making. This new delivery system is unto a séance, a communal incantation, twining Anthony’s avant and pop traditions together in a darkly radiant coil of folky chamber music; a rope to lower the listener through cobwebs and murk, unveiling new life beneath Anthony’s mad old lines. It is new life that we will need if we hope to reoccupy this cursed earth. AKA are Anthony Moore, Keith Rodway and Amanda Thompson. A pagan family of sound worshipers hailing from that unholiest of all places: Hastings UK, home of Crowley and Turing. Like their sinister forbears in that infamous tradition, this latest trinity shares a passion for subverting pattern and number, factoring unlikely permutations arising from sea and horizon, greensward, the southerly aspect, and the planisphere as half-world. Their equatorial shore speaks of a planet of water and earth, fire and air. AKA’s humble tools of choice for this endeavor are guitar, piano, organ, synthesizer and vocals. The Friends of AKA are Tullis Rennie, trombone and electronics; Olie Brice, double bass; Richard Moore, violin; and Haydn Ackerley, guitar. They too navigate the shoreline of the south coast, haunt the same taverns and regularly play together in whatever combinations fit the bill. Leaving the drums (and their drummer) at home to realize anew these dream-laden songs, AKA & Friends ensure that the notes fall around the beat and not on it, so as to define the pulse with absence. As such, time is liberated, prised free from the merciless clock; a rhythm of waves, passing through a steady-state universe of no beginnings and no endings. Discontinuities are dissolved, all is transition. On Beacon Hill: Anthony Moore with AKA & Friends manifest a sensuous post-devastation lounge act, seeking to re-invoke natural orders by naming — rather than cursing — the darkness in its many guises. Like final-phase Johnny Cash on a lost episode of Twin Peaks, Anthony’s innate gravitas is a light through the surreal landscape, as the players combine themselves again and again, their efforts rising and falling in shared space. Their gothic jazz orchestra carves delicately through Anthony’s songs, releasing the melodies and the melancholy to drift upward, like smoke against a sooty and scorched backdrop. On Beacon Hill: fantastic, prophetic journeys, dry eyed but deeply affected, through the shadow depths of Anthony Moore’s mirror. As we listen, we gravitate and journey alongside fellow refugees in solidarity and solitude alike.

Astounding 50th anniversary restoration / vinyl remaster of Pearls Before Swine's brilliant debut LP, originally issued by ESP in 1967 50 years later — still One Nation Underground — in the original mono mix that hasn't been heard since the days of the original vinyl pressing! All the better to cut through the sustained smell of BS, idiocy and outright apocalypse in the wind.

Astounding 50th anniversary restoration / vinyl remaster of Pearls Before Swine's brilliant second LP, originally issued by ESP in 1968 From 1968: the second album - and second masterpiece from Tom Rapp's merry band. A host of NYC session players augments the old Floridian Pearls gang, progressing the sound into greater depth, with Rapp's gimlet eye cocked at the world of contradictions that allows so much love and beauty, and so much to destroy it. Newly restored to highlight the gorgeous design of the album, inside and out. Make war no more.

"On the night of December 18, 2021, Mamer and his newly formed psychedelic folk band Mask were about to record a live album at Shenzhen B10 Live, a few audiences were invited. Before the recording, Mamer improvised on sherter for nearly 40 minutes. This album was therefore born.Xêrtêrmin / Sherter Solo may be, or should be the world’s first sherter solo album—although we don’t want to overemphasize it for the sake of sales. Most of the time, this ancient Kazakh instrument is used as a tenor dombra in ensembles, rarely as a soloist—but on this night, its old soul was awakened." - Tu Fei --- 切尔铁尔独奏: 马木尔 Sherter Solo by Mamer2021 年 12 月 18 日录制于深圳 B10 现场Recorded on Dec. 18, 2021 at B10 Live, Shenzhen制作人 Producer: 涂飞 Tu Fei录音 Recording: 曾君 Zeng Jun, 罗绿野 Luo Lvye母带 Mastering: 刘英 Liu Ying封面绘画 Album Cover Artwork: 张咏瑜 Zhang Yongyu摄影 Photography: 阿瓜 Wain设计 Design & 统筹 Coordination: 尹思卜 Yin Sibo曲目翻译 Tracklist Translation: 唐加力克 Karatorhay (哈译汉 Kazakh-Chinese), 骆炜湘 Lowi (汉译英 Chinese-English)旧天堂书店 & 深圳 B10 现场联合出品Published by Old Heaven Books & B10 Live, Shenzhen 2023

This album is a special production for IZ's 2025 China Tour. The selected tracks include the live recordings from the "Koxpendi" tour in 2023 and from the BBC radio show in 2010. Over the years, as an important branch of Mamer's many music projects, IZ has been on a path of self-innovation and even self-denial. We hope you can feel this from these recordings spanning 13 years. As Mamer said, "We need to learn from tradition, and give back as much new content to it as possible, at the same time embrace the challenges that instruments bring. This is the meaning of IZ's existence." Heart like the ocean, zeal like shining stone.

