Ogun marks their 40th anniversary by releasing this superb album from drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo's Unit as an octet including Alexander Hawkins on piano, John Edwards on bass, and Jason Yarde on saxes, performing a heartfelt tribute to The Blue Notes live in Italy. "Wild but still songlike collective thrashes swell out of catchy hooks (as on the title track); the street-brass sound of the old Brotherhood of Breath big band is echoed in struts like Irmite Is Right; the sonorous chant Dikelelu has a rumbling, Coltranesque undertow; and bassist John Edwards' crunching basswalk under Hawkins' zig-zagging piano solo on Sonke is awesome. There are protracted encores and namechecks at the end, but they all add to the sensation of being present at a gig you'd remember for a long time." - John Fordham --- Alexander Hawkins / piano John Edwards / bass Louis Moholo-Moholo / drums Jason Yarde / saxphones Ntshuks Bonga / saxophones Henry Lowther / trumpet Alan Tomlinson / trombone Francine Luce / vocals --- Recorded live in Milan, 2012 by Gianni Grassilli. Cover by Naiel Ibarrola.

A long-out-of-print slice of solo Chris McGregor gets a CD repress!! Recorded in concert at the Palais des Glaces, 37 rue du Faubourg duTemple, Paris on Friday 18 November 1977 by Ron Barron.Tracks 1-8 present the first set in its entirety and is a continuous performance; 9-13 are extracts from the second set. Tracks 4-6 and 9-13 were originally available on LP as OG 521 released in 1979.“Chris McGregor, who died in 1990 in his adopted homeland of France, rarely recorded solo. Two albums for the French Musica label have long been collectors' items, as has In His Good Time, recorded at a Paris concert in 1977 and first released by Ogun in 1979. The CD version comes with around 40 minutes of additional material and presents the first set of the concert in its entirety, followed by five tunes from the second set. The sound, using the original analogue tapes, is excellent.McGregor had a thick, rolling piano style, more or less equal parts jazz and traditional black South African music; like township jazz in general, his playing had the emotional intensity of African American gospelmusic and touched the same bases. On In His Good Time he plays a mixture of originals and traditional folk tunes, along with Mongezi Feza's "Sonia" and Dudu Pukwana's "The Bride." There is a purity—astraightforward joy—in McGregor's performances, which communicates itself powerfully. The 54-minute first set is played as a continuum, uninterrupted by opportunities for audience applause, and becomespleasingly hypnotic.” Chris May, All About Jazz, July 30 2012

“Procession” captures Chris McGregor’s Anglo/South African big band in explosive form. Originally released on LP in 1978, this historic recording has been painstakingly restored from the original two-track analogue masters for this CD edition, which features an additional 23 minutes of music.

This famous recording previously released as an LP now on CD with extra music launched the Ogun label. Recorded live at the Willisau Jazz Festival, Sept. 1974. This big band was exciting packed audiences throughout Europe, and needed an outlet provided by this new label, home of the South African family. The cover was designed by Niklaus Troxler with sleeve notes by Val Wilmer.Recorded live at Willisau, Switzerland, 27 January 1973  Chris McGregor - Leader, pianoHarry Miller - bassLouis Moholo - drumsDudu Pukwana - alto saxophoneEvan Parker - tenor saxophoneGary Windo - tenor saxophoneMongezi Feza - trumpetHarry Beckett - trumpetMarc Charig - trumpetNick Evans - tromboneRadu Malfatti - trombone

For the first time digitally and on CD here is the Jazz Doctors session from 1983 that was released on LP as Intensive Care, with the session recorded the following year that was intended for release as Prescriptions Filled, but was never issued, at last made available. Tracks 1-6 originally released as Intensive Care SGC1011 in 1984 on vinyl. Credits:Tenor Saxophone – Frank LoweViolin – Billy BangBass – Rafael GarrettDrums – Dennis CharlesRecorded: Wave Studios, London 8th, 15th, 17th Nov 1983Design, Layout – Hazel MillerSleeve Notes, Photography – Val WilmerEngineer, Mixed By – Charles GrayMastered By – George PeckhamProducer, Mixed By – John JackManufactured at Mayking RecordsMastered At – Porky's MasteringTracks 7 - 11 previously unissuedCredits:Billy Bang - ViolinFrank Lowe - Tenor SaxWilber Morris - BassThurman Barker - Drums, Piano Recorded at Wave Studios23rd Oct 1984Engineer: Martin Giles

