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

23 Sentences from DESERT PLANTS MORTON FELDMAN: Something that is beautiful is made in isolation. CHRISTIAN WOLFF: I try wherever possible to discourage competitive sort of careerism. JOHN CAGE: So that it takes an old fogey like myself to suggest again as Thoreau did all of his life, revolution. PHILIP CORNER: A lot of people hang up to restrictions which are not only in the external institutions. They are in your own mind. PHIL GLASS: The quintessence of harmonic music is in cadence for me. STEVE REICH: You must love music or be a duck. ROBERT ASHLEY: If you record a conversation with fifty people in the United States about their ideas, and if you get into each conversation really deeply, that when you get to the end, you will have one of me, one of Steve Reich, but you will have fifty of yourself. ALVIN LUCIER: But when you stutter, you scan the language. You are scanning your past. JOAN LA BARBARA: You know, instead of trying to direct the voice, I try to let the voice direct me. PAULINE OLIVEROS: I’m aware of my own physiology. And then I’m hearing it as a whole, and I’m aware of the various rates that are going on, the kinds of breaks in concentration that occur and how they are corrected. DAVID ROSENBOOM: What I’m looking at really is the existence of regularly pulsing energy. RICHARD TEITELBAUM: I played the same synthesizer for ten years. Me and it are very close to each other. LARRY AUSTIN: Ives’ main thing, I feel, was the concept of layering and getting us out of the idea that the sounds always had to come from the same place; that is, right in front of you. JAMES TENNEY: I realized in writing these pieces that this was one way to avoid drama, which I’m still trying to find ways to avoid. J. B. FLOYD about NANCARROW: Somebody actually brought up what was going to happen to the piano roles after he died; and he said, “Why? Do you want one?” LA MONTE YOUNG: You can always say that you wanted La Monte Young, but it was impossible. He was so mercenary, he wanted money. CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE: I’m searching for sort of this golden sonority. CHARLES MORROW: The high art itself is a form of power consciousness, that in a way one listens to the high art in the same way that one walks around being a flirt. GARRETT LIST: The only way for a one-world kind of feeling is where each nationality, each locality, has its own strength; so that people don’t need to have to take from another place. FREDERIC RZEWSKI: It’s still true that most Americans care more about the price of meat than they do about the exploitation of Bolivian miners. JOHN MC GUIRE: But sooner or later I am sure that I will return to America. BEN JOHNSTON about HARRY PARTCH: He was really willing to be as direct and as simple and as corny as you like, as people are when they aren’t trying to be concert artists."Desert Plants" was a cult book in the seventies because it brought the first information about the US-American composer-performer scene to Europe. Numerous examples of sheet music and entire scores enrich this insight into a time of experimentation that needs to be brought back into consciousness. The book, which has been reprinted unchanged, is dedicated to Carol Byl, who at the time transcribed the tapes largely literally in order to maintain the "stream of consciousness". The cover picture was drawn by Michael von Biel. The edition is accompanied by a CD which makes the surviving sound documents available in restored form as mp3 files, including the famous telephone conversation with La Monte Young. Thus the original voices from 1975 can be heard – a contemporary document.   Walter Zimmermann's interview partners are Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, John Cage, Philip Corner, Jim Burton, Phil Glass, Steve Reich, Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Joan La Barbara, Pauline Oliveros, David Rosenboom, Richard Teitelbaum, Larry Austin, James Tenney, J. B. Floyd (about Conlon Nancarrow), La Monte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, Charles Morrow, Garrett List, John Mc Guire and Ben Johnston (about Harry Partch).

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.

