Ute Kanngiesser - cello Daniel Kordík - field recording The release is accompanied by a PDF of writing by Evie Ward in response to the release. -- Please note that the WAV recording of this release has been recommended by the artists involved. -- "At 4AM I slip out of the house to cycle east, towards dawn, with cello on my back and a stool strapped to the rack. The word 'essential' is turning over and around in my head. I am taking the quietest roads, trying to stay invisible, worried that someone might stop me and interfere with our plans. I find Daniel with recording equipment and hand sanitizer and together we walk another distance through dawn and smell of rain. We enter the Marshes, these essential lungs of East London. It is where he had come almost every day of these locked-down weeks to field-record and breathe. And it is where Evie and I met for walks and secret music - carefully bending the laws of the officially ‘essential’. I am wondering about places and times when public music was forbidden and never driven to extinction. This time it is for pandemic reasons and the severity of consequences is unspeakable and has turned into much noise in my head. But the birds, the wind, and the rain offer such relief and I feel so shy in their presence that my music can only become the smallest of offerings to them in the rainless window between 4.48AM and 5.15AM." - (Ute Kanngiesser, June 2020) -- Photography by Daniel Kordík Cover design by Oliver Barrett

All new work by London-based artist Robbie Judkins (Left Hand Cuts off the Right), created on keyboard, zither, field recordings, synthesizer, khene, electric guitar and effects.  "Being classed as a key worker yet not feeling like one is a strange position to be in. Neither working for the NHS, caring for others, being a shop worker, ensuring safe transport nor providing an essential public service; yet remaining at work during this pandemic has filled me with worry, guilt, anxiety and some stability. These compositions and sketches bring together audio documents created during this time with a yearning for quiet despite a fascination with unavoidable noise." - Robbie Judkins -- Left Hand Cuts off the Right - All music & recording -- Robbie has very kindly offered for all money from this release to go to Cafe Oto.

An all new collaborative work by exciting new Belgian artists Ben Bertrand & Otto Lindholm: "The first time we collaborated as a duo was for our interpretation of The Sinking of the Titanic by Gavin Bryars at les Ateliers Claus. At that time, there was an audience surrounding us. Now secluded and on our own, we went back to the same venue and locked ourself for 2 days arranging and recording the music Ben Bertrand wrote while he was in confinement. We designed a dense and mineral triptych. Digging into this music, we experienced the current and pressure of the passing time. At some point we saw light coming in. The transformation has already been done, reversion to fundamentals is now our single option." - Ben Bertrand and Otto Lindholm -- Composition : Ben BertrandArrangement : Otto Lindholm and Ben BertrandBass clarinet and electronics : Ben BertrandDouble bass and electronics : Otto LindholmRecorded and mixed at les ateliers claus by Christophe Albertijn the 29th and the 30th of June 2020.Thanks to : Dad, Mom, Tommy and Keiko.Painting : Pierre Vande PittePicture : Laurent Orseau Artwork design:Oliver Barrett

Ikue was due to perform a 4 night residency at Cafe OTO this September 2020, but due to coronavirus had to be rescheduled to some time next year. In its place she's very kindly put together this selection of new work, all made at home on her own. In it, collected samples and concurrent keyboard lines are projected like aural holograms of dreams shot through crystal. Elapsed drum patterns and gurgling digital electronics emerge and scatter themselves in a haze of tropical music concrete, before wandering into melodic patterns and glimpses of songs. Ikue says "this is where I’m in right now, being home my own" - and its clear she has formed a natural symbiosis with her laptop during this time; conjuring thick synthetic clouds of thoughts, feelings and dreams for listeners to swim through.

All new file exchange mind-melter from 2nd generation Chinese/Taiwanese-American musician Audrey Chen & British electroacoustic artist Kaffe Matthews: "Breathing air as dark swallows was made during the three month COVID-19 lockdown period in Berlin 2020. Kaffe and I decided to embark on a music exchange after participating in a chain recording project isolated.connected initiated by Sabine Vogel. The first track of this album is the result of that, our first sonic meeting, inspired by prior recordings by Sabine and Michael Thieke. We then decided to continue the process by taking it in turns to send each other improvised solos to which the other would respond, producing four highly tactile and intimate breathing movements. Kaffe plays digital oscillators through a glu-box, whilst processing through resampling and granulation. Spatialization is via the pink ball Java interface and Touch OSC. I use my voice." - Audrey Chen -- Audrey Chen & Kaffe Matthews - voice & live electronics -- Recorded and mixed by Kaffe Matthews, Audrey Chen and Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø, April to June 2020. Mastered by Tara Transitory and Nguyễn Baly at Queer Ear Mastering Cover image by Götz Rogge - camera obscura art  -- www.audreychen.com www.kaffematthews.net

or a long lens where encounter runs          interfacing          just above hum-huff we find: - vert purlieu (tilt) - oblique cardioid (perspective) - reactive veils (bias) - stacks (extension/[false] mirror) an imaginary journey for double bass --- played, recorded, assembled, mixed, mastered by Tom Wheatley --- cover rendered by Oliver Barrett from a drawing by Tom Wheatley

A Manchester-London lock-down special by bassist Otto Willberg & guitarist David Birchall, "exploring certain spaces that are out of touch, maybe forgotten, bypassed, existing on the fringes - ’shadowed spaces'". Created by sending each other recordings of themselves playing in spaces near to their respective abodes, they melded the material together by revisiting the spaces and playing each of the recordings back to activate each others' acoustic. The result - like a photo of a murky landscape processed through multiple exposures - is a frothing mudbath of hollers, bellied drones, clattering percussion, creeping voices and caustic vibrations, resonating through streets, tunnels, open spaces and deep into our mind nuggets. David and Otto's work together in junk-rock/no-wave group Historically Fucked and in various free music settings has showcased their taste for bin rattling improv-flex and obscene humour, but we're pretty certain they've never made anything remotely like this. Music that teeters the line between the banal, the deeply weird and the beautiful. Fans of Peter Brötzmann & Han Bennink's 'Schwarzwaldfahrt', Blood Stereo's aural slimeballs and Idea Fire Company's intimate ritualistic melancholia - dig!

“Nostalgia (from nostos – return home, and algia – longing) is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy. Nostalgic love can only survive in a long-distance relationship. A cinematic image of nostalgia is a double exposure, or a superimposition of two images – of home and abroad, past and present, dream and everyday life. The moment we try to force it into a single image, it breaks the frame or burns the surface.” - Svetlana Boym, “The Future of Nostalgia” “I’m not deliberately out to antagonise an audience or spite them or anything like that, but if they adopt the attitude of ‘This isn’t what we expected’, then yippee, I’m gonna wallow in that, because you shouldn’t sit back and expect anything at all.” - John Lydon, “Anger is an Energy” Spring time. Three period instruments from the turn of the century: Yamaha CS1X, Korg MonoSynth 2000, MicroKorg Synth Vocoder. Fingers fumble, sounds happen - obnoxious, unapologetic, fragile like a wobbly cassette that you’ve listened to a million times on the Walkman you dropped before you could afford a Discman. I’m not playing the instruments, they are playing themselves, they are playing me and there is no forcing or fighting them. Faded-photograph sunshine sounds of ’90s electronica, caramelised sweetened condensed milk, the beach, rage, DIY chamber music for cats. Then, it stops: the end of nostalgia and the end of the world as you know it. We are getting old and the sounds have lost their innocence. Thank you to Ed (Teddy) Bennett, Michael Keeney and Hannah Peel for the synth love.  -- Xenia Pestova Bennett - composition / performance / recording / mixing -- Ed Bennett, production / creative & artistic concept Antony Ryan (RedRedPaw), mastering Oliver Barrett, cover design from a photo by Xenia Pestova Bennett

