In the 1970s David Toop became preoccupied with the possibility that music was no longer bounded by formalities of audience: the clapping, the booing, the short attention span, the demand for instant gratification. Considering sound and listening as foundational practices in themselves leads music into a thrilling new territory: stretched time, wilderness, video monitors, singing sculptures, weather, meditations, vibration and the interior resonance of objects, interspecies communications, instructional texts, silent actions, and performance art. Toop sought to document the originality and unfamiliarity of this work from his perspective as a practitioner and writer. The challenge was to do so without being drawn back into the domain of music while still acknowledging the vitality and hybridity of twentieth-century musics as they moved toward art galleries, museums, and site-specificity. Toop focused on practitioners, whose stories are as compelling as the theoretical and abstract implications of their works. Inflamed Invisible collects more than four decades of David Toop's essays, reviews, interviews, and experimental texts, drawing us into the company of artists and their concerns, not forgetting the quieter, unsung voices. The volume is an offering, an exploration of strata of sound that are the crossing points of sensory, intellectual, and philosophical preoccupations, layers through which objects, thoughts and air itself come alive as the inflamed invisible. Spotify and QR Codes This is a book about music, and we wanted to bring the print text to sonic life. We have compiled a series of web links to take you to recordings of the music, musicians, and artists David Toop describes, as well as to artists’ websites. We have placed codes in the margins, so you can listen to the music written about as you read. These codes can be scanned by a smartphone camera. On some phones, the built-in camera app will automatically recognise a code. On other phones, you would need to download a QR code reader app. We have endeavored to find online as much of the music as possible, whether the pieces have been commercially released or not. Many of the links take you to the Discogs database. There, there are links to videos and audio on YouTube. Some links take you to the artist’s gallery website or personal site. For the music that is commercially available, we have compiled an Inflamed Invisible playlist on the Spotify music streaming service. The playlist is accessible. Individual tracks from this playlist are seen as Spotify codes in the margins. To scan these, please download and use the Spotify app on your phone. Select the magnifying glass icon to search, then select the camera icon and scan the code. Atau Tanaka, Sonics Series Editor

A Jack Spicer quote - “Get those words out of your mouth and into your heart” - may be useful when consuming this provocatively bare duo performance, which compels the listener to abandon any presumptions about improvised music. Switching between squeamish spurts of controlled trumpet exhalations and an intentionally hackneyed melodic line that grows more compelling with every repetition, Wick’s playing is obstinate, confusing, and deeply welcoming. rousay surrounds the trumpet’s pure and metallic tones with deft sonic movement and anti-ideas, oddly-placed drum rolls and rhythmically elusive brushed patterns. Recorded at Marigny Studios in New Orleans by Rick Nelson, this is music that is egoless, non-narrative, and without identity, and yet it is in fact emphatic and deeply felt. The duo insists on framing improvisation on their own terms, not so much ignoring chops and improv tropes, but playing as if they simply don’t exist, a brash surfacing of new paths forward. --- Jacob Wick - trumpetclaire rousay - percussion ---Recorded June 14, 2019 by Rick Nelson at Marigny Studios, New Orleans, LAMastered by Andrew Weathers

Extremities documents the first meeting of Jessica Ackerley and Patrick Shiroishi, recorded live in a basement apartment in Chinatown, Los Angeles. Both musicians come from strong improvised and free music scenes: Ackerley from NYC, and Shiroishi from L.A. There is a joyful sense of abandon here; the love affair each musician has with their instrument produces a dripping intensity, congealing upon impact with the physical, coalescing into a new form; fresh contours, rippled textures glinting in the atmosphere of passive space, as their musical chemistry manifests in instantaneous spurts. Stylistically, the album ranges from free jazz to noise and even serrated slices of metal. This makes for music constantly branching out from an agitated core: bulbous and irregular, and convolutedly engaging from start to finish. --- Jessica Ackerley / guitarPatrick Shiroishi / saxophones, percussion --- Recorded by Jared RodriguezMixed and mastered by Lucas BrodeArtwork by E. Lindorff-Ellery"Garlic Foot" and "Knowing What to Write" (detail), 2020

Recorded live, this album presents Lonberg-Holm in an intimate relationship with his cello, beautifully recorded by Joaquim Montes at Studio Namouche in Lisbon. Using a variety of extended techniques, he conjures a barrage of multiphonics, interwoven timbral excursions, and minuscule textural knots lined along the peripheral architecture of these pieces. Lonberg-Holm alludes to his music having a non-denominational devotional presence in his life, and this relationship is evident in these deeply personal improvisations. This is visceral playing: heavy, dry, honest, and unpretentious. Lonberg-Holm has performed in an exceptional number of free jazz and free improvised ensembles, not to mention with a variety of indie rock bands; one can hear this experience permeating the seasoned playing in these recordings.----Artist's statement:"Over the years, I have made a number of solo recordings, some in studios such as the now demolished Airwaves in Chicago and the first ESS location (now gone as well), some in concert halls (e.g., Mills College), some outdoors (my father’s farm in central NY as well as the Florida Everglades), and a few at various homes I have lived in. Location has an obvious impact and my long and affectionate relationship with Lisbon inspired me to want to make a solo document there. I have recorded with a variety of projects at Studio Namouche in the Benfica neighborhood of Lisbon and love it. That was where I wanted to make this solo recording.Anyone who has been to Namouche knows it is a magical place. A faded version of its once probably grand self, Namouche is a sort of small RCA studio A that somehow survived the tumults of the recording industry; it still has the right proportions and materials on the walls, floor and ceiling. Add in good mics, a mixing desk, and the very capable ears of head engineer Joaquim Montes and it’s about perfect.I’ve described the cello as a “four string busy box” for many years but only recently did I realize it also acts as a “safe space” for me. Although the outcome of pressing the various levers is more unpredictible on a cello than a busy box, I still feel that if I follow the material where it wants to go, nothing can go wrong. It is an act of faith.For many years, “religious” music has been a source of entertainment and inspiration for me. In spite (or because?) of my lack of religious identity I find beauty in many types of music for worship. Over the years, at different times, I have been obsessed with Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Buddhist musics, sermons and chants. While I sometimes fantasize about making a record of religious music, the only faith I can claim to have any real relationship with is Christianity and a recording of Christian music might be misunderstood so . . . I refrain. Instead, I like to think that my solo cello improvisations are a kind of non-denominational devotional music.During the period when this was recorded, I was listening a lot to Alfred Reed. He seems to favor a very low A (almost A flat) and I experimented with tuning my cello down as a result. Some of the tracks are at that lower pitch and others are closer to A440.Namouche has a very fine grand piano and a number of other excellent keyboards. They also have some derelict pianos. Most noticeable are the two in the front vestibule and the one in the live room. The short piano pieces were recorded using only the piano in the live room. Because such wrecks aren't found in most good studios, I couldn’t resist playing it. The juxtaposition of a derelict instrument and an incompetent pianist in a great room with excellent equipment was simply too good to pass up." --- Fred Lonberg-Holm / cello, unprepared piano --- Recorded March 21, 2019 by Joaquim Montes at Namouche Studios, LisbonMastered by Branic Howard, Portland OR

