NULLA 0, a monolith is a rich collaborative oral archive & publication - a record and artefact of an otherwise ephemeral assembly of 9 participants and their English speaking voices who identify across non-binary, womxn and women (cis/trans), and were either born in London or moved to the city for a duration of time. The book and the project it was born from is about agency - amplifying voices that are often othered while sharing narratives which have typically been omitted from our collective histories. Together, contributors challenge the word ‘neutral’ - a term regularly associated with whiteness, middle class and binary voices, casually employed to flatly describe the voices of AI personal assistants who maintain their coded interactions in a master/slave role play. Initially meant as a series of in-person group workshops, the pandemic changed the landscape of the project by shifting discussions onto a digital platform. Here, strangers launched into an incredibly intimate and vulnerable subject - the voice. Following the first exchange contributors attempted to write a manifesto which could hold and celebrate our difference. The result is the publications of NULLA 0, a monolith. --- Participants: Adèle Morand / Geaola Oluwakemi Adeyemi / Sven Ironside / Jasmin Kent Rodgman / Ruari Paterson-Achenbach / Kendall Perry / Shannon Latoyah / Joanna M Ward / Hannah Doucet Project collaborators: Publication - Samantha Whetton, Design. Print. Bind. Preface - Lola Olufemi Sculpture Design - Grace Woodcock in collaboration with Lola de la Mata Sculpture Maker - Grace Woodcock Glass Design - Lola de la Mata Glass Blowing - Marcin Manzur and Jahday Ford

The Mermaid Cafe's music arrives at the curious intersection between British song-based experimentalist practices. Tipping towards the tender minimalism of Jane and Barton and Young Marble Giants, as well as the contemporary composition of Mica Levi and Neil Luck, the group explore the awkward space where melody, harmony, sound and outré weirdness meet in tryst. In this debut release by them, moods and tone palettes blend and shift, taking clouds of synthesis, ruffled tape work, scrapes of guitar and field recordings along with them as they lead us inward. Like the music, spoken refrains and diaristic laments arrive and disappear, providing signposts to their maze: intersections that gradually lead way to a romantic, melancholic core. A pleasure to put out a new release by this exciting young group who are bursting full of ideas.

"Minton spins the dial across the spectrum of vocalising. At points it feels as if semantic meaning is under the skin - a Beckettian monologue is close by - but then it skitters away. Minton wants us to find meaning in sound rather than the other way around." Louise Gray, The Wire, 2021 "But the Acoustic Chicken is tame beside Woke Up At 8, a free range download from Torquay vocalist Phil Minton. This thirty minute one-take outburst showcases the octogenarian’s unfailingly ability to make unexpected sounds come out of his mouth, often inhuman, often all too human, and owing as much to Beckett’s Not I as to the sacred tablets of improvised music. Panic, terror, social embarrassment, primordial energy and existential awe break the barriers of Minton’s all-consuming and physically exhausting soundscape. "  Stewart Lee, 2021 "Minton immediately triggered the flux of temperamental vocalism he’s renowned for. Shards of verbalization beyond the human, preposterous implosions, deranged emulations, triturated syllables... Thirty minutes of incredibly natural virtuosity summarize an entire existence." Massimo Ricci - touching extremes, 2021 Fished from a dream and dispelled through his contorted and bewitching vocal chords, long-time OTO-favourite Phil Minton shares with us a stunning new one-take solo recording. Phil turned 80 last November and was due to celebrate it with a residency at OTO, but as it couldn't happen we're happy to share this instead, and look forward to having him back in the venue soon... "I had never tried recording myself before, but since the dreaded youknowwhat I’ve been stuck at home, like most people. There's been some music zoomups with colleagues in various parts of the world which I’ve really loved, practicing the trumpet, some far out voice improvising with my grandchildren to keep my chops bouncing, walking our dog Molly, an occasional puff now and again and a glass of vino or two, but no travel and singing in front of people like there has been for the last sixty or so years. Putting out the recycling every Wednesday evening was no substitute, so when Fielding asked if I would like to record a solo for Otoroku, I thought great yes, i’ll give it a go. A new departure. I've always had a problem with technology, I can’t drive among other things, and the practice of improvising and button pushing etc all on the same day is difficult for me: my brain sort of curdles into a white noise custard, whistling and walking no problem. I've had some recording tips from other musicians and have a not so difficult recording program, so when I see that the sound waves are not going into the red when I get loud, all I have to do is press start and off we go - all pretty straight forward. I recorded *woke up at eight* in the morning after not sleeping that well, before any breakfast. I had a lot of fast sounds and images from half remembered dreams only just below conciousness. I’ll leave it to the listener to imagine a narrative if needed. As it is with most dreams, I remember nothing now, just an abstract sense of speed going nowhere…. If you do listen to the recording, please do it in one take like it was recorded and I really do hope you enjoy or whatever. *Also on Fontana records circa 1965, last line. "Because I new that my basal metabolism was not so demanding” A beatnik observation for the time, the producer requested the American accent." - Phil Minton -- Phil Minton - voice & recording -- Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

The Dalmarnock Tapes is a collection of previously unreleased tracks by Cucina Povera. They were recorded in 2017 during snowstorm flurries in Dalmarnock, in the east end of Glasgow, Scotland. Cucina Povera is the alias of the Glasgow-based sound artist Maria Rossi, who is originally from Finnish Karelia, the European region that borders Finland and Russia. Cucina povera refers to a style of southern Italian traditional cooking evolved out of precarity and making do. Rossi’s music shares that same ethos of simplicity. Her experimentations with voice and field recordings create gossamer loops – heavenly repetitions and soporific undulations; an utterly sublime and ethereal language that is all her own. This new series features stunning, celestial vocalisations from Rossi over eight tracks. The recordings were made in the dark, winter months when she was briefly renting a very cheap, rundown studio space in a damp, old warehouse in Dalmarnock. She made it there every day despite bad heating in the building. The snow piled high that year. It was also a period in Rossi’s life when she was moving house every couple of months. The tracks reflect that mildly disturbed and displaced feeling, with a sense of aloneness at their core. Layering her own harmonies to create a mystical solo choir, Rossi builds an echoey wash of soft sound, using her dreamlike voice as the main instrument and Finnish as the main language. They are spontaneous vocalisations, recorded on the cuff, riffing on a very simple idea or pair of words, such as ‘I hear the floor creaking next door’ or ‘Alone at night’. Her stripped back, ultra soothing meditations take on an almost spiritual quality, ebbing and flowing in waves of warmth and purity. The lapping, lilting motion of her cycles of song has a gentle, comforting quality despite the sense of isolation that inspired them. Hypnotic shimmers of sound wrap around rhythmic samples of clanking metal in ‘Kahleet’ (‘Shackles’’) creating a ritualistic or ceremonial feel. Elsewhere in ‘Yksin yöllä’ (‘Alone at Night’), her gentle refrains become an otherworldly lullaby. Much like simple Italian cooking, the minimalist approach generates powerful results, distilled with depth and intensity. --- Eight previously unreleased tracks recorded among 2017 snowstorm flurries in Dalmarnock, Scotland.Music, recorded and mixed by Cucina Poveracucinapovera.bandcamp.comCover by Krzysztof Marczakinstagram.com/ycszwText design by Awe Ixquantumnatives.comMastered by Adam Badí Donovalabdonoval.comWords by Claire Sawersclairesawers.comCassette photography by Zoltan Czakó