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

An invigorating, deeply interwoven recording from the pairing of Glasgow-born, London-based musician, Conal Blake and percussionist, improviser and sound artist, Regan Bowering. Having collaborated in a trio alongside musician and computer programmer Li Song since 2022, this was their first duo performance, recorded at OTO in January 2025 on a bill alongside Beachers and picoFarad. For this set the pair combined microphone feedback with acoustic percussion - augmented with a delay pedal - where the mics picked up the acoustic, tactile percussive gestures and used them to generate more feedback, which in turn resonated the drums. The result is a highly present, deeply symbiotic setup, whereby Blake and Bowering react to one another, but also the equipment itself, with the resulting strands building to something as densely intertwined as a Piranesi etching. Over the set's 21 minute runtime, Blake crafts woozy squalls of feedback, ranging from shrill, questioning tones to ragged, guttural growls, with a highly tactile grasp of the timbral possibilities of the set-up. Alongside this (within, under, over, through), Bowering's clipped percussive ricochets and sharply curtailed rolls spill into an intricate approach that delves deeply into the sonic possibilities of the kit; coaxing new textures and forms from the feedback loops, that in turn galvanise the entire sound palette into new territories. With such a synergetic sound and interplay, it's perhaps pointless to home in on the component parts too closely, though. Whatever the source, the sound that the duo create is curious, enthralling and fully alive. --  Recorded, mixed and mastered by Billy Steiger

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

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.

Maple's third full-lenth outing and the first offering on Drag City. Produced by Michael Gira of The Swans. This is their unique take on Rock n' Roll High School.

Beautifully produced X4CD Box set / First ever release dedicated to seminal British experiental ensemble Intermodulation via Paradigm Discs Having releasing a box set of works by Gentle Fire it felt necessary to do the same with Intermodulation and thus complete the other half of this missing chapter in British experimental music. Intermodulation have a quite different line up to Gentle Fire, most notably with Peter’s percussion, Robin on bassoon and soprano sax, and the shared use of VCS3’s and electric keyboards. Nonetheless both groups covered similar ground, appeared at the same European festivals, travelled together with Stockhausen to Iran, and they were generally concerned with a similar repertoire of experimental scores. Although Intermodulation released no records during their existence (and Gentle Fire only the one LP), both groups did appear side by side on the recording of Stockhausen’s Sternklang. This 4CD set aims to cover a wide range of their work. CD1 contains the entirety of their 1971 concert at Ely Cathedral (a 6 minute excerpt of which appeared on the 2CD ‘Not Necessarily English Music’ compiled by David Toop). CD2 focuses on their BBC recordings including excerpts from 2 Prom performances, one of which is the famous 1970 Prom which had Soft Machine taking the stage in the second half. CD3 features material held in the archives of 3 German radio stations and the fourth disc consists of one work; World Music by Tim Souster, the 72 minute opus written for the four players plus tape. In summary, we hear Intermodulation play 5 Stockhausen pieces (4 of which are realisations of his intuitive text pieces), 2 Terry Riley pieces and one by Cardew. They also play 2 compositions by Tim and one by Roger as well performing 2 group improvisations. The set comes with a 48 page booklet detailing the groups history. This is a numbered edition of 500.