Recorded live at a small bookstore in Dallas called The Wild Detectives, Success presents two symbiotic improvisers generating dense layers of sonic texture. Extensions of electric guitar and saxophone are precipitated into the listener’s consciousness like rampant cloud seeding; billowing forth surges of peripheral energy, an overflow continuously trimmed from the edges and falling to the floor. Often one’s sense of instrument distinction becomes blurred. Despite sounds being created separately by both forced air and amplified electromagnetic feedback, timbres converge with the room itself to create an enormous presence and a unifying, exhausting, gratifying listen, neatly augmented by the palpable presence of room tone. --- Steve Baczkowski / tenor, baritone saxophonesBill Nace / electric guitar ---Recorded live at The Wild Detectives, Dallas TX, August 16, 2019 by Stephen LucasMastered by Mark Alan Miller

This set of improvised pieces is made up of Montréalers Raphaël Foisy-Couture (bass), Vicky Mettler (guitar), and Vancouverite Lisa Cay Miller (piano). There's a relaxed atmosphere among the trio, despite seemingly disparate elements that swing and play with a tight cohesion; networked fistulas convey and receive. Along with their industriousness, this keeps their music light and exploratory, appealingly collectively-minded throughout. Miller only occasionally breaks out into fitful knots of block chords, her and Foisy's slyly executed extended techniques keep flowing a steady variety of sounds, and Mettler's crafty instrumental resourcefulness (as in the prismatic folk of her project Kee Avil) results in a deeply pleasing group improvisation that often feels wonderfully domestic. --- Lisa Cay Miller / pianoVicky Mettler / guitarRaphaël Foisy-Couture / upright bass --- Recording and mixing by Zachary Scholes, Montréal QC Mastered by Branic Howard, Portland ORopenfieldrecording.com Artwork by Raphaël Foisy-Couture

When we asked Mariam Rezaei to submit a Takuroku release late in 2020 she responded by saying “I want to do something, but I want to make sure it's something special”. Almost a year later Mariam decided to team up with vocalist Alya Al-Sultani, presenting a first time duo on turntable and voice, sending lightning fast sonorisations bouncing off the walls of OTO. Mariam and Alya come from different but overlapping disciplines. After growing up as a classically trained pianist, Mariam has built a reputation over time as a prolific turntablist, DJ and improvisor, never shying away from interdisciplinary and experimental projects. Alya meanwhile is a British-Iraqi soprano, but has spent the last few years integrating improvisational techniques, microtonal ideas and Eastern influences in her music. Together their dexterous lungs and nimble fingers birth forms that dance in and out of each other: shifting, soaring, dipping, diving, but never sitting still.Mariam takes Alya’s vocals as content to throw back into the mix, forming multiple layers of chops and edits that ricochet back and forth. Alya’s vocals move between tender refrains, textural flurries and righteous bursts of operatic expression, meeting Mariam digital fx, textural drones and sonic swells in ecstatic symbiosis. Alya’s repeated aphorism “I want you, female,” throughout the start of the set spells it out. This is music about desire and liberation: fiery, sonically rambunctious and forever reaching for new heights. -- Alya Al-Sultani - voice Mariam Rezaei - turntables -- Recorded in Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on the 30th of June, 2021 Mixed & mastered by Oliver Barrett

For Erika.In memoriam William Thomson, potman, pub pianist who died of TB at 39, the grandfather I never knew. -- Text, 'Lessness' by Samuel BeckettMusic by John Tilbury --John Tilbury: voice and clavichord -- Recorded & mastered by Shaun Crook Cover art by Billy Steiger N.B. The play-back level should be quiet; the text should be comfortably intelligible.

Wild Rani's music emerges from the sonic dirtbin of two different experimental traditions; the laconic and dry no-wave synth and tape work of late 70/80’s UK acts like Cabaret Voltaire, and the gooey dirge of Michigan noiseniks Wolf Eyes. Both approaches infuse her sound world with an eerie aura, filling the space with slime dripped synths, discombobulating drones and flurries of flute and rattle-snake percussion. Becky’s words are pushed to the fore, spelling out her upheavals, desires and alienation in direct, matter of fact syntax. This is an incantation and excavation – dispelling the ghosts of 2020 and 2021 in aural form. Having this as part of our final set of releases is fitting: an ode to an extremely strange, dark time. -- Wild Rani - synths, vocals & various instrumentation  -- Mastered by Oliver Barrett

Since 2006 the Portugese duo of Marta Ângela and João Artur (CALHAU!) have been quietly labouring away on their wonderfully tilted practice, embracing music, text, film, and visual arts on a path that has included performances, exhibition projects and several artistic residencies. For this new release on Takuroku they take influence from medieval Galician-Portuguese songs/poetry of insult and mockery called cantigas d'escarnio e maldizert. A carnivalesque sense of play, pathos and absurdity haunts the 33 minutes run time as they shift between sung and spoken incantations, baroque organ dirges, junk-yard musique concrete, layers of tape mush and sonic trickery. Although medievil in theme, there is a particular timelessness to proceedings. One of the main instruments CALHAU lists is "the ghosts of an old cassette re-recorded thousand times during the last 20 years" - with sounds fermented and rendered into beguiling forms. Another is "a crappy electric organ from 1980 called ORION", which dispels both baroque and twisted sonics from its tired engine. When first listening to this it instantly brought to mind the late Ghédalia Tazartès, who sadly passed away this year. Similar to Ghédalia's work this is ageless, contradictory, old, new, sad, strange and often hilarious music. Music that fearlessly reveals its multiple facets to slowly unfurl its twisted, tender core. -- CALHAU are Marta Ângela and João Artur -- Mastered by Oliver Barrett

Patrick Ward’s performances are dynamic contractions of his gallery installations in which video sequences designed for multiple screens are 'stacked’ within a single frame. Following up his Retroversion/s performances at Cafe Oto Ward’s Video Evidence presents a collage of sounds sourced from old VHS tapes, incidental phone footage and barely viewed YouTubes. Edited and mixed in Tottenham, September 2021 -- Mastered by Oliver Barrett

