A Delicate Stiletto comprises of 10 songs from Herb’s ‘vintage years’. Only 4 of the songs have been officially released before, back in 2006 and the other 6 have been hiding out in Herb’s lounge cabinet for 25 years. Imagine an even more whiskey soaked Dean Martin walking out of the cinema after watching a David Lunch marathon. Entering the nearest seedy night club and going hell for leather on the carpeted stage as a disco ball shines and glistens in the bloodshot eyes of a hundred seated goths. This is Herb DiamantÈ’s world of psychedelic lounge.Cracked lounge crooner Herb DiamantÈ emerged from a long psychedelic incarceration, largely intact, over 30 years ago. His songs of alcohol, tobacco and desire are driven by his rich, golden voice atop a psychedelic showroom of sound. A long, tragic set of strange circumstances and sporadic insanity has somehow combined to create his extended and sometimes frighteningly vivid hallucinatory universe. However, he remains a hopeless romantic and will forever pursue his difficult and evasive vision. Herb has shared the stage and studio with the likes of Sun City Girls and Master Musicians of Bukkake. In his other life as John Godbert, he has played in groups such as Skullflower and Vibracathedral Orchestra. He was in Manchester when Mark E Smith was in short trousers and is the man responsible for the iconic art work of the Fall album Live at The Witch Trials.

Selected works from John Chantler's time at Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudion EMS.  --- John Chantler / reed organ, serge synthesizer --- Tracklisting: 1. ( part I ) 13:02 2. ( part II ) 08:44 3. ( part III ) 14:47 --- Recorded and arranged March 2016—November 2017 at EMS, Stockholm; ZKM, Karlsruhe; NOTAM, Oslo and 1703, Stockholm. Thanks to staff EMS, ZKM and NOTAM for their help and support. KM residency was supported by The Australia Council for The Arts. Elements of '( part III )' originally commissioned by Audiorama, Stockholm.

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

Keen listeners who have dug below the surface of Oren Ambarchi’s triple-digit discography know that alongside hypnotic minimalism, veins of irreverent and joyously wayward exploration run deep. Cooked is something of a landmark in Oren’s work, bringing this gloriously cuckoo sensibility right into the heart of his most high-profile solo work. Carrying on the grand Ambarchi tradition of meticulously constructed all-star studio jams (which reached new heights with Shebang, his 2022 Drag City debut), Cooked brings together collaborators from Australia, Germany, Japan and Sweden for two side-long epics where the foot keeps tapping even as the mind boggles. Beginning with piano ripples from Eiko Ishibashi, after only a few seconds “Hidden Tableau” takes an unexpected turn with the entrance of a groaning synthetic voice (created by Konrad Sprenger, production mastermind at the helm for Shebang and this piece). The first half of the piece develops as an oddly moving concerto for this moaning and growling ghost in the machine and a delicate backdrop of piano, organ-like tones, and Oren’s signature shimmering Leslie guitar. As the beautifully flexible swing of Joe Talia’s drums enters, the harmonies fill out into woozy clouds and the synthetic voice seems to morph into something approaching a mutant trumpet. In a left turn that seems to come out of nowhere yet make an inexplicable kind of sense, the piece is then overtaken by patterns of intricate guitar and synthetic arpeggios. These might be Jim O’Rourke on synth, but who knows? If we learned anything from Simian Angel and Shebang, it’s that almost anything we hear could come from Oren’s guitar. Cooked is a long way from the spacious, light-dappled grooves of Ghosted, but Oren’s Swedish bandmates play starring roles here, with Johan Berthling’s double bass anchoring both sides, and drummer Andreas Werliin lending his delicate touch to the second piece, “Sleight of Hand”. Beginning with glistening layers of electric 12-string guitar, “Sleight of Hand” takes some key cues from electric Miles touchstones like “Feio” or his epic take on David Crosby’s “Guinnevere”, with Berthling’s sparse basslines punctuating an almost weightless cornucopia of shifting detail, glimmering with subtle contributions from Michiko Ogawa on shō and James Rushford on a panoply of acoustic keyboards. Suddenly, everything is overwhelmed by a knotty, hyper- complex ‘solo’ from Marcus Pal on digital synthesis, teleporting us to an alternate history where Allan Holdsworth traded the SynthAxe for Xenakis’ UPIC. Building with additional drums and percussion from Will Guthrie to a peak of sizzling intensity, the music then goes sideways into a gently surreal coda, where some distinctly Zawinul-esque chords and Fredrik Rasten’s guitar float over a sprightly rhythm box, the avian inventions of Swedish virtuoso whistler Isak Hedtjärn wafting atop the sunlit stew. It’s certainly Cooked, but not overcooked. Like 10cc in their prime, it layers a dizzying number of elements through intricate studio processes, yet somehow remains open, spontaneous, and intuitive, the whole thing suffused with an omnivorous love of music where everything is up for grabs. It’s a big call, but Cooked might just be the wildest ride that Oren Ambarchi has taken us on yet.  Hidden Tableau: Johan Berthling - Double bass Eiko Ishibashi - Piano Jim O'Rourke - Synth Konrad Sprenger - Voice synthesis, electronics & production Joe Talia - Drums Sleight of Hand: Johan Berthling - Double Bass Will Guthrie - Gamelan & drums Isak Hedtjärn - Whistling Michiko Ogawa - Shō Marcus Pal - Synthetic Sound Fredrik Rasten - Guitars James Rushford - Celeste, piano & portative organ Andreas Werliin - Drums

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

Silk screened softcover, 206 pages, 11 x 17 cm, Print run: 1000 Rab-Rab, May 2026The first English language translation of Varlam Shalamov’s memoires of the twenties,originally written in 1962. Translated, edited and introduced by Cathy Porter.