Beautiful, double CD reissue of Johnny “Mbizo” Dyani's (Blue Notes, Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Etc.) incredible LPs, Rejoice and Together, featuring: -> Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Double Bass, Vocals (Rejoice)/Keyboards, Vocals (Together)Dudu Pukwana - Alto Saxophone, Whistle (Together)Mongezi Feza - Trumpet (Rejoice)Willy M'Buende - Bass Guitar (Together)Hassan Bah - Congas (Together)Bosse Skoglund - Drums (Together)Okay Temiz - Drums [Turkish], Percussion – (Rejoice)Kenny Håkansson - Guitar (Together)Felix Perrera - Harp [South American Traditional Harp] (Together)Peter Shimmy Radise - Tenor Saxophone (Together) The life of Johnny “Mbizo” Dyani (1945-1986), bassist with the legendary South African jazz troupe the Blue Notes, is celebrated by the reissue of two recordings dating from his period living in Sweden. “Rejoice”, culled from a live concert with trumpeter Mongezi Feza and drummer Okay Temiz, and the studio recording “Together” featuring Dyani’s group Witchdoctor’s Son, were issued posthumously, the latter in 1987, “Rejoice”a year later; both are treasured collectors’ pieces in their original vinyl formats.Cadillac is proud to make these available again, this time as a 2 CD set, as the first release in its 40th Anniversary Series. Both recordings have been carefully remastered from the original tapes; “Rejoice” is further enhanced by an additional 20 minutes of music from the same concert.

Marking and celebrating their 50th anniversary, Cadillac Music delivers this special reissue of their debut release: Mike Westbrook's 'Live from 1973', featuring Westbrook on Electric Piano/Harmonica, George Khan on Tenor Saxophone / Electric Saxophone / Flute, Gary Boyle on Guitar, Alan Jackson on Drums / Alto Saxophone, and Butch Potter on Bass Guitar / Pogo Stick / Flute. With additional tracks*, mastered by Jon Hiseman of Colosseum, and released with the blessing of Mike Westbrook, Live 1972 stands out as a document of the Westbrook project in transition, and as a bloody great slab of music in its own right played by a brilliant collection of musicians. (* the unreleased tracks are additional to the original LP issue, but appeared on the Hux set that came out in 2017 but is no longer available) Mike Westbrook - Electric Piano/Harmonica George Khan - Tenor Saxophone / Electric Saxophone / Flute Gary Boyle - Guitar Alan Jackson - Drums / Alto Saxophone Butch Potter - Bass Guitar / Pogo Stick / Flute

LP - Edition of 300 copies, handmade textile artwork w/ printed inner / CD Edition of 150 copies, handmade textile artwork Sylvain Chauveau has been releasing quiet and minimal compositions on various labels for more than two decades. ultra-minimal marks his debut for Sonic Pieces and takes the minimal approach even further, centring on reduction and limitation. The album was recorded live at Café Oto, London in March 2022 - one of Sylvain’s rare solo concerts and the first time he performed publicly with only acoustic instruments; no machines, no recorded sounds have been used, only piano, guitar, harmonium and melodica, played one at the time. While some of the compositions are completely new, others are live versions of previously released pieces which have either been performed close to their original or stripped-down, reduced to a single instrument and partly rearranged. This reveals a predilection for repetitions and variations that Sylvain shares with Jim Jarmusch, and at the same time it is a personal attempt to avoid electronic devices as a tool for live music. The artwork and track titles follow this reductionist idea and an aesthetic of miniaturization that Sylvain has developed for many years. They refer to the minimalist, concrete poetry that he writes regularly. In this context rewriting some of the original titles was a consistent implication to achieve a complete work, an album that perfectly represents Sonic Pieces’ aesthetics, both musically and visually.

