Digital will become available 31st OctoberSLIP is Paul Abbott’s response to his 3 day residency at OTO in 2023. It’s a continued exploration of the acoustic-digital hybrid drum setup Abbott has been developing for some time, which involves drum kit and synthetic sounds combined closely—through an entanglement of limbs and cables—in an intimate but strange relationship with each other. Paul Abbott hasn’t had any formal musical training, but has a long history of making music, having collaborated for years with Seymour Wright, Pat Thomas, Michael Speers, Cara Tolmie, Anne Gillis and many others. Eventually, led by a profound suspicion of what is fixed or limited, Abbott began finding other ways to organise sound - or what he calls ‘material’: “I wanted a way to 'persuade' or guide the possibility of something happening - my activity or the events of an algorithmic composition - for example, but without certainty or formalism. It felt to me, during playing, that certain ideas had a particular sort of shape, but more than the form of a line. I began to write alongside (before/after) playing the drums, and ‘characters’ began to enter the scene as a more wobbly, and therefore appropriate option [to notation]. Working with these characters allowed me to simultaneously approach body, imagination, language and music: without dividing things up or separating these aspects from each other. It allowed me to leave things messy and entangled, whilst trying to deal with form and specificity: wanting to have some things feel or respond differently to other things at other times.”  In approaching his residency, Abbott developed a fixed cast of characters - crystal, lleaf, reiy.F, reiy.C, strike, nee, qosel, sphu and aahn. They each communicate using different kinds of movement and drum kit/s, and Abbott choreographed them as ‘dances’ based on different feelings, or outlines of behaviours suggestive of ways of moving (body, drums, sounds). He then arranged these characters into ‘compositions’: one for each performance day, with each composition featuring multi-layered activity - options for behaviours, ways to move around the rooms, play drums, develop synthetic sounds, change the lights or re-distribute the sound in the space. After the performances, Abbott took home 9 hours of recordings split into up to 28 multitrack channels for each day, and re-organised his cast once more into a performance for 2LP, CD and digital. It’s an enormous amount of work - but Abbott is activated by the process. For him, the pleasure of unstable edges, possibilities, slippages, is the vital attraction. Like all living organisms, Abbott’s characters have malleability and responsivity.  They stimulate a bundle of possible behaviours, a tendency to act a certain way, a temperament, a boundary of respective limits or affordances. It’s an affective way of working, inclusive of Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra, Nathaniel Mackey and Milford Graves. In ‘Pulseology’(2022), Milford Graves reminds us, ‘Breath varies, so cardiac rhythm never has that (metronomic) tempo. It’s always changing. All the alignments of the heart are determined based on the needs of the cells, specifically tissues and organs. The heart knows if it needs to speed up.’ In SLIP, to slip, in a heartbeat, is to descend not into the grid of the even metre accorded to the heartbeat, but into a play of mutability and modality. To change is the condition of the heart.

New release from South Korean sound artist, Suk Hong 홍석민, following on from his Pedigree album on the label in 2024. Listeners familiar with Pedigree's intricately multifaceted layers of texture and meaning will find much to love here, but Comedy! immediately establishes itself as an altogether more unsettling work. Recorded over an eight month period from October 2024 to May 2025, the album's title and its three parts represent Hong's sentiments over the crisis precipitated by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's declaration of martial law and its subsequent withdrawal at the end of 2024. From the album's outset it is clear that we too, are in uncharted territory. Taking the same serpentine, collagic approach used to such great effect in Pedigree, the layered and juxtaposed sounds here walk a consistently fine line between soothing and discomforting, eerie and familiar; seemingly blurring the lines between exterior and interior reality in a heady miasma of dream and memory. Soft, muted piano refrains run up against chittering, chattering repetitions both synthetic and mechanical; animal noises - human and bestial - are interwoven with fragments of voice and action but seemingly never enough to allow the listener to create a full picture. It's clear that something significant is happening, but it is outside our ability to make an objective assessment, let alone affect the outcome. As with Pedigree, Hong moves restlessly from one sonic environment to the next, revealing details so intimate that at times it seems that the recording device must have been not so much a physical microphone as a disembodied presence, flitting from place to place; an endlessly curious eavesdropper finding hidden meanings in every encounter. Through it all, ebbing and flowing, runs a calm, strangely distant tone-wash, halfway between blissful reverie and fretful disorientation. By the album's close, we may find ourselves a great distance from where we set out, consoled and unnerved in equal measure. Yet just as our thoughts begin to coalesce, the album ends as abruptly as it began. There is to be no easy resolution here, instead we must live with the ceaseless puzzles and contradictions of life as it unfolds.