The first in a series of two new releases by French tape-based experimental artist Jérôme Noetinger, who has treated us to countless unforgettable live sets at OTO. In this collaboration with Anthony Laguerre, each musician sent a 15 minutes improvisation to the other. Then each one made his own edit based on these two sequences. "There is a great tradition of exchange and correspondence work in experimental music. In the 80's, there were a lot of cassettes with musicians who had never met each other but were exchanging sounds by mail. Nowadays it's even simpler and more obvious. The imposed period of confinement - in France between March 17 and May 11 - was ideal for restarting such projects. Among those I was able to start, I was very happy to continue a new duo with Anthony Laguerre. A CD named "DnT" was released in the shadow of the pandemic on March 5th on the Dutch label Aagoo in the REV.Lab series. Anthony is a drummer, sound engineer, ingenious multi-instrumentalist and we also created together a small workshop to repair Revox tape recorders." - Jérôme Noetinger -- Anthony Laguerre & Jérôme Noetinger - all music & recording -- "Propagation 1" (15'45") edit by Jérôme Noetinger."Propagation 2" (14'53") edit by Anthony Laguerre. Recorded March / April 2020. Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

All new work from OLAibi, a Japanese percussion-based experimental music project by AI from Osaka, an ex-member of OOIOO who regularly works with Takagi Masakatsu. In her music, OLAibi incorporates ancient Okinawan influences and melds electronics, steel drums, pianica, exotic percussion instruments and her voice into dizzying technicolor dream states. Since her childhood, AI was deeply inspired and mesmerized by Africa, and discovering Western African drums in later years mainly triggered her further musical activities. Using her manifold cross-cultural influences, she's created this deeply personal work, excavating her current feelings and sharing them with the outside world. -- Land where the water never dries up. Land where the soil is fertile. These were the only conditions for me. The earthquake. That attacked Japan. I was looking for a place to dwell. One day I stumbled upon an old estate agent man who gave me an old map. “I’ve never been there but you go and have a look.” I went there following the map, I got there but it didn’t seem right. It was a jungle. No space to enter. I entered into the dark woods clipping the branches in front of me one by one with a nata sword which I had with me. I had no idea where the borders were. It didn’t seem like there was no infrastructure. I had no idea this jungle even would fulfil my conditions. What sort of future had I imagined, I decided to live here to make this place my home. It's my 9th year since I have lived here. I can say that I live like a human. I spend about £7 a month on electricity. It’s for some pendant lights to avoid insects and musical machines to work. And wifi to connect to the outside world. At first I tried so hard to live harmoniously with nature. I tried not to chop down trees and stopped cooking meat dishes. After 8 years you finally realise that you change the organic system inevitably by simply just existing. Only humans cannot fit in this world. And I cry from the sadness and helplessness. We sway. We are creatures that sway. We try to adjust to fit in this world finding the harmonious point swaying. That made me feel less tearful and got up to live for the next day. I name all my music of food or flavour. Not to forget that everything I make is given from nature. The languages I chose in my music I call them -Fate community language. I mix up and use the phonetic of all the different foreign languages, And all I have to do is to follow the word souls and my instinct. - OLAibi -- OLAibi - all music & recording Written & recorded in spring 2020 -- Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

Zongamin takes a snapshot of lock-down, like a faded picture of a day at the fun-fair, scrunched-up and torn-up at the edges. Exotica, disco, dub and kosmiche stylings are doused in bleach and tumble in a bath of mud and frothing sea water. Tape loops circle around, conjuring dusty clouds and moments for reflection on times passed. Like the work of General Strike and Hype Williams, Zongamin molds his explorations in multi-genre goo, but bypasses obvious pastiche, instead unearthing a form of latent, submerged funk. Download includes original artwork by Susumu Mukai -- All tracks by Susumu Mukai (Zongamin) -- Recorded on 4,5,6 June 2020.Mixed and mastered by Susumu Mukai and Drew Brown. Artwork by Susumu Mukai / layout by Oliver Barrett

Experimental vocalist Juliet Fraser shares her lock-down adventures on the 'TC Helicon VoiceLive 3'; twenty-two tracks of loops, refrains and laments fizzing with creative energy. "The TC Helicon VoiceLive 3 and I first worked together back in 2015, on a piece for voice and ensemble that took advantage of my many-buttoned collaborator’s ability to transform my voice in real time. Though the experience of frantically trying to press the right button at the right time whilst singing quite complicated notes wasn't altogether easy, I was left with a lot of curiosity for what this machine could do. I felt our adventures had only just begun. Fast-forward to March 2020: I decided to take the plunge, to order my own and make this reunion a lockdown project that might save morale and sanity. What's documented here are my little experiments, recorded over a 6-week period as I got to know the beast, fiddling around with the several hundred preset vocal effects, the manifold possibilities of individual effects (such as harmony and hardtune) and the loop function. Each track was made very fast, with no time for critical reflection." - Juliet Fraser

Vi Är Alla Guds Slavar is the latest missive from the long-running duo pairing of Mats Gustafsson (The Thing, Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, etc) and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth, Chelsea Light Moving, Dream/Aktion Unit, etc). Thurston had first come across Mats' playing on a duo disc with Barry Guy and had assumed he was one of those older beardy European improv guys - Remember this was before the internet and everyone knew everything. Their first actual meeting goes back to the early 90s at Blue Tower Records in Stockholm (now Andra Jazz - arguably the greatest jazz record store in the world) on one of Thurston's frequent soundcheck-skipping discaholic binges. The young guy behind the counter was blowing his mind with side after side of crazy rare jazz, test pressings, acetates and more. Running late, he offered Thurston a lift to the gig and en route asked if there was any particular records he was looking for. "There is this sax player - Mats Gustafsson - I'm looking for some of his stuff" "That's me" says the young guy - and there started an intense friendship that has manifested intself in music through their discaholics anonymous trio (with Jim O'Rourke), Gustafsson's large scale HIDROS 3 composition for Sonic Youth and much more besides… You can watch a video interview with Thurston where he tells the story of their first meeting here:

Born in 1964, Yukihiro Isso is a Japanese Noh flutist (hayashi-kata fue-kata) from a family that has been playing this instrument since the 16th century. He received his initial instruction in flute playing from his father Yukimasa Isso and performed on the Noh stage for the first time at the age of nine. From his middle school years he began to listen to a variety of different kinds of music and studying new instruments including the recorder, flute and piano. An acclaimed performer of classical Noh repertoire, Isso is also an accomplished improviser and has performed with the likes of Cecil Taylor, Peter Brötzmann and John Zorn.. Born 1946, Roger Turner grew up amongst the Canterbury musical life of the 1960’s with a strong jazz foundation. Since 1974 work has been concentrated on exploring a more personal percussion language through the processes of improvisation. Solo work, collaborations with experimental rock musics & open - form song, extensive work with dance, film and visual art, involvements in numerous jazz-based ensembles, & workshop residencies have formed part of that development. Takanehishigu is the audio documentation of the first time these artists played together. The results are a breathtaking new music which remains respectful to the individual traditions whilst simultaneously subverting them. --- Yukihiro Isso / Nohkan (noh-flute), shinobue, dengakubue, gemshorn and recorder. Roger Turner / percussion --- Takanehishigu was recorded live at Cafe Oto on 23rd Sep 2015 by Shaun Crook Mixed by John Chantler. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by Paul Abbott. Edition of 500 copies.