Man from the East This album was recorded at Liu Ying Studio in Shenzhen. An improvised session on acoustic guitar from start to finish, it nonetheless demonstrates a highly original, coherent artistic conception: a distinct “Oriental” aesthetic redefined by Mamer’s own creative vision. In tracks like “Sleepless”, “Man from the East”, and “Backyard”, Mamer ingeniously deconstructs and deploys traditional Han Chinese music scales to serve his own purpose, adding artful ambivalence and rich subtleties to an unmistakable lingering ambience of ancient Chinese spirituality. Tracks like “Punk Long Johns” and “Bande”, on the other hand, are sonic and rhythmic experiments upon “Nearer East” musical traditions: techniques of strumming, typical to Central Asian plucked string instruments, are applied to an acoustic guitar with constantly changing tunings, sometimes by the help of drumsticks or a screwdriver. In the track “Tursun Matia”, Mamer plays his guitar as if it was possessed by the spirit of a Dolan Rawap—an emotional tribute to his lifelong friend Tursun Matia, the late master of Mekit Dolan Muqam. Uyⱪesez (or Sleepless) sees Mamer reimagines the “Orient” from a unique position as an other of the othered. A man from the East with pale fire snatched from the sun, with strings that transcend the boundaries of time.

Otomo Yoshihide（大友良英） is Japan’s most prominent experimental musician and composer. Over the years, Otomo’s music has spanned across Free Jazz, Noise, Free Improvisation, Sound Art, popular music, film scores, and compositions for large amateur ensembles. Carrying the lineage of the Japanese Free Jazz movement that developed in the 1960’s, Otomo has exploited the sonic possibilities of both the electric guitar and turntable. He is one of the key figures who defined a now internationally recognized genre of Japanoise. His band Ground Zero, which as active throughout the 1990’s, has become legendary for their extreme stylistic collages and hyper energetic live performances. In the late 1990’s, Otomo lead Tokyo’s Onkyo (音響) movement, which crossed between minimalistic improvisations and Sound Art. Parallel to these, he also lead his jazz big band Otomo New Jazz Quartet (ONJQ) and scored award winning sound tracks for independent films and documentaries. After the tragic earthquake and tsunami that hit North-Eastern Japan in 2011, he initiated Project Fukushima, an outdoor festival and community art project in areas of Fukushima where he grew up during his youth. Together with local residents and artists, every year they host events that aim to remind people that life still goes on there, even after such severe calamity and environmental destruction caused by the nuclear reactor meltdown. In 2013, Otomo won national recognition for his soundtrack for TV drama “Ama-chan” which aired every morning on the national public broadcasting network, NHK. Combining many musical styles from Jazz, Pop, Big Band, and hints of experimental music, the soundtrack became a household hit. Interestingly, during the early 90’s, Otomo spent much of his time in Hong Kong before extensively touring Europe and the U.S. On each visits to Hong Kong, he actively collaborated with local experimental musicians. This album is a live recording from 2014 when he performed in B10 Live.

Opening the pages of NOW JAZZ NOW will drop you into the ravenous mind of the insatiable Free Jazz and Free Improvisation record collector.  Here are the infamous and rarified recordings that challenged, advanced and, many times, polarized, the orthodoxy of a music defined by beauty, struggle, and the pure essence of inspiration.  Featuring images of albums, singles, and cassettes direct from the authors’ personal archives in all their loving wear and tear, along with Philippe Gras’ exquisite photos of Free Music legends, this is a book for all adventurous lovers of creative sound, whether they be record collectors, avant-garde Jazz enthusiasts, students of radical culture, or simply curiosity-seekers in wonder to this music’s illustrious history and lineage. The three authors, music writer Byron Coley and musicians Mats Gustafsson and Thurston Moore, share a life-long mutual obsession to record collecting with a distinct focus on the recorded history of Free Music. Compiling their personal archives with a long-running discussion and debate of which recordings could be considered within a list of more than one-hundred releases, they have decided on presenting the works in chronologic order, realizing the music to be preternaturally noncompetitive, non-hierarchical, and of equal value. The gleanings of Gustafsson, Moore, and Coley along with the words of legendary musicians Neneh Cherry and Joe McPhee, will enlighten, delight, amuse, and bemuse all who enter their enthralled streams of appreciation, perception, and, most importantly, unbridled respect and regard for a universe of music devoted to the dignity of freedom and the holistic vibrations of spiritual unitySoftcover, 196 x 268, pp 277, fully illustrated  Ecstatic Peace Library, Dec 2025 By Neneh Cherry, Joe McPhee, Bryan Coley, Mats Gustafsson & Thurston Moore. Ships in December from the UK to arrive in time for the Christmas holidays.

