Bridget Hayden has been a regular fixture at OTO over our 13 year history, either treating us to her distinct brand of lonesome avante-blues, or sending scattered aural junk skywards in Leeds-based collective Vibracathedral Orchestra.   In this new solo work, she pares back her hushed songcraft, opting instead for a foggy psychedelia, seeing her spill cyclical lines of bowed guitar, tone generator and synth - as well as vocal apparations and wisps of flute - into a throbbing vaporous mass.  Each element feels like it is blowing from a spectre's mouth: rendering each low-end guitar riff, shrill of feedback or squelched synth-line in an ethereal, clouded greyscale. Whether summoning something of earthly matter or from somewhere else, Bridget feels like she's turning off the lights, lighting candles and welcoming us to a haunted ritual. Recommended listening for late winter nights. -- Bridget Hayden - All instruments, edits, compositions, recordings --

With live music and group-based rehearsal and recordings severely restricted in 2020, Dominic Lash gets to work on his own, exploring the rarely-embraced option of playing with recordings of himself on guitar and double bass. Neither a classic call and response or palimpset based approach to double tracking, Dom's volant weaving makes it hard to decipher which recording was made first. Both hands are used to colour the canvas, giving the illusion that lines of each instrument are leading each other down different paths. In a set of winding melodic phrases, splintered guitar stabs, bowed double bass refrains and harmonic embraces, Dom unveils conversations with himself. A dialogue that is both a reckoning and peacemaking with himself and his thoughts within 4 walls. in memory of Simon H. Fell (1959-2020) and John Russell (1954-2021), with love and gratitude Everything about this album has in one way or another been influenced by these two master musicians (but please don't hold them responsible). -- Dominic Lash - double bass, guitar, recording -- Cover design by Oliver Barrett

Week Nine is a collaborative, durational piece from Teresa Cos, Julia E Dyck and Caroline Profanter. Following a precise mathematical score, the artists developed a stringent practice of recording, editing, and mixing a revolving assemblage of audio files. Each week, their contributions decreased exponentially in length at the rate of 2.5 seconds of the initial 3656.0-second contribution. The result is a triptych of 61-minute compositions, each an archive of and escape from the sequence of moments lived during nine weeks of spring, in 2020. -- Composed, recorded, edited and mixed remotely between London, Montreal and Brussels by Teresa Cos, Julia E Dyck and Caroline Profanter Cover image W9: score by Teresa Cos Mastered by Oli Barrett

Pieced together by recording walks through Akihabara Electric Town, the Metropolitan Expressway which runs through the city (and past her apartment) and Hamarikyu Gardens, Anna Murray brings the fizzing sounds of Tokyo life indoors, melding them with her own delicate treatment of improvised sampling, instrumental layering and live-performed processing.  The result is a dream-like slow-scan through rushing traffic, temple bells, scurrying cicadas, noh chants, scattered crowds, the sound of radios playing from shop windows, game machines and vignettes of passing conversations. Anna's own interventions to the sound world never feel intrusive, and instead offer a subjective lens to the outside world: placing herself in a similar position to that of experimental filmmaker Chris Marker in his 1986 documentary 'Tokyo Days'. During the making of this work, Tokyo was not put into official covid-19 lockdown, instead a kind of voluntary isolation. Anna meets a city tilted off its axis, conjuring aural material quietly singing with wonder, alienation, sadness and longing. -- Anna Murray - field recordings, piano, tape, processing -- Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

London-based Brazilian artist Adam Matschulat uses his deft approach to musique concrete & electronic minimalism to carve a space of being: a sonic domain that comes to terms with entangled interior and exterior worlds. Both a meditation on time and upheaval, opening piece 'Through the cracks' begins with an overwhelming wall of opaque noise, before entering a wistful journey. Adam delicately renders his narrative in dream time, floating between ruminating keyboard motifs, tumbling aquatic sound worlds, the clatter of footsteps, the turning of a page, a tape player switching on and off... On FFFF, he teams up with experimental drums/sax duo @xcrswx, who lend their tilted playing to Adam's bed of thudding minimalist techno, creating waves of wiry static that seeth from the piece's airless inertia. The release is book-ended by a reworking of FFFF by Sunny Graves, who transmutes the piece, dipping it in a freezing cold bath of iterative industrial dread. Music that takes an aerial view of the city and zooms itself in, past the towering architecture and into the sounds that seep from hidden spaces. -- Adam Matschulat - electronics, field recordings -- Track 1 'Through the cracks' Track 2 'FFFF' @xcrsw (Crystabel Riley & Seymour Wright) Track 3 'FFFF' (Sunny Graves revision)