One way to spot a rip current in the ocean is to search for a rippled surface surrounded by still water. When many different currents are pulling in different directions, a rippling effect is created on the water's surface. This piece is for 4 unamplified electric guitars. It’s in a 13-limit tuning that I've been exploring in various contexts recently.  Over the the piece's duration, the guitars are tuned up or down at specific points, so that they cross each other, moving from a close cluster to a spread voicing over three octaves. As the frequencies push away or pull towards each other, the stillness is disrupted, sometimes only subtly, other times quite chaotically. At times many shifts happen at once, at other times the movement is against a backdrop of static pitches. -- Julia Reidy - 4 unamplified guitars -- Recorded in 2021 Mastered by Oliver Barrett

OTOROKU is extremely proud to present a reissue of Evan Parker's legendary boxset "Collected Solos".  Originally issued in 1989 and long ago sold out, "Collected Solos" brings Evan Parker's first four solo LPs issued on Incus - "Saxophone Solos", "The Snake Decides", "Monoceros" and "Six of One" together, alongside a cassette featuring extra cuts from the sessions at FMP studios which didnt make it onto "Saxophone Solos" and an accompanying booklet written by the late writer, Paul Haines. Housed in a specially made and screenprinted box, and numbered in an edition of 250, the collection celebrates Evan Parker's remarkable commitment to a creative life and work. 

Charles Gayle is a saxophonist, pianist, sometimes a clown and radical musical performer wrapped into the body of a humble person living in Downtown Manhattan since the 1960s. As this set attests to, It is sometimes hard to predict what he will do on stage... In all his musical (and personal) life Charles Gayle has remained outside of any form of mainstream, carving his own singular path. There is no player on the scene today with the emotional wallop of Charles Gayle. John Edwards is a true virtuoso whose staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others. Perpetually in demand, he has played with  Sunny Murray, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, Peter Brötzmann, Mulatu Astatke and many others. Ubiquitous, diverse and constantly creative, drummer Mark Sanders has worked with a host of renowned musicians including Derek Bailey, Henry Grimes, Mathew Shipp, Roswell Rudd, in duo and quartets with Wadada Leo Smith and trios with Sirone and William Parker. Here we present a 2CD set documenting the two very special sets delivered on the 15th of November, 2017 at Cafe Oto, Dalston, London. In classic ecstatic fashion one would expect from these three stalwarts of blazing transcendence these 2 sets swerve from the sublime to the this is an exquisite document of one of the most exciting trios operating today, Limited to 500 copies packaged in mini gatefold sleeve.

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

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

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

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

Please note this is the second pressing which comes in a black cover Lucy & Aaron is the debut collaboration LP from the duo of Lucrecia Dalt (RVNG Intl.) and Aaron Dilloway (Dais Records). Full length LP in full color cover with printed inner sleeve featuring art by artist Pieter Schoolwerth. File under Electronic / Tape Music. ARTIST STATEMENTS “I met Aaron in Madeira around 10 years ago, and I was blown away by his set, when I was going to tour the US for the first time, Forest, my US my booking agent asked me if I wanted to tour with someone from his roster and I suggested Mr Dilloway, the first show we played together was in Toronto, he started with a very groovy loop, some kind of soul extract that felt just right. With that, he levelled the dynamics and the atmosphere of the room, moving back and forth from the stage to the audience to double check if everything was sounding right. I have never seen such an elegant, disturbing and powerful show at the same time, it was a wild combination. We played a couple more shows together and on my journey throughout the states I was never in a place where his name didn’t pop up with a positive comment of admiration. We became extremely close and utopian. We started this record during a two week visit of mine in NYC, we crossed our signals, sometimes his affecting mine, or the other way around, we just wanted to make a fun, weird and inevitably emotive record that somehow captured so many things we love about music, to put oneself in character and go with the flow.” -- Lucrecia Dalt “Lucrecia and I met briefly 10 years ago while performing at a festival together. We traded some releases and I was very excited by what I heard. Her records stuck out to me over the years as something very special. I was a fan. We met again recently while performing on a bill together in Toronto, and while watching her perform, I was mesmerized by her selections of sounds, as well as her movements and control of the mixing board. I felt like we worked similarly. We struck up a very close friendship and what followed was a year of intense discussions about art, music, performance and recording. Immediately we began working on music together and her expertise in mixing and her highly trained ears and overall drive were very inspirational. This album was recorded in 3 different locations, Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY where Lu was doing a residency, sessions at Lu’s home in Berlin, Germany and finally at my home in Oberlin, OH. It was one of the most inspirational periods of my life and helped me overcome some intense musical and psychological obstacles. I learned so much by making this record.” Aaron Dilloway Recorded by Lucrecia Dalt & Aaron Dilloway 2019 - 2020 Mastered by Rashad Becker Cut by Warren Defever Art by Pieter Schoolwerth --- Hanson Records, 2021

The musician and spiritual seeker Alice Coltrane was much more than just John Coltrane’s second wife. One of the few harpists to feature prominently in jazz, she was also a renowned pianist and composer and her interest in spiritual matters greatly helped steer her husband deeper into Krishna consciousness, which had significant bearing on his music, most notably evident on A Love Supreme. This mesmerizing performance, held at Carnegie Hall four years after John’s untimely passing as part of a benefit event for Swami Satchidananda's Integral Yoga Institute, comprised a stunning and largely improvised rendition of Coltrane’s “Africa,” with Alice’s subtle piano and harp expressions excellently framed by the wailing saxes of Pharaoh Sanders and Archie Shepp, Cecil McBee and Jimmy Garrison trading non-standard bass lines, a dual drum onslaught from Clifford Jarvis and Ed Blackwell, along with members of the Institute on harmonium and tamboura. --- Alternative Fox, 2020

Surely their greatest recording. Nowhere does Mizutani’s guitar display as much hydra-headed, psychedelic-speed-freak ferocity as on these twenty-minutes of The Last One. Like star wars between bionic wasps. The cavernous, pitch-black, side-long grooving of An Awful Eternity is just as essential. Unmissable. --- Feedback drenched noise for the classic 'France' demos from japanese psych noise legend Les Rallizes Denudes "This just might be the single greatest side of OTT psych/noise guitar oblivion ever put to disc from the most legendary Japanese underground group of all time, Les Rallizes Denudes: the mysteriously-named France Demo Tapes have previously only circulated on wildly dubious CD-R burns, often with contradictory and conflicting track listings/material but the session (whether it was actually recorded in France or not) is consistently dated as being from some time in the late '80s. This gloriously out-of-nowhere release finally delivers on the hype surrounding this much whispered-about session, two massively deformed versions of their classics "Night Of The Assassins" and "The Last One". You have heard nothing" like this and when Mizutani is on this kind of form it's hard to believe that any other rock music exists outside of this singular, blasted universe. If you buy one electric guitar album this lifetime..." -- David Keenan. --- Take it Acid Is, 2020