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

Sotto le Nuvole arrives as a limited edition one sided LP with artwork by Gianfranco Rosi. Designed by Maja Larrson. Produced, recorded and mixed by Daniel Blumberg. Recorded at Daniel’s flat, London and underwater in Baia, Italy. Additional recording by Alberto Landolfi. Mixed at Timeline Studio, Rome. Additional mixing by Stefano Grosso. Mixing Assistant: Giancarlo Rutigliano. Mastered and cut by Loop-O.In Gianfranco Rosi’s portrait of Naples, Sotto le Nuvole (Pompei: Below The Clouds), the ground shakes periodically. Between Mount Vesuvius and theTyrrhenian Sea, the fumaroles of the Phlegraean Fields hiss volcanic gas and steam. Below the sleeping volcano, modern day Naples emerges in black and white and fills with voices, with lives. From the traces of history and the concerns of the present, Rosi documents a city immersed in its continuous past, with Daniel Blumberg’s minimal soundscape hovering in a sonic space between liquid and air. Tasked with creating a soundscape that would suspend space within Rosi’s film, Blumberg called upon the extended technique of saxophonists Seymour Wright and John Butcher to create a gossamer fabric of traces and sounds abstracted from their instruments. Having transitioned from theoretical physics to the saxophone, John Butcher has always deeply considered space in the context of his playing. His concerns are with flow, density and how the saxophone is situated in the living world. Zeroing in on the core sonic properties of the mechanical and acoustic components of the saxophone, Seymour Wright has integrated its every breath, reed vibration, keypad clatter and hissed microtone of his alto into his own, unique improvisational language. In his work with these two seminal players, Blumberg makes his most concentrated soundtrack to date - reinforcing the film's sense of overlapping time and space, and pushing at the limits of experimentation. Initially recorded in Daniel’s flat in London, Butcher and Wright centre themselves around long, consistent tones, so soft that it seems breath is being gently pulled from the saxophone's bell by an invisible hand. Blumberg himself adds haunting bass harmonica, and recordings of Wright’s launeddas - a traditional and ancient triple pipe polyphonic reed instrument from Sardinia, Italy. Blumberg then travelled to the volcanic region of Baia, next to Pompeii. Once a flourishing classical Roman city loved by Nero, Baia slowly sank under hydrothermal pressure, leaving the city in a kind of geological purgatory. Using specialised geophones and hydrophones, Blumberg took those initial recordings and amplified them underwater, sending them calling out across the ruins of Baia’s mosaics, Nymphaeum statues and villas.  “It was important to me that the music was whispered in the same landscape that Gianfranco has worked for the past three years, so that you can hear the volcanic air gulping, the lapping of the waves, the steam and bubbles popping against John and Seymour’s saxophone breaths – an echo from a suspended time.”   What emerges is deeply melancholic, tender, subtle and right at the edges of audio technology. Submerged in an aquarian mausoleum, the mysterious vibrations of the saxophone and its bell become an echo of an echo, wading from the future into the past.  --- Seymour Wright / alto saxophone, launeddasJohn Butcher / soprano & tenor saxophoneDaniel Blumberg / bass harmonica

Play Monk arrives in a gatefold, reverse board 2CD designed by Maja Larrson. Cover photograph of Thelonius Monk at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco in 1968 by Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. Inside photographs of حمد [Ahmed] by Stefan Lacandler. Recorded and mixed by Benedic Lamdin on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd March, 2025 at Fish Factory Studios, London. Mastered by Andreas LUPO Lubich. Produced by Seymour Wright/OTOROKU. After 6 albums re-imagining the work of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, أحمد [Ahmed] turn to the material of Malik’s bandmate Thelonious Monk in the group's ongoing search for future music.  Before going on to develop his own groundbreaking approach to jazz, Ahmed Abdul-Malik worked in Thelonious Monk’s late 1950’s quartets - appearing on seminal Monk recordings: Thelonious In Action (1958) and Misterioso (1958), and the more recently unearthed Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall (2005). Abdul-Malik and Monk share a critical engagement with time - specifically in challenging its linear trajectory and offering sites and modes of synthesis and rupture instead. In their music, fragments of time are scattered and re-arranged in the present, an idea central too to the project of أحمد [Ahmed]. Over several decades, all four members of أحمد [Ahmed] have engaged with Monk’s standards in various individual and collective ways, but Play Monk, recorded in the same three-day London studio sessions as Sama’a (Audition), is the first released documentation of the group's versions of Monk’s music which began with a spontaneous interpretation of ‘Evidence’ in Novara, Italy, 2023.   Across 2CDs, أحمد [Ahmed] atomize Monk’s ‘standards’ - transforming each composition into a shifting quantum time artifact. The melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and spatial gestures of each piece become complex vernacular forms, creating a dialogue in time and a (red)shifting lens through which to view our material present. Into the fissures of Monk’s form, أحمد [Ahmed]  pour their own play - colliding and dancing with Duke Ellington, Cecil Taylor, Caribbean diasporic music, European improvisation and Jah Shaka in their pursuit of future music. “Monk’s music is not played so much as grasped, condensed and catapulted through the vagaries of time,” writes Fielding Hope. “Monk famously used to dance in circles. In flight from the numerical bind, أحمد [Ahmed] make music that sounds like it could float on forever.”

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

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

This residency was produced in partnership with Professor Paul Hegarty as part of the funded project on Innovative music in Japan, with thanks to University of Nottingham and the AHRC impact ‘accelerator’ fund for support. Huge thanks to Paul Hegarty and Sam Thorne. “Chwalfa” (Welsh for “dispersal, rout, upheaval, upset, or a confused or chaotic state”) documents the first return of Incapacitants to the UK since 2016. With the windows boarded up and the subs doubled, two ordinary looking blokes Toshiji Mikawa's and Fumio Kosaka obliterate OTO’s usual whisper hush with clipped out, scorched earth tape loops and pedal chains - creating such an excoriating din it transports the room to the planet’s furnace core and back again. It’s all music, all at once -  a whorling vortex delivered at time bending velocity.  For Vymethoxy Redspiders, who writes the release’s extensive liners, “[the music] is a transcendental outpouring of raw consciousness and firmamental emotion, more in line with the “fire music” of free jazz players like Albert Ayler and Dave Burrell or Sun Ra in his most apocalyptic moments of Moog sorcery than most of the things I long came to associate with the practice of Noise. Incapacitants’ unholy racket morphs from vista of tormented glitch shimmer to crater of obliterated tape loop to deafening light pouring down on disaster fathoms. I'm struck by how Modal or Raga-like it sounds at points, where a deep tremor drone burrs like a wide open plain; for a “pure” noise that is often considered “not musical” it sure hits me where music hits most affectingly and more so than most sounds daring to call themselves music!”  “Chwalfa” contains two tracks, one from each night of the residency. It arrives as a glass mastered CD in a digipak. Edition of 500 with liner notes by Vymethoxy Redspiders.  --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on the 6th and 7th of September, 2024 by Billy Steiger. Mixed by Oli Barrett. Deemed best left unmastered. Cover photo by Paul Watson. Layout by Abby Thomas.

TRIM is an improvising quartet brought together by Dominic Lash (guitar) with Phil Durrant (modular synth), Steve Noble (percussion) and Rachel Musson (saxophones). After Musson was unable to make this show, Colin Webster was recruited on saxophone duties, resulting in two absolutely barnstorming sets under the freshly coined banner of TROM. You know how it is. Times are hard, things get stressful. Sometimes you’ve just got to blow off steam by blasting the doors off an unassuming Hackney music venue and sending the audience barreling down the street. Such was the case at OTO on 5th April this year, when Lash, Durrant, Noble and Webster summoned up the kind of utterly cathartic sonic scree that made a wonderful irrelevance of this having been their first ever performance as a quartet. Make no mistake, this is no one-note performance - the group cover a hugely varied amount of terrain over the two sets' combined near-80 minute run-time - but the sheer sense of exuberance on display here is hard to ignore. A rapidly rotating interplay sees all four musicians trading shapes that mutate and evolve with an almost breathless momentum. There's an exhilarating sense of new forms being created in realtime, forms that seem to blur and shift depending on your vantage point. Whatever angle you come at it, however, this one doesn't let up for a second. On this basis we look forward to welcoming back both TRIM and TROM here, with hopes for TRAM, TREM and TRUM too at some point in the future. -- Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli Barrett