"Vibrating the piano’s strings and manipulating the soundboard, Agnel spends a good portion of the live concert as often inside the instrument as on the keyboard. Moving from cord-strumming and  outside wood raps, backed by ratcheting bass string scrapes, irregular drum ruffs and gong resonation, she creates a dynamic introduction backed by irregular drum ruffs and below-the-bridge double bass rubs. “Part 2” captures the heart of the matter as Agnel’s opposite end keyboard slides emphasize both gentle plinks and pedal point thickness with the repeated and nearly identical patterns often interrupted by glissandi and string reverb. Meantime Edwards’ buzzing arco stops and Noble’s sharp cymbal cracks follow a parallel line. Occasionally there are brief Edwards-Agnel duets involving elevated keyboard emphasis and low-pitched string abrasions. But her piano command is such that elsewhere she creates call-and-response between her own strings and keys from opposite edges of the keyboard. A mid-track silent interlude leads to rhythm section intensification with Noble’s door-stopper-like reverberations and chain rattles making more of a impression than Edwards’ constant string swabbing. Meantime Agnel’s processional strokes and stopped piano keys preserve the exposition until she winnows the narrative down to isolated single note stabs. Double bass string shakes and drum hand patting similarly descend until the pianist’s key slapping signal the finale. A terse encore allows a patina of swing to peek through the otherwise bumping variations from all as a final cymbal splash marks the concert end." - Ken Waxman https://www.jazzword.com/ Sophie Agnel plays the whole piano. Its body matters as much as its strings. The keyboard's lid is just as good closed as it is open - in fact it’s best slammed open and closed rapidly. Joined by bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble, Three on a Match explodes the piano trio - each player sparking off the other so quickly that it’s impossible to figure out who lit the flame.  Recorded at OTO in 2023, this was the second two night residency for a trio that has fast become one of our favourite improvising groups. Each individually brilliant, Agnel, Edwards and Noble’s enduring connection is in their seriously playful approach to their instrument - in their way of looking at it as a whole and then tearing it apart, breaking it down into its raw materials - wood, brass, steel.  Born in Paris in the 60’s and playing her parents piano as soon as she could stand up, Agnel is classically trained and had a turn in modern jazz. What frustrated her was the strange disconnect between the frame of the piano and its keyboard - a weird boundary that seemed to form some hushed code of etiquette. “The first thing I put inside the piano was a plastic goblet. I’d seen a few pianists do it: Fred Van Hove, for example, put rubber balls inside his. But what didn’t appeal to me was that there seemed to be no link between the piano’s outside and inside.” If you see Agnel play now, the body of her piano is littered with fish tins, ping pong balls, wooden blocks - not that you’d recognize their sounds. Steve Noble surrounds his drum kit with whistles, tubes and towels alongside gleaming brass cymbals and gongs. Their stage is a heady mix of high and low - the grand piano and the gong alongside rubber balls and tiny bells; players half stood up, reaching in, bending toward - relentlessly working their instrument to unburden its sound from genre.  Free improvisation is always a leap of faith, a test of commitment, and these three players are completely unafraid. The music switches deftly from super taut string manipulation to extremely loud percussive collisions. The trio can play microscopic mutations on a bass note and then scale up on the turn of a pin to plunge into huge, black chords and ricocheting sonority - dissolving the boundary between body and sound. The crescendo of Part Two is shaped by such cumulative repetition that it feels like a confrontation - a controlled test for breaking point. What happens if we keep going?   As so we left Part Three as the last encore of the residency. It’s a totally exhilarating, skittering reprise - short and energetic - delivered with the kind of grounded abandon you hope to see improvisers play with but rarely do.