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

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

"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.

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.

Otoroku is delighted to present a remarkable, one-of-a-kind release from Swedish-Belgian sound composer, non-musician and cloud researcher, Valerie Mol, aka eurodyke (a play on the mythical Eurydice). Developed out of recordings made during Mol's performance at Cafe OTO in December 2023, The extrauniversal clouds is short record, a patchwork and a fabulation. The record, composed between 2021 and 2025, consists of one piece divided into three parts. In the first part, Jump-in see-through hoops, they are slightly saying hi, synthesized high frequency melodies and concrete sample-works join forces, an obvious collage and a lot of digital silences. In the second part, The extrauniversal clouds, Mol tells a fantasy story about living clouds that can only hear. The story is undeniably fun, but also serves to change the way the listener listens to the surrounding pieces.  The third part, Medley by clouds for pianos primarily manufactured by Yamaha, is as its title suggests a collage of recordings of improvisations performed and recorded at different venues, among them Fylkingen and Cafe OTO. It is inspired by other shorter pieces-in-series, György Kurtágs ongoing collection Játékok being an example. Spanning a wide range of sonic approaches in a markedly idiosyncratic and multifaceted style that makes a mockery of genre distinctions, The extrauniversal clouds, is a record hard to pin down but with a wealth of detail and meaning to uncover for those who dive in. -- Composed and mixed by eurodyke between 2021 and 2025Additional vocal mix by Paul PurgasSome piano recordings by Billy SteigerMastered by Oli Barrett Cover design: Victoria Sallamba, Instagram: @vicweraArtworks kindly made and provided by Helena Linder (page 2), Evelina Lindqvist Hedlund (page 4), Lorelei (page 5) Thanks to----->Paul Purgas, who enthusiastically suggested to me to release a record based on a concert I played at Cafe OTO in December 2023, and who mentored me through the process. Without Paul, you wouldn’t be reading this text. My parents, Lorelei, Malte Dahlberg, Kyra Mol, Loke Risberg, Ilaria Capalbo, Helena Linder, Hara Alonso, Cara Tolmie, Evelina Lindqvist Hedlund, april forrest lin 林森, Victoria Sallamba, Musikfabriken Uppsala, Biskops Arnö, KMH, Fylkingen, Cafe OTO, Ung Nordisk Musik, EMS