Previously released on accompanied by “Gone, Gone Beyond”, “The Mirror” is the dreamy soundtrack of an a/v project from collage artist extraordinaire Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us.With ‘’The Mirror’’ Bennett continues her eternal disassembling of popular music by exploring how the narrative of familiar sounds/songs can change dramatically under a new context, with that context always changing, in a never-ending flow.Each song is singular. And each song is a collage of and undefined number of other songs from other artists. It sounds familiar because that has been the modus operandi of People Like Us since the early 1990s. But “The Mirror” plays with the notion of familiar, driving around a collection of famous pop songs/artists, messing around with the memory of the listener and, of course, his unique comprehension of those specific songs applied in a new context.Because of the use of familiar pop sounds, “The Mirror” is often grandiose. Like an epic film only with highs, never letting the listener down or letting him doubt the power of pop. Even, of course, when the coordinates are twisted, mixed, over or underrepresented. Each moment feels like something that could only happen in a parallel universe. Although that may sound naïve, it’s just a lost thought of reaction to the beautiful collages of People Like Us in “The Mirror”. This mirror doesn’t reflect an image of ourselves or an image of pop. But an image on the way memories drift and are being constant rebuilt. An unfinished collage. 

Limited unofficial edition of demos recorded at Schloß Nörvenich between 1968 and 69, following the release of Delay 1968 --- Tracklist: Father Cannot YellPnoom(h) 1Little Star Of BethlehemMelting Away(My) ConnectionShe Brings The RainOutside My DoorPnoom(h) 2Greyhounds Greyhound

Recording with a sextet at the New York jazz club Sweet Basil in August 1977, McBee’s band included Chico Freeman on reeds, Dennis Moorman on piano, Joe Gardner on trumpet, Steve McCall on drums, and Famoudou Don Moye on percussion. Two complete albums of music were released by Enja Records from this engagement, the ground breaking recordings Music From the Source 1978 and Compassion 1979. “Few groups today sound as fresh, generate as high an emotional charge, or leave as lasting an impression as McBee’s sextet,” Chris Albertson wrote upon the release of these recordings. “It is as if each member were a unique piece of a puzzle, carefully placed to complete precisely the breath taking picture intended. The music is adventurous enough to satisfy any aural daredevil who has not completely lost his or her sense of beauty, yet all the basic jazz values have been preserved with due reverence.” – Chris Albertson

This studio recording of Jason Kahn (voice) and Ilia Belorukov (modular synthesizer) is tense and taut, as dry, crumbling sonic swathes manifest both as machine and human, facilitating an almost ceremonial liberation. Kahn has historically been known for electronic sounds exhibiting stasis and abrasive, enduring minimalism; as of late his work has been primarily concerned with his own unaltered voice. Belorukov’s work exists within the realm of improvised noise and electroacoustics, as he prioritizes a wide range of collaborations. Kahn's voice provides a stark contrast to Belorukov's jagged synthesis, like examining oneself close-up in a mirror. Here, these prolific musicians share a unique, intimate intensity through drastically different approaches. --- Jason Kahn - voiceIlia Belorukov - modular synthesizer ---Recorded by Ilia Belorukov at Sdvig in Saint-Petersburg on 30 Sept 2018 (A1, A2), and by Jason Kahn at WIM in Zürich on 28 Feb 2019 (B1, B2, B3)Mixed by Jason Kahn (A1, A2) and Ilia Belorukov (B1, B2, B3)Mastered by Ilia Belorukov, Saint-PetersburgThanks to Pro Helvetia and Kurt LiedwartArtwork by E. Lindorff-Ellery

Olive and Naka's collaboration pairs two musicians working with lo-/mid-fi sonics and modified/self-made instruments. Through extensive recording and touring, the duo has honed a patient aesthetic, allowing each other's sounds to unfold with minimal, sure-footed interactions, akin to moving along a path up the mountain for which this release is titled. Naka's sources here consist mainly of "long loops of sagging/distressed cassette tape winding into and out of similarly distressed portable tape players, with real-time analog processing." Olive uses magnetic pickups and analog electronics. This leads to sounds of uncertain provenance, playfully emerging from a thick analog haze, building toward surprising, subtle crescendos. This is work that results from, and produces, an active semblance of stillness. --- Takuji Naka / tapes, electronicsTim Olive / magnetic pickups, electronics --- Recorded in Kyoto, Japan, 2019Mastered by Branic Howard, Portland ORArtwork by E. Lindorff-Ellery

This collaboration between Notice alumna Ryoko Akama (NTR036) and Québécois sound artist Anne-F Jacques manages to be both minimal and teeming with activity. Recorded during their winter 2018 U.S. tour, (here presenting stops in NYC at Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia, and Boston’s Vernon Street Studios), these recordings feature occasional action-gestures over a whisper-bed of electronics, activated objects, along with Jacques' "contraptions and erratic devices" (a stated interest), which interject a variety of odd rhythms and sounds. When performing live, Akama and Jacques move fluidly across the room, stopping at various “object stations”, engaged with playful intensity. Patiently exploratory and hinting at a domesticity, these are wonderfully restrained performances; they project a pleasantness that results from the performers' masterful focus and choices. --- Recorded live:Side A: January 29th, 2018, Experimental Intermedia, NYCSide B: January 30th, 2018, Vernon Street Studio, BostonMastered by Branic Howard, Portland ORArtwork by E. Lindorff-Ellery Thanks to Phill Niblock, Katherine Liberowskaya, Cecilia Lopez, and Morgan Evans-Weiler

Notice Recordings’ Chicago origins were heavily galvanized by regularly seeing sets by cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and multi-instrumental improviser Zoots Houston. Both have since separately relocated to Kingston, NY, where they continue to engage with the kinds of musical exchanges exemplified here. This set, recorded live at Chicago’s Elastic Arts, finds them performing with percussionist Ben Bennett. Bennett, a musician and performance artist, is a notable figure in the current and vibrant free improv and jazz scene in NYC; recent collaborations include Michael Foster and Jack Wright, among others. All three players metaphorically deconstruct their instruments while scattering pockets of agitated hot air on the performance floor, augmented with pedals, radioesque static sweeps, tightly propelled breaths, and extended techniques. This is dry, heavily structural, bristling stuff, with periodic digressions into melody and a strong control of focused and at times uncomfortably magnified timbres. Much of the material is urgent and electronic, filling the space and remaining firmly gestural. These two sidelong sets display slices of time coming from strong voices within this niche of contemporary improvisation. ---Ben Bennett / percussionZoots Houston / synthesizer, objectsFred Lonberg-Holm / cello ---Recorded live at Elastic Arts, Chicago by Dave Zuchowski, July 21, 2016Mastered by Branic Howard, Open Field, Portland, ORArtwork and layout by E. Lindorff-ElleryLetterpress printed by Small Fires Press, New Orleans

