Jim Strong is a visual artist, painter, performer & experimental instrument builder. Until now his music is released on respectful labels like Vitrine and Crisis Of Taste. He is the one half of Melkings, a collaborative group with T.D. & founder of the experimental label Cor Ardens. im Strong’s music is characterised by a structural complexity, combining amorphous instrumentation and spoken words. His handcrafted instruments, that looks more like artifacts or sculptures, reproduce a big variety of cracking noises, broken electronics & drone sound effects. The outcome is a poetic mix, consist of free improvisation, crank-based mechanisms and sound poetry. Voluntary Letters are probably his most exciting work by Jim until now. This release includes eleven tracks, who successively structure an interior mystery play between paraphernalia & human soul --- More Mars, 2021

Philip Corner is one of the greatest American avant garde composers, an American outsider, a unique philosopher redefining what we call music and art, bringing together different cultures in a new kind of harmony, inviting all of us to experience music as a whole and be a crucial part of it. MoreMars Team can proudly announce the release of this amazing LP with 4 unpublished works spanning 30 years of pure creation. The beauty of these recordings lies on their lo-fi, hissy, raw quality.''Gong (ceng-ceng)/Ear'' was recoded in Bali (1989) using very resonant handheld balinese cymbals. Totally improvised music,shaman vibrations through the body, dedicated to dancers ( ''the dancer may be me...or you, listener!'' Philip Corner).''Two in Thailand'' (created in Bankok, 1996-performance recording in New York, 1997) with Phoebe Neville. This is a very formal Metal Meditation with very small finger cymbals and a heavy gong in slow punctuations. A wonderful graphically and verbally notated score for open improvisation.These two A' Side pieces distill many years of experience and experiment with the properties of resonant metal objects, whether intended for music or not. Metallic magic, deep resonating tones, delicate ringing cymbals, vibrating sonorities leading to a ritual, transcendent experience.''OM.Duet:Jug and Bottle'' with James Fulkerson (private performance, New York 1972) is a ''zen-like'' sustained tone with microtonal breath fluctuations, using the simplest possible resonators. Based on verbal instructions, slight mysterious gestural sounds brought up to ear close audibility, and eerie low frequencies create a spectrum of sound-texture varieties with a mesmerising, hypnotic effect.''Satie's 2 Chords Of The Rose+Croix...As a Revelation'' (Hartford Village, Vermont 1999). Music based on a chosen section of a loved classic, with a little ''beat up'' harmonium producing mystic organ sounds. Long sustained tones floating in the air, variety of pitches, rhythmic irregularities and weird time specifics resulting in a reverential, ecstatic composition, profoundly affecting. ''....Hum the Ultimate Mantra-this should turn you on-....'' Philip Corner. This is a limited edition LP of 350 copies, inclouding a 16 pages inner book full of info, photos scores + texts by Philip Corner

Provincial Headz: British Hip Hop and Critical Regionalism draws upon spatial practice, material culture, human geography, ethnomusicology and cultural theory in order to present an interdisciplinary counter-narrative to that of hip hop as a strictly urban phenomenon; providing an insight into the relocation of hip hop culture from its inception in New York ghettos to its practices in provincial and rural Britain. Hip hop culture truly arrived in Britain in 1983, a decade after its origin in New York City, and although many important events, artists and recordings that evidence hip hop’s existence in 1980s Britain are well documented, these are almost exclusively urban. Additionally, the narratives embedded in these representations remain too convenient and unchallenged. This book reveals parallel and dialectical experiences of British hip hop pioneers and practitioners dwelling outside the metropolis, discussed under the recurring themes of relocation, territory, consumption, production and identity. These narratives are framed within a rich contextual discourse drawing upon Bhabha, Bourdieu, Foucault, DeLanda and contemporary hip hop scholarship. Shifting hip hop research from urbanism to rurality, the book serves as an introduction to the complexities of its historical narratives in Britain and reveals another hip hop history and how we understand it.

VINYL IS DELAYED TIL NOVEMBER. CDS READY TO SHIP.  --- In the late 1960s, the American trumpet player and free jazz pioneer Don Cherry (1936–1995) and the Swedish visual artist and designer Moki Cherry (1943–2009) began a collaboration that imagined an alternative space for creative music, most succinctly expressed in Moki’s aphorism “the stage is home and home is a stage.” By 1972, they had given name to a concept that united Don’s music, Moki’s art, and their family life in rural Tagårp, Sweden into one holistic entity: Organic Music Theatre. Captured here is the historic first Organic Music Theatre performance from the 1972 Festival de jazz de Chateauvallon in the South of France, mastered from tapes recorded during its original live broadcast on public TV. A life-affirming, multicultural patchwork of borrowed tunes suffused with the hallowed aura of Don’s extensive global travels, the performance documents the moment he publicly jettisoned his identity as a jazz musician, and represents the start of his communal “mystical” period, later crystallized in recordings such as Organic Music Society, Relativity Suite, Brown Rice, and the soundtrack for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. The musicians in Don Cherry’s New Researches, hailing from Brazil, Sweden, France, and the US, converged on Chateauvallon from all over Europe. The five-person band—Don and Moki Cherry, Christer Bothén, Gérard “Doudou” Gouirand, and Naná Vasconcelos— performed in an outdoor amphitheater and were joined onstage by a dozen adults and children, including Swedish friends who tagged along for the trip and Det Lilla Circus (The Little Circus), a Danish puppet troupe based in Christiania, Copenhagen. The platform was lined with Moki’s carpets and her handmade, brightly colored tapestries, depicting Indian scales and bearing the words Organic Music Theatre, dressed the stage. As the musicians played, members of Det Lilla, led by Annie Hedvard, danced, sang, and mounted an improvised puppet show on poles high up in the air. The music in the Chateauvallon concert aspired to a universal language that would bring people together through song. In a fairly unprecedented move, Don abandoned his signature pocket trumpet for the piano and harmonium, thereby liberating his voice as an instrument for shamanic guidance. The show opens with him beckoning the audience to clap their hands and sing the Indian theta “Dha Dhin Na, Dha Tin Na,” and the set cycles through uplifting and sacred tunes of Malian, South African, Brazilian, and Native American provenance—including pieces that would later appear on Don’s albums Organic Music Society and Home Boy (Sister Out)—all punctuated by outbursts of possessed glossolalia from the puppeteers. “Relativity Suite, Part 1” notably spotlights Bothén on donso ngoni, a Malian hunter’s guitar, prior to Vasconcelos taking an extended solo on berimbau. A vortex of wah-like microtonal rattling, Vasconcelos’s masterful demonstration of this single-stringed Brazilian instrument is a harbinger of his work to come as a member, with Don, of the acclaimed group Codona. The sounds of children playing on the ensemble’s achingly tender rendition of Jim Pepper’s oft-covered beacon of spiritual optimism, “Witchi Tai To,” lends the proceedings an especially intimate, domestic glow. Given the context of the star-studded international jazz festival, the concert’s laid back, communal vibe feels like an attempt by the Cherrys to show Don’s jazz audience that he was moving on. At the same time, however, Don was extending a warmhearted invitation for them to come along for the ride. --- With liner notes by Magnus Nygren. --- Blank Forms, 2021

First time trio from Ren Schofield, Seymour Wright and Paul Abbott. Under the Container moniker Ren usually improvises overblown electronic hardware: infectious drum patterns, restructured feedback and dying tape loops. Wright and Abbott’s respective practices look to interrogate the British tradition of improvised music – groups such as AMM and SME - so this meeting somewhat shoves spontaneous interplay onto the dancefloor. The result is a high density recursive tangle of magnified antagonism and genuine investigative collaboration which steps off on the more cognitive side of techno. Not your usual dancefloor but experiments like this will keep free improvisation fresh. --- Seymour Wright / saxophone Paul Abbott / drums, electronics Ren Schofield / Roland 909, tape machine, delay --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Adam Maschulat on Thursday 9th August, 2018. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. 