"They had never played together before. They had never even met each other before this springtime 2024 concert at London’s Café Oto.  Evan Parker, circular breathing maestro of the saxophone, a legend in the universe that is Free Improvisation since the late 1960s and Bill Nace, one of the most intriguing experimental “noise” guitarists of the 1990s/2000s underground scene.  For those of us who have been enamored by the live and documented work of both these gents, this Café Oto duo was a must-hear event. It could have gone anywhere musically and that would have been totally fine. Particularly with Evan having a history of being thrown into a variety of challenging collaborations throughout his career, employing the learned elegance of trust in his own sensitivity to listening, responding, leading, following, sparring, intertwining, dialoguing, creating in the instant and, essentially, dignifying the non-hierarchical grace of chance.  The aesthetics of socialist consideration in Evan Parker’s playing, in his community of expanded and personal technique, for a younger player such as Bill Nace, strikes an exemplary model. This notion of respect would be entirely the reason Nace, when offered a residency at the most critical “new music” room in England, would request to play in duo with Parker.  Bill Nace came to prominence mostly during the apex of experimental music activity in and around Western Massachusetts in the early days of the aughts, with a focus on visual art and free improvisation guitar action. He could be found in the daytime hours, his head hanging down over a notepad, penning fine-tuned illustrations and abstract line drawings, while in the evenings he’d be attending any number of basement noise gigs, many of which he’d be participating in. His guitar style came across as being informed as much as by the physicality of his writing utensils in friction to the page as it was to his hearing and redefining of radical recordings ranging anywhere from the Black Unity Group to Black Flag. Utilizing various metal files and other small cylindrical objects Bill would allow his guitar and amplifier to be in tandem with the improvisatory movements of his body as the instrument balanced, intentionally and, at times, precariously, upon his lap. The performances came across thrilling and daring and they would be mostly in the context of venues nothing more than a low-ceilinged damp and dank New England basement, a clutch of people hanging onto rusty pipes or sitting up on dilapidated washer/dryer machines, the shards of Bill’s “file guitar” sounds ringing out like the most alive music on Earth. By the time Bill reached Café Oto in early 2024 he had relocated to Philadelphia all the while releasing a succession of collaborative LPs on his Open Mouth label to present his developing progression of solo and collaborative work. He also would find himself considerably engaged with playing the electric taishōgoto, a keyboard-activated string instrument from Japan which can exist as a one, two, four, five, or six string oblong sound object. Bill’s approach to the taishōgoto would not be too unlike his approach to the traditional electric guitar, though no outboard implements such as files, sticks, and rocks are utilized. The similarity would lie wholly with Bill’s full immersion of high velocity action-playing where, with the taishōgoto, an electric drone beauty occurs. The flurry of sonics and resultant harmonics emanating from the amplifier (which Bill opts to dial into with borderline loud-as fuck volume settings) furthers the meta-mantra properties of the instrument in an astounding display of drone dynamism. This sound world of Bill’s two-stringed taishōgoto on this Café Oto night worked beautifully with Evan Parker’s improvisatory saxophone conceptions. The duology achieved instant lift off at ground zero only to find it’s eventual finale as if it were organically ordained. Time seemingly morphed from its ancient human construct of control, rendered inconsequential to the torrential transcendence of the room wildly activated by the magic resonance of the multi-directional pan-spatial sonance of the music as if it were some beatific blessing. It was one of those nights where art as a liberating force of spirit gifted the listeners with an offering of exaltation and joy. It was entirely mystical and mind blowing. A night of Total Music." - Thurston Moore, London, 2025  For his last solo record ‘Through a Room’, Bill Nace shifted his usual saturated guitar sound and added tapes, hurdy gurdy, doughnut pipe, bird calls and the mysterious Japanese taishōgoto. Setting up for the final night of his three day residency at OTO with only the taishōgoto soundchecked, Nace hoped that Parker would arrive with his small soprano as its opposite. “I’ve been interested in state change, you know, playing until there’s a shift in time.” Known for his development of multiphonics to produce a constantly shifting pattern, Evan Parker has evolved an instantly recognizable sound - his work the soprano most distinct. Happily, it was the soprano Evan brought with him and as soon as the two start to play they entwine - taking off in a double helix of keys and reed primed for endless reconfiguration. Space warps under the velocity of playing, the pitch rising unrelentingly. It felt like unending lift off in the room, sheer energy until the last note makes remember your feet have been on the floor the whole time. Total time bending shredding.  --- Bill Nace / electric two string taishōgotoEvan Parker / soprano saxophone --- Arrives in a tip on sleeve with artwork by Bill Nace. Edition of 500 released as a split with Bill Nace's Open Mouth Records. If you're in the USA we advise you buy locally.  Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Friday 25th May, 2024 by Billy Steiger. Mixed and mastered by Brian Haran. Cover art by Bill Nace. Photo by Dawid Laskowski. Layout by Neil Burker & Bill Nace.  --- "The piece possesses exceptional cathartic beauty, with a power that seems to emerge from the mists of time, yet it feels more essential and compelling than any modernity. The 40-minute performance, built on loops and repetitions, forms a seamless whole that is impossible to pause, let alone stop. It is an experience that hypnotizes the mind into a marvelous trance, where the intensity of the performance fades behind the beauty of the perfect complementarity of sounds and the music shared by these two musicians. Branches is an exceptional release." - Best of Jazz