We first became aware of Mike Weis through his drumming in Chicago's Zelienople, in which he blended hypnotic, delicate grooves and shimmering auxiliary percussion into the band's unique downcast drone-folk. In recent years, Weis has expanded his exploration into meditation and ritual in music performance, exemplified by this set recorded for the 2018 Winter Solstice. Weis' mix of such unconventional percussion instruments as tongue drum, dholak, and changgo, as well as gongs, bells, and objects, all performed live, is typical in its unerring time, tightly controlled dynamics, and dense yet drifting atmosphere. The music settles in places which aren’t visible upon first sight, and, like walking through a foggy, mid-December field, pock-marked with patches of snow and tufts of brown grass, sounds reveal themselves for a moment of recognition and familiarity, only to recede, vignetted by the enveloping atmosphere. Mike Weis has been deeply admired by Notice since our inception, and In Low Light provides an engaging illustration of his practice. --- Mike Weis / mbira, tongue drum, dholak, changgo, bass drum, cymbals, gongs, singing bowls, bells, dharma bell, moktak, field recordings --- Tracklisting: 1. Number 1 - 07:062. Number 2 - 05:343. Number 3 - 03:014. Number 4 - 05:145. Number 5 - 02:486. Number 6 - 05:357. Number 7 - 03:538. Number 8 - 05:16 --- Recorded early Winter 2018 Pre-mastering by Matt Christensen Mastered by Branic Howard, Portland OR

Notice Recordings is pleased to present the release of Portland, Oregon-based percussionist Matt Hannafin’s “John Cage: Four Realizations for Solo Percussion”, which offers attentive, probing interpretations of pieces that bookend the final thirty years of the composer’s work. Simultaneously restless and nuanced, Hannafin’s performance demonstrates Cage’s continued relevance and enduring ability to push performers beyond their performative biases and toward the unexpected.Written with no instrumentation, “Variations II” (1961) and “Variations III” (1963) both provide toolkit-like sets of marked-up transparencies which are allowed to fall into random overlapping patterns. “c Ȼomposed Improvisation for One-Sided Drums with or without Jangles” and “One4” (both 1990) are two of only five pieces Cage wrote specifically for solo percussion, and explore Cage’s late-career interest in directed improvisation. “c Ȼomposed Improvisation” was written for percussionist Glen Velez, with whom Matt Hannafin studied just three years after the piece was created.Commissioned by Notice Recordings, these four performances are in dialogue not only with each other but with Notice itself, which has its roots in the underground/DIY realm while also exploring contemporary/academic composition. The accessibility, inventiveness, and challenge of compositions like these make Cage a unique pivot point between these two worlds.

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

Imagine yourself as a grape in a Belgian glasshouse, is the theme of this quietly immersive suite conjured by Christina Vantzou (CV) and Lieven Martens (Dolphins Into The Future) for the latter’s Edições CN  The musical component of a broader project incorporating poetic texts and photography, ’Serrisme’ conveys the cyclical experience of table grapes growing in vast glasshouses in the Flemish countryside. It was commissioned by the Flemish Heritage Fund to artfully document a peculiar culture that has existed for around 150 years, and has supplyied sweet little orbs to mouths from Russia to UK and USA.  The grape growing industry there is now a paler shade of what it once was, but the remaining glasshouses offer Vantzou and Martens a rich atmosphere and range of textures to work with. Maybe best known for his tropical dream sequences as Dolphins Into The Future, Lieven Martens plays to his strengths in evocative field recording for the first half, variously placing us under rain on glass and  between snipped vines for a nuanced evocation of the glasshouses’ day-to-day sounds.  Beloved for her work solo, with The Dead Texan and recently with a run of dead strong CV & JAB recordings; Vantzou takes a more impressionistic approach to the subject with two slow burning ‘Glisten’ beauties. Both working around he 10 minute mark, they offer amply room to drift with long, sustained glassy tones encouraging sublime states of mind, with strings and choral touches that suggest a sort of fading glamour of an old world viewed from outside. --- Serrisme is: a musical illustration - by Christina Vantzou, sound registrations - by Lieven Martens, a long poetic text - by Jan Matthé, analogue photographs - by Christophe Piette, and the usual perfect design - by Jeroen Wille. --- Edições CN, 2021

Since his 2006 debut under the L'Ocelle Mare moniker, Bonvalet has gradually moved away from traditional notions of composition and diverted his attention purely to the textural and timbral quality of sound. His tenure playing guitar in various bands - notably Cheval De Frise and Powerdove - provides the experience needed to isolate his instruments, zeroing-in on the gestures of performance - plucks, strums, vibrations - using them to assemble component parts that are essentially free by design.  Flute, piano, strings and various percussive instruments collide with all manner of effects and assorted sound objects like a telephone, metronome - even masking tape, each recorded and assembled through a no-method process that rejects traditional notions of composition. But while the assembly is for all intents and purposes dispassionate - just take a look at the track names - the resulting recordings are a marvel, gradually building into individual mood pieces that betray a buried instinct for harmony.  Take 'Guitare Classique, Métronome, Tambourins…’ as an example - Spanish guitar, pitch bent, a frenzied metronome, an arpeggio, something rattles - a non-linear, complex rendition, a miracle of sound that lands like the most inspirational film music you’ll have heard in years. Or on 'Piano, Banjo, Orgue, Métronome' - a more angular, interesting take on the sort of thing Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto have tried over a number of collaborative albums - a 3 minute recital punctuated by increasingly agitated piano notes, all moving key changes and brittle strings.  Through its curious construction, 'Sans Chemin’ (literally, ‘without path’) feels to highlight the way our instinctive interaction with harmony, beauty, and dissonance can quickly ignite or extinguish heightened feelings without easy explanation. Perhaps all the pieces here were really made without direction - an aimless meander through sound - or maybe there’s something significantly more intricate and complicated at play. Either way, the result is the same; a richly textured and evocative, often startling transition from chaos and into the sublime, mirroring our own complex existential topographies. --- CREDITS Music : Thomas Bonvalet Recording : Manuel Duval and Pierre-Henri Thiébaut* Mastering : Manuel Duval Photography : Thomas Bonvalet Design : Bartolomé Sanson --- Shelter Press, Murailles Music, 2021