Available as a 320kbps MP3 or 24bit FLAC or WAV. Edition of 300 standard LPs, 100 LPs with screenprinted artwork inserts and 200 CDs Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long time collaborator Alan Licht.  Celebrating thirty years of collaboration, Loren Connors and Alan Licht performed for two nights at OTO on May 5 and 6th, 2023. On the second night, with the stage lit in blue, Connors took up a seat on the piano stool whilst Licht picked up the guitar. What followed was the duo’s first ever set with Connors on piano - one of only a few times Connors has played piano live at all - here captured and issued as The Blue Hour. Its spacious warmth came as a total surprise live, but makes complete sense for a duo whose dedicated expressionism takes inspiration from a vast spectrum of emotion. Both opening with single notes to start, it doesn't take long before a surface rises and begins to shimmer. A run up the keys, the drop of a feedback layer on a sustained and bent note. The two begin to exchange notes in tandem and brief touches of melody and chord hover. After a while, Connors picks up the guitar, stands it in his lap and sweeps a wash of colour across Licht’s guitar. Sharp, glassy edges begin to form, open strings and barred frets darkening the space. When his two pedals begin to merge, Licht finds a dramatic organ-like feedback and it’s hard not to imagine Rothko’s Chapel, its varying shades of blue black ascending and descending in the room. When Connors goes back to the piano for the second side, the pair quickly lock into a refrain and light pours in. It’s a kind of sound that Licht says reminds him of what he and Connors would do when the duo first started playing together 30 years ago. It’s certainly more melodic than some of their more recent shows, and the atonal shards of At The Top of the Stairs seem to totally dissolve. What is always remarkable about Licht is that his enormous frame of reference doesn't seem to weigh him down, and instead here he is able to delicately place fractures of a Jackson C Frank song (“Just Like Anything”,) amongst the vast sea of Connors’ blues. Perhaps it's the pleasure of playing two nights in a row together, or the nature of Connor’s piano playing combined with Licht’s careful listening, but the improvisation on The Blue Hour feels remarkably calm and unafraid. There’s nothing to prove and no agenda except the joy of sounding colour together. Totally beautiful.  --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Saturday 6th May 2023 by Billy SteigerMixed by Oli BarrettMastered by Sean McCannArtwork by Loren Connors Layout by Oli BarrettScreenprint by Tartaruga Manufactured in the UK by Vinyl Press.  Edition of 300 standard LPs, 100 LPs with screenprinted artwork by Loren Connors printed as inserts. Also available on a limted run of 200 CDs.

The 4LP boxset version holds nearly all the music performed over the two nights, minus 5 minutes we were forced to cut to fit the music onto 4 discs. It will arrive in a handcovered and screenprint boxset, limited to 250 copies and will include a full booklet of photographs from the residency by Dawid Laskowski. Please note the artwork may differ slightly from the mock up.  Your order will be packed with care and delivered via a tracked service.  The 2LP version is an edit of the music played on both nights. It will arrive as a gatefold 12" printed in reverse board outersleeves and will include a pull out with photographs from the residency by Dawid Laskowski. The 2CD version contains both sets from both nights. The discs will be housed in a digipak on reverse board and will include photographs from the residency by Dawid Laskowski. It is a huge honour to publish Peter Brotzmann’s final concerts on OTOROKU. When we invited Peter to do a residency at Cafe OTO back in February 2023 we had no idea these would be his last ever shows and he played with such power it would have been hard for anyone present to believe he would never play publicly again. Recorded over two nights this grouping of Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone, John Edwards on bass and Steve Noble on drums feels especially resonant and personal to Cafe OTO. The first time Peter performed at the venue back in 2010 it was in a trio with John and Steve, (released as The Worse The Better kick starting our in-house record label) so it feels fitting that the last shows he ever played here should also have that trio at its core. The quartet last played together at OTO back in 2013, (released as Mental Shake on OTOROKU), and Brotzmann humbly opened the return of the group saying, "it's a pleasure to be back” before launching straight into a long blast on the alto sax, swiftly met by the relentless energy and engagement of Adasiewicz, Edwards and Noble. There are moments of tenderness to Brotzmann’s playing that feels specific to this small group - one that cuts across three generations - and in a space that’s come to feel like home. Of course, there is dizzying, forceful, singleminded playing, but even amongst a relentless chorus of cymbal splashes and busy vibraphone clusters the lyrical, spacious moments are savoured and held onto. As he remarked after at the end of the group's first visit to OTO, “the Quartet is, for us, a great adventure.” Peter clearly wanted to play to the end. Did he know these might be his last shows? We will never know. What is clear is he wanted to go out in style and on his terms. For anyone in the room at the time or listening to these recordings it’s clear he achieved that. It was Peter’s wish that these recordings should be made public and he was due to finalise the cover design on the week he passed away. We would like to thank Peter’s family for working with us to fulfil Peter’s wishes to release this material but more than anything we would like to thank Peter for all the extraordinary memories, his generosity and all he has given the music. On a personal level for us, like so many, he meant a huge amount and we miss him deeply. --- Peter Brotzmann / reeds John Edwards / double bass Steve Noble / drums Jason Adasiewicz / vibraphone  --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on 10th and 11th February 2023. Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielesi. Photos by Dawid Laskowski. Pressed in the UK by Vinyl Press. Artwork by Peter Brötzmann. Design by Untiet.