Contents  Foreward by Robert Ashley  Landscape with David Behrman  “Extending our nervous systems”  Drifting Harmonies (Paul DeMarinis) Landscape with Philip Glass “I’m making the rules”  Music of the Moment (Peter Gordon) Landscape with Alvin Lucier “With and without purpose”  Stretching Our Imagination (Jill Kroesen) Landscape with Gordon Mumma  “I’m using the by-product of my culture”  The System Is the Composition Itself (Maggi Payne) Landscape with Pauline Oliveros “I can feel myself changing” Shedding Another Skin (Margaret Ahrens) Landscape with Roger Reynolds  “I’m always interested in new experience”  Extending Instrumental Techniques (Paul Robinson) Landscape with Terry Riley  “Music is my spiritual path” Terrry Is a Solo Act (Craig Hazen) Landscape with Robert Ashley  Sound Changing Its Own Behaviour (Robert Sheff) Epilogue  Robert Ashley Documents the Aether (Tom Johnson) Essayist’s Biographies Composers’ Selected Discographies  Index of Names

Please note: This book contains 400 pages and weighs 2 kg so has to be shipped via courier. Please add your phione number when purchasing. This book is dedicated to the history of the music label Free Music Production (FMP), which from 1968 to 2010 achieved incomparable things as a Berlin platform for the production, presentation and documentation of music and decisively shaped the musical development of the '70s and beyond. Based on many conversations from over thirty years with key protagonists such as Peter Brötzmann or Jost Gebers, Markus Müller tells the success story of a musicians' initiative that emerged in the context of the 1968 ideas of self-organization and self-determination and worked successfully in an international network for over 40 years. Thematic focal points include the Total Music Meeting and the Workshop Freie Musik, the production of recordings, relations with GDR musicians, FMP and women, the internationally groundbreaking collaboration with Cecil Taylor. The book builds on the major FMP exhibitions in Munich and Berlin, but in many aspects goes far beyond them. Thanks to unrestricted access to the FMP-Publishing Archive in Borken, many first-published documents and photographs from the history of FMP can be found.