You may have heard of Gentle Fire, but could be forgiven for not knowing much about them. They were a 6, then 5 member group of composers/improvisers/performers based in London and Yorkshire. Most of the writings that cover the pioneers of experimental, electronic and improvised music have given them scant attention. In addition to this, their recorded output is slim, the main item being a long out of print LP (for EMI Electrola), featuring their interpretations of graphic scores by Cage, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff. Despite recordings for BBC Radio 3 and many German radio stations, it seems extraordinary that there were no other substantial releases of their repertoire, or any of the 6 Group Compositions they created. Most of the existing Gentle Fire archive was kept privately by Hugh Davies. After Hugh died in 2005 it was shared between various institutions. This release owes much to Hugh’s meticulous record keeping as well as the archives at the British Library and Special Collections at Goldsmiths, University of London. Listening sessions at the British Library were a revelation, it was like discovering a missing link in the evolution of experimental music, but above all it sounded so undated and fresh. The release is divided into 3 sections. The first CD, recorded between 1970 and 1971 contains 4 studio and 2 concert recordings of graphic and text scores: 2 parts of Stockhausen’s Aus den sieben Tagen, and one piece each by Earle Brown, John Cage, Toshi Ichiyanagi and Christian Wolff. Gentle Fire were active between 1968 and 1974 and were especially active during the early 70s, appearing at numerous European avant garde festivals, playing their own Group Compositions and a wide variety of experimental scores. They even ended up in Iran playing in Stockhausen’s Sternklang, and improvising at dawn at Hafez’s tomb. The text and graphic scores that they were innately drawn towards have large elements of interpretive freedom to them, where the composer provides a skeleton and steps back allowing the players to give it flesh. They were in regular communication with the composers of these piece, so it’s no surprise that their interpretations were sought after by concert organisers and composers alike. There are very few examples of groups working at this time with direct contact to the composers, which makes these recordings especially precious. CD2 and 3 focus on their own works, CD2 dates from 1973 and was recorded during a 2 day residency at Radio Bremen. The 5 pieces on this disc cover a wide variety of styles and include a 23 minute version of Group Composition VI which is their only text based piece and uses processed and filtered speech. CD3 is a recording of their appearance at ICES 72, a legendary festival that took place at the Roundhouse in London. Over the course of 2 chaotic weeks a vast number of the world’s experimental musicians took to the stage. Miraculously the whole of the Gentle Fire concert has been preserved. It consists of a performance of their Group Composition IV, centred around a large metal sculpture that all members of the group could play at the same time. The piece actually had its première the previous year on the original pyramid stage at the first Glastonbury Fair. There are several photos of the event included in the booklet that accompanies the CDs. At last it is possible to assess the importance of this group’s work, both their own work and their interpretations of scores, and to give them their proper place in the history of live experimental/electronic music as well as indeterminate and intuitive composition. Released in an edition of 500 with a numbered 48 page booklet.

Rock. It's still angular, rubbery and twitchy, but this fifth full-length contains their most straight-up Rock 'n Roll since their debut.

Pre-order: Ariving late Dec / Early Jan Astounding, long-overdue repress of Art Into Life's essential X5CD survey of Anne Gillis  French artist Manon Anne Gillis began creating everyday yet theatrical sound works and performances in the early 1980s. This is the first archival collection of her work, covering her earliest pieces from 1983 under the name Devil’s Picnic up to her installation and exhibition recordings from 2005. This five-CD box set includes all the LP and CD albums released on (CRI)2, DMA2, and Rangehen; her only collaboration with another artist—a 7-inch single with her close associate G.X. Jupitter-Larsen; her compilation contributions up to 1999 (excluding a few whose original masters have been lost); and eleven previously unreleased pieces appearing here for the first time. A dense compilation filled with the imagery of beautiful isolation.

Minimalist avant-rock from experimentalist Dreyblatt: ultra-rhythmic overtones created from striking piano strings strung to a bass. LP originally released in 1982 by India Navigation Records