Over the last decade, Toronto-based composer Nick Storring has become well known for his unique, painstaking compositional style of layering performances on a plethora of objects and musical/electro-mechanical instruments to deeply moving effect. ‘Newfoundout’, his seventh album, follows last year’s lush and nocturnal ‘My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell’ (Orange Milk Records) with more rhythmical material and an almost theatrical, phantasmal sensibility. The music here doesn’t just evoke imagined landscapes or unique sonic worlds, but it seems to be toying with the idea of a protagonist or a narrative. The pieces move with intent, unravelling in their course moving tales, haunting ancient stories and whispered rumours. There is an underlying aura of mystery and ghostliness which is also reflected in the track titles: all are named after ghost towns around Ontario, Canada. ‘Newfoundout’ is a truly fascinating new entry in Storring’s discography; one which not only highlights his strengths and refines his approach, but also showcases the breadth of his vision. It’s an album where hyperrealism meets psychedelia, where strange dreams meet cinematic grandeur. - Adam Badi Donoval --- All selections are named after ghost towns around Ontario, Canada.Dome is dedicated to the memory of Noah CreshevskyComposed, performed, recorded, produced, and mastered by Nick Storring using acoustic and electromechanical instruments/ treatments, and only the minimum of effects processing.nickstorring.caPhotography by Nick StorringArtwork and layout by Richard Čechoinstagram.com/riko_ceko/Words by Eric Chenaux and Adam Badí Donovalericchenaux.comabdonoval.comSpecial thanks to: Nathalia Sanches, Colin Fisher, Katrina Orlowski, Yvonne Ng, Peter Hatch, Noah Creshevsky, Seth Graham, Keith Rankin, Jakub Juhás / mappa, and John Farah (for the continued use of his Rhodes and Pianet).

"Stumbling into the Age of Loneliness I carry cloudy glass bottles to the edge of the Pacific. After 100 years in dirt beneath San Francisco they breathe fresh ocean air, fill with the energy of breaking waves. Microphones inside, ear to conch, I hear shadows: scurrying, wing flaps, chirps and chatters, whimpers and bellows. So many creatures, once emerged from the sea, now gone. How many vessels would the disappeared fill? What is the weight of a lost species? I make an offering of listening to help me carry all these ghosts we made." ⟶ Cheryl Leonard Life through the computer. We all have had to grapple with it over the past year, as we attempt to wring as much meaning, intimacy, experience and variety as we can from our shiny boxes of electronics. Concerts, plays, ballet, meetings, dates, dinners, coffees and conferences all became just a click away. Some of us cocooned ourselves in soundscapes lost, from old streams from noisy bars, to recordings of natural locations we could no longer get to. It was by turns revelatory, empty, full, sad and comforting. In Schism’s title track Cheryl E. Leonard treats us to her own imaginings of the world within her laptop; a pulsating, flickering, stuttering morass of coil pick up recordings, set amid the co-mingling of crickets, squirrels, birds, bats, and sounds played on natural-object instruments. She asks: “What does it mean when our mediating technologies have both the power to connect us to and distance us from the ecosystems we are part of?” Certainly this is a question which predates the pandemic, but it is one which we grapple with now with a set of new knowledges which speak to both the possibilities, and the shortcomings of a life lived digitally.In addition to her laptop recordings Leonard also turns to mics placed inside bottles to render the second piece on this release, Eremozoic. In the context this simple gesture takes on new resonances; a separation, enclosure, limitation which captures and reverberates particular tones, while missing others entirely. When I think of the computer in this era, I think of it like this, it exists as both echo chamber and conversation; alienation and hope. I think many of us have felt the last year, a little like life was lived inside a bottle. With this release Leonard reminds us of what we lost during the pandemic, but more profoundly what we might lose more permanently as we continue into the climate crisis. - Kate Carr --- Composed, performed, and recorded by Cheryl E. Leonard Mastered by Thomas Dimuzio at Gench Studios   Liner Notes by Cheryl E. Leonard Words by Kate Carr  Artwork and design by Juliána Chomová  Stone composition and photography by Ester Sabik  Risograph print by Kudla Press  Photography by Zoltán Czakó Dedicated to Patty Chen-Wei Liu Released by mappa as MAP026 in 2021

Food People - the delectable trio of Matthew Hamblin, Greg Thomas, and Lila Matsumoto - serve us up a generous portion of swampy psychedelia, avante-blues, DIY folk ramshackle and tape hiss melancholia on this new release. Following in the tradition of British astral-gazing junk connoisseurs Vibracathedral Orchestra, Food People fold their sounds into one another to form slow moving meshed collages of sound. Less focus is put on the progression of each sound, and instead on creating a non-hierarchical space where each guitar riff, wistful violin line, synth wash and tape recording can meet each other and sing together. To celebrate the release, Food People will play OTO on the 29th of September, as part of a packed bill featuring Kelly Jayne Jones, Chora and The Heads and The Golds. -- Food People are Matthew Hamblin, Greg Thomas, and Lila Matsumoto -- Cover design by Oliver Barrett

So pleased to present this new intimate solo saxophone recording by the utterly singular Akira Sakata. We can't wait to have you back at OTO some day, Akira! “Under the Covid 19 pandemic all the musicians and live music venues’ livelihoods are under threat. Currently, August 5, 2021 is in the middle of the TOKYO 2020 Olympics. Over 5,000 infected people, It jumped 10 times more than before the Olympics. We have entered an unknown territory. I am lucky to live. This solo is a continuation of the recording prepared to take a video in memory of the late John Russell. It was recorded at Bar Isshee in Tokyo. Many musicians, including Toshinori Kondo, died this year, but I couldn't even go to the funeral. I'm sorry. I can't help but hope that cafe OTO will hold up and this pandemic will end soon. " - Akira Sakata Japanese translation: 「Covid-１９のパンデミックの中でミュージシャンとlive houseは誠に残念な状況下にあります。 現在２０２１年８月５日はTOKYO ２０２０ Olympic の真っ最中です。感染者は５０００人を超えて、 オリンピック前の１０倍に跳ね上がりました。最早未知の領域に入りました。私は幸運にも生きています。 このsoloは　故John Russel追悼の映像を撮るために用意した録音の続きであります。東京にあるBar Issheeで録音したものです。今年も近藤等則をはじめ多くのミュージシャンが亡くなりましたが、葬式にも行けませんでした。残念でなりません。cafeOTOが持ちこたえられること、このパンデミックは早く終息することを願わずにはおれません」 -- Recorded at Bar Isshee Tokyo Recorded on 13 Feburuary 2021 Recorded by Eriko Suzuki(suzueri) Mastering & cover design by Oliver Barrett

Long term close OTO affliliate John Chantler treats us to a new work of deftly arranged textural synthesis, seeing soaring drones, weaving harmonic interplay, fluttering high ends and rolling snare drum work meet and be driven forth by a burning emotional core. We’d been thinking about getting a dog for a couple of years, but it was always tricky to work out a good time amongst the regular travel. We eventually settled on trying to make it happen after coming back from some concerts in Australia in June/July 2020 where I’d also planned to premiere the speaker/synthesizer objects I’ve been building for the last little while and that form the basis of all of the music for this piece. Australia was very quick to shutdown at the pandemic’s onset so the tour prospect vanished and the dog prospect moved into our immediate future instead. I see now that I replied to Fielding Hope’s invitation to make something for the Takuroku series the same day that Eli came to live with us in April 2020 and didn’t really anticipate how much his joyous presence and the ensuing impact of the bigger picture would make difficult what would have previously been a simple task. So, here is my piece — at the tail end of things. - John Chantler -- John Chantler - Digital synthesis, speakers, percussion. -- Recorded July/August 2021, Spaden / Sweden.Cover design by Oliver Barrett

Bad barrier the blood-brain, the glaucous membrane. Not much changedby a public plague year (during=other matter): flailingpinions, Distress or Alarm likely to cause Distress or Alarm, Neuronopsychononeuropsychocataract. Congestion of the blood-brain cloaca, a site for eyesores, spite for spyspores. So yeahblooming droopingthanks -- ornate and frailalready, no paralysed arm, no calcified brain. 3 nests of morpionsmakeupa Nervenkostum. Ululate onto mono tape forhours (1 yearis20, 12?), renounce/reduce/denature later, same as we always did. Triple-jointed wrists/unsnappy turns, at least spare us "real time". General Demolitionhaswon the allegorical war, the swifts are back, don't know for how long. -- Recorded to Sony mono condenser tape deck, NE/E Ldn (connected by sinkware x stereo speakers), 2020-21. External samples (scream of swifts[6], Monique Morelli sings Villon[8]) played straight to tape on Ymh SU-10 (1993). Tape-tape recursion on 2-track free trial computer program (discontinued). -- Triple Negative: Mme Tlank, Velimirovich, clinical wasteman: voices, percussion

