OTO wishes you all a great time over the festive period. To celebrate People Like Us have treated us to this special Holiday Mix. Available for free download. Enjoy! Tracklisting: Matthijs Vlot - HelloLionel Richie on HeliumPeople Like Us and Wobbly - HelloThe Evolution Control Committee - HelloAnimals Within Animals - HelloAE - Tape Cuts HelloKen Nordine - HelloThe Evolution Control Committee - HelloCurd Duca - Cassettedʳᶤᵖ⁻₁₃₃ - ·•● ｆｌｅｘButtress O’Kneel - The Britney Spears RecordsButtress O’Kneel - RhapsodyWΔll Flowers - Subliminal RomanceNew Dreams Ltd Initiation Tape - PSR41Limahl - The NeverEnding Story (Indecorum Vaporized)Buttress O’Kneel - NeverendingButtress O’Kneel - Rhapsodybd594 - Bohemian RhapsodyButtress O’Kneel - Martian RhapsodyLes Baxter - Lunar RhapsodyThe Evolution Control Committee - Spandau FiletErgo Phizmiz - Welcome AudioOtomo Yoshihide - TEACGwilly Edmondez - Break Up The PieceRoy Smeck - Waltz Of YesteryearBBC Radiophonic Workshop - Christmas CommercialAelters - Pal-Xmas Cheap GiftDJ BC - Jesu Joy Of Man's DesiringSvein Tuba Johannessen - Oh. What A MealStimmhorn - SchneeGeorge Winston - Skating (Remastered 1996)Unknown - ChariotsAdam Bohman - At HomeVoicedude - Santa Benz Rank Sinatra - Last ChristmasGoulburn Poultry Fanciers Society - Last ChristmasAdam Bohman - At HomeVince Guaraldi - SkatingAntzz - CrimboThe Kleptones - A Night At The Hip Hopera (excerpt)Blood Brothers - Under PressurePeople Like Us & Gwilly Edmondez & Hearty White & Caterina Robertson - BoxesPeople Like Us - ForeverL'Atome - The Air Beneath My MaskLuiz Henrique - Mas Que NadaDirt Bike Boy - Dolce Vita Felicity Glitch MixMatmos - SchwittUrsGwilly Edmondez - Grevious Bodily CharmChristo Graham - Muppet Christ Superstar

A caustic, creeping session from two avante-heavyweights, dug up from our archive and splattered into our uncertain present.  While Alan and Aaron might be best known for their group projects (Reynols, Volcano the Bear etc), the two have formed a symbiosis over the course of a decade now, allowing time for their own brand of surrealist interplay to meld and ferment. Clustered piano chords, ghostly utterances, heavy guitar riffs, thudding drum work, trumpets and more are piled together and thrown into a swirling psychedelic mass. There's moments disquiet, before things break out into a free-wheeling cacophony. Drama, theatre, absurdity, beauty; masks on, masks off. A ritual summoned somewhere between earth and... well, who the hell knows? -- Aaron Courtis & Aaron Moore - all music -- Recorded by James Dunn at Cafe OTO on the 28th of February 2020.

Available as 320MP3, 24bit FLAC, WAV & full audiovisual MP4 fileLive recording and a full film from Viridian Ensemble's show at OTO in February 2020. An ethereal blend of image and noise, reimagined folklore and femininity, Viridian Ensemble's performances evoke dissociative states, keening and supernaturalism. Utterances and nonsensical languages entwine collective rhythm, tone, and resonance. Using improvised sound and image (digital and analogue), the group produce a collective sound which reimagines female narratives; lacing ambiguity through feminist tropes & reaching for a punk solidarity in the classical.  Download includes access to both audio and video. Thanks to VE for putting this together.  --- Dali de Saint Paul / vocals Tina Hitchens / flute Caitlin Alais Callahan / double bass Esme Betamax / percussion Laura Phillips / 16mm films, sound responsive projections, waterphone --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on 29th February 2020. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn.

