"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

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

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC Tracklisting: 1. Pedigree I – 4.47 2. Pedigree II – 7.48 3. Pedigree III – 11.21 4. Pedigree IV – 6.30"With Clippy EM272 mics clipped on my backpack, I commuted and recorded in various locations to capture what's bluntly obvious to all of us here, I'm certain of. It is about what's been passed down, the pedigree of our people, hastily constructed to pick up the phase of the west, that I've known for my entire life and a part of my life. No good or bad, but just the way it is. I see much beauty here in my city's streets, when the unfavored sides are seen in the same scope. They are inseparable." – Suk Hong Otoroku is delighted to present this enrapturing, multifaceted release from South Korean sound artist, Suk Hong 홍석민, recorded in and around Seoul. At first the rapid procession of sounds in Pedigree's four parts - both found and performed, worldly and domestic - can seem bewildering; streetscapes merge with dissonant organ sounds, snatches of conversation blend with the hum and rattle of transport, electronic tones trade space with grunting pigs and homely rituals. The sound worlds seem to flit from one headspace to the next, giving the listener just enough time to acclimatise to each sonic environment before changing up the scenery again. But give yourself over to the restless momentum and the true expanse of the composition becomes clear, ultimately revealing itself to be something both transportive and profound. With each listen, more is disclosed. The effect is akin to looking at reflections upon the surface of a body of water and then letting your eyes readjust to the world beneath, teeming with life. Pedigree seems to exist in this moment of tension between the surface and the depths, favouring neither but revelling in a state of endlessly unfolding transition. -- - All tracks by Suk Hong- Mastered by Oli Barrett- Cover photo by (stephan) – image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

stretchedwoundspeaks - 5:55 (text from ‘(i) Libation’, ‘(ii) The Making of the Drum’, ‘(v) The Gong-Gong’, Masks - Kamau Brathwaite) Tracklisting: A1 - the sleepening (0:33)A2 – invisible bodies (2:10) A3 – unknown tongue (5:53) A4 – black mantle (1:25) (text from ‘Interlude’, Towards the Stars - Una Marson) A5 – black mantle II (1:26) (text from ‘Interlude’, Towards the Stars - Una Marson) A6 - gyre's galax (2:56)(text from ‘Gyre’s Galax’, The Matrix - N. H. Pritchard) B1 – stretchedwoundspeaks (5:55)(text from ‘(i) Libation’, ‘(ii) The Making of the Drum’, ‘(v) The Gong-Gong’, Masks - Kamau Brathwaite)B2 – rush hush (4:16) (text from ‘The Voice’, The Matrix, N. H. Pritchard) B3 - their naked descent (2:42)(text from ‘When in the Heat of the Day’, Solar Throat Slashed - Aimé Césaire) B4 – spittle (1:08) (text from ‘When in the Heat of the Day’, Solar Throat Slashed - Aimé Césaire) B5 - tender as fly agaric (0:31) (text from ‘When in the Heat of the Day’, Solar Throat Slashed - Aimé Césaire) B6 - slli (1:54)(text from ‘VIA’, Eecchhooeess - N. H. Pritchard)First solo release from vocalist, movement artist and composer Elaine Mitchener, whose work encompasses improvisation, contemporary music theatre and performance art. Solo Throat draws on the work of African-American and African-Caribbean poets Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire, Una Marson and N. H. Pritchard as source material for twelve new vocal compositions Elaine Mitchener is a veteran of vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde, traversing free improvisation, cross-disciplinary music theatre and contemporary composition with clarity and joy. Most recently, Mitchener has been improvising and composing with the written word as source material - challenging classical ensembles with her piece (“the/e so/ou/nd be/t/ween”), and commissioning composers Matana Roberts, Jason Yarde and George Lewis to respond to the work of Sylvia Wynter (“On Being Human as Praxis”, Donaueschinger Musiktage, 2020). Her performance of Umbra poet N.H Pritchard’s text FR/OG at OTO in 2021 was a revelation - a solo vocal recasting of the powerful visual-material form that Pritchard uses to disrupt semantic ‘sense’. Building on this performance, Solo Throat takes the work of Pritchard alongside poets Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire and Una Marson as its source material. Its compositions are a loose translation - a carrying from text to voice which holds multiplicity and celebrates the transformative power of literary possibility. Surrendered to the spacing and repetition of consonants and vowels, Michener’s exceptional phonetic freedom gives rise to a sensuous experience which intensifies the roles of rhythm, timbre and breath in expressing meaning. Solo Throat comes together as much through difference as similarity. Mitchener’s own solo improvisations sit alongside the work of Brathwaite, Césaire, Marson and Pritchard, forming a constellation of unlikely alignments which make no aesthetic conclusion. Instead, Solo Throat is a site of encounter, a plural de-composition of words into an assemblage of sounds and impulses, emphasising what Anthony Reed calls, “the play on and the surplus of margins of lyrical translation to resituate other pathways of expression”. Just as the poets cited use white space to complicate our act of reading, so Mitchener utilises silence and multiphonics to complicate the act of voicing and the way we listen. — Elaine Mitchener is a British Afro-Caribbean vocalist, movement artist and composer working between contemporary/experimental new music, free improvisation and visual art. She is currently a Wigmore Hall Associate Artist; was a DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Fellow (2022) and was an exhibiting artist in the British Art Show 9 (2021-22). In February 2022 Mitchener was awarded an MBE for Services to Music. Her regular collaborators include: composers George E Lewis, Jennifer Walshe, and Tansy Davies; visual artists Sonia Boyce, Christian Marclay and The Otolith Group; chamber ensembles Apartment House, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble MAM, Ensemble Klang, and Klangforum Wien; choreographer Dam van Huynh’s company; and experimental musicians such as Moor Mother, Loré Lixenberg, Pat Thomas, Jason Yarde, Neil Charles and David Toop. — Recorded and engineered by Sean Woodlock at Hackney Road StudiosMastered by Sean McCannLayout by Jeroen WilleAll music and artwork by Elaine Mitchener