Recorded in her boyfriend's kitchen in Menlo Park, CA, part of Silicon Valley, 'Crushed Shells' sees electronic artist Madalyn Merkey start her practice afresh, engaging with a whole new set of tools. Starting from a hodgepodge of small borrowed equipment, Madalyn's set-up grew into d.i.y. eurorack modules until it took up the whole room. The album is reflective of this raw, homemade process, including first time interactions with the equipment through to blossoming sound worlds. In her own words, "it is about starting from scratch and seeing where things go." At once baroque and experimental, Madalyn lets wandering melodies find their feet in open terrain. Crystalline synth lines meet others in gentle harmony and disharmony, like slow moving clouds floating past each other, overlapping and forming new shapes. Elsewhere she lets sounds blip, fizz and crack, gifting each gesture plenty of space to come into being. Rather relying too much on iterative electronic phrasing, she creates lively sonic dynamics, with altered repetitive patterns dancing in flux with punctuated rhythms. Carrying itself with a weightless minimalism, 'Crushed Shells' soundtracks an artist that has built a small new world for themselves, and has opened the kitchen window for us all to see. -- Madalyn Merkey - Waldorf blofeld with midi keyboard & d.i.y. eurorack modules -- Mastered by Oliver Barrett

Taku Unami is a performer of multi-instrumental, improvised, and unclassifiable (non-)music. Influenced by cosmic-pessimism, science-fiction, supernatural-horror, and weird-fiction, his work involves the myriad playing of string instruments, piano, synthesizers, recording hardware and software, and “obfuscated everyday, non-musical objects.”  On this release Taku embraces 100% computer programmed music. Instead of sculpting everything himself, he allows his computer to generate its own sounds as much as possible. The result feels like a slow scan through the astral plane; a journey through deep textural fog and indeterminate sonic debris. Oscillated sounds flicker, ascend and descend, tipping the axis of the journey on and off its free-falling motion . Less focus is put on the progression of sounds or narrative scaffolding. Instead, each of the 5 pieces acts as a segment of parts of a journey: aural illuminations of parts of the deep unknown. It has been far far too long since Taku played in Cafe OTO. Here's hoping he can make it back here soon, but in the meantime we hope you enjoy this new album by one of the most radical artists in Japan. -- Taku Unami - computer --Mastered by Taku Unami Cover design by Oliver Barrett

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. 

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

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

HIGHLY RECCOMENDED!!!! A singular exercise in Will Guthrie's discography, “People Pleaser”, a series initiated in 2017, sees the Australian partially put down his drumsticks and wear a producer cap for a result offering a resolutely singular perspective of / on his work with a very personal dimension. On the first volume, with a cover signed Stephen O'Malley sets the tone by diverting the chamaré Warhol influenced visual of the album “Unit Structures” by Cecil Taylor. The portrait of the free jazz pianist has been replaced by passport photos of Guthrie. The result is a diversion into a fairly “Pop” aesthetic whose musical content works in a fairly similar way. Four years later, the cover art's undertones are slightly darker and Guthrie hasn't aged a bit on his new passport photo. The twelve tracks of this second “People Pleaser” combine and arrange field recordings, heady loops, twists, musical quotes stuck on bedside records, recorded moments captured during travels, ghosty voices from low-fi lands, a police interview tape and imagined exotic sounds ... Guthrie could walk us for hours on his hard drive like looking at a photo album but he chose to build pieces based on this very personal sound material, much like a mixtape, with special care given to how sounds articulate, overlap and collide. He thus invites his heroes and his friends to join him in skilfully chiseled and finely edited imaginary jams. The first to take pleasure in this “People Pleaser” is undoubtedly its author as some of his finds are enjoyably playful; we are there embarked in an addictive sound patchwork at high speed where a Balinese Squarepusher is propelled via a defective cathode ray tube in a temple where the happy marriage of the saxophone and the gong is celebrated before this too short respite is interrupted by a sustained hip hop rhythm. The multiplicity and variety of sources give the whole a very pop format and the way in which Guthrie combines sounds, textures, rhythms and vocal elements quickly takes on a narrative dimension and poses this exercise between hip hop and a very personal plunderphonic, evoking as much J Dilla or RZA as the irreverent inventiveness of People Like Us or Wobbly.Will Guthrie has never been in as good company as on a solo album, he also lists on the cover the list of friends, heroes, members of his family and countries who inspired him and to whom he pays homage / collage on this new disc; An aesthetic exercise apart in his discography, both infinitely personal and self-centered and resolutely turned towards what animates him, the aptly named “People Pleaser” reveals the music DNA of the Australian and can be listened to on repeat. --- Kythibong, 2021

Maxed out and burning hot nasty, Electric Rag brings together the electric organs, electronics and alto sax of Jean-Luc Guionnet, with the closely amplified drums and percussion of Will Guthrie. After years of playing together in the minimalist pointillist free jazz noise core trio ‘The Ames Room’ (with Clayton Thomas on bass) Electric Rag offers up  another point of view on a musical history of nearly 15 years of playing together.The 8 titles of Electric Rag draw on their various experience in electronic music, free improvisation and experimental sound research, however the music is deeply rooted in their love of jazz, in its most potent, aggressive and antisocial form. --- Kythibong, 2021

Thomas Bonvalet is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist. Having commenced his vocation as a bassist he cemented it as a guitarist at the heart of the band Cheval de Frise (1998-2004). Progressively straying from the guitar, he began to integrate foot tapping and various wind and percussive instruments into his performance, incorporating mechanical elements and stray amped-up objects into the soundscape. This formed the guiding principle of his solo project, L'ocelle mare, initiated in 2005, and continues to form the core of his instrumentation. The release of Serpentement in 2012 marked the end of a cycle of four progressive stages, homogeneous but distinct from one another, released with successive regularity, proceeding with the elaboration of his singular set up, implicating the human body into a simultaneity of associated gestures and sonic tools and forming a commonality of timbres and tremors. This structure remained fluid and adaptable, finding a balance which lent itself quite naturally to collaborations, entering into the fields of improvisation, folk, rock and contemporary music. In recent years Bonvalet has collaborated, most notably, with Powerdove, Arlt, Radikal Satan, Jean Luc Guionnet, Arnaud Rivière, Will Guthrie, Gaspar Claus, Daunik Lazro, Fred Jouanlong and Sylvain Lemètre. Without renouncing his solo work, his interruption from it has allowed a slower and more elastic evolution, permitting ancient shapes to gradually metamorphose. In this way new compositions successively articulated themselves in an almost self-determining manner. Temps En Terre is the fifth album release from L'ocelle Mare, and the first to have been recorded in a studio. The preceding releases were characterised by a marked acoustic: the echoey reverberations inherent to Serpentement were thanks to the protestant temple it was recorded in; Engourdissement was entirely recorded in forest expanses, upon ponds and enclosed within remote wood cabins; Porte d'Octobre was recorded entirely in urban spaces; and his first, unnamed album was entirely recorded in caves and churches. The pieces forming Temps en Terre however, are recorded under a harsher gaze, presented in far cruder light, comparable to that of a live recording. The instrumentation is composite, rustic, yet paradoxically sophisticated: piano, 6 string bass banjo, mechanical metronome, tuning forks, claves, hand and foot clapping and tapping, mini amps, amps, subwoofer, microphones, small mix desk, bells, mouth organ fragments, concertina, componiums, "stringin it", audio ducker, drum skins, clockwork motors...  --- Kythibong, 2018 Kythibong - 2018