English-German Edition, 655 pages (!) collection of writings about ideas concerning music by American composer Robert Ashley. For nearly forty-five years, composer robert Ashley has pursued his vision of opera in the face of near complete indifference from the American mainstream culture industry. Ashley’s experience parallels that of other American indepen-dent avant-garde figures such as Terry Riley, Alvin lucier, and Pauline Oliveros. like these composers, Ashley uses notation only to the extent that it conveys his ideas to a longtime “band” of collaborators (which includes singers Jacqueline Humbert, Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, and Joan La Barbara, along with engi-neer/mixer Tom Hamilton). like Oliveros, Ashley is also keenly interested in performance as ritual; for the past three decades he has composed operas that rely upon the inflections and rhythms of American english and are set against the backdrop of a largely static “electronic orchestra.” Although much of Ashley’s work is conceived for television, only the seven-part Perfect Lives (1977–83) has been completely realized in its intended medium, and it has never been shown on American networks. Now, as Ashley enters his eighties, a european musicolo-gist—ralf Dietrich—has taken on the task of gathering Ashley’s essays, sketches of pieces, and program notes into one volume.    This bilingual collection—with verso pages in english and recto pages in ger  -man—is divided into four parts, the first three of which are arranged in roughly reverse chronological order. ordering the collection in this way arguably serves two purposes: First, it helps familiarize readers who might be unfamiliar with Ash-ley’s work with an overview of his aesthetic and how it was shaped by changes in technology, collaborators, and economic realities. second, by laying out the various guiding “threads” through Ashley’s career, one is better able to follow the divergent strands as they stretch back into his past work.    The first section, “Towards a New kind of opera,” begins with a detailed “musical autobiography”—Ashley’s recollections of changes in the American contemporary music scene over his long career—and is followed by a series of essays that establish the groundwork for Ashley’s brand of music theater. one distinctive strand running through Ashley’s varied compositional career is the drone, appearing in early pieces such as the In Memoriam series from 1963 as a “reference sonority,” and also found in the recent operas in the form of a sustained harmonic backdrop or “cloud” that the singers use to establish the modality and inflection (contour) of their singing. A second unifying factor is a preoccupation with numbers and predetermined “formulas,” revealed in great-est detail in Ashley’s discussion of the individual “templates” in Perfect Lives. in this work, each episode has a characteristic visual structure (composition of images, distinctive colors, times of day, camera angles / movements, and so on), which also occurs in a fractal-like self-similar fashion within each episode—in other words, each episode is itself made up of seven sections that follow the same procession through the templates, and some sections of some episodes are further subdivided into seven subsections. The thorough descriptions of Ashley’s working methods—illustrated with fragments from his sketches and production notebooks—are especially valuable, since almost none of this music is published in conventional score format.    The second section, “Discovering the musicality of speech: mills College,” focuses on the works composed during Ashley’s tenure at mills College in oak-land, California, from 1969 to 1978, a period during which Ashley “stopped composing” in order to “make music.” (This is a fine distinction—Ashley did in fact create several works during this period, most notably the nearly one-hour In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women (1972–73), as well as perform with the sonic Arts union, a collective that also included composers Alvin Lucier, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma.) originally brought to mills to build an electronic music studio, which soon developed into a public access studio, Ashley soon drafted a plan for a master’s level degree program in elec-tronic music and recording media (one of the first in the nation), leading to the creation of the Center for Contemporary music at mills College. Ashley taught composition and served as director of the Center, but became dissatisfied with the work: “Teaching musical composition is impossible, i think. . . . i thought of myself as a ‘provider.’ Whatever anybody thought they needed for their music, i tried to provide it. This was a convenient way out” (316).    Today, he acknowledges the period at mills for having changed his music profoundly: “i became thoroughly immune to scores. Nobody working at the Center wrote scores. Circuit diagrams, yes. Computer programs, yes. Tacti-cal plans for making a concert, yes. scores, no” (316). one fascinating piece from this period is “The remote boundary illusion,” one of four “hypothetical computer-controlled installations” called Illusion Models (1970). This piece uses sensors to locate a listener ’s position in a darkened room and interactively change the sound mix in such a way that the listener cannot determine the size of the room as he or she negotiates the space. Though “hypothetical” in 1970, this aural-spatial illusion uncannily anticipated virtual-reality technological breakthroughs of the 1990s.     The book’s third section comprises a number of essays and sketches from Ash-ley’s involvement in the oNCe Festival (1961–66) and oNCe group (1964–71). unfortunately, many of the oNCe pieces were documented either sparsely or not at all. Nonetheless, of particular interest are the pieces Combination Wedding and Funeral (1964), which directly inspired the “Church” episode of Perfect Lives,and The Trial of Anna Opie Wehrer and Unknown Accomplices for Crimes Against Humanity (1968), whose “interrogation dialogue” format foreshadows much of Ashley’s later work. There are also a number of interesting “conceptual pieces” from this period, verbal scores showing the influence of Fluxus figures such as la   monte Young, george brecht, and Dick Higgins. These include Rock Soup(1972), an outdoor performance piece for two or more keyboards powered by automobile batteries and triggering various automobile horns, and Spaghetti for a Large Number of People (1973), which outlines the steps for a spaghetti-and-salad potluck dinner.      The book’s substantial final section collects the program and liner notes for all of Ashley’s major works, from The Fox (1957) to Ashley’s 2006 opera Concrete; a list of works (complete up to 2009) rounds out the volume.    many of the writings in this volume have been previously published, but are hard to find, having first appeared in small limited-press european journals or program notes from Ashley’s live performances. Ashley’s newer contribu-tions made specifically for this volume are thoughtful and penetrating; in one particularly striking passage, he describes the new-music recital as creating an artificial museum culture while stifling any prospects of offering the specta-tor a transformational ritual experience: “it could have been juggling or a live porno act. Whatever it is, you are not a part of it. You have been a watcher. . . . You have simply been distracted from what is outside. You do not have more of a musical life. Your life is not more musical” (56). The fragments of sketches and notebooks are essential for those who wish to understand how these performances are realized, or to revive long-unperformed works. in as-sembling this compendium, ralf Dietrich has obviously benefited from a close and long-term cooperation of his subject; one hopes that, in turn, Ashley will benefit from the additional exposure that such a collection will bring to his impressively original body of work. (Kevin Holm-Hudson, University of Kentucky)

With contributions by Lasse Marhaug, John Corbett, Gérard Rouy, David Keenan, Karl Lippegaus, and Jost Gebers Brötzmann has always created and still creates the covers of his recordings himself – sometimes also for other musician colleagues – and in the past also often the posters for various FMP projects (Workshop Freie Musik in the Academy of Arts or Total Music Meeting in the Quartier Latin, later in Podewil). Looking at his early posters and record covers it“s striking how fully formed his visual sense was from the very beginning. He had a background from both advertising and Fluxus art and built upon that. Just like his playing, he knew what he wanted to say with his graphic design. The music and visuals were coming from the same place. And there“s no question who it“s coming from. When you see a design by Peter there is little doubt who made it. His work has such a strong character that when we try to copy the style (and many have) it“s obvious who we“re stealing from – so we fail. (Lasse Marhaug) In his graphic endeavors, Brötzmann has in fact made a body of work consistent with his music and his art, an oeuvre that undermines the presumption that design is inherently rigid. More than just the decoration of information, Brötzmann“s five decades of design bear witness to a sophisticated, delicate, and earthy sensibility, along with a dogged sense of internal logic. His record covers and posters are passionate and thoughtful, playful and brutal, basic and human. (John Corbett) This catalog with about 260 works is published to the exhibition at the Bimhuis, Amsterdam, Sept. 2016