New music from XT (saxophone player Seymour Wright and percussionist Paul Abbott) in the form of an exhilarating, super compressed, reflective re-assembling of a dozen years working together. Re-animating free improvisation with a Chicago house palette, Deorlaf X is made up of frenetic slabs of mutated multiphonics and triggered percussion, suspended in bouts of possessed reflexive quiet. Where the duo’s 2019 release Palina'tufa on Empty Editions focused primarily on a response to the real (and imagined) landscapes of Hong Kong, Deorlaf X is located in Dalston, and specifically at OTO. Wrung through Shuan Crook’s studio over three nights, the recordings dug from XT’s archive aren’t simply ‘duo’ - instead they actively draw on their public and social contexts, involving the influence of audience, engineers and other visiting musicians - Ghédalia Tazartès, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Senyawa, RP Boo and others. “A changing cast of OTO guests, audience and emotions hosted each time in a new London. XT structures sound an ongoing attempt to listen and learn about the rich and transformative affordances of the situations we occupy.” The resulting record puts a pin through a dialogue between Abbott and Wright, between histories, potentials, fact, fiction, ideas, friends, audiences, and spaces. The heavy use of referencing recalls the footwork or house traditions of sampling across all manner of influences; what’s recalled is primarily the structures of jazz - Ornette Coleman, Charlie Parker, Anthony Braxton - but also Ann Quin, Clarice Lispector, Anna Halprin. What’s created in recall is a kind of diary, a hyper re-membering - a blisteringly warped kind of future music. --- Recorded by James Dunn, Shaun Crook and Paul Skinner. Assembled, mixed and re-recorded 19, 20 and 21 January, 2020 by XT at Lockdown Studio, Cable Street. Engineer Shaun Crook. Sounds/design by XT. Cover painting Leon Kossoff 'Dalston Junction No.3, June 1973' oil on board, 20.5 x 25 cm. © The Estate of Leon Kossoff. ROKU026

‘Modern Living’ is album of material originally intended for the project ‘20°32'50.4"S 67°22'57.6"W ‘(2021) a multiscreen video installation about the Salar de Uyuni, an expansive, ancient salt flat in Bolivia which has the largest reserves of Lithium on the planet. An area of increasing global importance due to the increasing demand for Lithium within everyday electronic devices and the next significant shift in transport, the electric car. This record now sits outside of the project but is still very much informed by research into the area and the politics of the Lithium economy and the intersections between landscape, psychotropic medicine and global trade. Aspects of the record were written from a speculative perspective, in anticipation of my visit to the salt flats, other aspects were written in retrospect, trying to recall emotions and observations of alchemy and colonialism, futuristic land art, and the overwhelming sense of absence and alien melancholia that the salt flat instilled within me. The music synthesizes both digital and analogue sources, as a means to abstract both the material and the immaterial, to mimic sounds of fluidity and evaporation, heat and sunlight, the ancient and the ultramodern. -- Mastered by Jack Allett

Antonina Nowacka has treated us to countless unforgettable performances over the years, both with her sister Bogumila Piotrowska in oneiric audio-visual duo WIDT, and in abstract minimalist trio Szpety. In this new work her voice responds to her surroundings and journey through the Oaxaca state in Mexico, recorded in a set of small churches scattered throughout her journey. Imbedded somewhere between the earthily and the metaphysical, her voice - alone, searching and unbound - acts as a receiver of her outer worlds; an emotive map of the terrain as she drifts from one place to another. As Tristan Bath elegantly puts it, "her solo practice focuses solely on the voice’s inherent connection to mental states, its ability to speak wordlessly, and the apparatus of speech itself." "I made these recordings when travelling around the Oaxaca state in Mexico in February this year. I was following a trail of historic organs, but most of them were unaccessible. In the meantime, I discovered that many small churches in villages were open but rarely visited, and I realized they were actually perfect recording venues. What I also discovered, perhaps most significantly, was how interesting getting there was. Everyday I would look for churches to check out, and figuring out how to get there was an exciting part of the proccess. Some of the churches were in far out locations, not easy to access. But while I was travelling I discovered stunning mountainous landscapes, and I would transmit these beautiful experiences later when singing in the spaces. Sometimes I decided to get off road just when I saw an interesting spot. Sometimes I would go very far just to find out a church is closed, but then I would find a different one open nearby, and it would resonate with wonderful sound I did not expect. Whenever there were people in some of churches my interaction and recording would be more fragile as I didnt want to disturb anyone in their prayers." - Antonina Nowacka

Four Dances is an animated film made by Billy Steiger and Zara Joan Miller for TakuRoku. The film features four 'movement-drawings', or dances, each accompanied by piano recorded at Cafe OTO. 

A new work from Sunik Kim, following Zero Chime (First Terrace, 2019), presented in film format. Featuring new music, as well as text from George Jackson, Kim San, Danièle Huillet, Xu Lizhi, Rosa Luxemburg, V.I. Lenin, Lee Jae-eui, and many more. "...and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing..."

After countless appearances at OTO over the years - either solo, or in collaboration with the likes of Sharon Gal and Phil Julian - Andie Brown shares with us her debut album under her own name, and her first full solo album in the best part of a decade. Sculpted over the course of a year from her dedicated glass-based practice, Alucita is a tender new work, welcoming the listener to a slowly unfurling, harmonically rich sound world. "Alucita I, II and III are recordings from a trilogy of sound installations for automated glass harp and electronics. Each installation explores the harmonic content of the sounding object (a wine glass) through the synthesis of the resulting audio, fanning out the partials like the wings of a many plumed Alucita moth.Alucita I  is an audio-visual work for a single wine glass, electronics and film. This work was created as part of a micro-commission, curated by People Like Us / Vicki Bennett, as part of her residence at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre and hosted by WFMU.Alucita II  is a sculptural sound installation for eight wine glasses and electronics, developed during a three-month artistic residency at Huddersfield’s artist-collective organisation ame.Alucita III is a sculptural sound installation for four wine glasses and electronics." -Andie Brown -- All works recorded by Andie brown in Huddersfield between 2020 and 2021. -- Cover artwork by Oliver Barrett