OTOROKU is proud to reissue Evan Parker's first solo LP "Saxophone Solos". Recorded by Martin Davidson in 1975 at the Unity Theatre in London, at that time the preferred concert venue of the Musicians' Co-operative, Parker's densely woven and often cyclical style has yet to form; instead throaty murmurs appear under rough hewn whistles and calls - the wildly energetic beginnings of an extraordinary career.  Reissued with liner notes from Seymour Wright in an edition of 500.  --- "The four pieces across the two sides of Saxophone Solos – Aerobatics 1 to 4 – are testing, pressured, bronchial spectaculars of innovation and invention and determination. Evan tells four stories of exploration and imagination without much obvious precedent. Abstract Beckettian cliff-hanging detection/logic/magic/mystery. The conic vessel of the soprano saxophone here recorded contains the ur-protagonists: seeds, characters, settings, forces, conflicts, motions, for new ideas, to delve, to tap and to draw from it story after story as he has on solo record after record for 45 years. ‘Aerobatics 1-3’ were recorded on 17 June 1975, by Martin Davidson at Parker’s first solo performance. This took place at London’s Unity Theatre in Camden. ‘Aerobatics 4’ was recorded on 9 September the same year, by Jost Gebers in the then FMP studio in Charlottenburg, Berlin. Music of balance and gravity, fulcra, effort, poise and enquiry. Sounds thrown and shaken into and out of air, metal and wood. It is – as the titles suggest – spectacular." - Seymour Wright, 2020.

OTOroku is delighted to present 'not bad', an intricate and intensely galvanizing release from Breathing Heavy, the saxophone and sampler duo of Sam Andreae and Ciaran Mackle. Careening straight out of the blocks with a wildly invigorating immediacy, the duo scarcely seem to take a breath over the next thirty electrifying minutes. Myriad interweaving woodwind lines whirl and reel in convulsive fashion, overlapping patterns weave and dance like reflected light from water, and a dizzying array of motifs are conjured and discarded as if the pair were concerned about leaving any scrap of energy unspent. All the listener need do is to simply bask in the joyful tumult. Andreae's alto saxophone playing ranges widely from fluttering trills and an almost whinnying lyricism, to hefty squalls that seem to revel in a raw physicality. Alongside this (around, over, under, through), Mackle creates a densely swirling cataract of stuttering, tumbling sonic fragments that continuously reflect the entire entity back on itself like a collapsing hall of mirrors. There is obviously a level of deeply attuned interplay at work here that seems long-honed, but any attempt to discern the source of any given sound is rendered utterly moot. A duo performance this may be, but the end result is an undeniably symbiotic, fully-realised whole. -- Sam Andreae: alto saxophoneCiaran Mackle: sampler Recorded by Breathing HeavyMixed by Rory SalterMastered by Oli BarrettArtwork by Mio Ebisu  Thanks to Ash and Flora, Mio and Suzume and to Rory!