Some think Eric Dolphy was an otherworldly apparition. His stellar career lasted little more than 5 years. He was one of the most important pioneers of the jazz avant-garde of the 1960s. As a multi-instrumentalist, Dolphy played flute, bass clarinet, alto saxophone and clarinet. He also composed and arranged. His brilliant solos in performances with the Mingus Band, among others, are milestones in jazz and music history. Guillaume Belhomme traces his biography in sketches. “For having been an innovator, Eric Dolphy became an original. The depth of his message then caught up with him. At the source he created, a lineage of individual musicians that has not yet faded out of sight has continuously drawn, searching, perhaps, for ways to cross to the other side, beyond the obvious and the easy.”Guillaume Belhomme “Finally we have an English translation of Guillaume Belhomme’s wonderful biography of Eric Dolphy. I can read just enough French to know that it is a heart-felt homage to the great man. This translation will make a fuller appreciation possible.” - Evan Parker

Limited edition riso done for Dali's residency. 25 white, 25 orange, printed by Good Press on uncoated "Arena Rough Natural" 200gsm and 230gsm Orange. Designed by Oli Barrett.

A2 screenprint for our four-day residency with harpist Rhodri Davies, an artist immersed in the worlds of improvisation, musical experimentation, composition and contemporary classical performance. He plays harp, bray harp, horse-hair harp, electric harp, and builds wind, water, ice, dry ice and fire harp installations and has released eight solo albums. Designed by Sally Pilkington and printed on 175gsm colorplan paper by Tartaruga.

Edition of 200 two colour screenprints.Artwork by Peter Brötzmann.Printed with high quality 175 gsm paper by www.tartaruga.co.ukSize: A2 Artwork by Peter Brötzmann. Design by Untiet.

Edition of 200 hand numbered two colour screenprints. Artwork by Peter BrötzmannPrinted with black and white ink on high quality GF Smith Pale Grey Colorplan 175 gsm paper by : www.tartaruga.co.ukSize A2

Two color screenprint for our Music and Other Living Creatures series, designed by Silja Strøm and printed on 175gsm colorplan natural paper by Tartaruga.

A2 screenprinted poster for our shows with the great Arto Lindsay on 14th October 2023. Design by Oli Barrett. Printed by Tartaruga Press on high quality, 175gm claret colorplan paper. Edition of 100.

A1、B3、B4为马木尔个人作品，B1是阿西木·东希（Əxim Dongxe ule）作曲，B5为塔塔尔民间乐曲改编，其余为哈萨克民间乐曲改编。 Track A1, B3 and B4 are original compositions by Mamer, track B1 is composed by Ashim Dongxeuly, track B5 is a Tatar traditional folk tune, the rest are based on Kazakh traditional folk tunes. “模仿者系列第六场：星空”现场录音，2024年6月19日录制于旧天堂书店。 Live recording from Mamer's solo performance 'The Imitator Series Ⅵ: Sky' on June 19, 2024 at Old Heaven Books.

Live recording from Mamer's solo performance 'The Imitator Series Ⅷ: Dirty' on June 25, 2024 at Old Heaven Books.

Live recording from Mamer's solo performance 'The Imitator Series Ⅺ: Fake Jazz' on July 3, 2024 at Old Heaven Books.

Live recording from Mamer's solo performance 'The Imitator Series V: Underground Factory' on June 18, 2024 at Old Heaven Books.

The invisible force meets the ancient object — two ensembles for the price of one and a half! Synths, sintir, and much more. Sky music by deep earth people...

Staring Into The Sun is the latest ethno-folk cinema classic from Sublime Frequencies. Ethiopia is known to be one of the oldest areas inhabited by humans and presently has over 80 diverse ethnic groups. In 2009, photographer/filmmaker Olivia Wyatt explored 13 different tribes throughout Ethiopia in this visually stunning film on DVD with accompanying 136-page book of Polaroid photographs and audio CD of field recordings. Traveling from the northern highlands to the lower Omo Valley via bush taxi, Isuzu cargo trucks, and by any means possible, Wyatt brings together the worlds of Zar spirit possession, Hamer tribal wedding ceremonies, Borena water well polyphonic singing, wild hyena feedings and bizarre Ethiopian TV segments, presenting an enchanting look at these otherworldly images, stark landscapes and captivating sounds from the horn of Africa. The featured tribes are captured with an unflinching sense of realism and poetic admiration resulting in a visual and aural feast of the senses. 136-page hardcover photography book with one music CD and one film on DVD. 5 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches, landscape format. 117 color photographs and liner notes by Olivia Wyatt. Sublime Frequencies' most elaborate package yet. One-time limited edition pressing of 1,000 copies.