Digital download version of this recording originally issued as a one-sided limited edition 12" made available as part of a fundraiser for Cafe OTO to acquire some new equipment. Thurston Moore / Guitar Alex Ward / Clarinet, Amplifier Recorded 20 March 2012 at Cafe OTO by John Chantler & Jonny McHugh. Mixed by Alex Ward, Vinyl cut by Nick @ Curved. Cover image courtesy of Matti Braun.

One of the final Incus releases and one that was written up in The Penguin Guide to Jazz as ‘an essential document of modern music’. Otoroku is proud to release the first ever vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s legendary recording The Snake Decides. Featuring 4  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. From Brian Morton’s liner new notes: “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.” 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 500 copies.

For the time being we are unable to get to the post but if you order now your item will be posted as soon as things return to normal. Thank you for your support.  We're very pleased to announce Pat Thomas's ‘The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari’ on our in-house OTOROKU label. Recorded live at OTO in May 2015 and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, the LP comprises four typically genre-defying and sonically dexterous pieces from one of the UK's most extraordinary pianists. In Pat's own words: The title for this album was inspired by the incredible automatic water clock invented by Badi' al-Zaman ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari. Al Jazari refers to the fact he was born in Al Jazira which lies between the Tigris and the Euphrates in what is now Northern Iraq. Badi al Zaman means prodigy of the age. He is known by historians of technology as the father of modern robotics. The Elephant Clock at seven metres high is a testament to his engineering genius, it utilizes Greek water raising technology, combined with an Indian elephant, Egyptian phoenix, Arabian figures, Persian carpet and Chinese Dragons celebrating the diversity of cultures in the world. This and other marvels of engineering can be found in his Book of the Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices translated by Donald Hill (Pakistan Hijra Council). Over 50 devices are mentioned. Amongst them the first analog computer, his remarkable Castle Clock, however, the debt the world owes this muslim genius is found in his remarkable water raising devices, particularly water raising device number 4 where for the first time a crank connecting rod system is used. The crank is considered to be the most important single mechanical device after the wheel, by 1206 this is found fully developed in Jazari`s machines predating Francesco di Giorgio Martini by 3 centuries. 'For Al Haytham' is dedicated to the great polymath genius who wrote the great book on vision, the first person to give us a true understanding of how we see. 'Lubb' is an Arabic word meaning innermost consciousness whilst to conclude proceedings 'Done' is loosely based on a well known standard. - Pat Thomas 26th May 2017 --- Pat Thomas / piano --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on the 4th May 2015 by Mark Jasper. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Photo by Fabio Lugaro. Design by Maja Larsson. 

Recorded live at Cafe OTO in March 2009 during Otomo Yoshihide's first residency here. This was one of only a handful of solo piano performances Otomo has given where he uses the instrument as a control matrix for harmonically rich feedback tones and devastating clusters of complex noise. Vinyl sold out long ago, so pleased to share this as a download finally! "For Otomo, the piano is a big box of potential sound. But since he’s an obsessive sort, he really digs into certain of its corners, and dig he does; when this record doesn’t sound like a gonzo feedback extravaganza, it sounds like he’s cutting through the side of the instrument with a hand-held saw. Whatever the means he used to make the piano sound like that, he’s laid utter waste to the instrument’s conventional sonic associations. There are plenty of people out there making pianos sound like something other than pianos, but I can’t think of anyone else doing it with so much punk spirit and so little reference to any familiar piano vocabulary." - Bill Meyer, Still Single --- Otomo Yoshihide / piano  --- Recorded at Cafe OTO by Shane Brown. Mixed by John Chantler. Mastered by LUPO at Calyx Mastering. 

First solo LP from Maybe Noise collective member Sheng Jie. "I always feel that the cello is a kind of instrument that is full of sorrow and narration, like an aged intoning the past repeatedly and sadly alone. In my ordinary work, the concept of “narration” is always excluded on purpose. Or, it is taken as a part that I don’t want to deal with but have to. Thus, the cello, which is particular but unitary for me, can express a kind of true emotion which is very “clumsy”, because true emotions always seem to be clumsy by being direct and parched. This album emphasizes the concept of “performer”, which refers to the one, the fingers, the power and the immediate state of the breath when playing the instrument, without overmuch decoration and editing, or splendid and adept performing skills. Each track was performed and recorded from start to finish once and once again, in which some mistakes were retained and chosen reasonably. The name of each track is made from the names of gods in Bon religion. Those gods are the creators of the beginning of the universe. Their original form is egg, which transformed into space. The time and space structure they created was bulks of passivity. That’s Bon religion’s descriptions of the universe and the world. If certain cognition of forms must be given to gods and time and space, the best description that breaks the linear conception would be the space of “passivity”, in which music was born. The world view of oviparity is full of uncertainty. It grows and dies under a set structure of bulk.-gogoj a.k.a Sheng Jie --- Composed and electronic cello performed by gogoj a.k.a Sheng JieRecorded by gogoj a.k.a Sheng Jie in Beijing, China, 2018.Mixed and mastered by Cyril Meysson, In Saint-Etienne, France, 2018 --- Reverse-board heavy cover, 3-spines, printed with Pantone silver metallic ink. Limited edition of 300 copies, hand-numbered

This milestone of the avant-garde music, published in 1974 by the historic Opus One, was a very significant political awareness. With Coming Together and Attica, Rzewski celebrates in music the famous revolt of the American prison in 1971. The texts of Sam Melville and Richard X. Clark make pulsating and alive the invocations of the prisoners; full of pathos, these fragments of life oscillate between a confessional tone and the hymn to freedom, in a touching emblem of compassion. The fixity of the sound images is incisive, unnerving and melancholic, embroidering a solid minimalist repetition. The different combination of the verses produce a psychosis or obsession of a cathartic experience, at the same time emotional, physical and mental. Together with great guests such as Alvin Curran, Jon Gibson, Garrett List and Karl Beger, Rzewski seems to merge his radical vocation with the most meditative and suffered plots of the spiritual jazz; sealing all with Les Moutons Des Panurge, an amazing suite for percussion, a timeless masterpiece of polyrhythmic expertise.

"First of all, Bengt Berger - a pioneer of the Swedish underground of the 70’s and historical member of bands such as the Archimedes Badkar and Arbete Och Fritid – is a versatile drummer-percussionist and well-educated ethno-musicologist with several research sojourns in India and Ghana. Deeply influenced by Hindustani, Carnatic and West Africa music, he founded in 1980 the Bitter Funeral Beer Band, an ensemble of 12 elements, basing his ideas on the traditional funeral music of the people of Lo-Birifor, in the northern region of Ghana. The marriage between this afro polyrhythmic roots, with the spiritual jazz of the eternal Don Cherry and the indian sarod of K. Sridhar is in the direction to a pan-internationalism of profound spirituality, which blends different geographical traditions in a single contemplative gaze. It is the convergence towards a music without boundaries, where every instrumental voice shines and is well fermented and integrated. Music is unity."