Release #200 of our live digital series! After over a decade and so many incredible sets, we knew that the 200th release had to be something special, and it really doesn't get much more special than this. Where to start? Joe and John have provided so many incredible moments at OTO from the beginning that it's an impossible task to summarise them all. Some of these performances have been released on the label before - whether with Decoy or Joe and John's quartet alongside Lol Coxhill and Chris Corsano - but remarkably this is the first time that we've ever hosted a duo performance from them. Boy oh boy was it worth the wait. This first duo performance from these two took place in the Austrian mountains at the festival Artacts in Tirol, in the afternoon with snowy mountains glimmering through the windows. One of those magical moments in music, where the audience sat there completely moved - with tears in the eyes, tears of happiness. You might be thinking that a response like that might be hard to top. Well, dig in... -- Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli Barrett

On Pleading Light, Berlin-based Egyptian musician Assyouti reworks the score to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s seminal 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc. Matching the heightened expressivity of Dreyer's masterpiece is no easy feat, but Assyouti's skilful adaptation manages it, becoming less an alternative soundtrack than a heartfelt evocation of the film's astonishingly memorably imagery. Voices and orchestral fragments are slowed, looped and eroded to the point of rupture, shifting from accompaniment to textural matter that flares and falls to ash as distortion and decay quietly overtake the image. Throughout, a richly expansive chorus teeters on the precipice between the spiritual and the sepulchral, the human and the synthetic. It's hard not to get swept away with it all; this is music to get lost in. The set's near 40-minute runtime stretches from featherlight, angelic tones to a coruscating density. At times we sense things straining at the limits of the speakers themselves - not so much a matter of volume as an abundance of scope. This is sound-craft on a very broad sonic canvas. -- Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli Barrett

Wonderfully visceral, deeply trippy set from Berlin-based polymath, Eleni Poulou, recorded at OTO as part of a bill with longtime friend Dave Huismans and Scottish artist, Fergus Jones in May 2026. Sometimes live performance can bring a new meaning to the present, sometimes it can elevate that present to a whole new level. And sometimes, perhaps more rarely, a performance can bring you through into a new reality entirely. Such is the case here. "It will be" proclaims Poulou at the start of this 37-minute long set, and straight away we're slipping through the cracks to some other place.. Tape loops warble and a ravelling tangle of synth notes growl and thrum, whilst in the background some seemingly mechanical apparatus ticks and flickers to an unknown purpose. Through the murk and hiss, Poulou's voice exhorts the audience as if with some vital knowledge to share, yet the meanings seem warped and distorted in the telling, with fragmented phrases repeating and circling back on themselves. There's a clear sense of urgency, an almost subconscious understanding that something profound is being shared, but the logic is that of a dream. Whatever the parameters of this dreamscape - and it is a dream that Poulou always deftly manages to keep tethered both to the room and the audience within - it's clear that the rules of this reality are subtly askew. The effect is deeply hypnotic and strangely transcendent. To get the most from a dream we must meet it on its own terms, surrendering ourselves to what it has to offer. It is no easy task, yet if we can do this the hidden messages contained within can seem not only revelatory but inevitable. It can be. It shall be. It will be. -- Thanks from Eleni to Dave Huismans, Fergus Jones and Felt Records for the invite, plus Tara Clerkin, Beth Arzy, Egidija Circaite, Mo, Thea, Dave and Oli. -- Recorded by Kevin ShoemakerMixed and masterd by Oli BarrettCover photo by Eleni Poulou

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

Bumper pack of mind-frying, fuzzed out psychedelics from three masters of the medium, with Neil Campbell (Vibracathedral Orchestra), Noel Meek (End of the Alphabet) and Alexander Tucker (Grumbling Fur) performing solo and in a very special trio set.  --- Tracklisting: 1. Alexander Tucker Solo - 18:58 2. Neil Campbell Solo - 14.41 3. Noel Meek Solo - 21:56 4. Trio - 29.34 --- Recorded on Sunday 24th April 2016 by Shaun Crook. Mixed by James Dunn, Abby Thomas & Noel Meek. Mastered by James Dunn.

Softcover, 272 pages27cm x 21cmISBN 978-1-03693-585-6OTOHON, 2026 "The discarded syntax of the office, parcels of food on paper and cardboard: all are mummified in photographic stasis in the book you hold in your hand. But still, at this moment, they are also rotting somewhere. There is no end to this: through words and music, sound and visuals, Adam Bohman always brings home the bacon,  his textures manifesting a world you thought had disappeared." - Sophie Sleigh-Johnson   Adam Bohman has been operating on the outer fringes of underground music for over forty years. Working with home-built instruments, found objects, tape cut-ups, collages and graphic scores, his music transmutes the quotidian bric-a-brac of English life into sound - incorporating elements of music concretè and sound poetry alongside free improvisation. Much lesser known however, is Bohman’s visual output. Since the mid 1970’s, Bohman has used pencil, pastel, crayon and ink to conjure creatures and demons, sepia-saddened prospectors and smoked-out cowboys onto sugar paper and repurposed card. His later work uses biro and sellotape to cake together collages of takeaway menus, tinned food and the photocopied litter of the workplace. This is the first collection of Bohman’s artworks in print, bringing together just some of the thousands of drawings, collages and concert posters that collectively represent over half a century's worth of scrawing, scraping, gluing and smudging images into being. From drawings made in adolescence to recent collages, ‘Drawings, Collages, Paintings’ collects Adam’s artwork alongside an interview and an essay by Sophie Sleigh-Johnson in an attempt to bring attention and understanding to the work of one of England's most important underground artists.

The book arrives as signed and numbered 24 page staple bound booklet, printed in black and white on Keaykolour 100% recycled paper. Printed by Aldgate Press. Thanks to Max Bondi for his advice. Written during a bout of illness that prevented Foster from playing and performing music, Kneel to Heal is the first illustrated chapbook from musician Josephine Foster and a grateful offering to the restorative power of nature. Across 24 pages, Foster muses upon the simple joys of just being in the world, her figures traversing a landscape of words and imagery that is both playful and deeply felt. There is an uncluttered simplicity to Foster's art, at once charming and profound; a sense of calm and openness reflective of her feeling during its making "of being drawn profoundly into and toward silence" Conjuring the easy fluidity of Shel Silverstein, or the dreamlike, transportive scenes of Marc Chagal, Foster's brushwork digs deep into the soil whilst looking up to the stars. There are no weighty proclamations, no authoritative conclusions, just a shared wonder and a sense of time unfurling alongside the book's creation that offers solace both in its giving and its receiving. The joys of the natural world may be fleeting but Foster seems to suggest that there is no cause for despondency in this, merely an acceptance that this is how reality is. Nevertheless, "what emerges from the mystery.. and that real reality.. will heal".