Katz Mulk have developed a reputation over the past few years for their mind-boggling live performances, infusing dance, sculpture and choreography with their slippery experimental electronic pop. As a group they celebrate the possibility of art as a tool for excavation; filtering inside worlds and contradictory ideas into a space of cohabitation. For this release for Takuroku they share their most personal work yet, brought to life in a 4D maze where elements of pop, musique concrete, slanted electronics and oddball poetics slip and slide with one another in glorious technicolor. "The first two tracks tracks, 'Postcard' and 'Scolding and Soothing', were sketched out for a work-in-progress residency, when all four of members of the group were invited by AME (Ryoko Akama & Stephen Harvey) to spend a week in their Dai Hall space in Huddersfield and put together a new performance. The residency was from the 27th January to 1st February 2020, so developing the work for live performance ground to a halt because of the pandemic. From there it turned into an exchange between me and Ben, and we've slowly worked on it over the last year. We started by raking over familiar ground, using samples that hadn't quite made it into previous work/performances, and from there it transformed into something new and exciting for us quite quickly. The music is shaped by our circumstances - recorded separately at home on headphones rather than in a practice space. Vocals were recorded in the bathroom after my daughter, Corra, had gone to bed. Our collaboration ebbed and flowed through the months as different aspects of our lives took over - work, parenting, exhaustion - and I think this shaped the music as well. Leaving space for it to breathe and ideas to percolate.  As for the words... I edited them together from my journal, which is composed of personal reflections and automatic writing, alongside email conversations with friends, postcards I sent to people and the odd line from DW Winnicott to create a college of intimacies and anecdotes attuned to the present." - Ben Knight -- Cover photo by Stephen Harvey

أحمد [Ahmed] – the quartet of Pat Thomas, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Seymour Wright – make music of heavy rhythm, repetition and syncopation set deep into an understanding of jazz and the obscure depths of its history. Across the 2 LPs which make up ‘Super Majnoon [East Meets West] ’the group work and rework the music of the late musician Ahmed Abdul-Malik to create a stamping, swinging, relentlessly propulsive record where profundity and physicality root right back to ecstatic feeling.  Abdul-Malik was a NYC bassist, oudist, composer, educator and philosopher who fused aspects of American, Arabic and East African thought, ethics, meanings and beliefs in open and experimental ways to make vital, forward leaning jazz. [Ahmed] reimagine the notes of Malik as they push for new ground. Melodies respirate, swell, escalate and combust in a driving jazz which yes is technical, yes is accomplished, but ultimately just foot-to-the-floor swings.  ‘Super Majnoon [East Meets West]’ is a title fused from the leader of the Master Musicians of Jajouka Bechir Attar’s description of [Ahmed] after hearing them in Switzerland last year (Majnoon is the arabic slang for ‘crazy’), and Abdul-Malik’s 1959 album East Meets West. Arriving as a double LP, the first comprises studio recordings of [Ahmed] at Hong Kong’s Empty Gallery in 2018 and the second a scorched live recording at OTO from August 2018. The record features photos by Bert Glinnand Taku Unamiand ‘in and out’ liner notes by James G. Spady – historian and journalist from Philadelphia, the author of books on Marcus Garvey and the trilogy of groundbreaking books on hip hop (Nation Conscious Rap, Street Conscious Rap, The Global Cypha).  --- [Ahmed] are: PAT THOMAS / piano  ANTONIN GERBAL / drums  JOEL GRIP / bass  SEYMOUR WRIGHT / alto saxophone  --- LP 1 recorded by David Sum at Empty Gallery Hong, March 31, 2018. LP 2 recorded by Paul Skinner at Café OTO London, August 25, 2018. LP1 mixed by David Sum. LP 2 mixed by Pat Thomas. Mastered by James Dunn. Liner notes © James G. Spady. Cover photo © Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos. Design by Maja Larsson. Produced by John Hawthorn, Jens Löwius and Seymour Wright.

Pat Thomas is one of the most extraordinary pianists of our time. In a first time duo with saxophonist Matana Roberts, the lyricism of his distinctly dexterous and curious approach to the piano paints pathways for Robert’s poignantly vocal saxophone. Together the two speak; locked grooves and neat switchbacks on the keys form dialogue with long deliberate lines on the alto, punctuated by Roberts’ ecstatic vocalisations.  The trio of improvised pieces which make up the record’s first side are rich phrases, pitched at each end of the piano and stretched and pulled by Pat. His simple, repetitive cycles yield space and colour for Robert’s song, then let sounds build to a flourish; an armed run on the keys and some wonderfully soft landings.    The second side, a whole part in itself, goes deeper - hammered armfuls of piano and torn top breath blasting from Roberts fall in a flutter of delicate keystrokes. Call and response halves collide in a wonderful thunder before finding the edge of another line to hang onto. There is a remarkable sense of purpose, precision and restraint at play, as well as a peaceful milieu, which no doubt stems from the two players' fierce individual intelligence, creativity and curiosity.  The record arrives housed in a screen printed Kraftboard sleeve, die cut to reveal photographs taken by Dawid Laskowski and Fabio Luguro. Mastered by Giuessepe Ielesi who also mastered Pat Thomas’ The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari, we pressed this on 180g black vinyl. You can’t press a work called ‘The Truth’ on much less, can you? --- Pat Thomas / piano Matana Roberts / saxophone --- Recorded by James Dunn live at Cafe OTO on the 8th December 2018. Mixed by James Dunn and mastered by Guiseppe Ielasi. Photographs by Dawid Laskowski and Fabio Lugaro. Design and layout by Maja Larrson. 

"Japanese bluesman Kan Mikami is nothing less than an unalloyed force of nature. A skin-shredding blast of frozen wind from the poor, rural north of Japan that he calls home. In the late 1960s, like thousands of other Japanese young people Mikami made his way to Tokyo in search of a life different from that of his parents. Since then he has forcefully carved out a space for himself in the culture as a modernist poet, a raging folk singer, an author, a actor, an engaging TV personality, and one of Japan’s most uniquely powerful performers. For most of Mikami’s career as a singer, he has performed solo. Just him and his electric guitar against the world, creating jagged A-minor vamps to drive along the surreal wisdom of his lyrics. But he’s equally at home in more demanding improvisational contexts such as those provided here by John Edwards on bass and Alex Neilson on drums. Their dense propulsive textures seem to spur on Mikami, his voice arcing powerfully into fragmented spaces, his guitar darting, colliding, shedding jagged and angular splinters of sound. A pulsing, raging maelstrom of serrated-edged energy. Gruff, rough, honest and very, very real." - Alan Cummings --- Kan Mikami / vocals, guitar John Edwards / bass Alex Neilson / percussion --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on 3rd April 2013 by James Dunn. Mixed by John Chantler. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi

NOTE: The LP And CD have different audio from the same recordings. Outside of the 2CD release ‘Never Too Late But Always Too Early’ (Eremite, 2003) there has been scant documentation of one of the most dynamic pairings in all free jazz. Featuring unique material on each format Song Sentimentale rectifies this anomaly with a full blown audio account of the breathtaking communicative heights obtained by these three legends of the living. Over 3 nights in January 2015 the trio seduced a winter worn crowd with the kind of organic interplay only these three can conjure. Warm and urgent the material that covers both formats unveils a wide range of techniques and emotions. This is music on the edge of itself; a living, breathing and existing force documented for repeated visits. PETER BROETZMANN - TENOR SAX, B-FLAT-CL, TAROGATOWILLIAM PARKER - DOUBLE-BASS, GUEMBRI, SHAKUHACHI, SHENAIHAMID DRAKE - DRUMS, FRAME-DRUM, VOICE Recorded Live at Cafe Oto on the 27th, 28th and 29th January 2015 Recorded by James Dunn Mixed by John Chantler  Mastered by Andreas (Lupo) Lubich at Calax Photocollage by Dawid Laskowski Artwork by bro Design by Uniet/bro