An amazing document of the life experiment that was the Organic Music Society. This super quality audio, recorded by RAI (the italian public broadcasting company) in 1976 for television, documents a quartet concert focused on vocals compositions and improvisations. Here, Don Cherry and his family-community’s musical belief emerges in its simplicity, with the desire to merge the knowledge and stimuli gained during numerous travels across the World in a single sound experience. Don's pocket-trumpet is melted with the beats of the great Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, the Italian guitar of Gian Piero Pramaggiore, and the tanpura drone of Moki. A pure hippie aesthetic, like in an intimate ceremony, filters a magical encounter between Eastern and Western civiliziations, offering different suggestions of sound mysticism: natural acoustics in which individual instruments and voices are part of a wider pan-tribal consciousness. A desert Western landscape marries Asian and Latin atmospheres. Indigenous contributions with berimbau explorations find fossil sounds of rattles and clap-hands invocations. Influences of Indian mantra singing are combined with eternal African voices or with folkish-Latin guitar rhythms , while flute and drums evoke distant dances. In the Organic Music everything becomes an act of devotion and love, an ecstatic dwell in the dimension of a sacred free-rejoice.

More than half a century has elapsed since the founding of the legendary British free improvisation group AMM. We could say there would be no free improvisation as we know it today without AMM’s Eddie Prévost, John Tilbury and Keith Rowe. The mystery surrounding AMM has not faded; to the contrary, even nowadays it carries a particular appeal due to its engaged, intelligible and nonetheless radical message.As N.O. Moore writes in the ‘Until The Next Time’ liner notes:“The musician makes music audible. The improviser makes music differ from itself.AMM calls forth music at the same time as simply allowing it to arrive, unbidden, as if sound were as indifferent to us as any other natural phenomena.Against the egalitarianism of sounds (…), we reserve the right to fail – that is, we take the risk of evaluation. Next time, we will get it right? … That is the wrong question. AMM: the next time is to be heard here, now, sounding out … almost.”The 180g vinyl includes an insert with photos and liner notes by N.O. Moore. --- Eddie Prévost – percussionKeith Rowe – guitar, electronicsJohn Tilbury – piano

Black Truffle’s documentation of the prolific recent work of legendary American composer Alvin Lucier continues with Works for the Ever Present Orchestra. This is a very special release for the composer as it presents pieces written for the thirteen-member Ever Present Orchestra, formed in 2016 exclusively to perform Lucier’s works. At the heart of the ensemble are four electric guitars, an instrument Lucier began composing for in 2013 with Criss-Cross (recorded by two core members of the Ever Present Orchestra, Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O’Malley, for whom it was composed, on Black Truffle 033). Through the use of e-bows, the guitars take on a role akin to the slow sweep pure wave oscillators heard in many of Lucier’s works since the early 1980s, but with added harmonic richness. Like much of Lucier’s instrumental music, the pieces recorded here focus on acoustic phenomena, especially beating patterns, produced by the interference between closely tuned pitches. The work presented here is some of the richest and most inviting that Lucier has composed. Though all of the pieces clearly belong to the same continuing exploration of the behaviour of sound in physical space and make use of related compositional devices, each takes on a strikingly different character. Titled Arc, for the full ensemble of four guitars, four saxophones, four violins, piano and bowed glockenspiel inhabits a world of sliding, uneasy tones, punctuated by a single piano note. Where Double Helix, for four guitars, rests on a pillow of warm, low hum, EPO-5, for two guitars, saxophone, violin, and glockenspiel possess a limpid, crystalline quality. Accompanying the four new compositions are two adaptations of existing pieces for radically different instrumentation, demonstrating Lucier’s excitement about the new possibilities suggested by this dedicated ensemble. Works for the Ever Present Orchestra is an essential document of the current state of Lucier’s continuing exploration, as well as offering a seductive entry-point for anyone who might yet be unacquainted with his singular body of work.2CD release presented in a deluxe 4-panel digipak with cover artwork and liner notes from Alvin Lucier plus a 16-page booklet with live photos. Disc 2 of this release includes the bonus Adaptions for the Ever Present Orchestra featuring two pieces (“Two Circles” and “Braid”) that are not included on the vinyl version. Mastered by Rashad Becker. Design by Lasse Marhaug.

Okinawa-based artist Kanako Horiuchi centres her practice around her voice and the sanshin - an Okinawan musical instrument and precursor of the mainland Japanese shamisen – but opens the aesthetic possibilities of the instrument wide open, including excursions into electronic music, Senagelese music, minimalism and more. On 'Hope' she explores both the opaque nature of our current times and the glimmer of hope we can find in different places. ‘Darkness’ dives into the present with industrial synth washes and electronic drum cycles, before setting new co-ordinates on with the help of a drifting Okinawan Taiko on ‘Break Away’. On ‘Hope’ she shares vocal refrains with her 2 year old daughter, telling the tale of a buddha's arrival, world peace, mothers and the sea appearing. On final track ‘thanks’, recorded in Senegal before lock-down, she returns her instrument to folkloric traditions of the country, embracing the hope that can be gained through travel, exploration and generational love between mothers and children. “I never thought the covid-19 pandemic would affect my personal life, but it did. Somehow I wanted to formalise my thoughts and feelings I have had over this period into music. Okinawa, the county of Japan once used to be an independent country /kingdom, totally independent from Japan and any other country, has gone through and still has been going through the many layers of dark long history. I believe there are many places like Okinawa in the rest of the world. I wanted to make the music of Hope.” - Kanako Horiuchi Mastered and artwork by Oliver Barrett

Spanish artist Victor Herrero dusts the cobwebs off his old computer hard drives and rekindles himself with a series of unreleased solo recordings, self-recorded over 2015-2018. The cherry-picked selection of tracks offers an exquisite corpse of past moments in time, recollected and reordained to reflect the awkward present under covid-19 lockdown. In it, the strings of his nylon string guitar gently weave mellow melodic refrains in a rough and ready aesthetic. Little movements, laments and circling dances are given time and space to grow, allowing his songs to sing from the ground upwards and seep into oneiric states. Victor is a DIY troubadour, conjuring the ghosts of Spanish guitar maestros Francisco Tárrega and Fernando Sor and the haunting of times past. As we listen to this we can imagine him sitting on the edge of our sofa in dim candlelight, whisky in hand at 4am, with the sunrise slowly peeking its head above the horizon. A really special collection. -- Victor Herrero - guitar & recording -- Recorded in Tangier, Porto, Sweden & Cádiz Artwork by Marcela Mico Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

"In Another Place is constructed from the sounds of found materials, domestic objects and self-made mechanisms. Working between Lucerne, Montreal and Huddersfield, we followed simple cues as instructional starting points, responding to a single word to create a sonic response within a specific time-frame. These prompts became starting points for materially engaged, sonic exploration. Each take was a dislocated, improvisation to no-one, confined to our private studios and homes, our headphones and recorders. Sounds include recordings of ceramic hobs, seaweed, styrofoam, kitchen foil, balloons, resonant tubes, scrap metal, motors, water pumps, spark gaps, lightbulbs, water, wooden dowels and sand paper. The results were layered, re-situated and mixed by matching time-frames and timbre. In Another Place explores the musical potential of everyday materials through disconnection, interpretation and serendipity" - (Tim Shaw) -- "What if COVID-19 had never swept the globe? What if our lives were operating as normal? There would’ve been Anne-F Jacques from Montreal as ame’s fourth artist-in-residence collaborating, in different scales, with a gang of sound artists and musicians; Julia Eckhardt, Phil Niblock, Tim Shaw, Tania Caroline Chen, Yorkshire Sound Women Network and myself right now, here at Dai Hall, a venue for underground experimental music and art scene in Huddersfield. The luxury of chaos (I miss that now) would’ve been followed by high-spirited laugher. When Keiko invited me to make a mini album for Takuroku, I romanticised this hypothesis, the ‘what-if’ theory. Every event has a cause. This Takuroku opportunity has given us a chance to thrive, to get back to our individual creative zone, to listen to the world once more. Thanks to Cafe OTO." - (Ryoko Akama) -- Recorded by Tim Shaw, Anne-F Jacques and Ryoko Akama -- Mastered by Anne-F Jacques Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