All three sets from December's double 75 Dollar Bill shows. Settling into the Cafe from afternoon to late at night, this special trio formation of the band features long-time collaborator Andrew Lafkas on upright bass. Given the time their music stretches into half hour reveries, warmed through with the chatter and clink of the audience. Refracted Mauritanian and Arabic modal music, New York minimalism and blown-out folk combine here to create a moving space for contemplation.   --- Tracklisting: 1. Like Like Laundry - 30:252. WZN#3 - 19:433. 15 - 13:514. WZN#4 - 7:185. (intermission) - 3:356. intro/WZN#4 - 17:497. WZN#4 - 12:078. Water in the Lock - 5:309. Beni Said - 11:1710. I Was Real - 41:2711. WZN#3 (reprise) - 20:18. --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on Thursday 19th December 2019. Mixed by 75 Dollar Bill and mastered by James Dunn. Photo by Bradford Bailey. Thanks to Rick, Che and Chris Eckman.

"Who the fuck are these people?!" - Bloodclaat Orange "Bristol people are kind of relaxed. M*****w, you are not Bristol people, you are M*****w" - Dali de Saint-Paul "No, I said breathe in & out, slowly!" - Travis ONO "Seasick soul" - Penultimate Press "Death-affirming" - Dean Sunny Blount, David Mitchell, Bad Al Costello, Celia Mancini, Aby Ngana Diop, Alan Rankine, Rita Abadzi A sweaty palmed recollection of the night we first saw Triple Negative - three defiantly generous and original beings who shook us warmly out of a stupor with this show. Split between the baffling overlay of audio and their completely compelling presences onstage it was hard to know how to process what was happening, at once riveted to the spot and then overwhelmed with the fierce urge to leave the room until we could come back with something better to say for ourselves. Will leave an indelible mark on your brain.   --- 1st ever TN live show, Cafe OTO, Jan 6 2018  Putative track sublisting: Go Decay!; Mercurial Seal; The Fire of Hate; Towers, Open, Fire; Fresh Borg Shining Fight/Agitator; Born in the Wrong Time/Destroyer/Buddy/Under the Void (ft. Brigitte Fontaine, Babyfather, Areski, David d'Ath, Peter Gutteridge, Cameron Bain, Herman Meville, Peter Perrett and Celia Mancini) --- Madame Tlank / voice, violin, glockenspiel, grand piano D.Velimirovich / soprano saxophone voice clinical wasteman / backing tape, voice, Yamaha SU-10, gtr --- Mixed live & recorded by James Dunn; post-mixed/"mastered" by clinical wasteman (i.e. James is not to blame for anything)

A rare solo set from composer, percussionist and sound artist Susie Ibarra. Using the full breadth of a unique set up, Ibarra takes a meditative journey across her kit, taking time to find familiar rhythms and knots and allowing them to offer up new space and sound. Delicate, dynamic and extremely focused, Ibarra finds expressive harmonics in gongs and brushes alike, with refreshingly melodic, even pastoral, results.  "Rhythm Cycles is a drum solo that I consider as a performance meditation. I love to perform this piece as it is possible to always arrive at new places while returning to familiar cycles that make so much sense to me. This piece is constructed to weave through certain tempos and hit points during a solo performance that arrive at melodies and textures and phrases grounded in specific rhythms and polyrhythms. The piece cycles through each of these sections and allows me to improvise through a flexible structure, sometimes returning to a section at moments and other times moving forward to create a new rhythmic environment.” - Susie Ibarra. --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Thursday 7th November 2019 by Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. “Rhythm Cycles” by Susie Ibarra is a commissioned solo performance by the Bagri Foundation for their series " At the Cutting Edge" performed at Cafe OTO. Many thanks to the Bagri Foundation for the support of this release.  About Bagri Foundation The Bagri Foundation is a UK registered charity, inspired by unique and unexpected ideas that weave the traditional and the contemporary of Asian culture. The Foundation, with its roots in education, is driven by curiosity and a desire to learn, and aims for each project to challenge, engage and inspire. Through a diverse programme of film, visual arts, music, dance, literature and talks, the Bagri Foundation gives artists and experts from across Asia and the diaspora, wider visibility on the global stage. Recent projects include At Home in the World, a series of digital commissions; Tantra: enlightenment to revolution at the British Museum; Object, Story, Wonder: Museum Collections Revealed; and From Here to Eternity: Sunil Gupta, A Retrospective at The Photographer’s Gallery, London. www.bagrifoundation.org

Tongue Depressor (New Haven, CT) is the duo of Henry Birdsey and Zach Rowden. They write, improvise, and perform music that draws from the fields of drone, harsh noise, and church music, often using microtonal tunings. Soon to have an LP on Kali Malone & Maria W Horn's label Xkatedral, the pair are super prolific, having issued eleven releases already on a host of small cassette labels (Thalamos, Pidgeon, Obsolete Staircases, via their own fair hand). Primarily fiddle players, they switched up the instrumentation for their OTO show, bringing in a microtonal organ and lap steel. The result is spooky, sensitive and totally saturating. --- Henry Birdsey / lap steel, fiddle   Zach Rowden / microtonal organ, fiddle   ---   Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Saturday 9th November by Shaun Crook. Mixed & mastered by Tongue Depressor.