For the time being we are unable to get to the post but if you order now your item will be posted as soon as things return to normal. Thank you for your support. 'Patty Waters is a visionary avant-garde vocalist and composer, best known for her groundbreaking 1960s recordings for the legendary free jazz label ESP-Disk. Captivated by the music of Billie Holiday, she sang with Bill Evans, Charlie Mingus, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock before coming to the attention of Albert Ayler, who introduced her to ESP-Disk’s Bernard Stollman. The rest is history. Recorded with pianist Burton Greene, Waters’ haunting 1966 debut Sings juxtaposes a side of hushed self-composed jazz ballad miniatures with an iconoclastic take on the standard “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.” Sharing Ayler’s affinity for the deconstruction of folk idioms, Waters dismantles the tune through a series of anguished wails, moans, whispers, and screams that cemented her reputation as a vocal innovator, predating the extended techniques of Yoko Ono, Joan La Barbara, and Linda Sharrock, and cited as a direct influence to Diamanda Galás and Patti Smith’s own freeform vocal excursions. The mythic side-long exposition stands as one of the 20th century’s most harrowing expressions of madness and grief, its incantatory mutilation of the word “black” into a full-spectrum monochrome resounding with a particular potency at a time when battles for civil rights were erupting across the country. After recording a second ESP-Disk album Waters disappeared from the music scene, moving from New York to California to raise her son. It wasn’t until 1996 that she returned with a new recording of jazz standards associated with Billie Holiday and began performing sporadically. Her Blank Forms concert—with original pianist Burton Greene as well as bassist Mario Pavone and percussionist Barry Altschul, both veterans of Paul Bley’s ensembles—was Waters’ first New York appearance since 2003. Dedicated to Cecil Taylor, who had passed away moments before she took the stage, Patty Waters Live preserves the mournful tension that was in the air that night. Her first new release on vinyl since 1966’s College Tour, the record divides the session in the spirit of her debut. Side A features a set of desolate ballads, including Waters’ own classic “Moon, Don’t Come Up Tonight,” while the B-side puts into stark relief the fact that the fight for civil rights that Waters invoked over 50 years ago is far from over. Beginning with her rendition of “Strange Fruit,” a 1937 song written in protest of black lynching and American racism, the suite’s form-bending contortions also features the second-ever recording of Waters’ original, exceptional lyrical take on Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” Equally adept at channeling the heartbroken intimacy of Lady Day and the catharsis of The New Thing, on April 5th, 2018 Waters proved that she has lost none of her fire, remaining one of the greatest living jazz singers.' - Blankforms

Last year's "Sibling", released on Special Guest DJ's Experiences Ltd was one of the year's subtle standouts, but Bondy's music refuses to tether itself to one sound or another, instead hovering around the fertile area between experimental ambient and outre club modes. "Glans Intercum" paces further sideways, toying with dub and drone ideas and sandwiching these sketches between buzzing drum workouts that squeeze texture from collapsing beat templates. Oscillating piquant shocks of vibrant energy with steeply opiated hypnagogia and OOBE-like sensations, the results locate a mind in flux, torn between the need to flex hyper-articulated limbs and becoming lost in discretely introspective ambient interzones.  The eight tracks course from a sort of kaotic power ambient energy to a lushly unresolved daydream serenity through alternately convulsive and temple-smushing turns. ‘Rest’ opens with a bitter explosion of digital scree that escalates into pill-belly jitters, and ‘Ash In Emerald Casing’ keeps toes off the ground with Rian Treanor-levels of pointillist hyper-footwork tekkers, contrasting with the DJ Python-esque slithering vox and atmospheric mulch of ‘Spangled (With Stella).’ From the skittish ‘Drip on Nape’ his circles start to bleed into one, with the aqueous shimmer of ‘Ven’ and Stella’s vocals returns on ‘2404’ to blur the lines between up/down, where ’Skizz’ enacts a sort of perpendicular grime and he ultimately comes to bliss out in the fragile glassine fractals wilting from the closing title tune. --- West Mineral, 2021

‘Sotto’ is Andrew Oda’s attempt at world building in sound. Meshing method, mind, metaphysical and mundane into massive murals, its triptych of vivid compositions seem to wield electronic sound like a magic paintbrush. Inspired by the paintings of Otto Marseus van Schrieck, Ljubomir Popović, and Nicole Duennebier, ‘Sotto’’s three parts inhabit environments bursting with explosive internal ecologies of synthesized pulsations, yawning drones, tinkling imaginary chimes, and abstract noisy rumblings that flow, ebb and breathe with the infinite complexity cognition meshing with the chaotic order of natural greenery. Side A’s two pieces – ’Sotto’ and ‘Spirit’ – are both only made up of synthetic sound, created via computer and other synthesizing methods. The spark came from an attempt to show the process of creation, life and the final union through sonic means, spiralling into a dense lattice of lifeforms, spirits, and objects realised in sound. “The original goal of the project was to convey the idea of this sound visualization for creatures and textures that are fluid, tangled and morphing into and around each other,” explains Oda. While imagination and spirit are the subjects of the first two pieces, the final piece of the triptych, ‘Enfold’, emerges into a luscious and staggeringly beautiful material world. Oda turns here to acoustic recordings made in the field, as well as pianos, bells, and flute (performed by Susannah Oda), layering the results into the trembling organic soundscape suggested by Jonáš Gruska’s cover photography. The entirety of ‘Sotto’ is a living and vivid sound world of Oda’s creation – the first in a pegged trilogy of triptychs – brimming with beauty in which to wander and bask.  --- Side A contains only sound synthesisSide B contains field recordings, piano, bells, as well as flute recordings from Susannah OdaSOTTO was made in Indiana, California and Virginia from 2018-2020Cover and photos by Jonáš Gruskainstagram.com/jonas.gruska/Mastered by Adam Badí Donovalabdonoval.comWords by Tristan Bathtristanbath.comPhotography by Leontína Berkováleontinaberkova.com

As a project, Line Gate has been undergoing a slow, steady transformation, much like the longform drone works that have come to characterise it. What began as a band in 2010 and most recently surfaced as a solitary hurdy-gurdy resonance on 'Den' in 2017 has now flourished into ‘Apex’, Michal Vaľko’s latest album. 'Apex', simultaneously an album about perceiving the beauty around us, about sacredness, and a meditation on a state of timelessness and seeming non-action, is divided into two 30-minute pieces.The gently modulating drone of the hurdy-gurdy remains present during the first piece, along with its very characteristic (almost psychedelic) resonances and overtones. However, the listener's ear is almost immediately drawn to another sound source - the human voice. 'Apex I' presents an interplay between these two instruments, which, strangely enough, are positioned in a similar space on the frequency spectrum. The result is a mind-bending interplay between the hurdy-gurdy and the voice; one weaving around the other in seemingly indeterminable patterns.'Apex II' takes Vaľko’s explorations of the human voice even further: the hurdy-gurdy is withdrawn. Layers of voice, some processed, some raw, are the only building block here. A resonant layer of sampled voice, not dissimilar from the hurdy-gurdy, acts as an unstable, shifting sonic bed around which a gradually growing choir of voices orbits endlessly. Sibilants, consonants and vowels recited in mantra-like cycles form a non-linguistic vocal tapestry, one without explicit meaning, but imbued with huge emotional gravity and a unique enchanting quality. 