From Lawrence English  "I am ceaselessly fascinated by how memory operates and, I’m regularly struck by how individually subjective a collective experience can be when recalled by its participants. Lynch’s Lost Highway comes to mind here, specifically Bill Pullman’s character Fred Madison who says “I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened.” Like Madison, I can’t help but sense that memory takes shape through an accumulative process that reflects how each of us have lived (and maybe even wanted to live) up to that point in time.  Going back to listen again to these recordings of which I was a part with David and Akio, I was surprised by what elements had stayed with me and what others had slipped into the eternal greying of my mind. I have vivid recollections of listening to a Lyre bird before recording the pieces together at Witches Falls. I remember both Akio and David finding musicality in decaying palm fronds. I remember Akio’s voice, amplified through his Analpos, bouncing off the stones and trees. I remember David’s flute, so quiet in the pitch black of the night forest as to appear like a hushed tone of wind or a distant animal calling. I also remember trying to match my modest hand held electronics with the pulsing and pitching of the insects around me.  Reading David’s text, which is included in the book published alongside this edition, he recounts several things I had forgotten. Conversations about memory, ironically enough, had vanished from my mind until reading his words. I also didn’t really remember my role as tick surgeon, removing a living insect from David’s ear. I do remember his cooking though, as does Akio (captured aptly in his drawings), no doubt a testament to David’s improvisational culinary expertise.  Breathing Spirit Forms represents a distinctive exchange between friends and collaborators. Tamborine commands a special presence and encourages a deep patience from those who are willing to give time to its varied environments. For the three of us, we were fortunate to share these moments together, fleeting in our lives as they might be, to sense the mountain’s unique qualities, to respond to them through our exchanges and to form memories (as disparate as they might be) we carry forward with us in time."

Post-metal sludge avantgarde powerhouse SUMAC around Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom) follow up their collaboration with legendary Japanese guitarist and singer/performer Keiji Haino on Thrill Jockey (American Dollar Bill – Keep Facing Sideways, You are too Hideous to Look at Face on) with another monolith - heavy and experimental at the same time --- Keiji Haino / guitar, voice, flute, taepyeongsoAaron Turner / guitarNick Yacyshyn / drumsBrian Cook / bass

New album on bison from Kumio Kurachi, whos only performance outside of Japan was here back in 2009. "After 11 albums and unknown quantities of cassettes, compilations and split releases, Sound of Turning Earth is the first release outside of Japan for one of the most original figures in Japanese music, Kumio Kurachi. Recorded by Jim O’Rourke at his home studio, Sound of Turning Earth is Kurachi solo on vocals and guitar, mixing surreal lyrics and theatrical vocal personas with unorthodox tunings inspired by Japan’s national instrument, the koto. Lyrically Kurachi draws life from the small events of life, the hira, - the joy of choosing a lipstick in springtime, the business of changing the tatami, raindrops deciding whether to fall as snow. Set to his own brand of progressive folk in the Hirajōshi scale and laced with winding melodies which can be hard to forget, Kurachi maps his own territory for the people who inhabit his everyday. As much a visual artist as a musician, we are pleased to present Sound of Turning Earth in the form of a deluxe CD accompanied by new artwork by Kurachi and full translation of his poetic lyrics. These striking songs speak for a liberated imagination." “The music is so melodious that the mixture of the strange wording, guitar and variations of voices thrives all together and it can haunt you without noticing it, just like the small events of everyday life you can't escape from." - Midori Ogata  --- All songs written by Kumio Kurachi Guitars and vocals by Kumio Kurachi Recorded and mixed by Jim O'Rourke Mastered by Daichi Tokunaga (PLUM) Translation by Midori Ogata Design by Maja Larrson Special thanks to Midori Ogata --- Kumio Kurachi has performed actively in Japan since the 80's, and still plays shows in Fukuoka regularly. Past collaborators include Taku Unami and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto. He has played with Tenniscoats, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Katsura Yamauchi, Tori Kudo, Jim O'Rourke and Eiko Ishibashi." 

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition, extensive and copiously illustrated, with texts by Evie Ward, John Corbett, Lisa Alvarado, Christina Forrer, Naima Karlsson* Corbett vs. Dempsey is pleased to present Moki Cherry, Communicate, How?: Paintings and Tapestries, 1967-1980. Following Blank Forms’ exhibition in New York, which took an in-depth look at the Don Cherryand Moki Cherry partnership, Communicate, How? places the spotlight squarely on Moki, concentrating on her masterful tapestries and playful canvases, never separating them from Don’s presence, but inviting a long overdue critical appreciation for Moki’s artistry on its own terms.  In Communicate, How?, CvsD has assembled a selection of Moki Cherry’s most significant works, all of them drawn from the schoolhouse in Sweden where the family archives still reside. These include major tapestries that were used in performance and several that functioned as announcements for Organic Music Society events or other performances. Among these is a banner from the first gig for which Moki made a tapestry, as well as a marvelous silken marquee for a weekend festival at Ornette Coleman’s loft. A group of modestly scaled paintings, some of them shown in early Swedish exhibitions, suggest Moki’s uninhibited, surrealistic use of imagery, often centering on the female figure. These smaller works offer a key to her later tapestries, showing how she constructed her Thangka-like compositions piecemeal out of iconic fragments. The show also includes a ceiling-hanging soft sculpture that was part of Utopias and Visions, 1871-1981, an exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1971, in which the Cherry family lived in a geodesic dome in the museum for three months; this extraordinary work has not been shown since that time. Moki Cherry (1943-2009) was raised and educated in Sweden, where she worked as a fashion designer in the early 1960s. In 1963, she met Don Cherry, the legendary free music trumpeter, and changed the trajectory of her artistic practice forever. As a couple, Moki and Don worked together on building a utopian vision of art and music, eventually establishing Movement Incorporated, also known as Organic Music Society, a troupe with variable membership that drew together music, image, and dance, with costumes and stage sets created by Moki. Her work in this fecund period included designing posters and flyers for events – sometimes made as increasingly elaborate tapestries – as well as inventing most of Don’s signature outfits, composing large textile works that hung as backdrops for their performances and making artwork for covers on many classic Don Cherry albums. Moki also created works that were independent of such happenings, stand-alone paintings and tapestries that brought her training in fabrics and materials together with her visionary imagistic vocabulary. Her early paintings and tapestries were the focus of key shows starting in the early 1970s, after the Cherrys had bought a schoolhouse in a tiny village in Southern Sweden, which they established as a base of operations and cultural arts center. Moki and Don were pioneers of multicultural, interdisciplinary performance. In their work, particularly in the period of this exhibition, they invited artists and other collaborators from a wide spectrum of international points of origin and backgrounds to participate in their unique, vividly imagined new world. --- Text:Evie WardJohn CorbettLisa AlvaradoChristina ForrerNaima Karlsson Publication EditorKatie Cato DesignDavid Khan-Giordano --- CvsD, 2021