First time trio of Lebanese musician, writer and illustrator, Mazen Kerbaj, joined by Angharad Davies on violin and Sholto Dobie on self built organ and wind chime. Mazen's super extended technique often sees him morph his trumpet into a collection of metal tubes and bells; adjustable passageways for air to pass through and mutate into sound. A meeting with Davies and Dobie makes sense - both are incredibly talented at finding new phonetics in their practice with a sly sense of humour. Unearthly drones materialise, surprisingly delicate as they hover, burble and destabilise.  --- Mazen Kerbaj / trumpet Angharad Davies / violin Sholto Dobie / self built organ, wind chime --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on Wednesday 25th September, 2019. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Original image for artwork by Mazen Kerbaj.

Textures Festival returned to OTO back in April, opening with a ferocious new quartet featuring Swiss composer and saxophonist Antoine Chessex together with free music giants Pat Thomas, Steve Noble and John Edwards. Dissonance dominates and condenses the quartet to near saturation, then respirates - chopped up by Thomas' hammered clusters and shaken down by Steve Noble into a grinding tenor saxophone and double bass texture. This is a wonderfully paced and fierce first meeting.   --- Antoine Chessex / saxophone John Edwards / double bass Steve Noble / drums Pat Thomas / piano --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on Sunday 12th December, 2016. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Photo by Dawid Laskowski.

A total of 7 'vocal' pieces for soprano saxophone and piano, some written by Jan Rzewski and some by Steve Lacy. Frederic Rzewski and Steve Lacy met in Rome in the late 60’s when both were participating in Musica Elettronica Viva. Lacy dedicated his “Cryptosphere” to Rzewski - a tune full of a kind of micro playing that would dominate Lacy's playing after his time in Rome. Lacy and Rzewski shared a fascination with poetry and language, and here Rzewski and his son Jan recall moments from two records Rzewski and Lacy made together - "Rushes" based on Russian poems, and "Packet" based on poems written by Judith Melina of the Living Theatre.  --- Frederick Rzewski / piano Jan Rzewski / soprano saxophone --- Frederic Rzewski in conversation with Evan Parker: "Steve Lacy. Well, the important thing about him was that he was a great composer. People think of him as a jazz musician, an improviser, which he was, but he was also a great composer. He wrote probably two hundred songs which nobody knows and he wrote pieces for all kinds of compositions for orchestra and so on. He wasn't just what it's fashionable to talk about, he happened to be a great artist and a great writer. He wrote tone clusters with dozens of notes. They looked like grape bunches - clusters of grapes! So, I was, you know, like any pianist - I would fake them. I would fake them, of course. What you don't learn in the conservatory but what I think any professional pianist knows is that you have to fake if you're going to play music of today, to play Steve Lacy. So I did that, but then in the rehearsal Steve would stop and he would say, "well wait a minute, that's not exactly right." Of course it wasn't right - he knew what he wrote you know. He was a serious composer and he wrote it down and he knew what he wanted to hear. And so I would have to really practice at it."  Cover photo by Fabio Lugaro.

Pleased to present the full recording of Pat Thomas' moving tribute to Duke Ellington on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of his birth. According to Thomas, Ellington "never stopped discovering, never played the same tune in exactly the same way twice", and the same could be said here. The tunes are all there, but they emerge unpredictably, warped and hammered through the body of the piano in Pats own way. The second set was an hour long, with Pat rolling through 'Rockin’ in Rhythm', 'Isfahan' and 'In a Sentimental Mood' in a collage of heavy harmonics, serious swing and a wicked appreciation for exploration. An absolute pleasure to be in the room for this one, and tremendously happy to share the recording.  "Deconstructing and reconstructing as part of the interpretative process is second nature to Thomas. The obvious is kept at his arm’s length so from tangential start points, unforgettable melodies would creep back to plant flags firmly in the ground." - London Jazz News Tracklisting: 1.Prelude to a KissSolitudeTake the ColtraneSophisticated LadySatin DollSerenade to Sweden 2.Rockin’ in RhythmMood IndigoIsfahanIn a Sentimental MoodI Got It Bad and That Ain’t GoodHeavenDo Nothing Till You Hear From MeDay DreamCome SundayCaravan Cover art by Billy Steiger.