Recording of the stunning first set performed by the trio of Peter Brötzmann, Steve Noble and John Edwards at Cafe OTO in January 2010 during Brotzmann's first residency at the venue. This was also the first time the trio had played together. Recorded at Cafe OTO by Shane Browne, mixed by John Edwards and Mastered by Andres [LUPO] Lupich at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. REVIEWS "On an east London side street, Café Oto hosts a programme of international experimental sounds to shame subsidised arts temples, drawing demographic-defying crowds of all ages through its doors. The first release on Oto's own label, available as an authentic vinyl slab or a slippery download, is a 40-minute splurge of sax, drums and bass skronk, live at the venue in 2010, from the German free-jazz giant Brötzmann and two stars of the London improv scene. Unrepeatable moments of collective inspiration and sudden sunlit shafts of modal near melody punctuate the continuing energy blur. Business as usual down Dalston Junction." Stewart Lee, The Sunday Times  "Since it opened in Dalston in April 2008, Café OTO has become London's new music venue of choice for the likes of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Joe McPhee, Mats Gustafsson – and Peter Brötzmann, whose first residency at the club in January 2010 yielded this inaugural release on OtoRoku, Café OTO’s new in-house label. The night in question was the first time Brötzmann had played with bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble, and the decision to team them up was inspired. With Alan Wilkinson, or in Decoy with Alex Hawkins and NEW with Alex Ward, Edwards and Noble have a deserved reputation as a thrilling high-energy rhythm section. And as Brötzmann is no slouch when it comes to high-energy playing, the combination is explosive. Right from the start of the set – the first that evening – it's obvious why this was selected to christen the label. All three players jump straight into top gear, with Brötzmann setting a cracking pace, his torrent of sound characterised by that hard-edged tone which makes him such compelling listening. ...the worse the better sets a high standard for subsequent releases to match. But, as every night at Café OTO is recorded and there's a wealth of fine music waiting in the wings, including quality recordings from Otomo Yoshihide and Wadada Leo Smith, OtoRoku looks like a label to watch." John Eyles, Paris Transatlantic "These two extended improvisations, recorded in January 2010 during Brötzmann’s first residency at OTO, finds the group attaining near-telepathic modes of interconnectedness, despite this being the trio’s first outing together. From the off, Brötzmann’s gills are gurning, throwing up torrents of molten roar, while Noble’s mule-kicking at the traps reels out ride hits like a baby sporting a bonnet of bees." - Spencer Grady, BBC Music "Does the world need another Brötzmann album? Probably not, but as the inaugural release on Cafe OTO's in-house high quality vinyl-only label, this one is cause for celebration. Recorded there - superbly well, too - during Brötzmann's residency in January 2012, this is no frills straight-up free jazz, solos and all, pitting the Firebreather of Wuppertal against the might local rhythm team (yes, they can and do swing hard) of John Edwards and Steve Noble. All three are on outstanding form, from the opening yelp - when it comes to Big Bang beginning, nobody does it better than Brötzmann - to Edwards's snarling drone 38 minutes later. Shame engineer Shane Browne slammed thos faders down so brutally: for once, you feel like joining in with the whoops and hollers of the punters." - Dan Warburton, The WIRE

OTOROKU is proud to present a re-press of our first ever vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s legendary recording "The Snake Decides". Featuring four solos recorded in 1986 in St. Paul's Church, Oxford by the late Michael Gerzon, "The Snake Decides" is a groundbreaking example how far the language of a particular instrument can be taken. “The Snake Decides attracts a certain array of adjectives - intense, radical, fearsome, hypnotic, virtuosic – and occasionally allows a more ambitious reviewer to avoid platitude by talking more specifically about 32nd harmonics, circular breathing, multiphonics and Gerson's exact choice and placement of microphones. But this misses a point, too. Listening to this record, either for the first or the fortieth time, is an arousing experience.” - Brian Morton, 2018. Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and housed in a reverse board sleeve with new liner notes by Brian Morton this is the ultimate document of one of the most important recordings in all of Parker’s extensive and exploratory catalogue. Edition of 300 copies.

Lake From The Louvers is a new solo work for concrete sounds, electronics and instruments from Australian composer-performer James Rushford, who has spent the last fifteen years honing his singular approach to composition and performance through solo works and collaborations with artists such as Oren Ambarchi, Crys Cole, Will Guthrie, Graham Lambkin and Klaus Lang.Created primarily during a stay at the La Becque, an artist residency on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lake From The Louvers draws inspiration from the play of shadow and light on both the surface of the lake and the window through which Rushford viewed this lacustrine landscape. While the lake is itself at times directly audible in the form of field recordings, the image suggested by the record’s title is less directly represented than translated into sonic structures inspired, as Rushford explains, by ‘the passing of shadow through a fixed space’. The movement of light across these two flat surfaces, lake and window, finds its sonic equivalent in these eleven pieces, in which fragments and particles of sound – highly amplified crunches, synthesized squawks and pings, harp notes – ripple across the length of each track. Fixed sets of elements define each piece, often moulded into ephemeral ensembles in which individual voices consistently fade away and reappear.Rushford’s performances on various keyboards provide the unstable, wavering foundations of many of these pieces, with microtonal tunings adding a woozy, seasick edge to his stately, often stunningly beautiful playing. Each side of the LP ends with an extended keyboard work: the first for groaning, sighing church organ, the second for a psychedelic cloud of detuned synthesizer tones in which harmonic fragments sink into their own melancholic recollection. Elsewhere the record makes use of elements as varied as microtonal harp, skittering drum machines and synthetic marimba, establishing a sound palette remarkable for its breadth, as well as its sparkling, glittering quality. Where many of Rushford’s solo projects have taken the form of long works with a sombre cast, Lake From The Louvers is strikingly bright and accessible, a series of sonic glimpses in which, like a late Monet, the shimmer of light undoes the distinction between image and reflection, foreground and background, surface and depth.