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.

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC from the 16th June Tracklisting: 1. Potential - 22:50 2. Morning Star - 10:37     CD-R version comes in trigger case, with artwork printed on disc. No liners. Musician, writer and filmmaker, Sunik Kim follows up ‘The Bent Bow Must Wait to Be Released’ (Takuroku 2021) with their second LP - a deadly serious dismantling of the limits of contemporary computer music, delivered with playful dexterity and a touch of slapstick humour, a la Henry Cow.  Enlisting General MIDI to create frenetic, vital patterns of dis-organisation made up of gleeful synthetic trumpets, wry orchestral sweeps and brutal key clusters, Sunik Kim explodes a kind of simplistic sound into complex, beautifully uncertain structures. Rather than attempting to overwhelm or stun the listener into subjectivity, ‘Potential’ is ever shifting; regularly breaking form and unfolding, discreetly nibbling at the concept of the Spectacle and un-doing fatally closed systems of cyclic music.  On first listens we recalled Cecil Taylor’s Unit Structures, Stockhausen’s Gruppen, and even those weirdo attempts at making music from inside the world of Animal Crossing, Lil Jürg Frey. The overflowing ideas of Henry Cow (to which Kim dedicated a fantastically blended mix for the Wire in 2021) never drift too far from view, but contemporary counterparts lay few except for Yorkshire's most eminent polyceleratrix, Gretchen Aury, who we asked to write the liners. Gretchen’s words are unsurprisingly as extraordinary as the record itself, so we’ll close out the call to elicit a Media response to possibly the wildest OTOROKU yet with their words: “Potential reads as a rare honest response to the disaster capitalist era of the apparent nearing end of the anthropocene, a cyborg music which is not hopelessly psychotic like so much contemporary and especially computer-requiring music, but lucidly possessed with rapture, pain, madness, empathy, ecstasy, torment, fragility; all those vital feelings and incentives which our atrociously depressing times seem engineered to quash and bleed out of us. This sound is a blistering Electro Magnetic Pulse wave of revolutionary hope, exclaiming defiantly that History is not over, that the future is not ‘history,’ that there is still a vast multitude of ideas and identities burning brightly and resiliently, despite the fact that they are inconceivable to the tyrannical Hegemonic axis of global capitalist tech-culture. I ask of you, listener, if you truly wish to plunge beyond The Known, give yourself over in full to this record.” — Artwork by Sunik Kim Layout and design by Jeroen Wille  Liner notes by Vymethoxy Redspiders Mastered by Anotine Nouel at Sound Love Studios Track 1 edited by John Wall —