Delighted to share the full recording of Dave Burrell's stunning OTO show from last year. 'Overlooked' implicates Burrell in a jostle for positioning which he likely isn't bothered with - he's been happily writing and recording as a composer in residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia for well over a decade, and has worked with his wife, poet and librettist Monika Larsson, to tell the complex stories found in the archive there for years. No one in the room at OTO failed to notice his sense of deliberate ease and total elegance as he struck up two forty-five minute sets to thunderous applause, blending his earlier music with his later projects. Both sets hinge on one of Burrell's more contemporary works - 'The Paradox of Freedom’, as it weaves its way in and around the earlier ‘Black Robert’ and his most recent piece, 'Full Blown Rhapsody'. 'The Paradox of Freedom' imagines contradictions felt by freed slaves as they migrated north. “I use a boogie line that my mother used to play; there was a dance that went with it called 'Truckin’. I decided to use that line and try to do something with my right hand that would give the idea of migration and maybe an overreaction to freedom. The paradox is what kind of freedom are we talking about?”  A luminous second set opens with 'Margy Pargy'. Burrell traces its edges, open faced, sonorous and laden with swing, and then adds a gradual ringing, repeating slow dripped melody. He strides from Jelly-esque stompers into 'Expansion' and 'Full Blown Rhapsody' before looping back to 'Paradox'. 'Lush Life', Burrell's deconstructed tribute to Billy Strayhorn, closes the evening to a hollering room. An understated master. We wish wholeheartedly for his return. --- "Rough-hewn, strongly structured, then more distant before dropping in hints of recognisable melody. Rare excursions deep in to the bass register reinforced the sonorous resonance of OTO's Yamaha, drawn out by judicious use of pedals. Dense, chordal clusters gave way to the relentless rhythms of the railroad, cut short suddenly by a subdued sense of peace. A blink of boogie-woogie, and a warm 12-bar blues which gradually self-destructed with virtuosic invention. Dancing with Monika, considered and contained, closely followed by a spring-loaded Red Summer March, composed in the company of Steve Swallow one freezing winter, a spikey blues morphing in to a solid beat with a crafted melody strung over it, summoning up the spirit of Ellington." - London Jazz News --- Dave Burrell / piano --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Thursday 1st November 2018, by James Dunn. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. All material Dave Burrell-Lanikai Sounds Publishing Company, BMI. Photo by Fabio Lugaro.

After touring together in 2016, Paul Dunmall's joyous Quintet returned to OTO last winter. Known for his past collaborations with saxophonist Elton Dean and drummer Tony Bianco, and his work with improvising quartet Mujician (with pianist Keith Tippett, bassist Paul Rogers, and percussionist Tony Levin), Paul's work as a writer really shines brightest with this Quintet. The first set showcases totally new material - The Soultime Suite - and the second an emphatic rendition of 2016's Dreamtime Suite. Pure melody switches through pennywhistle, trumpet, tenor and alto with an elated rhythm section keeping things high energy. "When I listen to Paul, which is a great pleasure, and when I play with him, I hear the whole history of everything. You hear the history of the saxophone. You hear what Yusef Lateef called 'The Great Tradition'. That's the type of artist I want to be, one that reflects, as Paul does, the great tradition." Hamid Drake in conversation with Soweto, BBC. “Ever since I heard UK sax colossus Paul Dunmall with Keith Tippett’s Mujician quartet, I knew that there was something special, spiritual about his (tenor) sax playing. Nobody has a sound like him, he is in a class of his own!” – Bruce Lee Gallanter, Free Jazz Collective --- Paul Dunmall / tenor & alto saxophone, pennywhistle Hamid Drake / drums & framedrum Percy Pursglove / trumpet Steve Tromans / piano Dave Kane / bass --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Thursday 8th November 2018 by Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Artwork by Paul Dunmall.