‘A series of false endings’ Statement by Nidge Ince: "Standing proud in a field of wonder like a clear night riven with stars, UBS are a multifaceted magickal conglomerate who search for the divine and ineffable through sound, song and stillness. Their genre defiance continues to unfold and ascend, and each new release brings something glittering and unique to their collective canon. ‘The Night Fell Off Its Axis’ is no less piquant. Go forth and search for yourself ... ‘Roses in the voltage hum. Along the leys of Albion’ For friends" -- Students: Todd Barton - Shakuhachi, Waterphone David Colohan - Sonic Manipulation, Vocal Dom Cooper - Fender Rhodes, Field Recording, Modular Synth, Percussion, Sonic Manipulation, Vocal Dagmar Gertot - Vocal Graeme Lockett - Vocal Grey Malkin - Synth Alison O’Donnell - Omnichord, Shruti, Vocal Johno Wells - Sonic Manipulation Joolie Wood - Violin Recorded July 2020 - October 2020 California, England, Ireland, Oregon, Russia, Scotland Mastered by Bladud Flies! Cover ink gesture by Dom Cooper

how do i get / from a to b / from a to base /from a to u / a to be / a to base / a to aide /aide to base / base to brr / base to / br /base to breath / hh / arbours / arbr / hh /another great / unhoming From A to B Sonoscura’s slow, immersive soundtrack of voices, landscapes, and spoken text is organised into five connecting and echoing parts. The meandering energy creates inner repose and sharpened awareness. It was conceived and created in response to the eerie and brutal global confinement of Spring 2020. One of the pieces reframes Caroline Bergvall’s online public writing event Night & Refuge between five UK-based poets, live on zoom and twitter across five timezones, 20 May 2020, 6.00PM- 9.00PM BST. Sonoscura was also developed as a film-poem, filmed by Andrew Delaney and commissioned by Planet P berlin: lockdown version 21. poesiefestival berlin. Premiered online, 9 June 2020. -- Written, created, performed, recorded, edited, and produced during the Spring 2020 lockdown.Mixed and mastered by Jamie Hamilton. Produced by Caroline Bergvall. Cover image: Andrew Delaney, video-still from film-poem Sonoscura. Thank you to the poets and all the voices for their contributions. Special thanks: Jamie Hamilton, Andrew Delaney, Matthias Kniep, Michaela Freeman, Harriet Cook, Angharad Cooper, Erin Moure, Fielding Hope. Caroline Bergvall 2020A Sonic Atlas Project

Farida Amadou is one of the most exciting young players to emerge from the free-improvisation/experimental scene in Europe, having treated us to some explosive performances with Steve Noble and Thurston Moore here over the past few years. Farida's own solo bass playing takes centre stage here, utilising the metallic timbre & rhythmic potential of her strings as the basis for two exploratory improvisations. Terse melodies, harmonic shards and rumbling patterns are sewed together in elapsing incendiary phrases, like Jamaladeen Tacuma's playing if he joined an industrial punk band instead of Ornette Coleman's group circa Body Meta. With fx pedals Farida is able to open the possibilities of her instrument open, exploring thick fuzzed-phrases, spacious harmonic interplay, drones and more. We look forward to hearing more of this sort of thing from Farida in OTO, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. -- Farida Amadou - bass & electronics -- Recorded and mixed at Les Ateliers Claus - Brussels, by Christophe Albertijn august 19th 2020Picture - Laurent Orseau Artwork design - Oliver Barrett Thanks to Tommy, Christophe, Laurent and Jérôme.