‘face first in the entangled’ is Infant’s illustration of the “organic internet” between different lifeforms built by mushrooms. These mycological structures see wild fungi coordinating and operating in a decentralized yet organized fashion, leading to dramatic ‘social changes’ without the need for leaders. The music follows a similar path, with Detroit-based Patrick Miller working over a year-and-a-half to forge a mimic of such systems, eschewing lead elements in favor of co-mingling patches of sound. The role of composer is reframed here, Infant regressing to a more passive position as listener within the chain that led to the dense and untamed beauty of ‘face first in the entangled’. The process turned crude granular synth freeware into showering spores, vocal improvisations into near-unrecognisable murmurs, and field recordings and drum programmes into a distant pulse. The sonic elements at play swim around one and other and freely-associate, forming “micro-dramas” as the artist puts it, with each element playing a different, mutating part. The networked tangle of sounds adheres to its own inner-logic, pricking the sonic field, turning composted samples into a blooming forest floor littered with unexpected moments of shimmering denouement. The work was inspired by writers like Ursula K. Le Guin or Anna Tsing, both of whom sought to reject traditional hero narratives. The latter’s “The Mushroom at the end of the World” describes the foraging of prized matsutake mushrooms on forest floors worldwide, untamable by humans, and reliant on its symbiotic relationship with tree roots. The symbiosis of sounds Infant captures on ‘face first in the entangled’ reflects such organic structures, where the world is forged by an unknowable network of biological processes, rather than any one being. --- Music by Infantinfaaant.bandcamp.cominstagram.com/infantinfantinfant/Cover and photos by InfantMastered by Adam Badí Donovalabdonoval.comWords by Tristan Bathtristanbath.comPhotography by Leontína Berkováleontinaberkova.com

Somewhere between the buzzing Cyborg bugs and the whistling of extinct birds. Welcome to the hybrid zoo built on the ruins of the biotic crisis. You can explore the chirping, singing and trilling of birds and insects, which you know from pictures of cryptozoological encyclopedias or go straight to synthetic ornithology, where you can listen to mutated biorhythms. Everyone knows Mockingjay call, but who heard the voice of the Double-headed emu or the rustle of invisible community living in the crown of the Muku tree? Felicity Mangan is an Australian sound artist, composer and an attentive listener based in Berlin. She plays her found native Australian wildlife archive and other field recordings, either through a stereophonic system or often via hand-made speakers and found objects – exploring the timbre and forms of found and self-recorded animal voices while mimicking biophonic patterns to create minimal quasi-bioacoustic environments. "Tracks on Creepy Crawly were made between 2017-19. Samples were taken from found animal sounds and field recordings made in Berlin and trips to Japan and Australia.Some of the material was played live along side my collaborators in duo projects Native Instrument (Shelter Press, Entr'acte) and Plants and Animalia." Five compositions are perfect gateway to the Mangan archive, which is rather embedded aural illusion- speculative echo of spieces than a reproduction of rural soundscape. Felicity has presented projects in many different settings from galleries, gardens, clubs and festivals throughout Europe. Including National Gallery Denmark, Technosphärenklänge CTM/HKW and Sonic Act Academy.

Among the musicians whose work closely reflects the reduced forms in experimental music, perhaps the most interesting is Cristián Alvear, a Chilean guitarist performing formally radical post-Cagean music, as well as Laurent Peter aka d'incise, a composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer, one of the key figures of the eclectic scene in Geneva. The numerous projects in which they participate prove their strictly defined artistic vision and active involvement in networking the music community, so it’s appropriate to consider them as transitory elements between several scenes on different continents. They have collaborated, among others, with Ryoko Akama, Cyril Bondi, Michael Pisaro, Sarah Hennies, Seijiro Murayama, Taku Sugimoto, Lance Austin Olsen and The Pitch.Bow Down Thine Ear, I Bring You Glad Tidings is a good example of the refinement of the style developed by Alvear and d’incise in recent years. One can observe here how their musical language and range of instrumental techniques in the use of guitar and idiophones got crystallised.The classical form of a musical piece organized in time and characterized by a set of elements that create a coherent narrative is replaced here by the primacy of repetition, pitch, precise articulation and reverberation. Sounds seem to be clearly rooted in specific acoustic spaces, which allows the space itself to be treated as a real instrument that adds another layer of meaning. Repetitive sound sequences operate in a similar way to the metronome, determining an obsessive rhythmic pattern, a kind of matrix on which all the details are inscribed. The static structure of the pieces allows the music to function as a sound sculpture - breaking time constraints in favour of continuous duration and acting in a multi-perspective way. This material, does not promise any solution, but strictly accompanies the listener and tries to close itself in the continuous present.At the same time Bow Down Thine Ear, I Bring You Glad Tidings is a clear dialogue with the work of Henry Purcell. The title of the album is a reference to the anthems written by the British composer (Z11, Z2) and the titles of the pieces refer to his sacred songs (Z192, Z342). Apart from a skillful attempt to decontextualize the lyrics (biblical or rooted in the tradition of baroque religious poetry), we can see here not so much an attempt to give the music a metaphysical character, but certainly Alvear and d’incise tend to replicate a similar mode of listening, as in the case of Purcell's compositions - meditative and at the same time oriented to all elements of the musical situation.  --- Cristián Alvear / guitard'incise / percussion (2 series of "tuned objects"), post-processings recorded in a different space ---Recorded at Insub.studio, Geneva, May 2019Processings recorded at La Senne, Bruxelles, May & September 2019Edited & mixed by d’inciseCover art by Nick Hoffmanpilgrimtalk.bandcamp.comMastered by Adam Badí Donovalabdonoval.comWords by Paweł Szroniakrozkurz.tumblr.comPhotography by Leontína Berkováleontinaberkova.com

Long out of press mighty gamelan collab from members of US drone collective Pelt, the UK's Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides and New Zealand guitarist Michael Morley aka Gate. Recorded at 2012's TUSK festival in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the huge ensemble folded up into a mid-size room in a little corner of England and tapped into the music that has long transfixed the world - but with as much raga and hillbilly influence as Indonesian. Be warned, this is not 100% holy. Soon, avain hymns give way to drones akin to those of Vibracathedral Orchestra, and low, slow tones eat at your redeeming thoughts. A one time super-group and damn were they super. Official MIE press release: "In October 2012, at the Tusk Festival at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, noise emissaries from three continents came together on a Sunday to make music for an hour or so. From the United States came Mike Gangloff, Nathan Bowles, and Patrick Best of the mighty Virginia drone collective Pelt. Representing the United Kingdom were sonic pilgrims Pascal Nichols and Kelly Jayne Jones of Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides. And from Oceania came the transcendent New Zealand guitarist Michael Morley of Gate and, of course, the legendary Dead C. This summit proceeded without words. Their chosen means of deliberation was the gamelan: an array of gangsa and saron metallaphones and singing bowls sprawled out on the patchwork oriental rugs; a rig of gongs; the flurry of hammers and mallets; a few dozen onlookers seated cross-legged or just laying prostrate on the floor. And everyone and everything was transported. - Brent S. Sirota ---  Recorded at TUSK Festival 2012 at Star & Shadow Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Live sound by Steve Nicholson and Stosh. Recording by Sam Grant. With thanks to Henry MIE.  www.tuskfestival.com

A collection of the best recordings selected by the Dutch sound artist Felix Hess from his "Frogs" series featuring frog calls from around the world, released on cassette tapes, vinyl, and CD-Rs from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. A limited-edition pressed CD of this long-discontinued series, with new artwork by Sakura Kondo. It is a series that inspired the artist, who was a physicist studying the trajectory of boomerangs, to create sound works later in life. Palenque is a recording of cane toad calls from Palenque, Mexico. --- Recorded by Felix Hess Mastered by Makoto Oshiro Artwork by Sakura Kondo Designed by Hirozumi Takeda --- Basic Function, 2021

A collection of the best recordings selected by the Dutch sound artist Felix Hess from his "Frogs" series featuring frog calls from around the world, released on cassette tapes, vinyl, and CD-Rs from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. A limited-edition pressed CD of this long-discontinued series, with new artwork by Sakura Kondo. It is a series that inspired the artist, who was a physicist studying the trajectory of boomerangs, to create sound works later in life. Frog Night includes calls of three species native to Japan (tree frog, Tonosama frog, and Schlegel's green tree frog) recorded in a rice field in Kyotango City. --- Recorded by Felix Hess Mastered by Makoto Oshiro Artwork by Sakura Kondo Designed by Hirozumi Takeda --- Basic Function, 2021

"A long desire of extraordinaire saxophone player Peter Brötzmann was a studio recording of some of his favorite jazz tunes and his own music -- a grand bridge over the music important for his life and his musical career in the past and present. Trost invited him to Martin Siewert's studio in Vienna to do so in summer 2018. The result is intense, beautiful and touching. Features compositions by Harry Barris/Gordon Clifford, Sigmund Romberg/Oscar Hammerstein II, Herbie Nichols, Dizzy Gillespie, George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin, and Sonny Rollins. Personnel: Peter Brötzmann - tenor saxophone. Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Martin Siewert. Liner notes and artwork by Peter Brötzmann."