First publication of new pieces by composer and musician Mica Levi titled ‘star star star’. The collection debuts 7 new works developed over the recent months by Mica and a working group of performers during a residency at Oto. Using written text instructions, speech rhythm techniques and visual cues, these pieces are open to players with no previous musical experience and incorporate elements such as spoken word, light and movement. ‘star star star’ puts the emphasis on the player and the group, whether that be on stage or at home, and shares a DIY spirit of openness and possibility.

     Released in print by Cafe OTO (OTOHAN01) and as a download by CURL (CURL015). 
 Produced by Cafe OTO and Qu Junktions.     24ppA5Staple boundPrinted on pastel blue 80gsm paper Mica Levi is a musician and composer born in Guildford and living in South East London. They use programming software, written notation and improvisation to produce music and are currently a member of the groups CURL, Good Sad Happy Bad and Tirzah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Koln, Germany around 1991. After a 40-minute train ride from Aachen, Christoph Heemann and Jim O'Rourke are sitting around with Jan St. Werner, C-Schulz, Frank Dommert and George Odjik. Heemann has brought with him a strange obscure disc (what else?) from Portugal by some group called "Plux Quba." Or is it the record? The label? Who knows, because no one here reads Portuguese, dummy! But what they do know when the needle hits the groove is that they've never heard anything like it. Attempts to cite reference points are soon given up, there are some similarities to Robert Ashley's later work, but even that is deceiving. It is simple, gentle, melodic, and yet completely alien. Originally released in 1988 on Ama Romanta, and reissued last in 1998 on Moikai.

Four faces to the sky, stretched to the max to finally allow us to be free.

To pour some out for one of their heroes, the cosmos’ own Sun Ra, Bitchin Bajas simply cut a slice of their own DNA and amplify it! Or something like that: they clearly vibe with Ra in hypno-symbiosis, setting the controls of their analog synths for the heart of Sun. Bonus mixtribute: a heartfelt doff to Queen Wendy C, sythnaut and another mother!A portion of the proceeds for Switched On Ra was donated to The Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project. The Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP) is a visual arts and education project that connects teaching artists and scholars to incarcerated students at Stateville Maximum Security Prison through classes, workshops, a policy think tank, and guest lectures. Classes cover subjects ranging from poetry, visual arts, and creative writing to political theory, social studies, and history. PNAP also offers a tuition-free degree-granting program at Stateville in partnership with the University Without Walls at Northeastern Illinois University. Our classes serve as an indispensable opportunity for our students to connect with artists, scholars, and writers from the region, expand their cultural and political education, and communicate complex ideas. PNAP courses develop projects—visual art, creative writing, and critical essays—which are the basis for exhibitions, events, and publications that are shared both within and across the walls of the prison.

Our favorite six-string shaman is waving that axe around again! Sir Richard Bishop wrenches forth fresh damnable truth and beauty from a musical kamikaze run through histories both known and unknown. Turning a gimlet eye to the American Primitive guitar style, Sir Rick applies his own bloodthirsty interpretive methods on a self-described “excursion into the dark woods,” to locate – and play along with – the Primitive’s moonshine-fed inner savage.

Totality! It can only be good news. The second convergence of Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas, years removed from the first, misses no steps and posits low-key revolutions in gravity for everyone instead. LPs divide inevitably into two halves; here, the first side could be typed ‘space’ and the second side ‘time’. With loads of totally principled playing in the communal feel, both sides blur the edges warmly. Double Bass, Guimbri - Joshua Abrams Harmonium - Lisa Alvarado Drums, Percussion - Mikel Patrick Avery Organ, Synth - Cooper Crain Flute, Synth - Rob Frye Bass Clarinet - Jason Stein Electronics - Daniel Quinlivan

Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin share a fascination with rhythm and the myriad of ways it can subdivide within the beat. Using aspects of jazz, world and experimental musics, each tune settles into a deep groove, digging itself via continuous minimal adjustments into an ever-deeper, eternal groove.

Original, 1975 Japan only pressing on Offbeat Recods. NM/VG+ Prestige copy. Vinyl looks unplayed and new. Includes OBI. Sleeve is closer to NM, but has very minor corner dings and OBI has a light creasing toward top.  Image of actual record for sale. Any questions, or if you're local, want to check condition or colect in person, please email bradford@cafeoto.co.uk (please note: Bradford only works on Tuesdays and Thursday)

original 1981 pressing on Nimbus West. NM/NM Both the LP and the Sleeve are pristine / look new and unplayed. Sleeve still in open shrink. Very very minor corner dings, to be expected with age. As clean of a copy as could be found.  Image of actual record for sale. Any questions, or if you're local, want to check condition or colect in person, please email bradford@cafeoto.co.uk (please note: Bradford only works on Tuesdays and Thursday)

Original, 1971 Limited Edtion Box set Box set on FMP. Recorded during the Free Music Market August 27/28, 1971 in Berlin. Contains three previously released albums: Brötzmann / Van Hove / Bennink Plus Albert Mangelsdorff - Elements Brötzmann / Van Hove / Bennink Plus Albert Mangelsdorff - Couscouss De La Mauresque Brötzmann / Van Hove / Bennink Plus Albert Mangelsdorff - The End. NM/VG. All six vinyl sides are pristine and look new and unplayed. Unnumbered copy without poster. Box is complete but has age associated yellowing and was a bit compressed somewhere in its long life, leading to some folding on the sides of the box and split on one side.  Image of actual record for sale. Any questions, or if you're local, want to check condition or colect in person, please email bradford@cafeoto.co.uk (please note: Bradford only works on Tuesdays and Thursday)

Orignal 1974, CBS Japan only pressing of the original soundtrack from the movie of the same name directed by Shûji Terayama and the Tenjou Sajiki. Kan Mikami makes an appearance in the movie and some of the tracks. NM/NM Super clean copy. Both vinyl and sleeve look nearly new. Includes OBI and insert.  Image of actual record for sale. Any questions, or if you're local, want to check condition or colect in person, please email bradford@cafeoto.co.uk (please note: Bradford only works on Tuesdays and Thursday)

Original 1974 USA Strata East Pressing. NM/VG+ Vinyl is pristine. Looks new. Sleeve is super clean and tight, but has some cracking at top and bottom seems and a 4mm ding about 12mm up from the bottom left corner.  Image of actual record for sale. Any questions, or if you're local, want to check condition or colect in person, please email bradford@cafeoto.co.uk (please note: Bradford only works on Tuesdays and Thursday)

Original, 1971, Japan only pressing, VG+/VG+. Vinyl very clean. Closer to NM. No OBI or insert. Sleeve is in nice shape. Some light rubbing and corner dings.  Image of actual record for sale. Any questions, or if you're local, want to check condition or colect in person, please email bradford@cafeoto.co.uk (please note: Bradford only works on Tuesdays and Thursday)