Announcing Perseverance Flow, the latest album from acclaimed Chicago-based ensemble Natural Information Society (NIS), release date 2024-10-24. After a trilogy of double LPs by expanded manifestations of the band that began in 2018 with Mandatory Reality & continued through Since Time Is Gravity (a Pitchfork Best Jazz & Experimental Album of the Year selection & Mojo’s #1 Underground Album of 2023), NIS returns to its core formation of Lisa Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, Jason Stein on bass clarinet, & composer/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams on guimbri for one continuous 37 minute composition across a single LP. As the rocket boosters on spaceship earth sputter closer to burnout, lower your stylus into a soundfield that grows stronger the deeper you travel into it; a dose of the medicine many of us look to music to deliver awaits you inside.  One of the deep contemplations of this natural information (thanks Bill Callahan) is the wide range of source materials Abrams draws from over the band’s more than 15 year history: Ideas from minimalism, modal jazz & traditional musics are regularly reimagined in these compositions. The 2021 double LP descension (Out of Our Constrictions), with guest soloist Evan Parker, reflected aspects of Abrams’ love of party music, Chicago house, & John Coltrane. *But even veteran travelers with the NIS best brace themselves for the Perseverance Flow. Speaking to the history & the inspirations behind the album, Abrams offers: “We played the piece for a year in concert before the recording. At Electrical (Audio Studios, Chicago) we went in at 11 & were done in time to pick our kids up from school.” Abrams continues: "In a reference world, I imagine Perseverance Flow like a live extended realization of a Jaylib lost instrumental as remixed by Kevin Shields. Or vice versa. I also think it has sympathies to some of the more rhythmically intricate dance musics out of Chicago & Lisbon.” The core NIS ensemble heard on Perseverance Flow always address Abrams’ writing with the discipline of orchestra musicians & the creativity of improvisers. But this time around, instead of inviting living legend status musicians Evan or William Parker or Ari Brown as honored guests to solo freely over the composed materials, Abrams’ invited guest collaborator was the medium of the recording studio itself. Situated at the board with engineer Greg Norman, Abrams pushed post production techniques found only sporadically on earlier NIS records deep into the heart of the music, distorting & reshaping instruments to subtly &, at times, aggressively mutate timbre & texture, color & time. Refracting the band’s signature mesmerizing chains of overlapping rhythmic patterns through the sonic funhouse of dub makes Perseverance Flow the most formally experimental NIS album to date. Now a soundworld fully unique to itself is listening to itself, consoling & humoring itself, & consoling & humoring you. A destruction myth & a creation myth of a soundworld together at once —”energetically nutritious” (October 2025 Issue 500 The Wire) supernatural information society.

English-German Edition in two volumes 906 pages. These lectures, discussions were within the last years of Feldman's life, he died in September 1987, these were 1985 to 1987, for the "Nieuwe Muziek" in Middleburg, and the topics, subject matter runs the entire cornocopia of post war music, modernity, complexity, post-modernity, post-truth, post metaphysics. The discussion(s) are with all top-recorgnized composers Kaija Saariho, Iannis Xenakis, pianist Geoffrey D. Madge, Louis Andriessen, and not-so-well-known composers but important nonetheless as Konrad Boehmer and Bunita Marcus, Feldman's companion.Feldman was always a very engaging talker, conversationaist, he primed himslef with into-the-night discussions at the Cedar Bar in New York City, speaking with great painters de Kooning, Franz Kline, Pollock, Marc Rothko, Philip Guston his close friend.There is much anecdotal shibboleths here as well, as when a student who came to Alban Berg, and after some hours was not examining the student's composition. Berg said something like "how can you be a composer and not smoke cigarettes?". Time spent with Stefan Wolpe was also productive, right out of high school, and the house concerts of his works and others.