In 1976 the fairly square “Movieplay S.A.” imprint (via their slightly hipper “Serie Gong”) quietly issued this monster of a live-electronic / psych-freakout opus (oddly, alongside canonic titles by Inti-Illimani, Victor Jara, et.al ... all considerably more “Inside”) by the then-unknown composers Eduardo Polonio & Horacio Vaggione, recording under the name It. Predating the latter’s canonic Cramps-label debut “La Maquina Del Cantar” by a couple of years, this is miles away from the controlled generative transfixiations of said, instead figuring around the more iterative synthesizer, organ, guitar, and bass basheries laid down by the pair & post-processed heavily into something more in line w/ the best of Krautrock’s studio-excesses (Günter Schickert’s less rhythmically conservative work & the more outré Faust experiments come to mind, but there are also sections that are heavily reminiscent of Seeselberg, Anar Band, & even some of Schnitzler’s early solo outings) ...Unbelievably great, one of the (unheralded) missing links in the Electronic-Psych canon, brought out into the open after remaining a (well-guarded, I’d literally never heard of this until now) secret. This Creel Pone Edition recreates the original edition's gatefold via a snazzy metallic, pearlized 6-panel booklet. --- Creel Pone, 2007

Creel Pone rendition of this elusive 1975 Cramps Nova Musicha series (N.7) LP by the Romanian Composer Costin Miereanu, “put on the map” (so to speak) by its inclusion in the infamous Nurse With Wound list. I've always found it baffling that; of all of the Cramps titles reissued and re-reissued over the past few years, this piece, considered by many followers of the “Dark Side-long Aleatoric Electro-Acoustic Collage” aesthetic - see Dub Taylor, Luis De Pablo, Jean Claude Eloy, et.al - to be one of the finest examples of said, was never given its due time in the warm, contemporary sun. Kudos, then, for the Nth time, to Mr. P.C. C.P. for his prescient, timely efforts.Do, aside from “Dark Side-long Aleatoric Electro-Acoustic Collage,” what does it sound like you ask? imagine Xenakis’ bells-and-trinkets epic “Bohor” overlaid with Basil Kirchin’s “Worlds within Worlds” and generations of pan-linguistic self-help / instructional programs - at any given time in the piece there are at least 4-5 separate layers of gated textures, field recordings, dissonant / glassy ensemble playing, and a bed of Synthesized Drone-sound. The voices that dominate the first half in strident, authoritative tones give way in the second half to sparse moaning and sustained ululations, leaving more room for the woozy “Instrumental” textures. An ominous, creepy piece; not for the weak of constitution. --- Creel Pone, 2007

Continuing in the Creel Pone "6" Igloo program, here's a picture-perfect reproduction of one of the more obscure & bewitching entrants into the label's early discography, Henry Krutzen's 1981 "Silances" LP; IGL 006. Nestled somewhere between Ghédalia Tazartès' mutant Sound Poetry, Anton Bruhin's acoustic / Alphorn drones & the more "Private" sensibilities of Badouin Oosterlynck, Paul A.R. Timmermans, or latter-day channelers like Raymond Dijkstra, the largely quiet, humble multi-track constructs - utilizing a palette of voice, hand percussion, piano, harmonica, saxophone, synthesizer, and only the subtlest of Electronic embellishments - work amazingly well at evoking a particular aesthetic that recalls mid-period Nurse With Wound inasmuchas "List" participants such as Franz Kamin's "Behavioral Drift II / Rugugmool," recent C.P. "Graduate" David Cope's "K • Weeds," or even Dominique Lawalrée's Editions Walrus output. Regardless of affiliation - or lack thereof - this is a beguiling outing full of lush drones & assorted alchemical wizardry that fits perfectly in the recent stream of Acoustic-leaning Musique Concrète styles. --- Creel Pone, 2007

* This book is a monster. It's huge. Hence price and postage. So you know...  free improvisation: what goes on? how does it work?                                                                      how can you write about it? Musicswas published, from 1975 to 1979, by musicians and artists on the London scene of free improvisation, focusing on the most innovative participants of their generation. Steve Beresford, David Toop,  Annabel Nicholson, Evan Parker, David Cunningham, Lindsay Cooper, Eddie Prevost, John Russell, Derek Bailey, Hugh Davies, Peter Riley and many, many others contributed to the writing, graphics and photography. Musicswas a blueprint for the interdisciplinary activities of sound art, field recording, free improvisation, live electronics, 20th century composition & audio culture. It came out six times a year and ran for twenty-three hand-assembled issues. The journal covered improvised and non-western music alongside performance art, reflecting the broad interests of the so-called “second generation” of London’s improvisers, and provided a convivial focus point.  Overlapping with thelondon musicians’ collective (lmc), the publication first launched in Spring of 1975, with the tagline:an impromental experivisation arts magazineand a manifesto that proposed the destruction of artificial boundaries, and linked Free Jazz, the academic ministrations of John Cage, Cornelius Cardew and K. Stockhausen and indigenous and non-European music.Musicswas significant in the discussion of traditional Asian instruments as paths of equal value for the performance of musics. Produced by what was effectively an anarchist collective with few publishing skills and no support, the magazine’s roughness, marginality and scarcity has kept it from those who are active, even prominent in the field.  Musicsis an entree to the arcane world of the 1970s London improviser’s scene and presents scores, dialogues, debates, positioning, arguments, accolades, critiques, absurdist/dada notions, and a bit of pranksterism - all with collective enthusiasm. Founding Editor David Toop: “with rose-tinted affection I recall mass paste-up sessions with spray mount… a page of reviews of electronic music by women, written by Lily Greenham in 1978… in the same issue are five beautifully written and illustrated pages about listening in Greece. An Aural Sketchbook by Dave Veres was just one example of pieces about listening practice and field recording; others include Found Sounds by Michael Leggett, Sounds in Kyōdo by Kazuko Hohki, New York Sounds by Fred Frith and Sounds Heard at La Sainte-Baume by Hugh Davies. There are also invaluable accounts of groups such as The People Band, Feminist Improvising Group, CCMC, Los Angeles Free Music Society, MEV and the Dutch musicians associated with Instant Composers Pool. Interspersed among all this loamy archival material are a few essays of grinding tedium, snarky barbs of wit, barely decipherable photographs…” Musics Introduction: Steve Beresford / Foreword: David Toop isbn: 978-0-9972850-5-5 / Publisher:ecstatic peace library Pub date: 1 September 2016 Flexi-bound cover, Swiss-bound, 800 pages

A multidisciplinary examination of the interrelationships between space-time, memory, architecture and town planning through the concept of rythmanalyse according to the philosopher Henri Lefebvre. Published following the project “That, Around Which The Universe Revolves. On Rhythmanalysis of Memory, Times, Bodies in Space ”, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, from December 1, 2017 to January 28, 2018. --- Edited by Elena Agudio, Anna Jäger, Saskia Köbschall, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung . Contributions by Akinbode Akinbiyi, Jacques Coursil, Thulile Gamezde, Gintersdorfer / Klaßen, Noa Ha, Hebbel am Ufer Berlin (Annemie Vanackere & Ricardo Carmona), Kampnagel Hamburg (Caroline Spellenberg), Jan Lemitz, Dorothee Munyaneza, Lucia Nhamo, Christian Nyampeta, Qudus Onikeku, Tracey Rose, Louis Henri Seukwa, AbdouMaliq Simone, Awilda Sterling, Greg Tate, Kathrin Tiedemann, Trinh T. Minh Ha, Tinofireyi Zhou, Percy Zvomuya.Graphic design: Elsa Westreicher, Clara Brandt, Lilia Di Bella, Chiara Onestini.   ---   Archive and Savvy Books, 2021