Karakuchi is a debut 12” self-titled LP and the introductory release to the new London based label, The Florist’s Mum. The ten tracks are unclassifiable, but are best described as a leftfield dance epic with ambient undertones that combine lusciously romantic synthesizers, which bring to mind an amateur Vangelis, mixed with dreamy chopped & screwed voices, that are all warped within the texture of deteriorating tape loops, and finally set to some surprising structures of bouncy garage kicks and dribbling hi-hats. Karakuchi’s drifting between orchestration and organic crumble are a perfect companion for active electronic music listeners seeking experimentation and new depths of sincerity. --- The Florist's Mum, 2021

Originally a tape-only companion piece to Laila Sakini’s quietly stunning ‘Vivienne’ AOTY contender last year, 'Into the Traffic, Under the Moonlight’ now gets a standalone vinyl release, newly mastered by Rashad Becker to provide us with a chance to swoon at its endless, quiet charms from a new perspective. Featuring Laila’s voice, plus piano, samples, cello, bass clarinet, flute and handclaps, it’s a totally unique late night/intimate pop anomaly that sounds to us something like the missing link between Grouper, Bohren & der Club of Gore and The The’s Soul Mining.  'Into the Traffic, Under the Moonlight’ is no doubt woven from the same fibre as Laila's ‘Vivienne’ album - one of the records we listened to - and loved - most last year, but it expands on its minimalist palette of piano, voice and effects to include more instrumentation, samples and full bodied arrangements. Listening to  ‘Vivienne’, followed by this one, feels a bit like emerging from a small room - curtains drawn - into the outside world for the first time in a while. The quietly suggestive presence of Sakini’s music evokes ciné-rich scenarios and vignettes from a careful paucity of ingredients to limn scenes of lonely existential angst and hypnagogic dreaminess that contrast with ruffer cuts of late night trip hop and nerve-bitten breakbeats that resemble a makeshift coffee table strewn with bits of baccy and weed, mug stains and unpaid bills, rather than unwieldy art books and pot pourri. Despite their quiet nature, these are ambitious, layered, memorable songs for the ages. It pays to start at the back here, as the creaking cold space and aching vox of ‘Night Emotion’ really seems to sum up the wistful sensuality of the whole release, but -  to do it properly -  the album unfolds as a total artwork, looping from the plaintive vocals - and flute - of ‘Talk My Way’ in succinct turns thru the dust-mite dance of her instrumental ‘Wade High’, to the opiated night flight of ‘Into The Traffic’, while curled-lip smackers in ‘Easy Does’, and her restlessly cranky ‘Metro’ help play out a flux of feelings, ambiguous and determined - that remind you that no one ever really knows what goes on inside other people’s heads. In a world of overly produced and controlled music, this here is yr antidote - Laila Sakini is producing some of the most vital and brittle music of our time.

Rhythm has always been central to Fell’s work, from his icy, repetitive minimalist excursions with SND to his legendary run of unashamedly funked abstract house experiments as Sensate Focus. Here, he continues to excavate that rich seam with an ongoing collaboration with Aussie percussionist Will Guthrie; “Diffractions” pushing both artists’ interests into sharper detail, toying with polyrhythms and unusual tuning to uncover a suite of transformative fidget spins and sonic storm clouds. “Diffractions” features another two lengthy pieces of future-facing percussive abstractions that blur the line between synthetic and organic. Taking the influence of gamelan and fusing it with the heaving computer music that Fell has obsessively picked-at over the last four decades, the duo here zoom into a sound that’s almost effortlessly engaging; each piece is almost twenty minutes in length but they shift and mutate into polyrhythmic outer-realms and eerie universes of microtonality that are hard to fathom in one sitting. There are trace echoes of free jazz hanging from the rafters, the post-everything clatter of Humcrush and Food drummer Thomas Strønen’s mind-expanding solo material or even Autechre at their most confounding. The genius here is that just when you convince yourself that this music could only possibly have been generated by a computer, Guthrie’s unmistakably human flex edges into focus - playing with your perception - your expectations - in the most bold, innovative way imaginable. Basically, this record fucking rules. --- Nakid, 2021

Stemming from Speers’ background as a percussionist and technician testing large amounts of audio equipment, ‘xtr’ctn’ pairs nanoscopic recordings of electronic equipment’s internal behaviours with samples of the natural world and feedback from no-input mixers to yield a visceral and inventively personalised view on sound phenomena and resonant spaces that lay beyond the threshold of human perception. Arranging his unique palette of field recordings, SFX library, YouTube samples and original instrumentation by Olan Monk into non-linear, non-narrative structures, he invites the listener to immerse in a form of sonic fiction which highlights the fine line between referential, objective reality and pareidolic subjectivity. Distinguished by an otherworldy, meta sense of detachment shared with music by Giuseppe Ielasi, Mika Vainio, and :Zoviet*France:, the four pieces form a fascinating sonic weltanschauung that acknowledges and articulates the complex role of non-human and material sound generators upon the self. From the way seagulls resemble death metal screams in ‘obturo’ to the uncanny manner in which Olan Monk’s piano pulse and samples of Liam Byrne’s viola de gamba in ’tombeau’ recalls a scene of ravenous whistle and horn blowing at The Eclipse in Coventry c. 1992, each piece is densely packed with acousmatic data that will stimulate a broad range of reactions as listeners fill in the perceptive gaps according to their own sferic conditioning and grasp of worlds natural, and synthetic. Where the first two pieces steer clear of any blatant emotive cues, the fragmented shrapnel that opens ’sul. locus’ changes at the mid-way point with the suggestively gloomy strokes of a Kemençe, a stringed middle-eastern instrument held in subtle contrast with the sound of ice hacking taken from a 1984 BBC SFX library sample to sound like a location recording from an alchemist’s lab, or passages of When’s proto-BM classic ‘The Black Death’, while ‘ορμή’ follows with an eerie vent of percussive improv, the sound of filing metal, and a pressure washer that recall the lurching rhythm and gauntlet grasp of textures also found in the remarkable debut by Cairo’s 1127. It all points to a penetrative pair of ears and mind that sees the world differently, and should inspire listeners to pay closer attention to the world around them. --- C.A.N.V.A.S., 2019