Matchless, 2024  A film by HajduKino productions. Produced, directed, photographed and edited by Stewart Morgan Hajdukiewicz. Audio recordings mastered by Rupert Clervaux for Matchless Recordings and Publishing. Sleeve design Myah Chun Grierson at Studio Cymbal. "Region 0" PAL format BluRay disc. ABN-DVD A BRIGHT NOWHERE – Journeying into Improvisation is an important audio-visual record of a landmark series of four concerts staged in London in 2022 when more than 30 musicians joined improviser, percussionist and animateur Eddie Prévost to mark his 80th birthday. The film takes a close look at improvisers who create music in the moment, free from the authority of a composer, score or conductor. Ranging from profound delicacy to subversive atonality, the “awkward wealth” of this music raises vital questions about artistic freedom, individual responsibility and what it means for people to make music together in the 21st Century. Featuring performances by John Butcher, Sue Lynch, Ute Kanngiesser, Marjolaine Charbin, Nathan Moore, Seymour Wright, Veryan Weston, Alan Wilkinson, John Tilbury and Eddie Prévost amongst others. Plus readings by musician and author David Toop. The film includes the last ever concert by AMM, the pioneering improvising group co-founded by Eddie Prévost in the mid-1960s.

This deluxe CD/DVD is packaged in a heavy duty tip-on style gatefold sleeve with a glued in 12 page accordion style booklet. Sonambients: The Sound Sculpture of Harry Bertoia is a deluxe CD/DVD package containing historic recordings made in Harry Bertoia's Sonambient barn.The DVD, a film titled Sonambients: The Sound Sculpture of Harry Bertoia, by Jeffrey & Miriam Eger, was shot in 1971 and follows Harry Bertoia in performance and interview throughout his Sonambient barn deep in the Pennsylvania woods. This film offers a rare opportunity to follow the artist in practice, listening carefully as he moves contemplatively through his sculptures and gongs. Interview footage offers rare insight into Bertoia's inspiration and process.A separate CD contains four exclusive, recently discovered audio recordings. Included are the two earliest known collaborative tapes from Harry and brother Oreste, morning and evening sessions dated October 12, 1969, as well as a collaboration between the Bertoia brothers and their sister Ave who sings in careful unison with the overtones being produced by the sculptures. With the passing of Oreste Bertoia in 1972, these recordings mark the last meeting of all three Bertoia siblings.A 16-page booklet includes many never before seen production stills shot by Jeffrey Eger. These iconic images capture the essence of the artist in practice. All of this is packaged in a heavy duty, tip-on style, gatefold sleeve printed with metallic inks at Stoughton Printing in California.

2xLP; DVD, libretto, large 16p Booklet in printed cardboard box A music drama composed by Sven-Åke Johansson and Alexander von Schlippenbach, performed and recorded at Hebbel Theater, Berlin, 12.11.1994 In the programme, Johansson describes his observations of construction workers who "spend a good part of their lives – when it rains or snows, while changing clothes and so on – in these so-called construction wagons, usually set up in the immediate vicinity of the construction sites." The drama thus at the core employs an approach very typical of him: observing everyday activities and reinterpreting them artistically. What makes it unique is the combination of art forms: (absurd) theatre, dance, song and free jazz all are equal parts. Never, one of these becomes a simple accompaniment of the other. They alternate and mix, eventually leading to a Babylonian confusion that becomes meaningful in itself. Despite or maybe even because of its uniqueness, this opera is one of Johansson's key works. "... Über Ursache ..." was performed three times between 1986 and 1994. The audio recording of the premiere at the Stuttgart State Opera was released by FMP as a standard double LP in 1989. The 1994 audio and video recordings from the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin are presented here for the first time, packaged as a lavish box set with two LPs, a DVD, a 16-page booklet with photos and liner notes by Johansson, Konrad Heidkamp and Peter Ablinger, plus 20-page libretto – an edition that this spectacular work has deserved for a long time.  Cello – Tristan Honsinger Harp – Anne Le Baron Percussion, Drums – Paul Lovens Piano – Alexander von Schlippenbach Saxophone, Clarinet – Wolfgang Fuchs Saxophone - Dietmar Diesner Vocals – Shelley Hirsch Vocals, Accordion – Sven Åke Johansson Libretto-text by Sven-Åke Johansson & Shelley Hirsch Design by Teresa Iten Cover and Drawings by Sven-Ake Johansson

Recording of Otomo Yoshihide's set at B10 Live, Shenzhen. --- 大友良英 Otomo Yoshihide / 吉他 Guitar / 人声 Vocals --- 录制于2014年4月28日，深圳B10现场. Recorded April 28, 2014 at B10 Live, Shenzhen

Directed by Ludo MichCamera: Ludo Mich & Rufus J. BohezMusic: Arthur and his group ‘Live’Editing: Robbe De HertSound: Jules GorisSubtitles: Jan MatthéOriginal flyer art: Georges ‘mafPrint’ Smits Duration : 14:54 min.Year : 1971English subtitledArthur Is Fantastic is a b/w Fluxus film that portraits Arthur Indenbaum and turns him into a work of art by obliterating the boundaries between art and life. Arthur Indenbaum was the son of an American diamond dealer who had come to Antwerp in the late 1960s to be trained in his father’s business. Soon, however, Arthur found his way into the lively art and music scene of Antwerp of the period where he liked to get high, hang out with friends and play music with his band ‘Live’. At the time Gallery Vacuum was an art space run by artists and musicians Luc Deleu, Filip Francis and George Smits, who were an integral part of Antwerp’s alternative scene. On 6 May 1970 Arthur, with his extraordinarily big physical build and fuzzy hair, was exhibited as a live sculpture in Gallery Vacuum during a one-night show in which Ludo Mich took part as well. Ludo’s film Arthur Is Fantastic not only documents this gallery event but also shows fragments of a day in the life of Arthur: we see him get up, take a shower, smoke his first joint of the day, have a huge breakfast, play the guitar and walk the streets of Antwerp before arriving at Gallery Vacuum. Apart from being a strong and humorous Fluxus work of art this film is in hindsight a loving document of the early 1970s.