The catalogue of the 12th edition of Sonsbeek, centered around labour, and its sonicities, connects a millenary history crossing times and geographies to the present moment, through a multitude of voices, sounds, and ripples. Amidst everything that has and is still going on, what is silenced and what reverberates? What is revealed and what is ignored? Is solidarity resonating? Do we perceive its echoes while some people keep being denied breath? The curatorial framework of sonsbeek 20→24, centered around labour and its sonicities, connects a millenary history crossing times and geographies to the present moment, through a multitude of voices, sounds, and ripples. It invites us to listen to the sounds relegated to the "edges" of the "main" motive, to the whispered stories, to those passed through singing and through storytelling, and embodied narratives. An edition that inhabits the absence from the dominant image. An edition that draws particular attention to that which has been written otherwise — in singing, playing, performing, dancing, caring, in polyphonic rhythms and multiple motherless-tongues thanks to which memories, traditions, spiritualities, entire cosmologies crossed oceans and deserts. This edition aims to reveal the complex labour relations and inequalities that show who is (un)seen, who is (in)dispensable, who is seemingly worth our applause, and who is fawningly silent. This 12th edition of sonsbeek — the pathbreaking quadrennial for art in public space, is co-curated by Antonia Alampi, Amal Alhaag, Zippora Elders and Aude Christel Mgba, curatorial support by Krista Jantowski, under the artistic direction of Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. Force Times Distance – On Labour and its Sonic Ecologies is a journey, to say the least, into the unknown. A journey marked by a plethora of uncertainties, which we have chosen to embrace rather than fend off or deflect. From a global pandemic, to financial precarity, to arduous labour conditions, we consider the becoming of sonsbeek a wandering in wondering, trusting not only in our interlocutors—artists, curators, managers, audiences, producers etc.—but more especially trusting on the agency of the project and what it wants to reveal through us. --- Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition in Arnhem, The Netherlands, in 2021 With Sam Auinger, Raumlabor, Olu Oguibe, Werker Collective with Gleb Maiboroda & studio bonbon, Justine Gaga, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Sunette L. Viljoen, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Antonio Jose Guzman & Iva Jankovic, Wendelien van Oldenborgh & Erika Hock, Willem de Rooij, Hira Nabi, Alida Ymele, Omer Wasim, Mithu Sen, Cheick Diallo, Julieta Aranda, Leo Asemota, Gustavo Crembil & Mae-ling Lokko, Libita Sibungu, Oscar Murillo, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Nader Mohamed Saadallah, Stanley Brouwn, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami & Belinda Zhawi, Louis Henderson & João Polido, Ndidi Dike, Ibrahim Mahama, Laure Prouvost, Ellen Gallagher, Jennifer Tee, The Black Archives & Yinka Ilori. ---   Graphic design: Marcus Wachter / Werkplaats Typografie.

A curatorial and research project that aims to move beyond insanity as the opposite of sanity, and imagine a space beyond what is understood as sane, i.e. ultrasanity—not a romanticization of madness or mental illness, but an effort to reconsider and challenge the notion of madness and the stigmas labelled on the so-called mad. This publication unfolds as a collection of words, works, and images that informed, incited, and embodied SAVVY Contemporary's project Ultrasanity. On Madness, Sanitation, Antipsychiatry, and Resistance, an exhibition and research project on the elasticity of sanity.  It doesn't materialise simply as a catalogue of the exhibition but as a book retracing the trajectory of a research, as an occasion to extend SAVVY's curatorial proposition into a further choral perspective. With it we aim to deepen some of the reflections that moved and agitated us through two years of researches, conversations, programming, and practicing of Ultrasanity. The cogitations and the confrontations, the movements and the sounds, the trials and the tribulations, that accompanied us through the project and its 4 chapters and iterations are here collected to resonate one to each other, and to open new trajectories and paths. --- Edited by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Elena Agudio, Kelly Krugman. Contributions by Hortensia Völckers, Kirsten Ha, Alya Sebti, Inka Gressel, Joerg Fingerhut, Ana Gómez-Carillo, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Elena Agudio, Frederick W. Hickling, Debbie-Ann Chambers, Jaswant Guzder, The Brother Moves On, Jota Mombaça, Ghayath Almadhoun, Dora García, Monica Greco, Sajdeep Soomal, Ayesha Hameed, Jaswant Guzder, Johan Lagae, Sofie Boonen, Maarten Liefooghe, Mpho Matsipa, Dorothee Munyaneza.   ---      

A collection of essays, librettos, lyrics, memories, photos, personal anecdotes by musicians, visual artists, researchers and archivers that pays homage to the work and life of African-American composer, musician, performer, activist Julius Eastman. The book investigates his legacy beyond the predominantly Western musicological format of the tonal or harmonic and the framework of what is today understood as minimalist music. By trying to complicate, deny or expatiate on the notions of the harmonic, tonal hierarchy, the triadic, or even the tonal centre, Eastman's compositions explore strategies and technologies of attaining the atonal. One might be tempted to see Eastman in the legacy of Bartok, Schoenberg, Berg and others, but here too, it is worth shifting the geography of minimal tendencies and minimalism in music. It is worth listening and reading Eastman's music within the scope of what Oluwaseyi Kehinde describes as the application of chromatic forms such as polytonality, atonality, dissonance as the fulcrum in analysing some elements of African music such as melody, harmony, instruments and instrumentation. This publication constructs a non-linear genealogy of Eastman's practice and his cultural, political and social relevance, while situating his work within a broader rhizomatic relation of musical epistemologies and practices. --- Julius Eastman (1940-1990) was an American composer, pianist, vocalist, and dancer whose work fell under minimalism. He was among the first composers to combine minimalist processes with elements of pop music. There was some for John Cage, then came Christian Wolff, and finally Morton Feldman, from this school in New York. Only Julius Eastman remained outside the game, the last figure, the most solitary and enigmatic—undoubtedly also one of the most powerful. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eastman was one of the very few African-Americans to gain recognition in the New York avant-garde music scene. He was politically committed, a figure of queer culture and a solar and solitary poet whose melancholy influenced his genius as well as his tragic destiny: suffering from various addictions, declared missing, actually homeless. During Winter of 1981-82, he got deported from his apartment by the police, who destroyed most of what he owned—including scores and recordings. He was found dead in 1990, on the streets of Buffalo, after years of vagrancy. --- Edited by: Federica Bueti, Antonia Alampi, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. Contributions by Antonia Alampi, Rocco Di Pietro, Kodwo Eshun, Federica Bueti, Sean Griffin, Sumanth Gopinath, Jean-Christophe Marti, Josh Kun, Elaine Mitchener, Malak Helmy, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Marie Jane Leach, George E. Lewis, Berno Odo Polzer, Pungwe, Christine Rusiniak. ---