Very special release from filmmaker Lucia Nimcová and sound artist Sholto Dobie. Highly reccomended.  --- "I first discovered khroniky – Ukranian folk songs – in the Highlands of Scotland. I was watching a screening of Bajka, a mesmerising documentary made by the filmmaker Lucia Nimcová and sound artist Sholto Dobie. I knew nothing about these ballads beforehand, but I was fascinated by these odd, beautiful songs, especially the easy way in which they mixed misery and levity, where gentle melodies blend with tales of dark violence. The folk songs describe hardship, murder, torture, death in gulags, heavy drinking, outsmarting men, love affairs. But they’re often very funny too – many of the songs make fun of marriage, and there’s an amazing subcategory of khroniky songs called potka (vagina) songs.The khroniky have never been properly documented because they were considered too crude, or contained lyrics that were problematic, politically. When Ukrainian folk songs have been archived in the past, it’s normally a sanitised, more polite version of the ones that Lucia remembers from her childhood. Lucia grew up on the other side of the Ukrainian border in Slovakia. She is part of the Rusyn (Ruthenian) minority ethnic group found in the borderlands of Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine and Poland. Rusyn is a centuries-old Slavic language, looked down upon as a poor, uneducated dialect by the neighbouring Ukraine and Slovakia. It was forbidden to talk about Rusyn culture at Nimcova’s primary school, but the khroniky stayed in her memories.“I remember weddings when I was young,” says Lucia, who now lives in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia. “At the end of the night, when everyone was drunk and the young couple would go around their guests, people would sing in Rusyn. There was singing and dancing, and songs about being in prison or falling in love. I picked up the lyrics and sometimes my mum would make my sister and I sing them for people we met on the train. I was about five or six but the lyrics still come back when I sing to my kids.”Determined that these rich, nuanced, unique songs shouldn’t be forgotten, she decided to record them. Over two years, Lucia, joined by experimental musician Sholto Dobie, visited Rusyn villages high in the Carpathian mountains to rediscover the songs and make the documentary. It was at the beginning of war breaking out in Ukraine in 2014.“The Rusyn community is a very closed one,” explains Lucia. “Sometimes we’d have to wait several days to hear someone sing; we had to earn their trust before they shared something very personal to them. We’d stay up ‘til 5am at a wedding, then go straight to a morning baptism, or collect haystacks with the villagers, hoping they’d sing while they were working.”DILO is named after an important independent Ukrainian daily newspaper that was shut down when the Red Army entered Lviv in 1939. The four long tracks on DILO blur field recordings with song; an unpolished, privileged glimpse into a private world. We hear dogs barking and insects buzzing in the summer heat, then a blast of hurdy gurdy or violin will drift in, or a plaintive song soars softly over the rural background noise, with casually harrowing lyrics about a cuckoo, “lifeless in a world of misery”, as translated in the album’s booklet.For both Lucia and Sholto, it was important not to tamper too much with what they heard. “When you think about ethnography,” Lucia explains, “you have to have a lot of time, love and respect to document it with sensitivity.”“The songs all have their own atmosphere and intimacy from the spaces they were recorded in and it was important to maintain these particularities and move with them,” adds Sholto, who now lives in Vilnius, Lithuania. “They guide and sometimes interrupt a journey between interiors – domestic spaces; in kitchens, by the fire – and exteriors; marketplaces, cow sheds. We used contact microphones to record metal bridges and fences, and we spent one afternoon recording a wool processing machine, the details of the rattling and tuning wheels are the ground layer for the third track.”Lucia took rough notes and diary entries during the recording process, which are now shared in the booklet alongside a selection of lyrics, loosely translated, but revealing the depth and astonishing beauty that sometimes lies in the language of these folk songs.The feel of the album is intimate, flipping between laughter, where a woman sings about selling her pussy to buy a cow in one track, then shifts to a raw, painful truth; an adult son asks his mother why his dad won’t be back for dinner, as he’s gone to war.Since Lucia and Sholto began working together in 2014, they have shared the audio recordings on radio and film and shown photos in gallery spaces, making sure these special, smutty, poignant songs don’t get lost. This new record and booklet joins that same continuum, another glorious fruit from the same rare tree. " ---- Concept, photography, notes, and research by Lucia Nimcováwww.luco.skRecorded and mixed by Sholto Dobiesoundcloud.com/sholtodobieDesign by Ondrej Jóbwww.setuptype.comMastered by Tomáš Vtípil / dinn (dinn is not noise)www.vtipil.czWords by Claire Sawersclairesawers.comPhotography by Lukáš Rohárikbit.ly/2QT4r49Released by mappa as MAP025 in 2021This project has been supported using public funds provided by Slovak Arts Council.

"75 Dollar Bill came to perform at les ateliers claus twice - in very different circumstances, but never uneventful. The first passage was in November 2016 as a duo formed by Che Chen & Rick Brown. A few days prior to this gig Donald Trump just got elected and the general atmosphere was low to say the least. In 2019 they came back with Andrew Lafkas on bass, politics were forgotten for one night, and they rocked a full house with instruments that just made it in time for the last gigs of their European tour. This live ateliers claus release is a compilation of both passages. Che Chen And Rick Brown edited & chose the tracks themselves, four tracks from 2016 and two tracks from 2019." --- *Touedar Akli (2016) is a cover of song by Groupe el Azhar 1-4 (2016) - Rick Brown: plywood crate, percussion / Che Chen: guitar5-6 (2019) - Rick Brown: plywood crate, percussion, homemade horns / Che Chen: guitar, soprano saxophone / Andrew Lafkas: contrabass The 2016 concert was recorded by Etienne Foyer, the 2019 by Christophe Albertijn.

"Razen is the Belgian band led by the duo Brecht Ameel and Kim Delcour who have been exploring different musical worlds since 2010. For the past decade we witnessed the shape of their own sound without repeating themselves in a truly unique way.Razen played their very first concert at les ateliers claus and came back a decade later. This concert stands for 10 years of Razen-evolutionary music while revisiting our venue. It took place end September 2019. Razen has been a constant factor in my own personal musical journey, while working at Kraak - listening to their debut recordings, seeing the first performances and then witnessing them refine the Razen sound without compromising. Not losing their focus, but in the contrary mastering a certain continuity in their layered compositions while carefully choosing the instrumentations. A heady brew of deep listening music that is almost medieval in mood and wholly reverential in technique."--- Brecht Amee / santur & monochordKim Delcour / bass recorder, reeds, tambourine & bagpipePaul Garriau / hurdy gurdyDavid Poltrock / ondes-Marthenot & synthPieter Lenaerts / sarangi & 5string double bassJean-Philippe Poncin / bass clarinet, chalumeau & tenorarecording & mix by Christophe Albertijn. 

Roxane Métayer came to play les ateliers claus December 2019. She performed on our 1st floor where she surrounded herself with her violin, electronics and field recordings.Born in France and currently residing in Brussels, Roxane Métayer is a multidisciplinary artist. Learning the violin at a young age, she also developed herself as a visual artist, creating drawings, sculptures in uncommon materials as soap, and in recent years video. Her work as a musician is of an equally spontaneous nature. The violin is often taking the melodic lead, but at the same time serves a drone background.

"Live recording from the performance of Tomaga & Pierre Bastien, on 24th January 2020. 'Bandiera Di Carta’ is the collaboration between instrument builder and composer Pierre Bastien and the London based duo Valentina Magaletti and Tom Relleen who release music under the name Tomaga. We're glad to be able to share this unique and historic audio recording." --- Valentina MagalettiTom RelleenPierre Bastien --- artwork by Bruno Hellenboschrecorded by Christophe Albertijn

Alex Ward presents his second solo guitar album, conceived and developed over the first two months of the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown and recorded on May 28th of that year. Unlike his freely improvised solo clarinet performances such as the Otoroku-released 15.2.18, Alex's solo guitar music integrates composed and improvised materials in a similar manner to that which he employs with his groups Items 4 and 10. His first solo guitar album Frames (released in March 2020 on Relative Pitch Records) consisted of six individual pieces encompassing a variety of approaches and moods. By contrast, the five new compositions on The Trade are dovetailed into a continuous 43-minute performance, the formal arc of which might not necessarily be best perceived by attempting to discern where each piece begins or ends (although a division into 3 tracks has been made for listener convenience). This seamlessness of approach is reflected in the high level of momentum and energy sustained across substantial amounts of the performance's duration, balanced out by the starker tone of the album's later portions. --  Alex Ward - guitar  -- Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

Back in May 2018, percussionist Steve Noble met bassist Farida Amadou, and have since developed their own high-energy and exploratory music together as a duo. Steve's rolling, detailed and pointillistic playing melds in symbiosis with Farida's smudged, deep, funked-up lyricism, creating a physical sound that tosses and tumbles across lightning-speed interplay. As a unit they've welcomed into the fray ex-Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore and recently free jazz pioneer Peter Brötzmann, but for this set of trio releases they invite saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos, clarinetist Alex Ward and bass clarnitest Yoni Silver for a series cooked up in our OTO Project Space.  For this session, Chris Pitsiokos shoots winding darts of needle-sharp saxophone through Steve and Farida's sound world, taking the language of the likes of Coltrane and Braxton and pushing it into whole new extremes. -- Steve Noble - percussion Farida Amadou - electric bass Chris Pitsiokos - saxophone -- Artwork & mastering by Oliver BarrettCover photo by Laurent Orseau