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC Tracklisting: 1. Orbit - 29.30 Photo by Hannah Lovell Photo by Duncan StingemoreCaptivating and deeply felt new audio work by Blanc Sceol, aka the duo of Stephen Shiell and Hannah White. Originally commissioned for broadcast on the deep sea 'Radio Amnion' sound project, the piece is written for and performed on the bespoke, one-of-a-kind Orbit instrument, designed and made by Stephen and Hannah in collaboration with master luthier Kai Tönjes. Over the course of thirty minutes the piece drifts and unfurls in an entrancing, enveloping flow, utilising the instrument's unique sonic qualities to create something truly special. This recording is Blanc Sceol's response to a commission from Jol Thoms to create a new audio work for the June edition of his deep sea sound project 'Radio Amnion', where, each month at the time of the full moon, the abyssal waters of Cascadia Basin resonate with the deep frequencies and voices of invited artists, relayed in the sea through a submerged neutrino telescope experiment’s calibration system. Through the duo's sound and ecology work with Surge Cooperative on the Channelsea river they have found connection to Abbey Mills pumping station, Joseph Bazalgette’s Victorian ‘cathedral of sewage’, his overground homage to the underground network of pipes, an operational site that still moves water and humanure beneath the city today. This audio work captures the spinning frequencies of the Orbit, recorded in the chambers of the sewer substation, to be played out to the depths of the deep sea, creating a poetic resonance between these sounds and spaces, a spell of connection between the clear, linear, progressive features of our engineered water networks and the dark, wet, yielding, cyclical unknowns of the deep sea, where the sub station searches for neutrinos and on the full moon translates human-made frequencies into light and vibration for the seafloor. The words in the piece are a series of ‘one word poems’ created by participants from Blanc Sceol's ‘Sonic Meditations with the Full Moon’ sessions over the last year. Working with moon time through our deep listening practice, and the tidal phases of the Channelsea river, Orbit coordinates these cyclical flows in celebration of the fullness of the cosmic body that holds the tension between the earth and its inhabitants, and gives us all rhythm. Orbit the instrument:The Orbit consists of a red cedar decagon body, the resonating chamber, which is spun by one set of hands, bringing rhythm and flow with the changing pace of the orbit, as the other hands hold a bow to the ten strings, seeking out the varying chords and harmonic frequencies. As the two work together so the orbit begins to sing and soar, a myriad of changing, whirling pitch shifting drones. In 2017 Stephen created a prototype instrument, inspired by Uakti’s ‘torre’ and Walter Smetak’s ‘Ronda’, a plastic barrel strung with ten strings and played by two people - one who turns the barrel, and one who holds a bow to the strings. Many years and many tweaks later, in early 2023 we finally collaborated with master luthier Kai Tönjes to create an upgraded version, and ‘Orbit’ was born. -- Mixed and mastered by Ian ThompsonCover design by Oli Barrett from photos by Joe Thoms Originally commissioned by and broadcast on Radio Anion: https://radioamnion.net/

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC Tracklisting: 1. babnacrabni - 7.452. crrrrrrrtttttttii - 7.503. grrgles - 5.014. mlzaamlzfcrx - 8.065. mmsmmsmsmmmm - 7.33Otoroku presents "cracked breath folds", a heady, labyrinthine release from Nantes-based artist, David Papapostolou. Mixing phone recordings, percussion, saxophone, and voice, the album blurs the boundaries between found and composed, hi-fi and lo-fi, vocalisation and meaning, performer and place; with the outside world never far from encroaching upon the performed elements, sometime adjacent, often seemingly a willing accomplice. In David's own words: "I wanted to find some form of immediacy in the process of making the music happen. I explored creating material using means that I would have with me at all or most of the time: my voice, my phone, outdoor space. Finding a sense of freedom in voicing sounds outside, on the street, in an underpass. To reach that tipping point in pushing a musical situation towards something happening, It often feels like taking a bold step had been necessary." The bold steps of the undertaking are hard to refute. Opener, babnacrabni, sets the tone for the album, with disassociated spectral voices merging with the muted natural sounds, whilst a spasmodic saxophone line punctuates the crepuscular murk. Second track, crrrrrrrtttttttii runs on its own internal logic, each rising vocal refrain leading to the next in a ceaselessly yearning chorus that builds inexorably before seemingly interrupting itself, leaving the disparate threads to fray freely at the edge of the weave. Elsewhere, grrgles seems to eavesdrop upon an urgent undertaking whose purpose remains tantalisingly opaque; mlzaamlzfcrx's initial pastoral idyll gradually takes a turn into the eerie, with a tentative choir underpinned by cymbals sighing into the gloaming; and closer mmsmmsmsmmmm knots an intricate tangle of voice tones which gradually glitch and distort into new assemblages that slowly rise up out of the throat until only the breath remains. Drawing concrete meaning from the album's five pieces might be akin to seeing shapes in smoke; such a conspicuously personal creative approach must surely yield an equally unique response in each listener. Immerse yourself in its patterns however, and your own forms and visions will surely come. -- Recorded and put together between April and June 2024