Innovator, genius, forward thinker and trendsetter - there are few individuals who have stamped quite as unique a footprint onto the musical landscape as Lee 'Scratch' Perry. Instantly recognisable both for his appearance and his musical approach, he has become a legend in his own lifetime in the worlds of reggae and dub. Kiss Me Neck is an extensive, detailed and heavily illustrated guide to the records produced by Perrty and those that hailed from his legendary Black Ark Studio. --- ‎Cherry Red Books, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earlier this century Spencer Clark created a sound phantasy with Skaters and after that he pursued a new alchemy under various aliases (Charles Berlitz, Fourth World Magazine, Monopoly Child, Typhonian Highlife, etc.) and projects (like Egyptian Sports Network, Tarzana or The Temple Defectors). He’s back with a new album under a new name, Star Searchers, a futuristic eco-friendly record. It’s life on earth as you never heard it. The story goes like this: Spencer Clark wanted to do a soundtrack for the yet to be made Avatar 2. And if you know Spencer’s work, you’ll know that he engaged on this mission reading material that influenced the rich and crazy imaginary world of Avatar. If you think about it a little bit, something like Avatar could have really come out from the mind of Spencer Clark. But it didn’t. So, he dwelled around the idea of that soundtrack, working on what is now known as Avatar Blue. The record we now release is a selection he made from the 2CD released last year on his own Pacific City Sound Visions.Like many of Spencer’s other alias or incarnations, Star Searchers introduces the listener to a new world. Besides making sounds/soundtracks for alternative realities he cares about making a world for his music to live in. It’s never superficial or dedicated just to the act of imagination, Spencer creates sounds that sustain the reality he imagined. That’s why they’re so rich and consequential in the realisation of music as a medium.Avatar Blue is music but also literature. And cinema. Star Searchers’ sound creates an absorbent sound about what’s happening in aquatic life. It goes beyond the perception of what we’ve seen or what we’ve known, it’s a neo-future aquatic life, with a world building structure and sounds and narratives that go along with it. All done with a sound-aesthetics that could be described as slowed-down-trance, that fits 1980s synth nostalgia and dreams of sci-fi to come.

Super limited tape. A narrative-musical work, a Babylonian library in which sound and word give shape to an evanescent sonic space with infinite historical, archaeological, science fiction and future references. Etrusca 3D is a new band that merges two current Audio and visual artists from the 21st Century, Francesco Cavaliere and Spencer Clark. The album is the first to be released by Spencer Clark's label Pacific City Discs, as a subsidiary and in collaboration with Discrepant. Etrusca 3D is the juxtaposition of two imagineers friendship, as Francesco says, 'because I am Etruscan and you (Spencer) are 3D." There is a piece of the future of Etruscan civilization contained within this disc. It is with Spencer's remote viewing of a past and future creative culture and Francesco's birthright that we find a true insinuation of civilizations world body. --- Pacific City, 2021

XXTREMELY RARE, THINK KWIK!! "In October 2018, the manager of ESP-Disk', Steve Holtje was invited by the 8th OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival to give a lecture titled 55 Years of Nurturing Avant-Garde and Outsider Music: ESP- DISK's Perpetual Revolution, in Shenzhen, China. During this event, Tu Fei, the curator of the festival, as well as the co-owner of Old Heaven Books, reached an agreement with Steve on further co-operations. For over half a century, ESP-DISK' has been publishing a massive amount of great records, among them are many free jazz masterpieces. And with great honor, the Old Heaven Books is authorized to produce and release this cassette boxset including 5 selected ESP DISK' classics, as a tribute to the label concept “The artists alone decide what you will hear on their ESP-Disk.”' This cassette boxset include 5 ESP-DISK releases: Albert Ayler- Spirits RejoiceRecorded Sept. 23, 1965 at Judson Hall, New York CityMarion Brown Quartet - Marion Brown QuartetRecorded in New York City in November 1965Sonny Simmons - Staying on the WatchRecorded in New York City on August 30, 1966Ronnie Boykins - The Will Come, Is Now© & ℗ 2009 ESP-Disk' Ltd./Syndicore Music (BMI)Sun Ra - Concert for the Comet KohoutekRecorded live at Town Hall, New York City, December 22, 1973. Limited Edition to 300 CopiesReleased by ESP-DISK' & Old Heaven Books

Unreleased material from the one and only Emil Beaulieau, rediscovered after more than 30 years in storage. An entirely chance online interaction with Frans de Waard (Vital Weekly, Korm Plastics, Kapotte Muziek) lead to adhuman acquiring a master tape of unreleased 'Private Performance' extracts recorded in 1988 by Ron Lessard. These tracks were originally submitted to Korm Plastics for inclusion in a series of 7" releases centered around ‘Musique Concrete Composers', but sadly the project was never completed and the recordings have been held in Frans’ archive ever since. Seemingly inspired by the discovery of this tape, Frans took to further digging, emerging with another cassette - an audio letter from Emil to 'Franz' sent sometime during the same era. If the 'Composer Series' material gives us Emil with his more serious, institutional hat on then the audio letter represents him at his most mischievous and wildly roughshod self. Nothing but Emil kicking back at home with his gear, croaking intermittent greetings, questions and the occasional jibe to Frans amidst a sea of jagged loops, twanged junk and destroyed noise. Raw, hilarious, unedited and joyous, the material was too good to remain private and forms the B side of Korm 88 at both Ron and Frans' suggestion. Korm 88 is not just a red-hot slice of classic Emil Beaulieau action - it is a document which reveals new context and insights into the early working practices of an artist who is rightly considered a living legend and pioneer of underground noise as we know it. Adhuman is very happy to release this document from a true personal favourite, inspiration and since 1988 (at least) AMERICA'S GREATEST LIVING NOISE ARTIST.  --- Music recorded by Ron Lessard, 1988 Cassettes provided by Frans de Waard 'Composer Series' cassette digitised by adhuman 'Audio Letter' cassette digitised by Frans de Waard --- adhuman, 2021

'This EP cassette was put together as a footnote to 'Cantus, Descant', a more raw and improvisational representation of the composition process in its early stages. These were actually the very first recordings I gathered when I began working on this record in August of 2017. A week or two before I moved from Canada to LA, I did several recording sessions at Pacific Spirit United Church in Vancouver and Chapelle Saint-Louis in Montréal on two beautiful Casavant organs from 1964 and 1916, respectively. 'Ruminant', from 'Cantus, Descant', comes from the Vancouver sessions and is "thematically" related to the 'Laurus I-III' material here. Nothing from the Montréal sessions actually ended up on the LPs, but I vividly remember recording the 'Accord of Voice I-II' series. I had just returned from six weeks in Europe and went in to do the first set of recordings the very next day at 7 am, before the church opened to the public, and my mind was kind of a mess. 'Accord of Voice I' was the first thing I worked on, it is the seedling of 'Cantus, Descant' even though it didn't make it to the album, and I still perform it for myself sometimes when I'm starting with any particular organ as a way of getting my head in the right place.' -Sarah Davachi --- Featuring the Casavant pipe organs of Pacific Spirit United Church in Vancouver, BC, Canada (ca. 1964) and Chapelle Saint-Louis in Montréal, QC, Canada (ca. 1916) Recorded and performed August 2017 by Sarah Davachi --- Late Music, 2020

"On the 1st of October 2020 I had a dream I was part of something. A late night open mic jam at an under-water jazz cellar, literally a flooded space underground. I set to recreate that experience Home Alone, with what sounds that looked like it. Evidence of those sessions is available online By November I had completed building a version of a machine for accessing the dream. The Dream Machine, however, solved nothing as a bigger parallel problem had simultaneously revealed it to me that such simulation could not replace, or entirely replicate, the corresponding shared experience of Real Life Dreaming. The time was to release what was possible to summon of the Dream Experience, and a CDr was hastily produced and given a limited-edition life of its own. What was supposed to be a relief-like revelation of one near-future utopia, the experience wavered "between unbridled relief and woefully unrealistic optimism" (NMM). On the 17th of December 2020 a Tallinn and Helsinki based online radio station made an entirely baseless and untrue announcement that in 2021, '2021' would receive a Second Life from the seminal Tampere record label Ikuisuus idaidaida.net/episodes/mental-alaska-2020-12-17 Therefore, rather than allowing for the shattering of the Dream Image of a better near-future, the premonition acted as a guide for the Dream Vision from an isolated experiment to a wider world of shared experience, hence hopefully somewhat fulfilling the Dream Prediction itself." - BE, Helsinki, 2021 Boom Edan is Tuukka Asplund.

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