Five chamber and solo works by the Canadian composer Barbara Monk Feldman. "I have been thinking about what is inside and what is outside. The everyday life and tragedy of what goes on around you, and the fact that to accomplish anything you need the isolation in the studio - I think about this moral issue. And then on another level, I think about an inside and an outside for art itself, and how ephemeral that is....What I am looking for is a way to notate the most intangible aspect of the music – for me that is the colour. Colour is not only the instrumentation. It also involves the ‘weight’ of the tones, and a kind of gravity in the relationship of the sound and silence, as well as the spacing of duration and registration." --- GBSR Duo (Siwan Rhys & George Barton) with Mira Benjamin   --- Another Timbre, 2021

Michael Winter's extraordinary composition from 2015, a seven-part canon which starts off fast and gradually slows down over its 45 minute duration. Performed by Liminar, Mexico's leading ensemble for contemporary music. The cover image cover and corresponding caption are reprinted from the book Matters Computational by Jörg Arndt --- Another Timbre, 2021

Two pieces for cello and piano by Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith, both performed by Anton Lukoszevieze (cello) and Kerry Yong (piano) "In Ballad (45 minutes in duration) I was extending myself into a longer work; I wanted to make a work that could be the entire concert, that could unfold over a longer time. With Through the Low Hills (10 minutes), I was working with a very restricted vocabulary in a process of constrained variation, working and re-working just a few elements. I felt like I had an object in my hands and was turning it over and over, looking at it from different angles. With Ballad, it felt more like a journey where I was discovering unfamiliar terrains." --- Cover photograph by Anton Lukoszevieze   Apartment House: Anton Lukoszevieze (cello) and Kerry Yong (piano) --- Another Timbre,  May 12, 2021

Second CD release by Adrián Demoč following his highly-regarded debut 'Ziadba'. Four beautiful chamber works, three performed by Apartment House, one by an ensemble from the Janacek School of Music in the Czech Republic. The title track, Hlaholika, was commissioned by Another Timbre as one of the label's 'quarantine commissions' during Covid lockdown in 2020. The front cover shows a stone tablet engraved in Glagolitic script --- Another Timbre, 2021

5 chamber works by UK-based composer Oliver Leith, performed by Explore Ensemble   --- Cover drawing by Susan Te Kahurangi King Performed by Explore Ensemble --- Another Timbre, 2021

A 40-minute composition for sextet and field recordings, combining harmonies taken from the music of Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe with field recordings made on Whadjuk Noongar boodja (country), Western Australia. --- Josten Myburgh (composition, alto saxophone & electronics) Jet Kye Chong (percussion) Jameson Feakes (electric guitar) Stuart James (piano, electronics) Djuna Lee (double bass) Kirsten Smith (flutes) Cover image: still from the film 'Night Parrot Stories' by Robert Nugent (2016) --- Another Timbre, 2021

A week after her 41st birthday, Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a single mother living payslip to payslip, the condition was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness.In The Undying - at once her harrowing memoir of survival, and a 21st-century Illness as Metaphor - Boyer draws on sources from ancient Roman dream diarists to cancer vloggers to explore the experience of illness. She investigates the quackeries, casualties and ecological costs of cancer under capitalism, and dives into the long line of women writing about their own illnesses and deaths, among them Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker and Susan Sontag.Genre-bending, devastating and profoundly humane, The Undying is an unmissably insightful meditation on cancer, the cancer industry and the sicknesses and glories of contemporary life. --- 'Profound and unforgettable' Sally Rooney'A classic . . . I have long thought of Boyer as a genius' Patricia Lockwood'An outraged, beautiful, and brilliant work of embodied critique' Ben Lerner'Some of the most perceptive and beautiful writing about illness and pain that I have ever read' Hari KunzruBlending memoir with critique, an award-winning poet and essayist's devastating exploration of sickness and health, cancer and the cancer industry, in the modern world --- Penguin, 2020

Edited by Will Holder, the constellation of material in this issue collectively philosophises on topics that deal with difference and the transformative processes between things. It essentially puts forth the notion of the intellectual as a transitional identity. Contributions from various contemporary, historical, and even ancient authors. --- Including texts by Lewis HydeGeorge MichaelBernadette MayerIan Hamilton FinlayAnne CarsonJohn CageBarbara GuestNathaniel MackeySimone WeilRobert Duncan --- 320 pages, 12 x 19 cm, paperback, --- uh Books, 2020

"This book should be required reading for anyone interested in my music," declared composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton. One of jazz's most important figures, Braxton transcends the usual critical boundaries with works ranging from a piece for 100 tubas to compositions for interplanetary orchestras. Based on interviews from a 1985 tour, this is a fascinating profile of a musical visionary and his ethical, political, and spiritual beliefs. "Absolutely essential reading." - The Wire. --- Dover Publishing, 2018

Selected and arranged by the authors themselves, and featuring an introduction by Jarvis Cocker, Side by Side presents the lyrics, poems, writings and drawings of innovative musician Robert Wyatt and his creative partner, English painter and songwriter Alfie Benge. As a founding member of influential English rock bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole, and with a solo career which has lasted for over forty years and seen him collaborate with a diverse range of artists including Bjork, Brian Eno, Carla Bley, Paul Weller and David Gilmour, his own music remains unclassifiably personal. Alfie Benge is a visual artist, songwriter and pioneering music manager, having managed Robert’s career for fifty years. She is also married to Robert. Since 1982 they have collaborated on many of Robert’s most well-known songs. This unique volume celebrates one of the most enduring creative partnerships of the last half-century.

The trilogy comprises Carnival (1985), The Infinite Rehearsal (1987) and The Four Banks of the River of Space (1990), novels linked by metaphors borrowed from theatre, traditional carnival itself and literary mythology. The characters make Odyssean voyages through time and space, witnessing and re-enacting the calamitous history of mankind, sometimes assuming sacrificial roles in an attempt to save modern civilisation from self-destruction.' Independent on Sunday 'The Four Banks of the River of Space is a kind of quantum Odyssey... in which the association of ideas is not logical but... a 'magical imponderable dreaming'. The dreamer is Anselm, another of Harris's alter egos, like Everyman Masters in Carnival and Robin Redbreast Glass in The Infinite Rehearsal... Together, they represent one of the most remarkable fictional achievements in the modern canon.' --- Faber & Faber, 2013

Described as 'a landmark, not in the West Indian, but in the contemporary novel' by C.L.R. James, Earl Lovelace's Caribbean classic tells the story of Calvary Hill - poverty stricken, pot-holed and garbage-strewn - where the slum shacks 'leap out of the red dirt and stone, thin like smoke, fragile like kite paper, balancing on their rickety pillars as broomsticks on the edge of a juggler's nose'. The Dragon Can't Dance is a remarkable canvas of shanty-town life in which Lovelace's intimate knowledge of rural Trinidad and the Carnival as a sustaining cultural tradition are brilliantly brought to life.