"Having brought together two entirely independent solo improvisations like this, one from near the start of the lockdown and the other very recent, and finding that they fit together so well that I must have been  following the same pattern albeit on two very different instruments, what does that tell me? Have I merely folded time on itself without any corresponding fold in space and thereby gone precisely nowhere? Have those intervening months vanished in the attempt? And what can I call the fruits of that attempt? An imaginary duo between present me and early-lockdown me, made real by a stray thought taken too far (because I hadn't intended to put the two together when I recorded them). Have I learned nothing? By themselves, each is both an attempt to reach beyond time in itself, by touching the infinite variability of the reality beyond illusion and, by that very variability (and unpredictability) a blow struck against the homogenising forces of consumerism, a wrench thrown in the gears of the satanic mill. But when combined, then, the variability is multiplied. Not by dialogue (since each was blind to the other) but the stark fact of their separation in time and the events that they book-end. 50,000 dead, give or take. Have we learned nothing? Must the same battles be fought over and over again every single time? Will we still follow the same pattern, when this is all over?" - Massimo Magee, London, 11 May 2020 Cover image: '144 Pills' by MiHee Kim Magee

French artist Bruno Duplant gifts us a 36 minutes long piece insaisissable(s) instant(s)', a reflection both on time and the complex emotions under covid-19 lock-down. With field recordings of voices, birds and dogs, electronic bips & clicks and lingering piano notes, he draws his curtains and welcomes us to his discreet aural world. "Time has only one reality, that of the Instant. In other words, time is a reality tightened on the instant and suspended between two nothingness. Time will undoubtedly be able to be reborn, but it will first have to die. He will not be able to transport his being from one instant to another to make it a duration. The instant is already loneliness ... It is loneliness in its most stripped metaphysical value. But loneliness of a more sentimental order confirms the tragic isolation of the instant: by a kind of creative violence, time limited to the instant isolates us not only from others but from ourselves, since it breaks with our dearest past."Gaston Bachelard, L'intuition de l'instant, Editions Gonthier, méditation, 1932, p. 13-15. Dedicated to Reinier Van Houdt -- Bruno Duplant - field recordings, electronics, piano -- Cover design by Oliver Barrett from a photo by Bruno Duplant.

"Recorded over three separate afternoons.  Paper is a latest piece in my series for “prepared” violin. This one uses paper weaved across the strings, the resulting sound is that of a woodwind instrument (I hope). It is then improvised. Orlando GibbonsFantasia IV- I first played these Fantasias in 2011 for F-IRE Klang Codex concert series run by Lucy Railton and Fred Thomas. Around the same time I began performing at Oto in Lucy’s Kammer Klang and in some way I will always associate the Gibbons Fantasias for Treble Viols with Lucy and the early days at Cafe Oto.  Slow Changeis a process piece, a journey of the bow going across the string from the bridge to the end of the fingerboard, the sound is slowly changing, other strings get involved as the bow gets higher on the fingerboard. " - Aisha Orazbayeva -- Aisha Orazbayeva - violin, preparations, recording, mixing -- Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

Ballads of a troubadour from Gobi Desert in Central Asia. Wang Xiao was born in Karamay, Xinjiang in 1966. His parents are oil exploration workers. From childhood, he followed his parents to live and grow up in the wilderness of Gobi Desert. In 1989 he quit his oil field job and started traveling as a troubadour. He has lived in Tibet for 10 years and now resides in Yunnan. “In my memory, there is no ‘home’ concept, just keep moving from place to place”. The album is clearly not “indie city folk”, nor is it “world music”. However, after years of immersion in the vein of Central Asian culture, the influence of traditional music from various Central Asian regions is obvious. The whole album is dark and deep, like the rocks in the desert. The occasional overtone singing plays well with the dombra tone, the musician is seeking the divine nature of the universe. “Folk singers in the past were poets and sorcerers themselves. They could only sing after divination and sacrifice, or by helping people to predict diseases, fortunes, planting and family affairs. Folk singers should be the ones who atone for the lives.”The symbolic and poetic lyrics are also an important part for the album. With Lu (Heartless/Vergissmeinnicht/Mandarava), Edward Sanderson and Josh Feola's help, we included the full Chinese lyrics with English translation, it will help the listener to have a better understanding of Wang Xiao’s music.The album was recorded in the winter of 2007 in Beijing. “At that time, it was just me, Wu Junde and Wu Tun to do this recording. They bought me some wine, we drank them and recorded the album (dombra and vocal) for only two hours, then I went back to Tibet right after.” Wu Junde and Obul added tanbur, mouth harp, more vocals and percussions afterward. “We didn’t feel it’s a very good album at first. The tempo is not always right because we didn’t use a metronome, but as you listened to it for a long time, it was great. It's a record that can't be repeated, because it's made at one go, and it's very straight.”Previously self-published as CDr in 2010, now we reissue this album as a Ten Year Anniversary Edition, with new graphic design and a bonus track “Refugee of Faith on the Ancient River Bank” recorded in 2016. All tracks are carefully remastered by our friend Cyril Meysson.“Black Horse River, for me, is my real motherland.” – Wang Xiao“His voice is original, it’s a blend of a shaman and the characteristics of the nomadic people. His way to play dombra is unusual, not with the finger but a plectrum, that makes the music fiercer and more rhythmic. Wang Xiao spent many years in Lhasa, he also put the rhythm of the monks chanting into his music, all these make his works dialoguing with the sun and the earth, it contains the essence from the land and the passing time.” - Zhang Zhi 張智（旅行者樂隊）“I came up with the nickname ‘Folk shaman’. I met Wang Xiao back in 2002-2003, when he was still a rock-n-roll young guy in Shenzhen, but his mental state was like channeling with a shaman or a minstrel. It may have something to do with his life experience, mysterious and unique.” - Wu Junde --- Music/Lyrics/Vocals: Wang Xiao(Except "Wild Geese" Lyrics by Sa Dao & Wang Xiao, "Cover Song" Original singer Li Shirong, Music/Lyrics by Lei Zhenbang, rearranged by Wang Xiao)Dombra: Wang Xiao (Track 1-10)Guitar: Wu Junde (Track 1)Mouth Harp: Wu Junde (Track 5)Chorus: Wu Junde (Track 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10)Tanbur: Wu Junde (Track 4,8)Percussions: Obul (Track 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10)Recorded by Wu Weiyi in Beijing, China, winter 2007, previously self-released in 2010(Except bonus track “Refugee of Faith on the Ancient River Bank” recorded in 2016)Remastered by Cyril Meysson in Saint-Étienne, France, January 2019English lyrics translated by Lu (Heartless/Vergissmeinnicht/Mandarava)Proofread by Edward Sanderson & Josh FeolaCover art: Wang Yuanqing, Photography: Li Ming, Design & Layout: ruò tánSpecial thanks to Wu Tun & Wu Junde