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC Tracklisting: 1. Lean In - 24.54 2. Intact - 15.16We're thrilled to present two longform pieces from Yorkshire-based sound artist, Sophie Cooper. Composed during a week-long residency in the OTO Project Space in February 2022, Lean In was originally written for an 8-speaker surround set-up, here distilled into an equally expansive stereo version. Over 25 minutes, Cooper weaves fragments of on-site found radio sounds, processed trombone, electronics and voice to explore themes of broken family structures and the unspoken estrangement issue. We release this alongside the newly remastered companion piece, Intact, commissioned by hcmf// in 2019 and for which Cooper was nominated for an Ivor Novello Composer Award in 2020. Together, the pieces build upon each other in a way that uncovers new insights with each listen, revealing a multi-faceted work at once intimate and far-reaching in its emotional and sonic impact. "This release is a double A side of accompanying pieces both written during residencies for spatial audio systems namely the HISS (Huddersfield Immersive Sound System) for hcmf// and the set up at Café Oto project space. These versions have been designed to be listened to on stereo set ups. Both of the pieces deal with the topic of family estrangement using verbatim sourced with permission and support from a UK based charity called Stand Alone who support adults in this situation. Intact was the first piece made of the two in 2019 and Lean In was written in early 2022 so you’ll hear references to how people’s lock down experiences impacted on their estrangements in the second piece. It was really interesting to come back to this topic after a break and reflect on changes between the texts in both years." – Sophie Cooper, February 2023 -- Enormous thanks to: Everyone involved with the HISS, hcmf//, Cafe Oto, Arts Council England, Kathy Hinde and Matthew Olden for the support with these pieces. -- Cover photography by Maryanne RoyleMastered by Oli Barrett

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC Tracklisting: 1. 她的眼睛失去了光华 Her Eyes Lost Their Luster - 10.09 2. 像根草 Like Blade Of Grass - 3.23 3. 迟钝 Inertion - 5.08 -- Master and cover art by Oli BarrettOriginally from Inner Mongolia, Deng Boyu has been active in the Chinese music underground since the late 1990s. His work spans numerous genres, as a drummer, solo electronics artist, improviser and collaborator to many musicians both in and out of China, including Mamer, Lao Dan, Lee Ranaldo, Marc Ribot, Akira Sakata, Theresa Wong and Federico Casagrande. Having hosted two of his releases on our site through the Old Heaven and Dusty Ballz labels, we're delighted to present《Inertion》on our in-house OTOroku imprint. Opening with the thrumming, pulsing hum of ‘Her Eyes Lost Their Luster’, Boyu hints at reverie but wastes no time in pulling the rug out, the lulling bass drone being intermittently disrupted with static bursts and fragmentary synth stabs before the two sonic factions coalesce in an increasingly dizzying scree of chirping electronics. Just as you think the palette has settled, Boyu abruptly changes tack once again, laying down a sparsely propulsive rhythm over which a stadium-sized guitar suddenly erupts, whose initial incongruity is instantly washed away in a surge of giddy euphoria; Boyu not so much setting fire to his guitar as the whole damn stage. Second track, ‘Like Blade of Grass’ doesn’t let up, with fuzz-drenched tones dancing around each other in percussive patterns that skitter and churn in a freewheeling clatter that constantly threatens to unravel whilst always keeping just ahead of itself. The titular closer, ‘Inertion’, piles on the Industrial Lynchian dread, beginning with a funereal march over which a digital analogue appears to be arguing with itself. All is resolved, however, as Boyu’s layered guitars unashamedly crash back in, releasing all the built-up tension in an all-too-brief rush of power-chord endorphins. There is an almost dizzying restlessness here, covering more ground in 20 minutes than most would manage in a triple LP. The result is anything but scattershot, however. Instead, Boyu crafts a collagic density consisting of myriad reference points all competing for space. There can be no neat outcome - these are not clues to decipher. Instead, Boyu builds around these competing approaches; tongue-in-cheek modern jesterisms versus considered sincerity; minimalist arrangements brushing up against maximalist sound; structured craft and tonal dissonance - not coming down on one side or the other but revelling in the clash. You might not have time to get comfortable but it’s a compelling and compulsive place to be.