Stay away from nothing shines a spotlight on the deep relationship between Paul Thek and Peter Hujar through the artists’ letters and photographs. Beginning in 1956 and spanning two decades, the publication opens a window into their intimate, complex, and beautiful lives, starting with a sequence of images by Hujar that showcases the two of them in innocent moments of pensive and haunting play in Coral Gables and beyond. These early portraits of their budding relationship are followed by several playful postcards from Thek in 1960 and his first letter to Hujar in 1962, written while the artist is in the Philadelphia harbor aboard a containership bound for Europe. In the letter, Thek is brimming with joy and new discoveries and exclaims that the world “seems bigger and more gloriously strange than ever before in my entire life.” The two eventually meet in Rome, where they both begin to evolve into the icons we know them as today, and the remaining letters trace Thek’s travels and adventures, romantic dalliances, work, and financial ups and downs through 1975. More than fifty letters and postcards, along with drawings and other ephemera, are reproduced in Stay away from nothing and their poetic, quotidian, and melancholic tone provide a rare glimpse into Thek and Hujar’s relationship as it wavers with seduction, glamor, tumult, and mischievousness. Throughout this period, Hujar was photographing Thek in his now-iconic style, capturing him in Italy, in various studios, and on the beaches of Fire Island. Included are the artist’s classic images of Thek in the catacombs in Palermo, as well as his studio portraits of the artist creating The Tomb. Among these well-known works are dozens of other photographs, many unpublished until now, including candid portraits of Thek, as well as images of the two artists goofing around or posing for passport photos. Collectively, these images demonstrate not only the complex emotional interiority of Thek but the tender, dark, and hopeful connection between the two artists, lovers, and friends. An afterword is provided by Andrew Durbin, author of A Wonderful World that Almost Was, a biography of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek.Edited by Francis Schichtel Paperback, 9 x 12 inches, 192 pp Primary Information, 2025   Paul Thek (b. 1933) is among the most legendary and elusive artists of the post-1960s generation. He burst onto the New York scene with his Technological Reliquaries series, then known as “meat pieces,” which challenged Pop and Minimalism with an idiosyncratic approach that merged earnest posthuman embodiment and a critique of contemporary art trends. In Europe in the 1970s, he created new modes of exhibition-making that involved the creation of elaborate, ephemeral installations composed of sand, candles, newspaper, chicken-wire, Polaroids, and discarded furniture. Upon returning to New York in the later years of his career, he produced his deliberately “bad paintings” while continuing his longest-running series of paintings executed on newspaper, works that poignantly underscore his sustained engagement with themes of ephemerality and the passage of time. Thek died of AIDS in 1988. Peter Hujar (b. 1934) died of AIDS in 1987, leaving behind a complex and profound body of photographs. Hujar was a leading figure in the group of artists, musicians, writers, and performers at the forefront of the cultural scene in downtown New York in the 1970s and early 80s, and he was enormously admired for his completely uncompromising attitude towards work and life. He was a consummate technician, and his portraits of people, animals, and landscapes, with their exquisite black-and-white tonalities, were extremely influential. Highly emotional yet stripped of excess, Hujar’s photographs are always beautiful, although rarely in a conventional way. His extraordinary first book, Portraits in Life and Death, with an introduction by Susan Sontag, was published in 1976, but his “difficult” personality and refusal to pander to the marketplace ensured that it was one of the last publications during his lifetime.

Practicing Dying is a literary anti-memoir documenting life in a Zen Buddhist monastery in rural France where the protagonist, a woman in her late twenties, attempts to overcome chronic drug addiction and mental illness. Broken and severely unwell, our protagonist arrives at the monastery from London: starving, drug-addicted and disillusioned, having exhausted every conventional treatment route available to her. The book examines how, habituated to a life of benefits assessments, petty-crime and sex work, she struggles to adjust to the rules, discipline and religious life of the monastery—at times to devastating and comedic effect. As the story unfolds, she reflects on her addictions and past experiences, raising critical questions about what it means to be “an addict” and why there may be vested corporate and societal interests in maintaining a narrow, individualistic understanding of addiction. Anarchic and provocative, tender and self-deprecating, Practicing Dying differs from other contemporary memoirs in the genre of addiction-recovery by simultaneously challenging the dominant narratives surrounding mental health while proposing an alternative approach to treating the “sickness of self” from which we all increasingly suffer. ‘Practicing Dying is brilliant, rewarding and difficult. Northall offers the most brazen and shocking account of addiction I’ve ever read. Committing herself to the practice of Mahayana Buddhism, she eventually finds a way out, but only on the most rambling, circuitious path. Her account of addiction and loss, displacement and grief is profound and it proves that nothing is ever one thing.’ — Chris Kraus, author of The Four Spent The Day Together Practicing Dying is a literary anti-memoir documenting life in a Zen Buddhist monastery in rural France where the protagonist, a woman in her late twenties, attempts to overcome chronic drug addiction and mental illness.softcover, 345pp Pilot Press, London 2025