Research shows that all humans have a predisposition for music, just as they do for language. All of us can perceive and enjoy music, even if we can't carry a tune and consider ourselves “unmusical.” This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on the capacity to perceive, appreciate, and make music. Scholars from biology, musicology, neurology, genetics, computer science, anthropology, psychology, and other fields consider what music is for and why every human culture has it; whether musicality is a uniquely human capacity; and what biological and cognitive mechanisms underlie it. Contributors outline a research program in musicality, and discuss issues in studying the evolution of music; consider principles, constraints, and theories of origins; review musicality from cross-cultural, cross-species, and cross-domain perspectives; discuss the computational modeling of animal song and creativity; and offer a historical context for the study of musicality. The volume aims to identify the basic neurocognitive mechanisms that constitute musicality (and effective ways to study these in human and nonhuman animals) and to develop a method for analyzing musical phenotypes that point to the biological basis of musicality. --- Contributors: Jorge L. Armony, Judith Becker, Simon E. Fisher, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Bruno Gingras, Jessica Grahn, Yuko Hattori, Marisa Hoeschele, Henkjan Honing, David Huron, Dieuwke Hupkes, Yukiko Kikuchi, Julia Kursell, Marie-Élaine Lagrois, Hugo Merchant, Björn Merker, Iain Morley, Aniruddh D. Patel, Isabelle Peretz, Martin Rohrmeier, Constance Scharff, Carel ten Cate, Laurel J. Trainor, Sandra E. Trehub, Peter Tyack, Dominique Vuvan, Geraint Wiggins, Willem Zuidema --- MIT Press, 2019

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.

In this detailed biography Schweizer is honored not only as a central figure in the development of European free jazz, but also as a committed pioneer for the equality of women in art and society. In her early years, for example, she stood up for the artistic and economic autonomy of artists and fought against discrimination against people on the basis of gender, origin or sexual orientation. The German critic Christian Broecking, who sadly passed away this year, has created an elaborate, diligent work with lots of case studies. What is more, the book consists of many interviews with Schweizer and over 60 contemporary witnesses, which turn out to be insightful as to her life's work. Chronologically, the biography begins with Schweizer’s youth. She grew up in a pub owner’s family in Schaffhausen and after her first attempts on the accordion she discovered the piano and joined the Crazy Stokers, a Dixieland band, at the age of 16. In 1957, that alone was a sensation. Shortly after that she landed in the top ranks at the Zurich Amateur Jazz Festival playing soul jazz and hardbop. The prize was a man’s shirt and a pack of cigarettes - no one could imagine that a woman would be able to win the first prize. Broecking’s biography is diligently and thoroughly researched, it is at its best when it tells anecdotes. One chapter addresses the chronic underpayment of jazz musicians, one deals with "Knitting as Provocation." Time and again, the author inserts digressions to explain a fact even more explicitly and places it in a social context. As a result of Schweizer’s consistent advocacy against apartheid (she has had very good connections to the South African expats in London) and for women's rights, she was part of the so-called Fichen scandal, in which she was surveilled by the Swiss secret service. --- ‎Broecking Verlag, 2021

Broken Music is an essential compendium for records created by visual artists. The publication was edited by Ursula Block and Michael Glasmeier and originally published in 1989 by DAAD. Broken Music focuses on recordings, record-objects, artwork for records, and record installations made by thousands of artists between WWII and 1989. It also includes essays by both editors as well as Theodor W. Adorno, René Block, Jean Dubuffet, Milan Knizak, László Moholy-Nagy, Christiane Seiffert, and Hans Rudolf Zeller, as well as a flexi disc of the Arditti Quartet performing Knizak’s “Broken Music.” The centerpiece of the publication is a nearly 200-page bibliography of artists’ records. Works chosen for the publication revolved around four criteria: (1) record covers created as original work by visual artists; (2) record or sound-producing objects (multiples/editions/sculptures); (3) books and publications that contain a record or recorded-media object; and (4) records or recorded media that have sound by visual artists. Artists documented in the volume include Vito Acconci, albrecht/d., Laurie Anderson, Guillaume Apollinaire, Karel Appel, Arman, Hans Arp, Antonin Artaud, John Baldessari, Hugo Ball, Claus van Bebber, John Bender, Harry Bertoia, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Claus Böhmler, Christian Boltanski, KP Brehmer, William Burroughs, John Cage, Henri Chopin, Henning Christiansen, Jean Cocteau, William Copley, Philip Corner, Merce Cunningham, Hanne Darboven, Jim Dine, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Fischli and Weiss, R. Buckminster Fuller, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Jack Goldstein, Peter Gordon, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Bernard Heidsieck, Holger Hiller, Richard Huelsenbeck, Isidore Isou, Marcel Janco, Servie Janssen, Jasper Johns, Joe Jones, Thomas Kapielski, Allan Kaprow, Martin Kippenberger, Per Kirkeby, Cheri Knight, Milan Knizak, Richard Kriesche, Christina Kubisch, Laibach, John Lennon, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Annea Lockwood, Paul McCarthy, Meredith Monk, Josef Felix Müller, Piotr Nathan, Hermann Nitsch, Albert Oehlen, Frank O’Hara, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, A.R. Penck, Tom Phillips, Robert Rauschenberg, The Red Crayola, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Gerhard Richter, Jim Rosenquist, Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm, Robert Rutman, Sarkis, Thomas Schmit, Conrad Schnitzler, Kurt Schwitters, Selten Gehörte Musik, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Strafe für Rebellion, Jean Tinguely, Moniek Toebosch, Tristan Tzara, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, Emmett Walsh, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner. Ursula Block is a curator living in Berlin, Germany. From 1981 until 2014, she ran gelbe Musik, a gallery and record shop in Berlin that featured work by artists at the crossroads between music and art. Michael Glasmeier is a professor, writer, and editor living in Berlin, Germany. Since the early 1980s, he has curated dozens of shows that explore the intersection between the visual arts, music, film, and language.

From its use in literary theory, film criticism and the discourse of games design, Salomé Voegelin expands 'possible world theory' to think the worlding of sound in music, in art and in the everyday. The modal logic of possible worlds, articulated principally via David K. Lewis and developed through Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological life-worlds, creates a view on the invisible slices of the world and reflects on how to make them count, politically and aesthetically. How to make them thinkable and accessible as the possibility of the everyday and of art: to reach a new materialist understanding from the invisible and to develop an ear for the as yet inaudible. This revised edition continues Voegelin's exploration of the sonic possibility of the world into the sonic possibility and impossibility of the body. Listening to work by Áine O'Dwyer, Hannah Silva and Jocy de Oliveira, it considers sonic possible worlds' radical power to rethink normative constructions and to fabulate a different body from its sound: Hearing the Continuum Between Plural Bodies; between humans, humanoid aliens, monsters, vampires, plants, things and anything we have no name for yet but which a sonic philosophy might start to hear and call. --- Bloomsbury Press, 2021

Poster for Chris Corsano's four day residency at Cafe OTO which took place from the 20th to 23rd of August 2014. Full residency line-up:  Wednesday 20 August 2014 Chris Corsano Solo Ilan Volkov's Summer Strings Lover's Ritual with Chris Corsano Thursday 21 August 2014 Okkyung Lee with John Butcher and Chris Corsano Mette Rasmussen with Alan Wilkinson, Pat Thomas and Chris Corsano Friday 22 August 2014 Evan Parker with John Edwards and Chris Corsano Massimo Pupillo and Chris Corsano Saturday 23 August 2014 Vibracathedral Orchestra with Chris Corsano Pressing Information Limited edition of 100 prints. Printed by Pat at Heavyrock.