Longstanding pioneer of the Bay Area, Pacific Coastline underground scene. Seymour Glass has been recording, performing, disrupting and spreading his Musique Concrete trickery for many's the decade. With projects such as Glands of External Secretion with Barbara Manning, BUFMS, Brent Lewis Ensemble , his time as publisher and editor of the now legendary magazine Bananafish, his online mail-order empire – Tedium House, his many other solo and collaborative projects, it is safe to say that Seymour Glass is a lifer.On this double disc onslaught, Seymour has gone above and beyond the call of sonic obscurity. Six wonderfully disturbing longform pieces of cut up sounds and garbles presented to you in a nice 2 CD card gatefold cover for you to enjoy in an uncomfortable atmosphere. Beyond timing, past masterfully braided timbres, the six sides and hundred-twenty-eight minutes of Posterior Vitreous Detachment aren’t just gorgeous musically, they are the lost sound library of Alexandria itself, an indefatigable degustation, squirming sushi along anundulating conveyor one glutting morsel climbing onto another, the eaten eating, a rising gorge of nascent hunger so that somehow you have room for it all. Have I been seduced, educated and nourished, or is this a fattening for slaughter? My attention clawfights in panic but my fears seem to shape the music as it parries, distracting me with meek yowls turned yawns rolling me right onto my back. I’m done for.- pHarmar Histamine

This very special and wonderful solo performance by Oxford based Pat Thomas was recorded in Dublin during the first ever Reception Weekend event at the Complex. The piano Pat was playing had been very unique as it had copper plating on the interior giving the piano and strange and magical resonance. Nyahh Records is very grateful and excited to be able to share this performance with the world and to have Pat Thomas added to our list of artists.

At long last, Rafael Toral delivers 'Travelling Light', his stunning, wildly anticated follow-up to 2024's critally acclaimed ‘Spectral Evolution’, via Drag City. Sprawling across beautifullay produced double LP and CD editions — complete with liner notes by Oto’s own Bradford Bailey — encountering the Portuguese, experimental journeyman embarking into the some of the most ambitious territory of his career, 'Travelling Light' is one of those rare wonders that unfolds over time and has to be heard to believed.

Glenn Kotche, Jim O'Rourke and Jeff Tweedy. Together again, this time with protection. Three guys playing musical songs featuring singing.

"Breathing in, breathing out. Tide comes in, tide goes out. The sun rises and it also sets: beginnings and endings. These are the first impressions given by The Visitor: a build-up and break-down. One seamless, 38-minute piece of music that completely engages its listeners. An extremely thoughtful piece that even a year later, still retains all of the qualities it had upon first listen. This record made me realize the full potential music can have when someone who actually gives a damn does something about it. Here, O'Rourke constructs an intricate and personal piece of music that unveils its beauty with every listen. Open your ears, put this record on the platter, close the door behind you, shut your eyes, and prepare for the trip. Remember to be a good visitor - and visit often..."

We Jazz Magazine, Issue 20 / Fall 2026 128 pp, 170 x 240 mm in size and printed on 140g Edixion paper with laminated 300g Invercote covers.  “Brilliant Corners” for Thelonious Monk Thelonious Monk By Francis Gooding, Mats Gustafsson, Fielding Hope, Patrick Preziosi, Andy Thomas, Arttu Tolonen, Bret Sjerven, Daniel Spicer & Wif Stenger, Miles Okazaki by Andrew Scott, Kiri Ra! by Wif Stenger, Jazz Is Dead By Tina Edwards, Dirar Kalash by Henry Boon, Dewey Redman on Impulse by Andy Beta, Water Damage by Matt Sonzala, Mikel Patrick Avery by Patrick Romanowski, The Torched Torch Singers by Alex Coles & more.

Softcover, 51pp Taco!, September 2026  someone is driving between two fieldssomeone else is feeding the baby you’re at the buffet24 hour buffetall you can eat meatthat is me Written in the Year of the Dragon, Zara Joan Miller’s long poem traces fire across a year. Moving through the experience of becoming a mother, it repurposes rage and tenderness as forces of transformation. A radical re-centering that calls into question wider meanings of home, security, faith and survival in the face of global imperialism. A year of feeding fire, of dousing and soft loving.

Softcover, 149pp Scribe, 2026Translated by Julia Sanchez and Heather Cleary  In Northern Mexico, Paulina, Perla, Antonia, Reina, and Jordan are striving to survive the barrio, hustling on the edge of a cartel-run economy, nursing the wounds made normal in a world that eats its own. Hovering over their trials is a spirit with gothic flair, dressed in black and crowned with braids: Medea, a mythic mother of the Chihuahuan desert, ancient as the Aztecs but never too old to be petty. From aiding a trophy girlfriend’s abortion, to accompanying a mother in her search for her lost child in the desert, to embracing those taken too soon in the narco’s brutal proxy wars, Medea fights for justice for her chosen mortals ― her divine wrath the only power that could rival the corrupt, violent web spun by the cartel, the government, and the military. Dahlia de la Cerda’s magnetic prose draws readers right into the heart of that web and links all our fates to the missions of Medea, equal parts midwife and gravedigger, a femme fatale god in a femicidal world.

Softcover, 345pp Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2021Why Japan? In Fifty Sounds, winner of the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, Polly Barton attempts to exhaust her obsession with the country she moved to at the age of 21, before eventually becoming a literary translator. From min-min, the sound of air screaming, to jin-jin, the sound of being touched for the very first time, from hi’sori, the sound of harbouring masochist tendencies, to mote-mote, the sound of becoming a small-town movie star, Fifty Sounds is a personal dictionary of the Japanese language, recounting her life as an outsider in Japan. Irreverent, humane, witty and wise, Fifty Sounds is an exceptional debut about the quietly revolutionary act of learning, speaking, and living in another language.

Softcover, 450pp Granta, 2026To the untrained eye, the rabbi is far from desirable. He is lofty and unkempt, he is ageing and his congregation is ever diminishing. But to one man, he is the object of obsession.Our narrator adores the rabbi and worships the universe between his legs. But so too does he bristle at being relegated to the peripheries of the rabbi's life. When they're apart, he manically contemplates every element of the rabbi's being: his absent husband; his first (and only) wife and child, both now deceased; his unstable, yet alluring, adopted son. Until, in a bid to help sustain their relationship, our narrator embarks on an increasingly urgent quest to better understand his mercurial lover - one which threatens to upturn the lives of both men.Lavish and lascivious, My Lover, the Rabbi is an exuberant exploration of devotion and desire, as well as a careening Catherine wheel of a novel about queer family-making, one which is attuned to the mysterious constellations and patterns that shape our lives.

Softcover, 300pp Penguin, 2026Strikingly clear, humane and helpful, this is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand autism and the autistic spectrum. Drawing on many years of clinical experience and research, as well as the testimonies of autistic people, it is an up-to-the minute account of the many indicative features of autism and how they have been assessed and treated over almost a century.As rates of autism diagnosis escalate in almost all high-income countries, researchers today mostly agree that there is no single cause or even single clinical picture of autism. Rather than a neat and well-defined entity, autism is described as a spectrum or constellation of traits, varying in intensity, distribution and severity, with practically everyone in the general population showing at least some autistic trait or feature.At the same time, there has been a radical split between the ways in which autism is perceived. For many, it is a disorder, a pathology based on a deficit, whereas for others it is an identity, a natural variation in human cognitive and behavioural diversity.For anyone facing the special challenges of autism, it can be hard to find clarity amid such complexity and contradiction, making Darian Leader’s illuminating guide to the field of autism research and treatment particularly welcome.