During the crucifixion Christ is said to have sustained 5 wounds: 1 in each hand and foot from the nails of the cross, and the 5th was formed when the side of Christ was pierced by the sword of Longinus. These 5 wounds became objects of specific veneration in the late Middle Ages and in manuscripts the side wound is usually depicted as a mandorla: an almond/diamond/vulvic shape, generally isolated from Christ's body and oriented vertically on the page. It is the vulvic shape of these images, and their implications, that this publication takes as its focus. Images of the side wound were used as talismans, one could gain magical protections by looking at them, touching, ingesting, or wrapping them around your body, and they are often found on birth girdles: rolls of parchment with magical formulae for easing birth. Mystics of this time speak of drinking from the wound, kissing it, entering it, living within it, and subsequently being birthed from the wound. The vulvic representation of the wound produced a state where Christ was seen as neither fully male, nor fully female, but rather as an unstably sexed figure, asserting a constant fluidity. Through this side wound Christ became a mother, lover, object of erotic desire, and a portal for the whole universe to emerge from. SIDE WOUND: The Female Christ provides an overview of the many ways the side wound has been interpreted historically and includes images and archival information of the numerous manuscripts depicting the side wound.Softcover, Staplebound 128 x 177mm, 36pp Hildegard Press, Canada, 2025

Articles: aja monet by Ayana Contreras, Azymuth by Ben Lee, Henry Threadgill by Bret Sjerven, Sven-Åke Johansson by Magnus Nygren, Anna Webber by Stewart Smith, Rafiq Bhatia by Florent Servia, Talk Show (Steph Richards & Qasim Naqvi) by Andy Cush, Ganavya by Tina Edwards, Cosmic Tones Research Trio by Blake Gillespie, Quincy Jones by Rob Garratt, Devin Daniels by Samuel Lamontagne, album design essay by Alex Coles, Discaholic column by Mats Gustafsson, album reviews, live reviews, photo essay & more. “Weathering” for aja monet Issue 17 / Winter 2025, 128pp We Jazz Magazine

This is exactly what we need. Big time. Johannes Rød returns with the massively expanded edition of his essential guide - a monument of discographic research spanning six decades of creative music documentation. 381 pages plus 47 unnumbered pages of label artwork. 185 labels mapped with obsessive detail and passionate advocacy. From the explosive emergence of free jazz in the mid-1960s through ESP-Disk, BYG Actuel, and Actuel, through the European improvisers' movement documented by FMP, Incus, ICP, and Po Torch, to contemporary operations like Clean Feed, Trost Records, Astral Spirits, and Smalltown Supersound. This is not just catalogue information. This is cultural history. Each label entry captures aesthetic vision, cultural context, the networks of musicians and presenters that made each imprint distinctive. Rød understands that free jazz culture has always been about more than just the music in the grooves - from Absinth Records' handpainted sleeves to FMP's iconic covers by Annette Peacock and Paul Lovens, this book documents the visual beauty alongside the sonic radicalism. When Rød's Free Jazz and Improvisation on Vinyl 1965-1985 appeared in 2014, it immediately became the essential companion for anyone navigating the vast landscape of creative music documentation. This 2025 edition is the complete map. Hundreds of catalogue entries. Geographical, cultural, and ideological perspectives spanning American pioneers (Savoy, Blue Note's avant-garde excursions), European explosions, Japanese radicalism (DIW, PSF), Scandinavian innovations (Odin, Circulasione Totale). With a foreword by Mats Gustafsson who writes: "DIG IN, enjoy and start your own research. It is all in front of you! Johannes Rød has created a unique possibility for all of us. It is a deep well of knowledge and music. It is the most FUN ride you can make: into the (un)known world of improvised music!" As Joakim Haugland of Smalltown Supersound notes in his introduction, free jazz has been "the spine of the label, that holds it all together" - always present, always essential. This book is that spine made visible, tangible, researchable. It's information and inspiration in equal measure. In an era when streaming platforms flatten everything into algorithmic sameness, when the physical object threatens to become mere nostalgia, this book reminds us why labels matter - why curatorial vision, aesthetic presentation, and committed documentation are crucial to creative music's survival and flourishing. A landmark publication.A guide to 185 labels  Softcover, 485pp Smalltown Supersound, 2025

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.