This recording from the earlier years of Cafe Oto documents the impossible pairing of four contemporary giants. Its one of those miraculous one off groupings that reminds us why the venue opened in the first place.’ “The magic of the first minutes – an alto solo by Joe McPhee of true purity – soft-spoken, masterful and accomplished – brought back to mind the blissful Coleman/Haden duet last year at the Royal Festival Hall. ‘Ornette gave me freedom to move in a certain way,’ said McPhee. He searched hesitantly and carefully for his words, all the more surprising from such an articulate musical (or, as he might say ‘muse-ical’) practitioner and campaigner. Coleman’s 80th birthday coincided with McPhee’s stint at Cafe Oto. McPhee and his co-musicians delivered an intense performance which was both creative and restrained. With Evan Parker ‘s tenor in tow – a collaboration going back to the late 70s – and Lol Coxhill, sitting with head bowed intently, a soprano master – it could have gone anywhere, yet they worked off each other, often in the higher registers, building up almost bird-call like interactions and trills. Earlier, Chris Corsano‘s drumming presented a dense bedrock for McPhee to play against, and his solo spell was a crisp exercise in sonic curiosity. McPhee picked up his soprano mid-way through the second set, heightening the lyricism of the three saxophones. Then, being a devotee of Don Cherry, he switched to pocket trumpet, allowing him to interject, and punctuate the concentrated sound layers built up by the quartet, and lead the music out through a different door”- Geoff Winston (londonjazznews.com) Recorded 10th March 2010, this is also a document of the only time Lol Coxhill and Joe Mcphee shared the stage. The recording is a little rough, but hey, so was your birth! Limited to 500 copies packaged in mini gatefold sleeve.

Two sides of experimental music from the SWANA (South West Asia & North Africa) region and diaspora, co-released in a limited run of 50 cassettes with collaborators Another Sky Festival. Side A mixed by Zeynep Ağcabay. Side B mixed by Dakn داكنْ. Proceeds from this release will go to the Palestine Red Crescent Society. Recorded at OTO and Bishopsgate Institute at the first edition of the festival, from 29 September-1 October 2023. Over three days and nights Another Sky brought together 26 artists whose heritage spans Armenia, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia and Türkiye, eliding genre and category through beats, improv, ambient soundscapes, pieces composed for classical and non-western instruments, moving image and more. Side A - Mixed by Zeynep Ağcabay: Sampled artists: AZADI.mp3.آزادی /// Jad Atoui جاد عطوي, Vibrant Pools (2023), co-commission by Another Sky & Irtijal Festival, performed by Atoui with Distractfold Ensemble (Daniel Brew, Alice Purton) /// Mariam Rezaei, SING (2023) /// Sam Salem أسامة سالم, The Way Up & The Way Down (2023), performed by Noam Bierstone /// Nour Mobarak نور مبارك, Subliminal Lambada (2023), co-commission by Another Sky & Counterflows Festival Side B - Mixed by Dakn داكنْ: Curse لا نعترف Deeds مش ارقام Dues غرب إحلم Had هون Feels ك لا شيء Needs إطفي خلص Sampled from Zeynep Toraman, An emotional rollercoaster just for you (2018), performed by Distractfold Ensemble (Rocío Bolaños, Daniel Brew, Linda Jankowska, Alice Purton, Kasia Ziminska) /// Sam Salem أسامة سالم, The Way Up & The Way Down /// AZADI.mp3.آزادی --- Recordings from Another Sky Festival at Bishopsgate Institute, 29 September 2023, and Cafe Oto, 30 September and 1 October 2023, London. Audio technical director Dan Ehrlich, sound technician & recordings for Cafe Oto Billy Steiger, mastering Oli Barrett, side B tracks 1-5 mixed by Muqata’a مُقاطعة. Side A mix © Zeynep Ağcabay. Side B mix © Dakn داكنْ. All sampled recordings © the composer. Logo by 40MUSTAQEL