"…the total past sensation, not its echo nor its copy, but the sensation itself, annihilating every spatial and temporal restriction, comes in a rush to engulf the subject in all the beauty of its infallible proportion … Death is dead because time is dead … time is not recovered, it is obliterated." - Sunik Kim from the accompanying essay"Beyond excited to announce the new album Formenverwandler by Sunik Kim, a Los Angeles-based musician, writer and filmmaker who has previously released music on Notice Recordings, Rope Editions and OTOROKU. Spanning almost 2 hours, Formenverwandler is a detailed and considered study on time and duration.Drawing from her extensive research on composer Conlon Nancarrow, Formenverwandler sees Kim exploring the time or tempo canon, which can pull and project the listener's senses, melting the temporal and spatial perception of presented sounds. As in previous works such as 2022’s Raid on the White Tiger Regiment and 2023’s Potential, Kim deploys patches and tools she has designed for SuperCollider, which take raw, utilitarian General MIDI notes and multiply and spray them into frenetic webs and networks of spiraling sound.It is within these networks that sounds, recognisable and familiar, are placed, scattered and gathered into new structures that appear to shapeshift, constantly morphing in meter. The album's title Formenverwandler (German for shapeshifter, taken from the classic Der Zyklus track) perfectly encapsulates this collection of pieces that are in constant motion and in a state of reflection and restructure. The four pieces are mirrors and refolds of one another, both stretched and condensed in various directions and examined to the point of near exhaustion.Along with the music, Kim has written an essay which outlines the thoughts, actions and reflections that make up this body of work. Reading the essay—and rereading it—is an endlessly insightful way of entering and understanding the headspace that produced this deeply considered music and its inner ecology. Along with rationale and reasoning, Kim interjects quotes from writers, poets and thinkers—from Lenin to Woolf—who have ruminated on and have existed within the confines of time."

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

"The seemingly irreverent approach to the instruments, the repetitive repeats of certain motifs; ‘institutional music’ could be something that comes to mind for the listener. The inmate, free of all musical convention, behaving childishly, almost manically. The result is a polyphonic counterpoint that comes close to falling apart and leaves the impression of being something new." - SAJ, 10-10-24 "The first major document of Johansson’s music since his passing, two days at cafe oto is a reminder of his galvanizing presence, his conceptual range, and his skill set as an instrumentalist. It deserves more than a passing mention in the commentariat’s attempts to cement his legacy." –Bill Shoemaker, PoDDrummer, visual artist and one of the original European free jazz players, Sven-Åke Johansson was never willing to settle for a single route of exploration. As a musician and composer he appeared on key recordings for the legendary FMP, delivered marine weather reports for Edition Telemark, crooned love songs for Ultra Eczema and was at the heart of the recent free music revival in Berlin via Umlaut alongside Joel Grip and Axel Dörner. “My work is not actually jazz, but rather the exploration of sounds,” he said. “In that sense, my music defies some categorizations. Jazz is only a small part of what I do”. When asked to play at OTO last year, Johansson proposed two nights with four musicians half his age - alto saxophonist Seymour Wright, his fellow [Ahmed] member and double bassist Joel Grip, and French alto saxophonist Pierre Borel. Grip and Borel both played alongside Johansson in Stumps; Wright had previously recorded a trio with  Johansson and Grip almost a year earlier in Johansson’s Berlin studio - due to be released later in the year via We Jazz as The Jazzy Stork. A quartet of two saxophones, bass and drums sounds like jazz, but all four players perpetually reach outside of the genre for inspiration. Opening disc one, Grip’s and Wright’s staccato melodies are drawn delicately together with the lightest of threads, little playful buzzrolls and tom taps: if this is jazz it's the gentlest sort we’ve heard in some time. Grip and Wright stretch a handful of notes over a trickle of toms, the room thick with listening.  For his next act, Johansson changes tack, bringing out his accordion. Like his frequent collaborator Rüdiger Carl, Johansson's work on the accordion is full of expression and humor - his sometimes short, pointillistic improvisations suddenly cohering into brief melodies that flicker with nostalgia. Grip picks up a swing, and the quartet head out on a warm adventure before the saxophones and accordion satisfyingly drift out of the room together.  It feels important to mention Sven-Åke Johansson dressed sharply.  He was a man of intention with a touch of melodrama and it kept his music from drying out. Amidst the great volume of German Free Music in the 1970s, Johannson's first solo LP ‘Schlingerland’ (1972) swishes cymbal and snare, tom and hi-hat, sometimes almost imperceptibly. Skin, metal, plastic and wood, always in a tank of developer; quite melodic, beautifully concentrated. Fifty years on, Borel, Grip and Wright continue this gradual investigation of music and there are no better collaborators for Johannson. All three can shred jazz into its microparts, can swing, can groove and shriek. Over Two Days at Cafe OTO, buoyed by Johannason’s light touch, a sort of minimalist bebop emerges - the last track dividing and multiplying melodic fragments until its motifs print the inside of your skull. It’s totally luxury music - full freedom, full commitment. If it doesn't hit the first time, you’re sure to come back for it. We’re blessed it was recorded and grateful to have shared in this music. Thank you, Sven-Åke Johansson. — Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Rory Salter on 8th & 9th April, 2025. Mixed and mastered by Werner Dafeldecker. Photos by Dawid Laskowski.