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...

Malik King was an important part of the St Louis jazz scene of the 70's & 80's. He studied under Albert Ayler in NY in the early 70s before returning to the Midwest. He was a member of the Shirley Le Flore's ensemble "Free N' Concert". He also served as musical director of The Creative Arts & Expression Lab, The African Peoples Continuum, & The Black Arts Alliance, The worrier poets, The Human Arts Ensemble, as well as various Emerging Force Ensembles. Zimbabwe Nkenya (1953-2022), a creative artist and innovative musician, was brought up on army bases in the USA and Spain. He spent 30 years traveling and performing in New York, New Mexico, Arizona and St Louis. playing with a who's who of jazz. In New Mexico he became an integral part of the scene, producing and hosting the KUNM'S radio show "THE HOUSE THAT JAZZ BUILT" . Luckily Malik self released "Time & Condition" in 1982, capturing his work together with Qaiyim Shabazz. It's not just a crate diggers Holy Grail, but an important artistic and historic document of the St Louis scene. Time & Condition stands alone as a (very) individual, spiritual jazz classic. Maurice Malik King - Alto saxophone, voice, & small instruments Qaiyim Shabazz - Congas Drums Zimbabwe Nkenya - Bass Violin

Artistry was Sirone's first album as a leader, recorded in 1978, just after the split of the Revolutionary Ensemble. Artistry has an Atypical combination of instruments, bass, cello , flute and percussion and delivers aplenty. Listen and you will know. Sirone ( Norris Jones) had an enormously prolific career as a bassist, both as a member of the Revolutionary Ensemble and playing with many of the best musicians of the 20th century - from Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Gato Barbieri, Noah Howard, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Sonny Sharrock,Marion Brown ... and the list goes on.

First Official Reissue of Conspiracy. NOT TO BE MISSED!! (due to a slight delay at the pressing plant, this release has been put back to the end of July) Jeanne Lee (1939-2000) was an African-American vocalist, poet, composer, improvisor, activist and educator. In her 40 year career she performed with Archie Shep, Marion Brown, Gunter Hampel, Frank Lowe, William Parker, Andrew Cyrille, Anthony Braxton, Ran Blake, Billy Bang, Cecil Taylor, John Cage, Rashsaan Roland Kirk, Pauline Oliveros, Reggie Workman, and many others. "jazz is a music that combines so many opposites...you have to fined that balance, then you have a guideline between freedom and discipline, between rhythm and melody, between body and spirit, between mind and instinct" (Jeanne Lee) This is the first official reissue of "Conspiracy" since its limited release in 1975, it was her first record under her own name as a solo artist. It is a true lost gem, with a unique and beautiful sound. Musician Elaine Mitchener describes "Conspiracy" as "one of greatest free-form albums of the1970s". "i feel the music like a dance, I think it's an important part of the music, it has to be felt like a dance" (Jeanne Lee) --- Jeanne Lee - vocal Gunter Hampel - flute, piano, vibraphone, alto clarinet, bass clarinet Sam Rivers - soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, flute Steve McCall - drums Alan Praskin - clarinet Perry Robinson - clarinet Jack Gregg - Bass Mark Whitecage - alto clarinet Marty Cook -trombone Recorded in New York, 1974 Originally released in 1975 on "Seeds records" and Jeanne Lee's own "Earth-forms records"