A Self-titled split album, featuring the debut recording from new band Not Usurper, and a new recording from old band Usurper. Just like Nietzsche’s studies on what constitutes Good and Evil, what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in Usurper’s world of aural mischief is hard to decipher. Over the past two decades Ali and Malcy have made clear their love for aural detritus, absurdist humour and Beckett-esque excursions, manifesting their activities in cd-rs, tapes, comic books and life-altering live performances. Sounds unfurl less as musical signifiers and more as moments of micro-theatre, cogs in motion, rainfalls of assorted junk and muttering from the sewer upwards.While ‘WRONG’ gives the duo space to explore the nooks and crannies and assorted miscellanea in the respective abodes, ‘RIGHT’ seems to give them some purpose. Scissors and paper are in their hands, they seem to be wrapping something, but what are they wrapping? Are they doing it ‘right’? Are they ‘right’? Does it sound ‘right’? Does it look ‘right’? Is what they are making ‘right’? Wait a minute, is that Malcy, or is that Ali? Or is Ali Malcy and is Malcy Ali? Does it matter? What is ‘wrong’ after all? Is wrong right, or is right wrong? But what does ‘right’ mean? Is it correct, or is it a start - ‘right’ now? Let’s do it right, right now, ‘right’? Leave that up to Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff, or not Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff. Or Usurper, or Not Usurper. -- Not Usurper isn't Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff Usurper is Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff -- Recorded in 2020 Artwork by Malcy Duff Mastered by Oliver Barrett

Tom Scott has long been a long-term guest at OTO, treating us solo sets and collaborations with the likes of Andrew Chalk, Ashley Paul and Timo Van Luijk for over a decade now. Scribed over summer and Autumn in 2020 lock-down, 'Tattered Angels' is an 18 part suite for piano, seeing Tom pick up fragments of memory and distill them into a set of sanguine melodic lacunas. Alongside his music practice, Tom is a photographer, capturing the barren landscapes, sea shores, boats, stones and marine objects by the coast of Barrow-in-Furness. Like a photo album rendered in aural form, 'Tattered Angels' unfurls a series of vignettes that meditate on place and time. With his piano keys, Tom paints impressionist moods of each memory, delicately aligning each note with the contours, rhythms and small details that seep from the frame. Like Satie, Poulenc and Ravel, Tom is able to unearth latent emotions and piece them together in a weightless space. Music that slowly dances from his headspace to ours. -- Tom Scott - piano -- Recorded at Piel View House, late October & early November 2020 Titles lifted from poetry by Guy Garrett Cover image by Tom James Scott Design by Oliver Barrett

At the end of May this year Calum Storrie started to produce a graphic score with no idea of how it might translate into sound. The score, drawn and collaged onto manuscript paper, used a limited number of elements: a red circle, black lines, a film still, a rubber stamp, a stencil, zigzag lines, a fragment of musical notation and found and ‘Letraset’ text.  Storrie made a page a day over the next nine days. He sent the finished score to Steve Beresford, wondering if he might be able to take this visual exercise and turn it into a piece of music – coherent or otherwise.  Beresford worked on the score at the piano over the following weeks, recording the responses to individual pages on his iPhone. The result is this suite of nine reflective studies. The release is accompanied by a 20 page PDF manuscript of the score. -- Written by Calum Storrie Performed & recorded on piano by Steve Beresford -- Cover design by Oliver Barrett

London based artist Cam Deas presents a revelatory new stage in his practice. Following in the footsteps of the likes of David Tudor's Rainforest works, Cam studies in the liminal space between the natural world & synthesis, conjuring deep, meditative and beguiling sound worlds. Some of his most singular and focussed work to date, following on from a series of impressive releases on Death of Rave and Alter.   "I wanted to make something which reflected a scene of nature, outside of the city, somewhere which has become more and more attractive to be over the last few months... So I made these synthesised percussion sounds to be almost real and wooden, which are weaving in and out across different tempos, playing patterns that are somewhat regular, but always changing slightly. This is meant to be analogous with the dawn chorus, or any scene of nature where lots of different small events are happening, layered, at once... But I only had the dawn chorus, so I recorded that at 4am on Monday morning. These individual bird songs weaving in and out, repeating, different birds joining and leaving throughout. So it's meant to be 3 different sound environments, or imaginary frames of an environment at 3 different moments." - Cam Deas