With But remember what you have had, Stephen O’Malley continues and expands his musical approach by transposing it to multiphonic electroacoustic writing and acousmatic listening. Drawing not only on his extensive experience as a composer and live instrumentalist, but also on the countless studio production and mixing sessions he has taken part in the course of his many projects (in solo, with SUNN O))) or KTL, to name but a few), Stephen O’Malley’s work on this new piece is ambitious, engaging in an inspired research that delves into the deep intricacies between polyphony, intonation and timbrality, enhanced by melodic motifs. To do this, O’Malley summons up his own very personal sound universe, constellated with amplified textures, instrumental sustained tones and raw energy, in order to diffract them into wavefronts, waves and blows that weave a complex, rich and fascinating matter. But remember what you have had stands out as an important work in Stephen O’Malley’s repertoire: it brings together the multiplicity of his musical approach in an exemplary way, while laying the foundations and promises for the future of an already extraordinary journey.

What?? is a focused and grounding work produced by Swedish composer Folke Rabe in 1967. From his interest in sound phenomena and harmonics Rabe was able to make one of the most deep, moving pieces of sustained sound generated in this formative era of minimalist electronic composition. Initially reissued on Dexter's Cigar in 1997 and now available on Important with expanded packaging including archival materials furnished by the composer. Amplified infinity. "My interest in the makeup of various sound phenomena began many years ago. The basic physical preconditions were familiar to me, but I wanted to experience the components of the sound with my hearing. I attempted to 'hear into' the different sounds in order to grasp the components that made them up. I experienced how the overtones in a tone sounding on the piano change slowly as they die away. I also attempted to grasp the brittle arpeggio of formants that arises when a vowel is slowly changed at a particular pitch. I also tried, as far as possible, to train my hearing to tease out the complex processes that occur at the origin of sound. "At the same time as this listening, I was concerned with monotony. My first feeble attempts yielded little: later, more systematic repetitions led to findings. I found methods by which the transitoriness of sound could to some extent be compensated. Small details and micro-variations between the repeated elements that would not have been noticed in a context richer in contrast then come to the fore. Extended sounds that change and move into one another very slowly have a similar effect. "Hobby experiments of the sort described, as I conducted them, are of course primitive from a theoretical point of view. But this basic experience was exactly what was important to me. "The musical field indicated here is perhaps somewhat foreign to the Western musical tradition. In other living cultures it is entirely relevant. This state of affairs is, I believe, connected with the development of musical notation. As this method of fixing sound developed, all the subtler qualities of pitch, sound, and time relationships had to be leveled off. On the other hand, systems of notation first made possible meaningful musical constructions. This fact compensated for the loss just described, making possible the great tradition of European music. "In Western composition, intervals, rhythms, and tone color – to the extent that they eluded notation – were subordinated to a philosophical idea, or at least a motivic/formal one. The sounding fact as such retreated into the background, and the West, in ethnocentric self-idolization, erected its own cultural tradition (be it Beethoven or Coca-Cola) as an example to the world. "But there are in the world many fields of music in which the qualitative element grows from the immediate sound. In such music, one looks in vain for formal elements in the Western sense; this music may thus seem primitive, senseless, or even provocative. In reality, however, these are two different possibilities of musical organization. "Indian musicians said to me that Western music is certainly good music, but they found its technique of phrasing incomprehensible: 'The music always breaks off before it has begun!' "What What?? means: As you will hear, What?? is constructed from harmonic sounds. These sounds move into one another by means of enharmonic melding of the partials. I chose harmonic sounds because a pleasing richness results from them, but more particularly because the partials reinforce one another through their inner hierarchy, and can thereby produce certain illusions. "I chose the extended, seemingly endless form in order to enable peaceful journeys of discovery in the sound, but also in order to work with this particular material. Electronic devices have no muscles. 'Breathing' expressiveness is contrary to their nature; their characteristic quality is an enormous, tireless endurance. "About 85% of the material is made up of electronically generated tones, which however are never present in their static, original form. Each partial has been specially treated in itself, which can at times yield a very rich result.