Chinese free improvisation saxophonist / flutist 老丹 Lao Dan's debut saxophone solo album (previously released in cassette format, sold-out) reissue in 6-panel Digipak CD format, with new artwork. These recordings are from Qinglongdong Tunnel in Hangzhou, China. All natural cave reverbs, the free improvisation of Lao Dan's alto saxophone and the sound of the passengers and the cars were recorded, as every functioning individual."Lao Dan is a monster improviser. I'd never heard of him and I was completely swept away by his powerful playing and concept.""I have this feeling Lao is a soldier that cannot be silenced."Lao Dan is a freelance musician and wind instrument player, who started learning sax at the age of 8 and later turned to Dizi.During 2002 to 2006, he studied dizi in Beijing. In 2007, he was admitted with the highest score to Shenyang Conservatory of Music (SYCM), majoring in Dizi. During college, he served as the principal Dizi player of Youth Chinese Orchestra of SYCM.From 2012, he started his research on wind instruments from all over the world, including Jew's harp, Didgeridoo, Bansuri, Bamboo Sax, Duduk, etc. Lao Dan blends his own thoughts into the traditional way of playing Dizi, in which he pays a lot of attention on details of freedom, mood, thought and space. With plenty of performing and recording experience, Lao Dan has been experimenting more on his music since 2014. Based on Dizi and sax, adding various wind instruments and with new elements such as experiment, noise and improvisation, his music has been improved to a more substantial and creative level. He has also been actively cooperating with artists worldwide, including the legendary Japanese drummer Sabu Toyozumi.In 2013, he formed the music group Red Scarf with Deng Boyu and Li Xing, covering a variety of music genres including progressive rock, thrash metal, avant-garde jazz, funk metal and punk rock, and released their eponymous debut album in 2016.In May 2017, Lao Dan finishde recording his first Dizi solo album “Zhui Yun Zhu Meng (追云逐梦)” and it was ready to be released under Modern Sky World Music. In June, he joined a four-country avant-garde saxophone project raised by Japanese label Armageddon Nova, where his own composition “Self-destructive Machine (自毁机器)” is issued.  --- Lao Dan / alto saxophone, chinese flute --- Recorded by 老丹 at Qinglongdong Tunnel, Hangzhou, China23 August & 25 December 2017Mastered by Cyril Meysson in Saint-Étienne, France, January 2018Photography by 饒依爾 Rao Eer & 若潭 ruò tánTranslation by 呂立揚 Li-YangLayout by 若潭 ruò tán

"Let's get the facts out up front: Lines Burnt in Light is pure insane genius. Evan Parker, for decades a master of the saxophone in various contexts, steps up about three levels on his new solo disc. As the inaugural release on his new Psi label, this is going to be a hard act to follow. Parker insistently pursues a high-level spiritual energy on these three extended improvisations for solo soprano saxophone. And he does not relent. Lines Burnt in Light documents a live performance with no effects or overdubs (apart from the rich acoustics of London's St. Michael and All Angels Church). Parker wastes no time firing up his engines during the first piece, recorded before the audience's arrival. His playing operates at many levels. At its most literal, the music cycles through a long series of short, high loops. As time moves on, these cycles drift fluidly through musical space, acquiring new elements, leaping up and down, and defining new tonalities. But this music is clearly about much more than the literal. Parker colors his fundamentals with an inexhaustible array of overtones, and it's at this level that these improvisations really come alive. Each note turns furry, spikey, or rounded, depending on how the saxophonist chooses to shape it. The high notes sail through the air with birdlike delicacy, chirps and whistles all about, as if a flock of songbirds have alighted on the microphone. As the recording proceeds, Parker meets his audience head-on with a similar urgency. While some listeners may find the sheer density and intesity of Lines Burnt in Light daunting, those with open ears and hearts can look forward to over an hour of pure invention and delicacy. The saxophonist's pursuit lies far beyond technical fluency (which he happens to have in great abundance), much as Coltrane aimed for a higher realm. It's this process of transcendence which lifts Lines Burnt in Light to a spectacular zenith of light and sound. Maybe it's the glow of the full moon outside as I listen, but this music provides express transportation to another world." - All About Jazz

Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie returns to Black Truffle with Nist-Nah. Like his previous solo record on the label, the abrasive hip-hop concrète of People Pleaser (BT027), Nist-Nah finds Guthrie branching out in a new direction, this time in a suite of six percussion pieces primarily using the metallaphones, hand drums and gongs of the Gamelan ensembles of Indonesia. The music presented here is grounded in Guthrie’s travels in Indonesia and study of various forms of Gamelan music, from the stately suspended temporality of the courtly Javanese Gamelan Sekatan, to the delirious, thuggish repetition that accompanies the Javanese trance ritual Jathilan, to the shimmering acoustic glitch of contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alit and his Gamelan Salukat. However, far from an exercise in exoticism, Nist-Nah develops out of Guthrie’s extensive work with metal percussion in recent years (as heard, for example, on his 2015 LP for iDEAL, Sacrée Obsession), where gongs, singing bowls and cymbals are used to build up walls of hovering tones and sizzling details. Though Guthrie is broadening his palette to explore Gamelan instrumentation and pay tribute to his love of this sophisticated yet elemental percussion music, the pieces presented here are equally informed by Guthrie’s interests in free jazz, electro-acoustic music and diverse experimental music practices, exploring long tones, extended techniques, and non-metered pulse.Nist-Nah presents a variety of approaches across its six pieces, from the crisp, precise rhythmic complexity of the opening title track to the droning textures of ‘Catlike’ and ‘Elders’. On the epic closing ‘Kebogiro Glendeng’, Guthrie offers an extended, layered rendition of a Javanese piece belonging to a repertoire primarily used for warmups, beginner’s groups and children first learning Gamelan, elegantly gesturing to his own amateur status while using the piece’s insistently repeated melody as an extended exploration of the hypnotic effects of repetition, falling in and out of time with himself to create woozy, narcotic effects until the piece eventually dissolves into a wavering fog. 

Continuing Black Truffle’s series of releases documenting the recent work of legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier, String Noise presents three major works for violin solo and duo composed between 2004 and 2019. Lucier has developed his compositions in close collaboration with many instrumentalists over the years; the three works presented here are performed by the violinists for whom they were originally written, Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris, who together make up the innovative violin duo String Noise, and have premiered works by a plethora of major figures in contemporary music. The long-form compositions presented here continue Lucier’s life-long exploration of acoustic phenomena, drawing on aspects of some of his most well-known compositions and extending them into new instrumentation. Tapper (2004) extends the experiments with echolocation – gathering information about an environment by listening to the echoes of sounds produced within it – that Lucier began with his classic 1969 work Vespers, where performers explore a space equipped with hand-held pulse oscillators. Here, the same principle is put into practice for solo violin, the body of which the performer taps repeatedly with the butt end of the bow while moving around the performance space. The result is a subtly shifting web of echoes and resonances produced by the reflection of the sharp tap off the surfaces of the room (in this case, the Drawing Center in New York). In Love Song (2016), two violinists are connected by a long wire stretched between the bridges of their instruments, causing the sounds played on one violin to also be heard through the other. As the two violinists play long tones using only the open E string, they move in a circular motion around the performance space, thus changing the tension of the wire, which creates a remarkable array of variations in pitch and timbre ranging from ghostly wavering pitches reminiscent of a singing saw to near-electronic tones. In Halo (2019), one or more violinists walk slowly through the performance space in a zig-zag pattern while sustaining long tones. As in Tapper, the consistent sound production reveals the sonic properties of the environment. As the title of the piece suggests, the outcome is a shimmering halo of sound produced by the reflection of the violin’s extended tones off the walls and ceiling of the performance space (in this case, Alvin's home).  