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

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

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

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

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

'I met SUGAI KEN a few years ago in Tokyo, outside the Dommune radio studios. His personality and music, a very special brand, touched me. His music is a coded vision of a dream world. A trade that is progressive yet traditional - in the most positive sense of the word. Recently out of the blue, Sugai San sent me a collection of personal field recordings he made of folklore groups and public performances in Tokyo, Toyama, Kanagawa, Kyoto, Tottori, … The close listener already knows that Sugai San’s aesthetics speak of a great knowledge of these performing arts. An open invitation: “the traditional local performing arts in the 21st century intrinsically conceive “fragility” as they are vulnerable to extinction. The Japanese local performing arts that appear in this recording is no exception, endangered by the declining birth rate and aging population which are typical to the country. (SUGAI KEN)” I bring the original recordings into conversation with new elements (corresponding field recordings and or additional percussion and strings, performed by Antwerp musicians Jeroen Stevens and Roman Hiele) like a ‘monomane’ - tr. imitating – sound game. But when i throw these old and new figurines together on the podium, the objects immediately disappear in the cracks of the stage wood. Thus only the understament of the suggestion remains. And relentlessly the significance of every movement now becomes a question. Furthermore, what’s in focus? The manipulation? Or the content? Or are we zooming in on the aspect of archiving ~ preserving? Dubious. In KAGIROI – tr. heat haze - people coexist for a moment severely carved in time like a high contrast still of dancing flames. When you bring this composition home, it will never boil yet merely evaporate. And when you gaze at the clouds of condensed droplets inside your own darkness, on a soft volume, You complete our puzzle.  . -Lieven Martens --- SUGAI KEN - field recordings, liner notes Lieven Martens - collage, additional sounds and field recordings Jeroen Stevens - additional percussion Roman Hiele - double bass, mastering Kohei Oyamada - liner notes translation Jeroen Wille - artwork --- Edições CN, 2021

Preceding a debut album proper for the label due soon, '17 roles (All Mapped Out)’ takes us on a journey from a ringing railroad crossing and domestic rustle, thru quietly glorious inner landscapes and into reverberating x pastoral strings and lambent pads that coalesce to attune the ear to claire’s aural purview with half-heard riffs on friends, life in the digital realm, and the afterlife. Set to the slightest but most transfixing shifts in tone and texture that possess an incredible capacity to bring you to tears, often unexpectedly, her everyday sounds are magnified to gently distort their meaning and heighten their sensuality, effectively glimpsing the firmament from far away in a sort of waking dream gaze. As with claire’s myriad releases during the past few years, her music’s low-key treatise on loneliness, friendship and existentialism has uncannily come into its own this year, appealing to atomised souls seeking connection thru music. This one in particular feels to strongly capture and characterise a mix of fleeting and torpid emotions in a way that evokes the passage of time and the fragile sense of place in the world like nothing else you’ll hear on the scene, like a rare orchid poking out from the crumbling facade of ambient convention. --- Shelter Press, 2021

Don't test the waters; a gut-rigged amalgam of disengaged tape remedies, mouth whiplash and last-limb electronics. --- TracklistA1 untitledB1 untitledB2 untitled --- Regional Bears, 2021

"KENMORE / LINDORFF EXCHANGE marks two collaborations from 2009: one pairs New Orleans-based radio producer and DJ Joe Shriner with multimedia artist Evan Lindorff-Ellery, based in Kingston, NY; the other features Lindorff-Ellery and Gary Lindorff, an author and poet living in Vermont. Though performed and recorded independently, these two pieces share a common approach; they are informed by the specific acoustic environments in which they were made and exhibit an ambiguous passion for the liminal space between interior and exterior, both psychologically and literally.The title of KENMORE EXCHANGE refers to two locations on Kenmore Avenue in Chicago. Using a shoebox cassette recorder, Shriner captured various sounds at DePaul University’s Lincoln Park campus. In the basement of a building that has since been razed, he recorded himself playing a persistent F minor chord on one the school's practice room pianos, enclosed by brightly-lit concrete walls and a single window. In Lindorff-Ellery’s airy apartment (five windows total) six miles due north, the two manipulated these tapes along with field recordings Evan made as he biked between the university and his home.LINDORFF EXCHANGE is a document of Lindorff-Ellery and Lindorff's late afternoon, mid-winter experience in a cabin in the Vermont woods. No artificial lights were used in the creation of this aural portrait, and each lighted and diffused section of the cabin became darker as the recording continued; needless to say the objects merged with each other. Somehow, very faint classical music appeared on this recording, and there may or may not have been post-production tape manipulation. What we have is what we’ve got. --- Regional Bears, 2021

Page 29 and Page 44 are part of an iterative text-sound project Hopkins began in 2018. In this ongoing project, text generation software is used to repeatedly alter a page of text. Each alteration is collated in an expanding document that he uses to inform recordings and performances. The pages were read, but not a great deal was said.Flakes 1 and Flakes 2 are collages made from test signals and found audio fragments from Australian television between 1974 – 1979. Anticipating the broadcast, but nothing begins. ---Recorded and assembled in 2021 on Gadigal and Wangal land.Mastered by Renato Grieco.Artwork by MP Hopkins.

'Mentos Gulgendo (1)' is the Nowacka sisters' consuming Slip debut: a mercurial set for transfigured organ and voice, shaped to shudder, creep, or take flight. From the rough, anchored sound of a Unitra Estrada 207 AR organ, Antonina and Mila alchemise 6 nagging, fearful pieces, which alternate between burrowing, prickly beds of processed instrumental sound and more spacious sighs, buoyed up by dancing, full-blooded vocals. The Polish duo's careful ear for the grain of the organ - sometimes allowing it to sink in, more often urging, pressuring it onwards - makes for a magnetic, addictive listen. 'Mentos Gulgendo' is a new project by Antonina Nowacka and Mila Nowacka, who make possessed, hallucinatory sound and visuals as WIDT, most recently in a wild, unnerving collaboration with German producer Christoph De Babalon for Bocian in 2018. --- Music composed, performed and recorded by Antonina Nowacka and Mila Nowacka at the Family Allotments "Kaloria", using a Unitra Estrada 207 AR organ. Mastered by Filip Marcinkowski Artwork by Masia Debska --- Slip Imprint, 2020

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

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

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