Limited edition run to raise money for the Adam Bohman Exhibition Fundraiser. Adam Bohman has been operating on the outer fringes of underground music for decades. However, his tape cut-ups and home-built instruments represent just a tiny fraction of his artistic practice. In parallel, Adam has been creating and carefully stockpiling an extraordinary collection of collages, ink drawings and graphic scores that only a handful of people have ever seen. We're planning an exhibition at our project space that will present these works publicly for the first time. We hope you can help us make it happen. More images.

Edition of 100 hand numbered two color screenprints for our four day Peter Brötzmann festival celebrating his decade long relationship with Cafe OTO. Design by Peter Brötzmann. Printed on A2 colorplan White Frost 175gsm paper by Tartaruga. 

Screenprinted on thick, quality paper. Design by Maja Larsson. Limited poster to celebrate the two day residency by the legendary and uncompromising Patty Waters.  From original listing:  Patty Waters must be acknowledged as a vocalist who has tested the limits of the human voice’s capabilities. Since her brief recording career in the mid-6O’s – after Albert Ayler brought her to the attention of ESP Disk – and despite performing very rarely, her influence has spread far beyond the realms of avant-garde and jazz. She has received much critical acclaim for her two ESP Disk recordings - Patty Waters Sings and Patty Waters College Tour. Waters' interpretation of Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair still remains a bold testament to the power of human expression. With a repertoire ranging from hushed piano solo ballads – in which her voice can fade to a whisper, barely audible – to performances using her voice as an instrument, conveying an incredible range of emotions, Waters is a singular artist and we're delighted to host her for a very rare two-night residency alongside Burton Greene (piano) and Tjitze Vogel (bass). “One of the best fucking singers alive.” – Rolling Stone “Praised by people like Miles Davis. her range moves easily from intimacy to introspection to rage. and her evocation of “Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair” has no parallel In musical history.” – San Francisco Sentinel “Hear her voice with the ears of wolves. A sound contour never before heard in American music and poetry. It transcends virtuosi vocalizing. It is presented as Shamanic ritual. The most perfect realization of Jazz song as siren song. Compels a revisioned understanding of the lure of the sweet woman's voice as a passage to paradise.” – Village Voice

Two color screenprint for our Music and Other Living Creatures series, designed by Silja Strøm and printed on 175gsm colorplan natural paper by Tartaruga.  Music and Other Living Creatures is a series at Cafe OTO (curated by OTO Projects) dedicated to music about, with, or by other living creatures. Birds, tigers, chickens, insects and many other living creatures are explored through sound-walks, listening sessions, commissioned performances, live responses and discussions. 

On occasion of the very special 2 shows by this insane trio we have a limiited screenprinted poster - DESIGNED BY BRÖTZMANN and printed on thick, quality paper in a limiited edition of 100 numbered copies.  From original entry:  Delighted to welcome back the dynamic, corruscating pairing of Peter Brötzmann on reeds and Heather Leigh on pedal steel – this time expanded to a trio with the addition of the one and only Keiji Haino! The duo of Brötzmann and Leigh have established a fierce rapport in the past couple of years – weaving a powerfully frenetic interplay reminiscient of some of the all-out blast of Brötzmann's Die Like A Dog quartet. Add Haino's incendiary propensity for masterfully fluid improvisation and you have the makings of a very special evening indeed.

Screenprinted on thick, quality paper. Design by Maja Larsson on the occasion of the special one night event featuring Loren Connors at Cafe Oto.  From original listing:  Thrilled to welcome back one of the most singular guitarists of our time for a very special solo performance - his first European show since 2011. Loren Connors' singular adaption of the blues is a distinct personal vision combining the Delta bottleneck sound and the ancestral blues voice (appearing as distortion, baying hounds or multi-tracked guitar), with hauntingly unexpected sounds. Outside of his three decades of solo work, Connors has also collaborated with the likes of Suzanne Langille, Jim O'Rourke, Darin Gray, Alan Licht, Christina Carter, Keiji Haino, San Agustin, Jandek and many others, as well as leading the group Haunted House. Loren's set will be preceeded by a screening of ‘Gestures’ – a short film on Loren Connors by Vincent Guilbert.

Issued somewhere between Mica Levi’s emergence in 2008, and their recent gush of solo and band releases with Curl and Good Sad Happy Bad, Mica wrote and recorded ‘Feeling Romantic Feeling Tropical Feeling Ill’ around about the time they were receiving award-nominations and resounding acclaim for their soundtrack to Jonathan Glazer film, ‘Under The Skin.’ Naturally it shares some of that OST’s tones and moods, but the results are far more febrile, lush rather than dark and tense, stitching together a tapestry like mixtape-cum-production showreel of curdled chamber pieces, shrugged hip hop, ambient flights of fancy and gorgeous snatches of strings recalling the intervals of Carl Craig and Derrick May’s seminal ‘Relics’ set going into what sound like early sketches for what would become Tirzah’s ‘Devotion’ album a few years later. Replete with new, minimalist artwork symbolic of the album’s enigmatic nature, the record’s second wind is arguably ideally timed for the world’s current state of torpor and tentative anticipation, with 60 minutes of figurative, quietly perplexing, evocative melodies that work by inference as opposed to ever beating you around the head with a message. It’s peppered with some exquisite, often unexpected moments that arrive and recede into its matrix with uncanny logic that perhaps comes as close as you’ll get to living inside Mica’s iridescent, endlessly intriguing mind. --- DDS, 2021

Gnarly, ruff cut up sounds from actually cut up flexi discs. Direct to 4 track from Brighton's garbled gonk purveyor Duncan Harrison. No mercy! Released on Robert Ridley Shackleton's Cardboard Club  

Collage for found text 2018-2020 Voice – Claire Bloom, Daffy Scanlan, Duncan Harrison, Josh Peterson --- Regional Bears, 2021

Another mindblower from the camp of Regional Bears. Vanessa Rossetto is an American composer, improviser and painter. She uses primarily chamber instrumentation, field recordings, electronics and a wide array of different objects exploring them through extended and traditional techniques and other methods of her own devising --- Regional Bears, 2021

Truly spannered churned out gunk from the mind of Duncan Harrison. Could possibly be the best Duncan Harrison release to come out in the last 12 months --- Regional Bears, 2021

Yong Yong tap into some “Torraye Braggs shit.” Downtempo signals, ghetto tech jibber, skull caps under knit beanies, hacky sack. A kind of pan-ethnic cooking analogy comes to mind: a plume of brown spices, melodies like foreign legumes. Fire up Dr. Sammy Sample and reappropriate whatever, basically. Smoothness is definitely not a priority – don’t save this for your BeatsByDre. I use cellphone speakers and let the bass snap like a baby carrot. B-side trades in ADD groove splicing for an extended trip. Less cut-and-paste here; more long-form four the floor. Things melting into other things. For the dancefloor in your day spa. --- Goaty Tapes, 2015

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

Arthur 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.

FILMED LIVE: CAFE OTO LONDON, ENGLAND FEBRUARY 15, 2014