@xcrswx is the duo of Crystabel Efemena Riley (human/drum-skin) and Seymour Wright (saxophone) both also working with digital, analogue and ANDROID technologies – live and in the studio. Together they create sound works, and ideas that they explain, are to do with: “(REFERENCES) a span of human traditions, technologies and applications from the menstrual-bloody origins of cosmetics through evolution of reeds/drumskin ritual/musics, to Samsung and Audacity tools and attachments, Crunchyrolls and sub-woofer succulence. It’s committed, collaborative work that draws on decades of other association (past and present: X-Ray Hex Tet, Maria & The Mirrors, GUO, أحمد [Ahmed], XT trios with Anne Gillis and RPBoo) and (MORE REFERENCES) glamour/talent, clean-beauty, smart-boards, teaching-teams, stages, studios and solos, but in terms of what comes out is a sui generis, exciting, radical, extreme, tender, physical and fresh synthesis, of beats, layers, and patterns of raw and polished sound”.*MOODBOARD is @xcrswx’s first 12” LP, following on from FIXES a 10” split (with Lolina) from 2023 and CALLTIME/HARD OUT, a 7” single from 2020 it completes a trilogy of releases on Feedback Moves. It extends the previous releases in exciting, new ways – presenting things on a scale where everything is greater, with extremes wider, rawer and deeper than on previous recordings. MOODBOARD is one long-form piece played across two sides, and, a suite of discrete, overlapping songs – OKIE EFE, NPC, P2W, REFERENCES, MORE REFERENCES, UFFIZI, THE CREATIVE DECK, OKIE EFE IVẸ – pulsing with the intensity of one of @xcrswx’s extraordinarily intense, physical, caring and socially-situated live shows, but employing hi- and lo-tech studio assembly, intervention, and re-invention to keep these two sides very much, and meticulously, produced – a record made. Released 2025 - Feedback moves

Rie Nakajima and Keiko Yamamoto are joined by violinist Billy Steiger and percussionist Marie Roux in a dozen deconstructions of Japanese folk music, for this pacy, engaging debut album. Rie’s baby orchestra of rice bowls, toys, clock workings, balloons and motors is by turns haunted, teased, adorned and laid waste by Keiko’s chanting, rumbling, whispering and stamping on the floor. The production by David ‘Flying Lizards’ Cunningham deepens and spooks the mix, which brims over with energy and wit, intimacy and presence, grace and mystery. "Suddenly we are closer to music being made than we have been for many years or longer even, so alarmingly close as to feel warmth and discomfort, as if studying the sole of a foot from a few centimetres away or holding a private whisper within an enclosed hand and feeling its trembling desire to be free; but also so far away distant as to feel each vibrant, pungent ingredient within its box or jar or bowl or packet or bottle or air-tight translucent container or brown paper bag painstakingly stirred, shaken, scattered, poured into the heated cauldron of what we call recording, its imaginary rooms and its production, though my better self prefers not to speak about or analyse the notion of ‘the studio’, this being a working up of spaces that are social, a vision of something beyond us but not quite beyond us because its existence as a listening object is real enough to make us pause and question how it was lost or never found." - David Toop --- Keiko Yamamoto / voice, melodica, flute, recorder, floor percussion, toy dog (1-7, 9-12) Rie Nakajima / objects, whistles, flute, cards, taisho koto, xylophone, piano, abacus, drain horn (1-12) Billy Steiger / violin (2,4,7-9,11,12) Marie Roux / percussion, thumb piano (2,4,7,9,11,12) --- All composition by Nakajima/Roux/Steiger/Yamamoto apart from Yobu, Hebi, Iroha, Kitsune and Are Kore (Nakajima/Yamamoto) and Futari (Nakajima/Steiger). Words by Yamamoto except 5 and 11. Iroha is a Japanese classical alphabet. Sojarobai is a working song from Miyazaki, Japan. Produced by David Cunningham.  Cover image by Marie Roux. Sleeve design by Ayako Fukuuchi.