With the tools of field recordings, cello, whip and tape manipulation in hand, Lia Mazzari and Tom White tease the temporality and geography of domestic and outdoor spaces during various parts of 2020 lock-down, rupturing a sonic space where they are both passive and active subjects. Rather than relishing in the new found silence of lock-down, Lia and Tom amplify sounds that are normally drowned out by the buzz of everyday life and activity. On 'The Unending Attraction of Crowd', they delve their curiosity into aural events during the initial lockdown phase in spring 2020. In it, the clatter of industrial work and manufacturing in London is processed alongside the snap of Lia's whip and recordings at a football match, where they captured the artificial crowd noise piped into the field, as well as the chants of fans watching from the side of the stadium before they were dispersed by police. On Lettura di un’ onda (reading a wave) they explore the duality between city and countryside in post-lockdown summer, both juxtaposing and transmuting aural components in a fizzing aural mesh. On Lia's trip to France, scurrying cicadas, covid-19 safety announcements and cello drones elapse in and out of the frame, meeting Tom's domestic rumblings in a slow panning organic and synthetic sound world. Together and apart, they form a hybridised sonic ecology, exploring the beauty, alienation and acute loneliness of their own lives and others locked down. -- Lia Mazzari - whip, cello, field recordings Tom White - field recordings, digital manipulation, tape manipulation -- Mastered by Oliver Barrett

Inclusive music ensemble JAMAICA! send a sonic missive from London's underbelly. Swelling drones, ghostly mutterings and crumbling electronics fade in and out of one another in a cauldron of organic and synthetic sound, made from a mixture of traditional and home-made instruments. Fans of early AMM and Wolf Eyes' more stripped back work will relish here in this extended zoned jam, where no intensity is lost while each aural gesture is given space to breath, explode, implode and fade into silence.  The piece is bookended by a sudden dub soundsystem workout, seeing the group emerge out of their insular domesticity and party on the streets.  The music presented here heavily features and is dedicated to Leon, one of the mainstays of JAMAICA! who passed away earlier this year. -- All music by JAMAICA! -- Artwork design by Oliver Barrett The artwork features Leon's bass. RIP.

Lament in Three Parts was improvised and recorded on April 30th in the quiet bunker-esque venue, Ausland, just 20 doors down from where I live in Berlin. Additional processes and editing were completed on May 1st 2020. Special thanks to Cafe Oto, Ausland, Billy Steiger and Petter Eldh for their part in the making of this release, and especially to Sophie Fetokaki for her generous writing in response to the music. Her foreword and Billy Steiger's artwork accompany this release. I would also like to acknowledge Catherine Lamb, Rebecca Lane and Johnny Chang whose music, playing and friendship has made a significant mark on my own meanderings in to new musical territories in recent years. Extract from the foreword, 'Thoughts for Lucy: a foreword to Lament in Three Parts' - by Sophie Fetokaki: "...What is it about the telling that provides comfort or consolation? Perhaps it's partly in the curative power of naming, an act that can bring our experience into relief and ward off the depressive forces of nothingness, formlessness, and monstrous plasticity. There are also other forms of telling that are not lexical, and our too-easy separation of sound and speech, music and words, belies the existence of something deeply healing and transformational that grounds and unifies them both." - read the full text here (pdf). www.lucyrailton.comwww.sophiefetokaki.comwww.billysteiger.com

“The real world appears in the image as it were between parentheses” - Emmanuel Levinas Tesserae interprets Indian Classical music at the intersection and interstices of cultures to imagine a trans-cultural musical space that reflects the contemporary migratory world. It draws from Western Classical music, Western experimental music tradition, and electronic music making techniques to imagine new possibilities for Indian Classical music, and creates a liminal space where such categories enter into a conversation with themselves and each other to be constantly challenged, negotiated with, modified, and reinscribed with new meanings. The works are mosaics of generative patterns where numerous recorded vocal phrases intersect and glide over one another to form colourful images of a multidimensional musical space unbounded by traditional, cultural, geographical, or categorical borders. Anudhatthamudhatthassvaritham is a compound word formed from Anudhattham, Udhattham, and Svaritham, the three notes from which Indian Classical music is believed to have originated. Oscillators generate new notes and sounds from these originary notes by modulating each other in a partially controlled environment, which in turn feed into an artistic imagination leading to their assembly into the Carnatic raga Sindhubhairavi. The artistic and electronic interpretations are in conversation with each other throughout the process of conception, construction, and production to fashion hybrid formations that reimagine and renew the past in a space of cultural hybridity. The vocal phrases that constitute Ten Thousand Dancing Shivas and the singing style can neither be conveniently classified as Hindustani nor Carnatic. However, as in the artforms, gamakas, or the movements between notes, become as important as the notes themselves to form hybrid entities that are in perpetual motion through pitch-space and time. These entities gradually begin to intersect and glide over one another in a partially controlled chance-based environment where harmonies are no longer fixed or stable, but fluid and malleable. The intersecting vocal phrases and the harmonies they form conjure a musical space that reflects the intimacy of cultures in the contemporary migratory world and celebrates the possibilities afforded by cultural hybridity in enriching our traditions and modes of thought. -- All vocals by Nakul Krishnamurthy. -- Track 1 uses Tom Mudd's Gutter Synth.Vocals in track 2 recorded at Crescendo Studios, Palakkad.Special thanks to: Jimmy Bunch, Alasdair Campbell, Santhosh Chirackal, Fayez Fazil, Mark Fell, Adam Greig, Tom Knapp, Namita Krishnamurthy, Oliver Pitt, Rohini Rajan, Rian Treanor, and Jeremy Woodruff.Artwork design & mastering by Oliver Barrett