Andrew Batt-Rawden is a Sydney based composer, performer & publisher. His practice is cross-platform & all-embracing. Though initially stemming from an almost traditional sense of ‘the composer’, Andrew fuses elements of gesture, choreography, new technology, text, performance art & mixed-media into his work & has a wide-ranging history of inter-disciplinary collaboration. His current focus is on incorporating all the senses into the audience experience by integrating data feeds to affect live electroacoustic performance, particularly with the use of heartbeat & movement data & by building algorithmic software that works with both light & sound; a collision of chamber/art music & technology. Chris Mansell has been called 'a significant voice in Australian poetry’. She began as an editor & poet in the 70s & since then has chosen to live an isolated rural life. She is the recipient of multiple awards for her work & continues to publish with regularity. Her writing has been described as ‘stylistically & thematically ground-breaking’. One emerges from the experience of reading it disturbed & challenged. Its haunting rhythms do not easily let go. Seven Stations is a collaboration between a young composer & a multi-award winning poet, combining elements of contemporary chamber music, electric instruments, electronics & voice with a vivid text. A cheerfully profane song-cycle, using the railway stations of the city’s centre as the focus of its imagery. "Like every city, the soundscape is a constant hum of people, traffic lights, cars, buses, birds. Depending on where you are, you also hear water, trains, music. Depending on when you are, your ears pick up the scurry of rats & possums, the asymmetrical rhythm of drunken steps in cloppy heels punctuated by profane outbursts, laughter & conversation in many languages. Some people open their mouths & the sound of bank notes flap with their tongues. Others speak with a smile full of shark teeth, ever-ready to take a nip. The lucidity of the dream that created the structures holding this city together - something beautiful yet strange.” - ABR

Zubin Kanga is a modern day David Tudor. He is at the forefront of 21st century avant-garde piano music, not only as a performer but also as a prolific commissioner of new works. Zubin has collaborated with many of the world’s leading composers including Steve Reich, Beat Furrer, Thomas Ades & Michael Finnissy. His teacher & mentor Rolf Hind was a pianist signed to the infamous Factory Records (Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire) who instilled a borderless view of ‘classical’ music in him. Zubin has performed for the BBC Proms, ISCM World New Music Days & The London Festival as well as with the Bang-on-a-Can Allstars, Eighth Blackbird & Ensemble Plus-Minus. The heyday of the graphic score was the 1960s. A small group of composers like Bussotti & Cardew picked up on the ideas first put forward by pioneers like Morton Feldman & Earle Brown, developing non-conventional music notation into elaborate & artistic scores. Not Music Yet for solo piano is a watercolour graphic score by Berlin-based Australian composer, David Young. Composed for Kanga, the performer is to consider it a time-space score (pitch read on the vertical axis & time on the horizontal). They should make three equal passes, reading left to right, playing only the black parts of the painting first, followed by white then blue. The work can be performed in either 7 or 42 minute versions. Young recommends the use of a stopwatch to aid exact timing. Further, every attempt should be made to realise the graphics’ contours & shapes as carefully & precisely as possible. Recorded with incredible detail on a 102-key Stuart & Sons piano (1 of only 6 in the world).