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC Tracklisting: 1. Seeking - 3.33 2. Room in Shared Apartment Looking for a Soul - 5.37 3. Square Peg - 3.24 4. I'll Tell You That - 2.41 5. After The Allotments - 5.16 -- Mix by Sonny Johns Master by Oli Barrett Cover photograph by Giuliana BorrelliDanielle Price is a tuba player whose work explores the range of creative possibilities of the instrument, both in her own compositions as well as her extensive list of collaborations ranging from artists as diverse as Ashley Paul, Bill Wells, Oxbow, Ntshuks Bonga and Mats Gustafsson. After the Allotments sees this expansive approach in full flow, blending improvised and structured forms in delightfully unexpected ways. Across the five tracks, Price crafts an enviable parallel universe where singer-songwriters have traded their ubiquitous acoustic guitars for tubas. Opener, Seeking, sees Price’s breath gradually expanding into soft evocations under which a tentative tuba line deliberately draws out resonances both wistful and reflective, before Room In a Shared Apartment Looking For a Soul snaps back into focus, building a sparse, propulsive rhythm where utterances from both voice and tuba blend and unfurl in one fluid line that contorts and loops back on itself. Price’s brass melodies extend further on each new time around before splitting off from its rhythmic underpinnings and soaring upwards and outwards. Square Peg takes a sudden about turn, dialling the smokey jazz atmosphere up to 11 as a playful tuba walks the bass and almost audibly clicks its fingers along to Price’s yearning, soulful vocal, evoking Sofia Jernberg’s stellar work with Fire! Orchestra. Track four, I’ll Tell You That, pushes this interplay further, as voice and tuba exhort each other into ever more untethered contortions in an increasingly raucous call and response. After the minimalist palette of the first four tracks, the plaintive opening piano notes of the titular closing piece ring out like a bell. Price deftly glides across the keys, weaving a tremendous sense of calm like the freshness following a downpour, as her understated spoken vocal conjures up a deceptively everyday yet far-reaching scene that in a few short sentences seemingly captures a life.