Whether solo, as part of Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides and White Death, or in her other collaborations, Manchester-based artist Kelly Jayne Jones work has always brought a distinct otherworldly flavour to proceedings - one that reaches for both individual and collective solace in the abstract. Side-stepping any potentially reductive spritualism or exoticsm, Kelly has built a multi-faceted practice over the years, engaging with quantum fictions, animist ideology and music as a site for transformation. With that, she has expanded her tools from flute, contact mics and tape works to include dance, gesture, sonic drawings, stone sculpture and film. 'The Reed Flute is Fire' is the most distinct rendering of her practice thus far, confidently embracing electroacoustic composition with a deft and gentle touch. Elements of field recordings, synthesis, instrumentation and voice are brought together in rich oneiric technicolour, like iridescent streams of flowing, dripping and splashing water soaking an imaginary landscape. Sliding bass tones and thick drones add both tonal hues and reframe the musical narrative - pushing and pulling the journey in new directions. While a tryst with nature and technology is suggestive within the albums' aesthetics, Kelly makes clear that such a symbiosis is never reached without constant exploration and points of arduous upheaval. A 4-dimensional sonic journey over land, city, air and water in worlds both real and unreal. -- Kelly Jayne Jones - voice, flute, electronics -- Mastered by Oliver Barrett Mixing and additonal processing by Guillaume Dujat

"São Paulo, the city where I live, entered quarantine in March 2020. Around that time, demonstrations started to break out nationwide against a leader who was accused of having total disregard for human life as he downplayed the severity of the pandemic and failed to take prompt measures to slow the spread of Covid-19. These demonstrations, whose forms might seem unusual to those not familiar with South American culture, are called “panelaço” in Portuguese. Panelaço is a kind of ‘political performance’ where people spontaneously start banging pots and pans and shouting together slogans in the streets. However, this time, due to Covid restrictions, panelaço was performed from balconies and windows. Over this period of strict quarantine rules, people could not go outside and have a normal social life. Therefore, the loud banging was also a way for people to express their feelings, political views, and share a common space through sound. In a way, panelaço can be considered as a social act which gives shape to a new type of collectiveness, in a creative manner. In the context of Latin American countries such as Argentina and Chile (where panelaço is called, in Spanish, “cacerolazo”), and Brazil, such practice of banging pans as a form of protest has become quite common nowadays. It is an extremely simple act in which anyone can participate; it is indeed a DIY kind of demonstration. In addition, since pots and pans obviously relate to food, such acts can also be interpreted as a strive for survival in times of crisis. Yet, in this era of social distancing and community containment, this practice has come to hold a new meaning for people: a way of coping with a new reality and connect with others through sound. In panelaço, sound reveals itself in its sociality as it operates as a medium for political discourse, going beyond the physical and aesthetic level. This is why it inspired me on a fundamental level. While listening to the multitude of spontaneous banging and shouting coming from outside the window, I decided to participate in their angry and euphoric demand for change in my own way, through an improvisation with my modular synthesizer. Then, original sounds of Brazilian panelaço were collected from the Internet and added to create a polyphonic composition in which each sound fragment would respond and communicate with each other in an improvised fashion. This is how and why these three tracks “Movimento 1”, “Movimento 2”, “Movimento 3” came about." - Yama Yuki -- Sampled, performed ,recorded, and edited by Yama Yuki -- Mastered at Casa Metaesquema  Artwork design by Oliver Barrett