One of the landmark albums in the British avant garde reissued on Evan's psi label. Includes 2 tracks not issued on the LP. Gorgeously reproduced. Monumental set of improvisations between Parker, Bailey, and Bennink, considered by many to be a key recording in the history of improvised music, it brought together three musicians who then continued to develop the genre in the intervening three decades : EVAN PARKER (soprano & tenor saxophones), DEREK BAILEY (guitar) and HAN BENNINK (percussion, etc).

Designed by Remake Design (who also created the now iconic Donald Judd: Writings book), this issue features words by or about Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Ornette Coleman, Nicole Kaack, Bradford Bailey, G. Lucas Crane, Jennie Gottschalk, Ambrose Akinmusire, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Margasak, Terry Riley, Kim Brandt, John Cage, Josh Sinton, Edgard Varése, Marc Hannaford, John Zorn, Matthew Mehlan, Million Tongues Festival, Alex Mincek, Lester St. Louis, Steve Lehman... A quarterly journal founded in 2012 by Nate Wooley, providing in-depth interviews and essays, Sound American starts from a simple desire to open the doors of experimental music to a wider audience. Sound American believes that music is for everyone and should be shared on the most basic human level. Sound American aims to accomplish this by creating a direct intellectual, social, and emotional bridge that links audiences and artists. Advisory board: David Grubbs, Rebekah Heller, Taylor Ho Bynum, Zeena Parkins, Matana Roberts, and Ken Vandermark.Sun Ra (1914-1993) is an African-American experimental jazz pianist and composer. A prolific artist, he recorded over one-hundred albums with his band, the Sun Ra Arkestra. His work is imprinted with esoteric elements drawn from a personal cosmic philosophy that had a great influence on Afrofuturism.

Restock expected to ship 3rd August Guest edited by Shawn Jaeger, the Lee Hyla issue features remembrances and appreciations of the deeply missed composer by Stephen Drury, Rhonda Rider, David Rakowski, Bryan Hayslett, Chris Fisher-Lochheed, Eliza Brown, Scott Wheeler, and Ben Hjertmann. As well as articles by or with Jerome Harris on Jaki Byard, Charissa Noble on Johanna Beyer, Rick Moody on Stephen Malkmus, Sam Amidon on Son House, Colin Stetson on Henryk Górecki, Claire Chase, Kate Soper, and Eric Wubbels. Also photos from Katherine Desjardins and exquisite corpse from Shawn Jaeger. --- Sound American is A quarterly journal founded in 2012 by Nate Wooley, providing in-depth interviews and essays, Sound American starts from a simple desire to open the doors of experimental music to a wider audience. Sound American believes that music is for everyone and should be shared on the most basic human level. Sound American aims to accomplish this by creating a direct intellectual, social, and emotional bridge that links audiences and artists. Advisory board: David Grubbs, Rebekah Heller, Taylor Ho Bynum, Zeena Parkins, Matana Roberts, and Ken Vandermark.

Restock expected to ship 3rd August. The Alien Issue features writing on the alien and alienation by Sarah Hennies, Franklin Bruno, inti figgis-vizueta and James May on listening to ourselves and each other, Marc Hannaford, Nicole Kaack in conversation with Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Charmaine Lee and id m theft able on building a home, Matana Roberts, Jacob Wick, Wendy Eisenberg, Chris Pitsiokos and Ben Young on WKCR and Triple Point Records, a contribution to the 2019 exquisite corpse series by Lester St. Louis, and more. The print edition includes very special full color reproduction of Charles Gaines's Librettos. Sound American is A quarterly journal founded in 2012 by Nate Wooley, providing in-depth interviews and essays, Sound American starts from a simple desire to open the doors of experimental music to a wider audience. Sound American believes that music is for everyone and should be shared on the most basic human level. Sound American aims to accomplish this by creating a direct intellectual, social, and emotional bridge that links audiences and artists. Advisory board: David Grubbs, Rebekah Heller, Taylor Ho Bynum, Zeena Parkins, Matana Roberts, and Ken Vandermark. --- published in 2020 English edition

“This is the prize-winning history of the music known as Enka, one of the dominant forms of postwar popular music, that rearranged everyone’s understanding of the history of postwar pop. Love it or hate it, Enka is a necessary background for anyone hoping to understand the music of Japan. With a new introduction by the author and full color printing (unlike the Japanese original), this is a must-have for your collection.”

Why did Andy Warhol decide to enter the music business by producing the Velvet Underground, and what did the band expect to gain in return? What made Yoko Ono use the skills she developed in the artistic avant-garde in pop music, and what in turn drew John Lennon to visual art? Why, in 1980s West Germany, did Joseph Beuys record a pop single and artists such as Walter Dahn, Albert and Markus Oehlen, and Michaela Melián form bands? What role does utopia play in the pop music and art of Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, and Fatima Al Qadiri? And, vice versa, did dystopias of transgressive imagery and noise lead the artist group COUM Transmissions to make music as Throbbing Gristle? In Double Lives in Art and Pop Music, Jörg Heiser argues that context shifting between art and pop music is an attempt to find solutions for contradictions faced in one field of cultural production. Ever since Duchamp’s readymade und Hugo Ball’s sound poetry, the definition of art has widened and dissolved to a point where nearly anything geared toward an art audience can be considered an artwork. Today it has become convention to praise art as a way of questioning conventions, not least in regard to conventional borders between disciplines, media, and genres. However, heroic claims of dissolving borders have become a way of kicking at doors that are already wide open—in a political and economic environment defined by neoliberal deregulation and flexibilization geared toward new markets, and permeating every social and cultural sphere. It has thus become increasingly important to discuss the relationship between different fields of cultural production. This book does just that, looking closely at the careers of artists and pop musicians who work in both fields professionally. Historically, these figures provoked cognitive dissonance, but the seeming acceptance and effortlessness today of current border crossings can be deceptive, since they might be serving vested economic or ideological interests. Exploring the intertwined histories of pop and art from the 1960s to the present, Heiser shows that those leading double lives in art and pop music may often be best able to detect these vested interests while pointing toward radical alternatives.