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC Tracklisting: 1. Stuck Like Jane Austen - 5.352. Louise - 5.193. Frosted Bats - 3.034. The Time Is Appalling - 2.545. Okonomiyaki - 3.076. Secrets in the Open Sea - 7.507. Spinning Eggs - 4.448. Dark Light - 7.449. Heavy Jelly - 5.2410. Smart City - 9.0511. Stubbornly - 3.4112. Feet Facing Forward - 4.0313. Preserved - 2.0614. How Far Can Words Go? - 5.00 -- All tracks improvised live.“[This] collection of 14 live improvisations is a masterpiece in spontaneous strangeness… Time Trout’s album is a product of incredible musical intelligence.” – Louise Gray, The WIRE OTOroku is thrilled to present the debut album from Time Trout, comprising fourteen tracks improvised in real time. Seemingly summoned out of the ether, these songs arrive fully-formed, with an awkward, jagged personality that moves, all knees and elbows, with a bristling, roiling, unstoppable momentum. It’s a constant high-wire performance, with all four participants looking relentlessly forward lest a glimpse below causes the whole thing to drop. Thankfully, the balance is never in doubt. From the off, drummer Stephen Moses and bass guitarist Dave Mandl create a series of hypnotic locked grooves, that simultaneously draw you in and subtly pull the rug out from underneath you all at once; like repeatedly stumbling down the last couple of steps to the dance floor. Over this hypnotic ouroboros of a rhythm section, Marcus Cummins’ saxophone deftly feints and weaves between the cracks, running the gamut from tentative, staccato stabs to giddily whirling lyricism. The three instrumentalists constantly trade emphases in such an assured way that you quickly stop trying to focus in on one part and give yourself over to the single, intricate whole; running through which, like a bright red thread through the labyrinth, is Viv Corringham’s astonishing spoken word vocal performance. A restless stream of consciousness that seems to have the primal urgency of a message delivered in a dream, Corringham mixes Delphic abstractions with bracingly lucid implorations, the whole performance delivered with such seamlessness that it’s hard to tell whether the lyrics are channeling the music or vice versa. The answer, of course, is both. -- - Viv Corringham / voice- Marcus Cummins / soprano and alto saxophones, ocarina, bells, shruti box- Dave Mandl / bass guitar- Stephen Moses / drums, percussion -- Recorded by George Taylor at Collect Pond Studio, New YorkMixed by Mario Viele at Excello Recording, BrooklynMastered by Oli Barrett in The Shrubbery, Somerset Thanks to: Aaron Moore, Michael Evans, George Taylor, Dann Baker / Hugh Pool / Mario Viele (Excello), David Watson, Ed Baxter.

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC Tracklisting: 1. keep making selects - 5.592. suggest - 6.373. please put - 5.454. asleep - 4.475. just natural - 4.266. en - 5.177. two-way relationship only - 5.228. prose - 5.14A collection of beautifully realised pieces from Tokyo-based sonic artist, Akhira Sano, whose work focuses on the imperfections and irregularities of form and sound. Across the album's eight tracks, clusters of notes gradually emerge and unfold in a way that appears minimal at first but soon becomes totally enveloping - it quickly becomes clear that the space left between the notes is perfectly shaped for the listener themself. It could be the time of year in which this album is being released, but there's a cozy glow to in front of's sound world that almost requires you to stop what you're doing and curl up inside it. This is a not an album which calls attention to itself, rather it draws the listener in through the understated intimacy of each composition - there’s a power in a fragility which is offered up so unselfconsciously. Nothing is hurried here, Sano gives each note its own time and space in which to emerge and the result is a soft, crepuscular, sonic blanket in which to wrap yourself in completely. -- All tracks written and recorded by Akhira SanoMastered by Oli BarrettCover design by Oli Barrett

Tracklisting: 1. I - 6:30 2. II - 6:49 3. III - 17:43 4. IV - 6:18 5. V - 16:56Keiji Haino, one of the foremost exponents of the Japanese avant-garde, always provides a masterclass in constantly shifting improvisation. John Butcher is a saxophonist of rare grace and power, who has expanded the vocabulary of the saxophone far beyond the conventions of jazz and other musics, to encompass a staggering range of multiphonics, overtones, percussive sounds, and electronic feedback. Haino and Butcher met when Butcher opened for Fushitsusha at the show Cafe OTO arranged at St. John, Hackney - 5 years ago. In 2016 they were invited to play two duo concerts – at The Empty Gallery in Hong Kong and at Cafe OTO in London. Otoroku is proud to present the audio documentation of their first UK meeting. Recorded live at Cafe OTO in July 2016 the results are an uncompromising milieu of swirling sound played out as a total union of these two legendary performers.  Haino’s blues drenched guitar entices skittering notes from Butcher’s sax playing as numerous sonic clues unravel over the course of of this unique and compelling journey. Light Never Bright Enough comes in a limited edition of 500 LPs and 500 CDs with matt sleeves and japanese removable obi-strip. --- Keiji Haino / vocal, guitar, flutes   John Butcher / saxophones and feedback --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on the 9th July 2016 by Luca Consonni. Mixed by John Butcher. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Photography and design by ORGAN.