Screenprinted on thick, quality paper printed by Tartaruga. Design by Maja Larsson / Organ studio. We're delighted to present a four-day residency with one of the greatest living UK-based improvisers - Pat Thomas. Criminally unheralded, Pat is a fearless and uncompromising player who – despite coming from a background of free improvisation and new music – can feel as close to the worlds of noise and experimental music. His performances range in approach and texture from fearsome cacophony that can sound like a piano having its guts ripped out, with Pat thumping discordant clusters of keys with his fists or rattling the exterior wooden frame; to delicately soothing passages where his fingers glide over the keys, creating microscopic tones and resonant melodies that can hold an entire sonic landscape. The residency coincides with the release of Pat's new LP - The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari - on our own in-house OTOROKU label, which comprises four typically genre-defying and sonically dexterous pieces from one of the UK's most extraordinary pianists. "I can't quite think of anyone else who sounds quite like this: it is in a class of its own." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery "Thomas runs the gamut of techniques, splashing clusters, weaving contrapuntal lines and building elaborate structures from the inside out. Despite their variety, they share a fundamental quality – they truly sound like spur of the moment creations, not the final draft of ideas mulled over for weeks, if not months on end." - Bill Shoemaker, Point of Departure

A3 poster for Riverloam Trio – the trio of Mikołaj Trzaska, Mark Sanders, Ollie Brice – at OTO in 2014, as part of the 12th Polish Film Festival. From the original listing... “Acclaimed composer, saxophonist and clarinetist, Mikołaj Trzaska appears at Cafe OTO on 10th May for Trzaska Moving Movies, leading an international trio with Mark Sanders (drums) and Ollie Brice (double bass) playing songs from the soundtracks to the outstanding films of Wojciech Smarzowski including Rose, The Dark House, and Traffic Department. Trzaska is one of the most important figures in the Polish jazz scene in the broadest sense. One of the creators of the revolutionary Polish form of jazz called 'Yass', he has been working with Wojciech Smarzowski for many years. His soundtracks have received exceptional recognition, both from fans and from music critics alike. Trzaska has also created music for a number of documentaries, including Iwona Bartólewska’s A Letter to My Son.”

Poster print for the Intersect event that took place across Cafe OTO, The Vortex and Servant Jazz Quarters in December 2013. Design by Paul Abbott. From the original listing... “An extended evening of adventurous music taking place across Servant Jazz Quarters, The Vortex, Cafe OTO and The OTO Project Space. The ticket price gives you a wristband that gets you access to all four venues throughout the day. Line-up includes: Alex Ward Angharad Davies Blue Eyed Hawk Chris Weaver Daichi Yoshikawa Dollyman Fumi Okiji Guillaume Viltard Hannah Marshall Isnaj Dui James Dunn Jennifer Allum Julie Kjær Klavikon Matthew Bourne Oli Brice Oliver Coates Orchestra Elastique Ore Paul Abbott Peter Blundell Phil Julian Rachel Musson Ross Lambert Seymour Wright Strobes Steve Noble Tom Rogerson Woven Entity Yoni Silver”

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

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

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

Variations On A Theme by OM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">Variations On A Theme by OM" />Brand new, beautifully produced Vinyl and Cassetted reissues from Drag City  OM reunites one of the most powerful rhythm sections in rock music: Al Cisneros [bass, vocals] and Chris Hakius [drums], both ex-members of the legendary Sleep. Variations on a Theme is comprised of three long songs employing a series of rhythmic chants whose cadence-like textural drive conveys flight. The album's numerous lyrics serve as symbolist vehicles to a state outside the field of time and space. Variations on a Theme is a series of vibrations and flow. The opening track,"On The Mountain at Daw" is the thematic blueprint of the entire album; a transportive series of differentiated verse with sets of solid groove. "Kapil's Them" furthers the motif while the closer "Annapurna" breaks the spell, where the final wash of sound reflects the infinite.

Brand new, beautifully produced vinyl and cassettes editions from Drag City of Om astounding second full-length

Zhu Wenbo is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who is dedicated to "music that doesn't sound like music", and he has released 'Four Lines and Improvisation' (Alone-001) and 'Jyunishi 十二支' (Aloe-003) on Aloe Records. Fat City was a band that contains elements of lo-fi, krautrock, noise rock, etc., it is one of the representatives of Beijing D-22 underground rock memories. Years later, during a performance at the Xiaozu Works, Zhu Wenbo somehow decided to cut and read the lyrics while the four-track recorder slowly spun. The collage style seems to have shades of William S. Burroughs and David Lynch."Fat City is my first band. Ma Meng and I started rehearsal in late 2008, and we stopped activities at the beginning of 2013. At that time we really wrote a bunch of songs. Thanks to some suitable opportunities, I decided to do a special performance at Xiaozu Works on November 1st, 2024, using the lyrics of Fat City as performing materials. I printed all these lyrics on paper, and during the performance I cut them into fragments and picked them randomly and read. The process lasted long time, meanwhile I used a four-track cassette recorder recording and playing back. Forward, reverse, fast and slow. Twenty four lyrics in total. This is all the lyrics I can find, but there are still some forgotten. Now these songs sound like the same song. They have always been like this. " - Zhu Wenbo

Li Song is a London-based musician and computer programmer. He performs improvised music with his computer and composes music using electronics and acoustic instruments. Luciano Maggiore is a Palermo-born, London-based musician whose work is characterised by the use of speakers and several analogue/digital devices (samplers, CD players, walkmans, tape recorders) as well as acoustic objects and addresses the performativity of the musical act, the perception of it, and the obscurity that emanates from it. His main interests include mechanisms of sound diffusion, performance, repetition, endurance, non-human animal languages, dance, and folklore.This album was recorded beneath the railway arches and across the marshes of Walthamstow, London. It captures the subtle interplay between portable electronics and the rhythmic pulse of passing trains. Rather than erasing the urban environment, the artists added white noise to create a unified sonic landscape. The result is a semi-composed, semi-improvised exploration born from the interweaving arches of environmental factors and human dialogue—a piece of music that eschews self-awareness in favour of a supernatural imbalance.The work functions as a collaboration between Li's "no-performance" practice and Maggiore’s fascination with repetition and endurance. A creation of time in which the boundaries between performer, device, and environment finally dissolve.

Zhao Cong is an experimental musician based in Beijing. She uses a variety of everyday objects, amplified by pickups from varies microphones, to bring out unfamiliar and heterogeneous sounds. She has released solo album '55355' (Alone-004) on Aloe Records in 2023. Kevin Corcoran, based in San Francisco, is a percussionist and sound artist whose work engages with sonic material across a multiplicity of domains, using a variety of approaches such as improvised performance, field recordings and sound installations.'-1 outside / 24 inside' was recorded after the duo's performance at Aloe on-site #20. The two tracks were captured separately: one evening in an underground pass-way, and another during daytime in a studio. Both locations are venues in Beijing that consistently hold experimental music concerts. Resonating with the album title on both metaphorical and geographical levels. With their playing, you can hear the touch of the musicians' hand, hear the variations between amplified and un-amplified objects, and how sounds change in different spaces.