The bold voice of James Brandon-Lewis meets one of the UK's fiercest rhythm sections. A relatively new, young player, Lewis' credentials include having studied with with Charlie Haden and Wadada Leo Smith at Cal Arts and recorded top records with Jamie Branch and Chad Taylor. His playing is characterised by a strong attack but has a wicked way of threading a fine melody from a chunky chord. When Edwards matches him on a tone and the pair find themselves locking into Sander's smouldering, skittish groove it's magic - proper mid-air, heady free jazz. Solo sections from Sanders and Edwards testify to the fun had in our hot little room. We look forward to a reunion.  --- James Brandon-Lewis / tenor saxophone John Edwards / double bass Mark Sanders / drums --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Paul Skinner on the 4th February 2019. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn.

First time trio from Ren Schofield, Seymour Wright and Paul Abbott. Under the Container moniker Ren usually improvises overblown electronic hardware: infectious drum patterns, restructured feedback and dying tape loops. Wright and Abbott’s respective practices look to interrogate the British tradition of improvised music – groups such as AMM and SME - so this meeting somewhat shoves spontaneous interplay onto the dancefloor. The result is a high density recursive tangle of magnified antagonism and genuine investigative collaboration which steps off on the more cognitive side of techno. Not your usual dancefloor but experiments like this will keep free improvisation fresh. --- Seymour Wright / saxophone Paul Abbott / drums, electronics Ren Schofield / Roland 909, tape machine, delay --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Adam Maschulat on Thursday 9th August, 2018. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn.

Irreversible Entanglements' remarkable UK debut, with Pat Thomas joining on piano for the second half of their firey 83 minute set. Comparisons of Irreversible Entanglements to Amiri Baraka and the New York Art Quartet ring true - free improvisation burns hot under Ayewa’s searing poetic narrations of Black trauma, survival and power - words drawn from her own 'Fetish Bones', '3D Bones' and 'Out of Order Punk'.  Dedicated to Cecil Taylor. --- Camae Ayewa / vocals Keir Neuringer / saxophone Aquiles Navarro / trumpet Luke Stewart / bass Tcheser Holmes / drums Pat Thomas / piano --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Thursday 5th April, 2018. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Original artwork by Geoffrey Winston.

Six months on and finally into summer we're buzzed to share the recording of Chicago footwork originator and pioneer RP Boo alongside ever-radical, longstanding collaborators Seymour Wright and Paul Abbott in a special New Years Eve trio. RP Boo, Seymour and Paul share a fascination with the musical history of Chicago – a source of which is of continual nourishment to their ongoing practice. While RP Boo’s footwork takes from the rhythmic structures of Chicago house and the samples, grooves and melodies of 60’s/70’s Chicago soul, disco and R&B;, Seymour and Paul share a fascination with these musics, and bring to this lineage a long term engagement with Chicago’s jazz traditions, from Baby Dodds to the AACM. Expect spurred soul cut with condensed, triggered kit drums and sax. Samples from The Fog, Gerald Levert, Tweet and Evanescence (!) --- RB boo / cdjs Seymour Wright / alto saxophone (actual and potential) Paul Abbott / drums (real and imaginary) --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Tuesday 31st December 2018 by Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by Paul Abbott. Photo by Dawid Laskowski.

Before heading up to Counterflows festival, we were lucky to have new two piece Zywizna play an extraordinary set at OTO. Zywizna is a collaborative project between two distinct voices in underground Polish music – Genowefa Lenarcik and Raphael Rogiński. With guitar and voice they re-realize traditional Kurpian folk songs within a new experimental context; making music that is as much about the past as it is about the possible future. Raphael returns solo on the 7th March for a night of solo guitar.  Raphael Roginski is one of the most exploratory guitarists to emerge in Europe in past few decades. Laying the foundations for new Jewish music in Poland with the bands Shofar, Cukunft and Alte Zachen, he has gone on to immerse himself in primitive American folk and blues, early Israeli music, European improvisation, Mediterean music, Jewish African music, American experimental music, as well the work of of Bach and Coltrane. Genowefa Lenarcik is a singer and performer of traditional Kurpian folk music. Daughter of the Kurpian vocal legend Stanisław Brzozowski and the acclaimed torch-bearer of her father’s oeuvre. ---  Raphael Roginski / guitar Genowefa Lenarcik / vocals