Tracklisting: A1 The Solar Model - 13:51A2 The Laws of Motion - 03:28A3 For George Saliba - 03:42B1 The Oud of Ziryab - 04:46 B2 For Ibn Al Nafis - 04:17 B3 For Mansa Musa - 03:44 B4 The Birds are Singing - 06:01  Pat Thomas returns to OTOROKU for his fourth collection of solo piano improvisations, this time recorded in a studio setting at London’s Fish Factory.  For 25 years now, beginning with Nur (Emanem) and continuing through Al-Khwarizmi Variations (Fataka), The Elephant Clock of Al-Jazari (OTOROKU), and now The Solar Model of Ibn Al-Shatir, Pat Thomas has drawn on the Arabic world for titles for his solo piano work - specifically the long-standing Islamic tradition of astronomical invention. For Thomas, the work of the polymaths he dedicates his music to has been sidelined by Eurocentrism, just as the Arabic origin of “jass” and the scalar, intervallic and polyphonic contributions made by Arab musicians have been routinely overlooked. Islamic innovation is at the heart of Thomas’ solo projects and draws a direct link between his Sufi faith and a totally unique style of playing. Each of his solo piano records is a dedication - not just to the innovators Thomas names but to the beauty of the universe in all its complexities.    Starting standing up with one hand inside the piano and one on the keys, ‘The Solar Model’ begins with single staccato bass notes appearing like chondrites in the darkness, occasionally tumbling towards a rhythm and then falling out of it. Metallic string work starts to pull towards an unseen centre and eventually notes from the upper registers appear, clear and light. With both hands drawn to the keys, Thomas builds towards scintillating beauty, carried through “The Laws of Motion” and propelling us towards the A-side closer, “For George Saliba”. Notes fall rapidly, colliding to form a crowded core with a warped sort of bebop in its middle - distinctive Pat with a nod to the Duke’s groove. The whole landscape of the A side swings with this one movement, until its energy is spent on one last sweeping rotation.  On the B-side, “The Oud of Ziryab” notes to the instrument maker who added a 5th pair of strings to the Oud. The single bass notes of the first side are swapped for clusters, bursting together and decaying in space. Making use of the sustain pedal and the silence of a studio setting, it’s one of the most open, lush recordings of Thomas at the piano we’ve heard - more Muhal Richard Abrams than Monk, the lower end thundering under rapid, crystalline blues.  “For Mansa Musa” brings back a swing instantly recognisable as Pat, with a huge euphoric lift halfway that crowns the record but the album’s end title “The Birds are Singing” is more celestial, more chromatic - a reminder that the spiritual matters just as much as the physical for Thomas. --- Released in an edition of 500 LPs and 500 CDsRecorded at the Fish Factory, London on Wednesday 6th March, 2024 by Benedic LamdinMixed by Benedic Lamdin Mastered by Giuseppe Ielesi Photographs by Abby Thomas Pressed at Vinyl Press UK