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

Region-free 2x Blu-ray. Includes 80-page book. Comes in a bespoke custom box with stickers/postcard. Seventeen episodes of Alice Coltrane’s Eternity’s Pillar, a spiritual television programme broadcast in Los Angeles between 1985 and 1988. Drawn from master tapes held in the Coltrane archive, the programmes combine devotional teachings, meditation and music from the jazz visionary and spiritual leader. Also included is Alice Coltrane, A Love Supreme, a 1970 Black Journal segment filmed at her New York home, featuring an interview and performance footage with Pharoah Sanders, Reggie Workman, Bill Wood and Rashied Ali. An accompanying book adds an episode guide, essays, interviews and recollections, plus the running time is almost nine hours!

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

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

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

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

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

This is a recording of the ten minute piece kindly commissioned by Alan F Jones for the Organ for the Senses festival held annually at the Spreckels Pavilion in San Diego using their open air organ. The music was performed by Justin Murphy-Mancini and recorded by Alan Jones. This audio is from a rehearsal performance a few days before the public premiere on 27 May 2017. --- Justin Murphy-Mancini / organ --- Tracklisting: 1. Move Along, Nothing To See Here - 10:14 --- Recorded by alan jones/laminal audio at spreckels pavilion organ, san diego, may 2017

A duo for saxophone and synthesizer. Johns/John lock into a series of cycles and frequency systems that while loosely in the tradition of the patterned saxophony and accompanying string drone of La Monte Young and the Theatre of Eternal Dream Music’s B Flat Dorian Blues. The pair obliterate the instrumental hierarchy that Young espouses for an altogether more unknowable intensity of experience. -- John Chantler / synthesizer Johannes Lunds / alto saxophone  --- Liner notes: Two Dreams For Endless Skies Music makes my mind drift uncontrollably. When I saw John Chantler and Johs Lunds perform at Copenhagen’s Mayhem venue I had a vision: I awake suddenly to discover that I have been sleeping on a beach. It’s a rainy early morning and I’m laying on my back in the open on the sand, the hood of my jacket blinding my peripheral vision. I have no idea how I got there and only see grey clouds above and hear the waves and wind. I stare into the sky blinking from light speckles of falling rain, my mind reeling from two dreams. I try to stem the rapid decay that dreams inherently suffer from: 01 Static I’m a child living on a west coast Canadian island and the nights I hate most are the silent ones. To fall asleep to anything other than silence is preferable – rain the best, howling wind reassuring, a violent storm just fine – it’s an emptiness broken sporadically by a creaking tree, a snapping branch and other terrifying small sounds that emanate from the encroaching forest. It’s the terrifying absence of background sounds that makes me aware of how far away from everything I am here. It makes me claustrophobic – the dark edges of the forest encroach, the only thing keeping them from closing in is the light outside the front door washing the dark green trees, ferns and rocks with a creepy dim light. Around this time, while I start to understand my fear of silence, I am given a portable radio. I spend nights slowly panning the tuning dial through the shimmering static noise of the radio spectrum, picking up the odd AM channel that somehow has made itself audible all the way out here where I am. Faint songs blend into speech into rich hisses into warbling glissandi and squeaks and pops – engrossing noises that I imagine come from orbiting satellites, distant planets and other worlds. 02 Waves In the next dream I travel with my father to the northern tip of Vancouver Island. We hike through the forests of Cape Scott Park towards the sea. It takes us all day to get there. Along the trail I listen to the relentless roar of the wind and crashing waves coming off the ocean. The coast persistently seems just over the next hill but doesn't appear – the white noise grows more wearing and the hike turns to a slog. The park we are in contains a series of overgrown fields and dilapidated farm houses. Built by late 19th century Danish colonists, they were abandoned just over a decade later when the roads and utilities the government had promised didn't materialise. The settlements have a spooky peacefulness, beautiful but mournful in the subsuming nature. Through ghost farms and fields, then some low bushes, we finally arrive at the shore. Here the white noise of wind and waves takes full hold. The white-capped sea churns out to the horizon and the pale bright sandy beach stretches to either side of us for kilometres. Far down the beach we see a number of large dark lumpen shapes plonked upon the sand. As we walk towards them the shapes slowly reveal themselves to be a colony of recently deceased sea lions. In the heat of the blaring sun some of the giant cadavers have become bloated enough to cause their boiled and steaming guts to explode out onto the beach. Dotted in constellations around the carcasses and across the shore are hundreds of brightly coloured size 10 Nike running shoes, all for the left foot. A shipping container must have fallen off a freighter during a heavy storm, breaking apart and dumping the left footed shoes into the sea, where they drifted to the shore and washed up on this beach. They look so peculiar and fake against the guts and endless nature – vibrant running shoes, floating through infinite space, bobbing across the swelling grey sea, in the brilliant rays of sunshine, or the luminous light of the moon, blown on by howling wind through the slow motion murk of my memory. A large black bear emerges from behind one of the giant sea lion carcasses and raises itself up onto its hind legs. I jump up but instead of the beach I am back in the venue and my ears are ringing. Finish There’s an idea that the essential human use of music is as a mask – that at its core music is a way to drown out all the external noises that our most inner primordial self automatically processes as a warning, setting our nerves alight. What this understanding of music might mean for, say, love songs, dance or noise music is hard to fathom, and the idea becomes too reductive to be interesting. But it is useful sometimes, inasmuch as the idea connects music directly to animals, landscape and endless cosmos – dumping us humans and our machines and activities into what was once called nature. Sound and silence drift uncontrollably, endlessly, until they find music. Music makes our minds drift uncontrollably but gives us an interface with the world. Nathaniel Budzinski

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC    Tracklisting: CD1 “Put the Brakes On” - 50:08 CD2 “Some Good News” -  56:43Double CD documenting the magic meeting of one of the all-time great rhythm sections in jazz: percussionist Hamid Drake and bassist William Parker, with London’s brilliant Black Top (Orphy Robinson and Pat Thomas) and Elaine Mitchener. Across two sets the quintet are infectiously energetic and inspired, striding from synchronised heavy groove to star bright solos, whilst incorporating dub effects, guimbri and sumptuous blues piano playing.  Formed by Orphy Robinson and Pat Thomas but always realised with an ever changing number of invited musicians, Black Top's blend of lo-fi samples, dub effects and experimental electronics has been daring free improvisation since 2011. Their virtuoso performances draw on their Afro-Caribbean roots with delicious spontienty and humour; the histories of Ridley Road Market, the LIO and Islamic West Africa are sounded out side by side on iPad, marimba and vibraphone. Having met in 2006, Black Top played with bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake as part of their residency at Cafe OTO in 2016; forming a quartet grounded in transatlantic kinship but which looked outward to the Carribean, calypso music and Saharan gnawa rhythms. When Parker and Drake returned to OTO in 2019 Black Top reformed again, but this time with the brilliant addition of vocalist Elaine Mitchener.  Over the last few years the clarity with which Mitchener has explored vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde has been stunning, but here the range in her influences is manifest, moving effortlessly between phonetic and poetic experimentation and spoken word, all the while at ease with soul soaked jazz and dissonant free fall. A hand drum duet with Hamid Drake astonishes before being laced perfectly with cosmic theremin and Parker’s fantastic acid shehnai.  --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Sunday 28th July 2019 by Paul Skinner and mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Photos by Dawid Laskowski and artwork by Oliver Pitt.