Restock expected to ship 1st August The second issue of Spectres is devoted to the concept of resonances, with contributions by Maryanne Amacher, Chris Corsano, Ellen Fullman, Christina Kubisch, Okkyung Lee, Pali Meursault, Jean-Luc Nancy, David Rosenboom, Tomoko Sauvage, The Caretaker, David Toop, and Christian Zanési. To resonate: re-sonare. To sound again—with the immediate implication of a doubling. Sound and its double: sent back to us, reflected by surfaces, diffracted by edges and corners. Sound amplified, swathed in an acoustics that transforms it. Sound enhanced by its passing through a certain site, a certain milieu. Sound propagated, reaching out into the distance. But to resonate is also to vibrate with sound, in unison, in synchronous oscillation. To marry with its shape, amplifying a common destiny. To join forces with it. And then again, to resonate is to remember, to evoke the past and to bring it back. Or to plunge into the spectrum of sound, to shape it around a certain frequency, to bring out sonic or electric peaks from the becoming of signals. Resonance embraces a multitude of different meanings. Or rather, remaining always identical, it is actualised in a wide range of different phenomena and circumstances. Such is the multitude of resonances evoked in the pages below: a multitude of occurrences, events, sensations, and feelings that intertwine and welcome one other. Everyone may have their own history, everyone may resonate in their own way, and yet we must all, in order to experience resonance at a given moment, be ready to welcome it. The welcoming of what is other, whether an abstract outside or on the contrary an incarnate otherness ready to resonate in turn, is a condition of resonance. This idea of the welcome is found throughout the texts that follow, opening up the human dimension of resonance, a dimension essential to all creativity and to any exchange, any community of mind. Which means that resonance here is also understood as being, already, an act of paying attention, i.e. a listening, an exchange. Addressing one or other of the forms that this idea of resonating can take on (extending—evoking—reverberating—revealing—transmitting), each of the contributions brought together in this volume reveals to us a personal aspect, a fragment of the enthralling territory of sonic and musical experimentation, a territory upon which resonance may unfold. The book has been designed as a prism and as a manual. May it in turn find a unique and profound resonance in each and every reader. Spectres is an annual publication dedicated to sound and music experimentation, co-published by Shelter Press and Ina GRM – Groupe de Recherches Musicales.

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. 

Special poster bundle from our archive – five randomly selected posters/prints for just £15 (£12 members)! Pictured is just a small selection from our poster archive, stretching right back to some of the first shows at OTO in 2008. Screenprints, risographs and high quality prints for shows from the likes of Sun Ra Arkestra, Jandek, Konono No.1, Matthew Shipp, The Necks, Okkyung Lee, Tenniscoats, Awesome Tapes From Africa, John Butcher, Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore and many, many more. Posters will be randomly selected and we'll try to include a good range of prints in each package.

Screenprinted on thick, quality paper and printed in flourescent colours by Tartaruga. Design by Maja Larsson / Organ studio. On our wishlist from the day OTO opened, we're over the moon to finally host one of the greatest free-music groups of all time – The Art Ensemble of Chicago! An extremely rare opportunity to see this legendary group, the impact and influence that The Art Ensemble of Chicago have had over the past five decades cannot be overstated. At turns soulful, chaotic, ennergising and transcendant – playful yet attentive, generous but untethered – the AEC helped redefine what jazz music could be and continue to seek out its future. “A legendary band that created new standards not only for improvisation but for performance as well” – All Music “One of the most enduring units dedicated to free improvisation and modern jazz composition in existence.” – Pitchfork

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. 

A2 silkscreened poster for Joe McPhee's four-day residency at OTO, May 2019. Designed by Oliver Barrett and printed by Tartaruga on thick, quality paper in a limiited edition of 50 numbered copies. For over four decades Joe McPhee has been pursuing a beauty in his music that balances the fierce attack of European free improve with a lyrical poetry stemming from Coltrane’s Love Supreme and hinting at the dark roots of his country’s civil rights protests. Joe has performed and still performs with musicians across all music: Survival Unit, Brotzmann’s Tentet, Dominic Duval, The Thing, Raymond Boni, Andre Jaume, Decoy with John Edwards, Steve Noble & Alexander Hawkins, Evan Parker amongst others. This very special residency draws together the various strands of Joe's incredibly diverse, ever-curious sonic approach, with a jam-packed line-up of collaborators old and new. Even across four nights it's hard to do justice to the scale of his musical output but what's guaranteed is that each of these nights will be unmissable in its own way.

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.

No input noise from Taiwan. "Activist and underground young pioneer from Taipei scene, Xu uses chaotic frequency manipulation and carefully textured post-apocalyptic soundscape. "Formless" includes his full live performance recording at Cafe OTO in 2016.""Born in 1997, Xu set out performing and producing harsh noise under the alias “Berserk” since 2015. Initially, he focused on playing rough feedback from handmade instruments and synthesizers before carrying on specializes in no-input effects. Influenced by Japanoise, Death Metal, Hardcore Punk, his live performance is known for highly intense physical energy and massive volume. In 2017, he turned to combining various equipments including no-input mixer and shortwave radio to session with Free Improvisation musicians and folk narrator. His works as Chia-Chun Xu emphasize more on the interaction between sounds, space, and the others. Besides working on his projects, he also runs his music label “MKUltra Productions”, promoting Taiwanese and worldwide noise and experimental musicians." --- Semi-transparent pro-cassette and tape case, insert printed with special satin paper, limited to 133 copies.Side A recorded at Senko Issha Records, TaipeiSibe B recorded live at Cafe Oto, London, 2016.5.27No-input Electronics / Vocal / Recording / Mixing / Mastering: 徐嘉駿 Chia-Chun XuArtwork (Film destroying): Jesse TsengLayout: 若潭 ruò tán

"A classically trained Chinese bamboo flutist, Lao Dan picked up the saxophone again around 2013 as he went wildly astray in the world of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation. While demonstrating an ever-growing ability to deliver explosive force and intensity in his free playing, Lao Dan keeps a brutal honesty in his approach to the instrument. He plays ‘jazz’ as what it is, not what it’s supposed to be. Navigating constantly between the East and the West, Lao Dan embraces a unique aesthetics which fuses all his past influences into a voice of glorious mayhem and sheer zaniness.Recorded in June 2019, this is a solo set in which two instruments – tenor saxophone and Zheng, also known as the Chinese zither – were played successively and simultaneously by hands and feet. The recording was made in one go with no overdub or effect added. Lao Dan never learned to play the Zheng properly before this very first attempt. As a result, he didn’t struggle at all to play it in an awkward way, while with the saxophone he did, as always, try very hard to do that.The cover art, created by Shenzhen-based artist Tiemei, is a portrait of Shennong, the Deity of medicine and agriculture in ancient Chinese mythology. The three tracks in Chinese Medicine are named after three species of herb each believed to have unique medicinal properties. It is our responsibility to remind you to take them with extra caution. In Chinese medicine, after all, every drug is a thirty-percent poison."

The second of the Machine Bass recording series, MB-S2-600/10 is a record in an edition of 1. 600 minutes long, it is split into 10 equal parts, 1 hour each. Each of these cassettes is one of those parts. The parts, without chronology, are identifiable only by the unique data rendered cover of each cassette.

Machine Bass - Series 1The first of the Machine Bass recording series, MB-S1-900/45 is a record in an edition of 1. 900 minutes long, it is split into 45 equal parts, 20 minutes each. Each of these cassette is one of those parts. The parts, without chronology, are identifiable only by the unique data rendered cover of each cassette

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

"Borbetomagus: A Pollock of Sound is the first feature-length documentary about the legendary improv/noise group Borbetomagus. Filmmaker Jef Mertens brings a raw, urgent, and unpolished vision focusing on a band that has spent almost four decades defining and redefining not just their music, but the boundaries of music itself. Band members Don Dietrich, Donald Miller, and Jim Sauter tell their story with the help of artists, writers, photographers, and filmmakers that include noted critic Byron Coley, drummer Chris Corsano, guitarist Thurston Moore, groundbreaking Japanese noise unit Hijokaidan, and Switzerland's masters of 'cracked electronics,' Voice Crack. Includes never-before-seen archival footage, amazing photographic finds, and previously unreleased recordings."