6 panel Digisleeve CD with sleevenotes by Lol, photos and illustrations Tracks 1-5 originally released in 1978 on LP as OG 525 - The Joy Of ParanoiaTracks 6-7 originally released in 1977 on LP as OG 510 - Diverse Lol Coxhill - soprano saxophone, loose floorboardMichael Garrick - electric pianoDave Green - bassJohn Mitchell - percussionPaul Mitchell-Davidson - bass guitarKen Shaw - electric guitarVeryan Weston - pianoColin Wood - celloRichard Wright - Spanish guitar "The idea behind the original two LPs which form this re-issue was to present collective example of certain areas where I function mostly as an improvising musician. My intention with The Joy of Paranoia was to create an album which presented my saxophone improvisations within several different situations. The tracks with Michael Garrick, though based upon familiar compositions, were played very openly. The duets with Veryan Weston were spontaneous. Joy of Paranoia Waltz is based upon a simple riff with four saxophone overdubs. The Wakefield Capers, with the exception of some established rhythmic settings by the members of Paws for Thought, is improvised."  --- Lol Coxhill / soprano sax Michael Garrick / electric piano Dave Green / bass John Mitchell / percussion Paul Mitchell-Davidson / bass guitar Ken Shaw / electric guitar Veryan Weston / piano Colin Wood / cello Richard Wright / span guitar (track 1) --- Recorded at Bretton Hall, Wakefield; Hatfield Music Centre; Mekon Studios, London; Fairway Tavern, Panshanger; Seven Dials, London. Tracks 1-5 originally released in 1978 on LP as OG 525, The Joy of Paranoia. Tracks 6-7 originally released in 1977 as OG510, Diverse.

Beautiful x2 CD reissue of Moholo's essential Bra Luis - Bra Tebs and Spirits Rejoice! Bra Louis - Bra TebsLouis Moholo-Moholo - drumsFrancine Luce - voiceJason Yarde - alto & soprano saxesToby Delius - tenor saxClaude Deppa - trumpetPule Pheto - pianoRoberto Bellatella - bassSpirits Rejoice!Louis Moholo-Moholo - drumsEvan Parker - tenor saxKenny Wheeler - trumpetNick Evans - tromboneRadu Malfatti - tromboneKeith Tippett - pianoJohnny Dyani - bassHarry Miller - bass "With the Octet having whetted his appetite for band leading, Louis Moholo-Moholo went on to develop an array of ensemble projects, the longest serving of which he dubbed Viva La Black. It was with Viva that Louis toured South Africa in 1993, and for Louis and some of his compatriots in Viva the tour was nothing less than a personal triumph, a return home after three years spent in exile. Why these studio sessions rested in the vaults for so long remains a mystery. It was a slightly changed band that Louis assembled in 1995: the fresh ingredient that would move Viva into the darker, earthier grooves of Bra Louis - Bra Tebs was singer Francine Luce, originally from Martinique and now one of the vocal treasures of the London improv scene. But here they are, at last." - David Ilic   "Full of striking themes and strong improvisation, and continues a tradition that goes back a long way in South African jazz: stripped-down, hymnal themes repeated like mantras, gradually intensifying into free-jam furores, or giving way to racing swing. Some of the songs are as quirkily gentle as a Norma Winstone record, some like Annie Ross in a free-improv band - and though Francine Luce's frantic variations might not work for everybody, she's sonorous and soulful on the brooding traditional song Utshaka, and on a defiant Motherless Child."

Recorded live at OTO in April 2017 includes long time collaborators Jason Yarde on saxophones, John Edwards on bass, and Alexander Hawkins on piano, with the addition of saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings. "Another crowded night, atmosphere charged, some new faces, lots familiar...From the first note the music spirals into the spirit world, summoned, a dance of beauty and life and death., and some of our friends are crying. They are strong and crying. We've been here before and it's always a shocking truth. This music is very real." "Experience the sensation of being blown away by the waves of emotion, whether overwhelmingly ecstatic or exquisitely refined. And most of all, perhaps, listen to the Louis Moholo Moholo Quartet to understand how, in this music, the individual and the collective can simultaneously attain equal importance: a most elevated state of being." – Richard Williams, The Blue Moment, review of Louis Moholo Moholo Quartet at Cafe OTO."

"One of the most notable things Parker and Stevens have in common is their way of absorbing and transforming influences from jazz. Stevens has often paid tribute to the music of people such as Eddie Blackwell and Ornette Coleman. Parker has his roots in the records of Coltrane, Dolphy and others. They have drawn on other musics to create a new language which is very personal and not in any way parasitic upon its resources. Other contexts will find Parker playing tenor saxophone and Stevens a conventional kit. In the duo, Parker plays only soprano and Stevens' kit is diminutive - no bass drum, two hi-hats, a childs snare. Evendently they have mapped out a very special area - extremely concentrated and intimate."  --- John Stevens / percussion, cornet Evan Parker / soprano saxophone --- Front cover illustration by Geoffrey Rigden, 1986. Corner to Corner recorded direct to U-Matic master using Schoeps and Neumann microphones on June 8 1993 at Angel Studio, London, by Kirsten Cowie. Longest Night recorded on the longest night of 1976 at Riverside Studios, London, by Adam Skeaping.