Senyawa are a contemporary duo originating from Jogjakarta, Indonesia. Rully Shabara (extreme vocals) coupled with Wukir Suryadi's deft instrumentals (and homemade instruments) produce one of the most profound examples of experimental via traditional music happening anywhere today. By weaving Indonesian folkloric moods with various shades of modern genre hybrids, Senyawa has been navigating unexplored musical terrain for more than a decade. Sujudtheir premier release on the Sublime Frequencies label, is the latest chapter of this very special and singular sound of the past, present, and future. The basic theme of the record can be summed up with one extremely powerful Bahasa Indonesian word, "tanah", which translates to "soil-ground-land-earth". Shabara's vocals are an expressive force, conjuring spirits from the soil with a deep humility and respect for the land and their existence in the universe. Suryadi has built a new guitar for these tracks and pushes the Senyawa sound into new territory, utilizing delay, loops, and other effects creating grounded backdrops of folk metal, punk attitudinal, and droning earthscapes - providing Shabara the perfect context to explore his whispering poetry and jagged, sharp-as-a-kris animistic powers. There is simply no other sound like it and Sublime Frequencies is thrilled to present this new direction in their discography.

Les Disques Bongo Joe are pleased to announce the fourth album of La Tène ! Collaborating for the third time with the band, we're proud to release Ecorcha/Taillee, a two track project in between drone, folk, experimental and occitan music. La Tène’s long, hypnotic, wordless pieces are built from traditional folk instrumentation, wild percussion and blurred, subtle electronic embellishments, and feel as ancient and earthy as those millennia-old artefacts – with all the metal, wood, dedication and craftsmanship they entailed. As on their previous release Abandonnée / Maleja, a double set running to over 80 minutes, Cyril Bondi, Alexis Degrenier and Laurent Peter expand to seven members in total. Cohorts Jacques Puech (cabrette – a small bagpipe associated with the Auvergne region of France), Louis Jacques (cabrette and a larger, 23” bagpipe), Guilhem Lacroux (12-string guitar) and Jérémie Sauvage (bass) each return to add colour, layers and intrigue. Ecorcha/Taillée was recorded in a barn converted into a ballroom and cultural centre which exists to promote the folk music of region Auvergne. Both L’Ecorcha (eighteen and a half minutes long) and La Taillée (just under a quarter of an hour, brevity by this group’s standards) were recorded live and what you hear is a single take, with no editing after the fact. L’Ecorcha goes into space with simple, minimal tools. Beginning with a single, doomy chord circling in perpetuity and a metallic shaker by way of rhythm, a drone of unspecified provenance is joined a little under halfway through by Alexis’ hurdy-gurdy, adding bucolic buoyancy while Laurent uses the wooden surface of his harmonium as an extra percussive source. La Taillée is spikier, danceable even thanks thanks to Cyril’s insistent drumming and the harmonium and hurdy-gurdy moving in a glorious lockstep. If you were to think of the relationship between Lou Reed’s guitar and John Cale’s violin while taking in La Taillée, you wouldn’t be OTT by any means. nspirations, soundalikes and kindred spirits are elusive and fleeting in the case of La Tène. There are a couple specific to Ecorcha/Taillée, both brought to the table by Alexis : a Christian song titled La Passion, collected in 1883 by French folklorist Félix Arnaudin, and a reggaeton hit single from 2022, Saoko by Spanish star Rosalía. La Taillée adapts its crunchy central riff in La Tène’s own image. It’s that link between the past and the future that also rings out in the music of La Tène.  Alexis Degrenier : Amplified Hurdy-Gurdy - Vielle À Roue Amplifiée Cyril Bondi : Percussions - Percussions D’Incise : Indian Harmonium, Electronic, Percussions - Harmonium Indien, Electronique, Percussions Jacques Puech : Cabrette - Cabrette Louis Jacques : Cabrette, 23'' Bagpipe - Cabrette, Cornemuse 23'' Guilhem Lacroux: 12 Strings Guitar - Guitare 12 Cordes Jérémie Sauvage: Electric Bass - Basse Electrique

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.