“The animating spirit is Poppy’s protean musical imagination, as light as wings beating one moment, thunderous and dark the next. … It’s not just an archive [but] otherwise unreleased works caught in live performance and gently transformed in the editing suite into the components of four well-shaped albums. … Poppy’s music is like Madagascar — you discover species there you don’t find anywhere else.” — Brian Morton, Wire magazine, on ARK HIVE OF A LIVE “Whatever the details, whatever the situation he finds himself in at any given moment, whatever his temporary function, whatever company he finds himself in, whether he is on his own or with others, commissioned, contracted and sponsored or left to his own devices, the music is as elusive and compelling as ever, expressing a mysterious state of being rather than merely a form, creating space and time for both performer and listener. Some of his pieces are intensely exciting and uplifting and cheerful, a melancholy razzle-dazzle; some are very austere and serious and sober, a freaky, bittersweet unease. Exactly as they were, exactly as they will be, the same, but different, taking advantage of the ambiguity in the world.” — Paul Morley, from the introduction to Ark Hive of A LiveArk Hive of A Live is a set of recordings by Andrew Poppy, along with a 128 page PDF, including writing by Andrew Poppy, an introduction by Paul Morley, other writing by Leah Kardos, Nik Bärtsch and Rose English and archival photographs. Andrew Poppy developed Ark Hive of A Live as a place for unreleased music from the 80s 90s 00s and 10s. ‘Live’ in the title indicates these works originated in public performance as opposed to the recording studio — however, these live recordings have been processed, and while they remember their original acoustic vibration are now transformed, transplanted and almost the same. Ark Hive of A Live isn’t a box set ‘best of’ or mini series. Each disc has been ordered to play like an album, with an indelible ‘suite-like’ order, even if many of the pieces were written at different times and with different production details. Volumes 1 to 4 are focused respectively on: the orchestra with a soloist; a collection of vocal pieces, for ensemble or orchestra; music written for independent ensembles; and the contrast between acoustic music and music which creatively exploits electrical and electronic technology. The Ark Hive is an ironic meditation on the archive. It brings together element of biography and materials from a lifetime of creative endeavour in sonic, language and visual forms. Tracks, writings, performance photographs and scores: 1+1+1+1 = Ark Hive. The project holds it all together with some irony, because it is aware of the absurdity of the enterprise but plows ahead relentlessly anyway --- Performers include: 
Andrew Poppy, Sustaining Ensemble, Noszferatu, Crash Ensemble, CoMA Ensemble, Roger Heaton Group, John Harle, Simon Haram, Darragh Morgan, Tania Chen, Kädy Plaas, Margaret Cameron, Ashley Slater, Peter Sidholm, BBC Concert Orchestra, ROH Garden Venture Ensemble, Estonian Male Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The live recordings in Ark Hive of A Live are connected with various images and writings collected in the PDF, which contains the following:— An introduction by Paul Morley, who helped release Andrew’s first albums on ZTT Records in the 1980s.— Invited writing by Leah Kardos, Nik Bärtsch and Rose English, responding to different aspects of the Ark Hive collection.— Writing by Andrew: introducing and reflecting on the Ark Hive project; overviews of each of the four volumes of music; writing on each composition, including programme notes, lyrics, poems, prose poems, librettos, performing instructions; and thoughts on his life and work as a composer, performer and creative artist.— The Image Ark: 38 photographic images, with complementary text by Andrew and credits/captions.— Discography Backwards: writing by Andrew, reflecting on each of his album releases.— Discography Forwards: summarising compositions and musician credits. --- “Freely drawing from the sounds of contemporary classical, experimental, jazz and pop music, and moving confidently between forms and formats, from concert music to pop records, operas and oratorios, dance and film soundtracks, Andrew Poppy’s diverse oeuvre resists easy categorisation … An elegantly generous (or stubborn), genre-indifferent (or should that be style-inclusive?) approach that flies in the face of putrefying compositional tradition, and any rules or anxieties over low vs highbrow, tonal vs textural, serious vs popular, acoustic vs electroacoustic; artfully dodging conspicuous intellectualism and side-stepping the class-political airs of contemporary classicism. Poppy’s denial of boundaries not only frees his music to be what it wants to be, it gives his music freedom to explore the uncanny territories and tensions that live in the in-between. Replacing polarities with multiplicities.” — Leah Kardos, from the Ark Hive of A Live book --- Music by Andrew PoppyWriting by Andrew Poppy, Paul Morley, Leah Kardos, Nik Bärtsch and Rose EnglishMastered by Stephan MathieuDesign by David Caines

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

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

Double Mini CD, one recording on each, stacked inside a 3 inch CD case with printed artwork by Luciano Maggiore Composed and performed by Li Song 03.10.21 (black disc) two snare drums, sine tones, suspended bluetooth speaker, drumsticks Recorded live at Café OTO, London by Shaun Crook on the 3rd of October, 2021 09.10.21 (white disc) two snare drums, metronomes, drumsticks, masking tape, bluetooth speaker, microphone Recorded live at Hundred Years Gallery, London by Graham Mackeachan on the 9th of October, 2021

Infant Tree, August 2025Caius Williams is a musician from London who plays the double bass, guitar, and bass guitar. He works in collaboration with others, alongside an ongoing solo project, and often works with improvisation. Some projects include ‘Crosspiece’ (with Theodora Laird), a duo with guitarist Tara Cunningham, alongside recent performances or collaborations with Lifetones (Charles Bullen of This Heat), Steve Noble, feeo, Daniel O’Sullivan, Mark Sanders, Sachiko M, Tom Challenger, Maggie Nicols, Mark Wastell, amongst others. Caius has been running the GRAIN series at Avalon Cafe in Bermondsey for the last 3 years, which is focussed on programming new and adventurous music and nurturing a growing community with cross-scene and cross-generational collaboration. https://caiuswilliams.bandcamp.com/musichttps://www.instagram.com/caiuswilliams_https://www.youtube.com/@GrainResidency   Tara Cunningham is a guitarist and composer whose work focusses on both improvisation, and pushing the textural boundaries of her instrument. Ongoing projects include; duo with bassist Caius Williams and acid-jazz group Red Snapper. She has also recently recorded part of Jack Cooper’s Modern Nature for their fourth studio album, as well as currently working with drummer Seb Rochford on his latest project for 6 guitars.