Writing from the body, from nervous impulses, sensations and gestures, but also from our being carried by matter, language and history, Sabina Holzer explores how writing may become ‘a way of singing and slip over into liminal, latent meanings and potentials.’ How to stay close to the body of the word? To perceive some of the multiplicity of our reality and ways of being, she incorporates somatic practices, ecology and new materialism, fables and science fiction in her writing. Allow me to dream a body with you gathers poetic essays and stories that delve into the fine grain of our corporeal entanglements and embeddedness. ‘Would an encounter between you and me be possible without all this?’ Sabina Holzer works in the field of expanded choreography. Her performances, interventions and texts explore the ecologies of human and more-than-human bodies with particular attention to movement and matter. She engages in practices of collaboration, philosophy, ecology, science fiction and poetry.

Two-Headed Doctor is a forensic investigation into a single LP: Dr. John, the night tripper's Gris-gris. Though released in 1968 to poor sales and a minimum of critical attention, Gris-gris has accumulated legendary status over subsequent decades for its strangeness, hybridity, and innovative production. It formed the launch pad for Dr. John's image and lengthy career and the ghostly presence of its so-called voodoo atmosphere hovers over numerous cover versions, samples, and re-invocations. Despite the respect given to the record, its making is shrouded in mystery, misunderstandings, and false conclusions. The persona of Dr. John, loosely based on dubious literary accounts of a notorious voodooist and freed slave, a nineteenth-century New Orleans resident known as Doctor John, provided Malcolm Mac Rebennack with a lifelong mask through which to transform himself from session musician in order to construct a solo career.

Net of Atoms is a new album from Otis Jordan, drawing closely from the previous two albums for Them There - Dodger Point (2020) and Restless Guests (2022) - Jordan delivers his most ambitious and well articulated full length work to date, perfectly rounding off a trio of releases for the label. The Glasgow based band leader has remained active since his last outing for Them There with contributions to the ongoing research project Folklore Tapes’ most recent V/A compilations and a split tape for the nascent ‘Ceremonial County’ series on the label. Most notably and surprising perhaps was his recent collaboration with Sam Mcloughlin’s Hood Faire imprint ‘Early Experiments in Recording Vol 1 (1976 - 2021)’ - a compilation which Jordan curated that unearthed early recordings from a slew of experimental heads and many now renowned in their field musicians. More so than ever before, the songs on Net of Atoms stomp sure-footedly through the meandering instrumental textures of Otis Jordan’s vivid musical landscape. Ever off-kilter and unpredictable - violin motifs, clarinet themes and hammered found sounds disappear into the mist as suddenly as they arrived leaving behind breadcrumbs to be picked back up later. Recurring variations on melodic themes act as waymarks through the webs of rhythms and resonance as each short scene side-steps into a new tempo and timbre rewarding repeat listens. “This is the most ‘song’ based album I’ve ever made, with vocals on nearly all of the tracks” says Jordan - and the voice does also help guide the listener, although the vocal lines remain linear and consistently curious, rarely repeating. Instrumentally, any given moments can swiftly abscond from smokey Jazz feels to Captain Beefheart-y low-key Psych and freeform Folk ditties recalling the early noughts ‘Twisted Nerve’ jams of Aidan Smith and frequent collaborator Samandtheplants. All the while compounded by a restless forward drive that seems determined to explore the furthest reaches of this exotic sound world. Once again Jordan assembles a multitude of esteemed musician friends for the assignment. Many of the players from the ‘Restless Guests’ live session return including the nimble Moondog-esque percussive touches of Finn Rosenbaum, locally renowned virtuoso DBH offers up some violin and Lost Map’s Molly Linen returns to lend her dulcet, whispered tones on the track ‘Pendle Hill Conversation’. New friends such as Manchester's legendary DIY enthusiast Paddy Steer and the trumpeter Hermon Mehari also feature across the album. For the most part however, Jordan records and composes these crafty, intricate records himself in true DIY style across various home studios from Todmorden to Glasgow and shows no signs of slowing down.  Finn Rosenbaum - drums (4) Hermon Mehari - trumpet (4,14) Ike Goldman - vocals, glockenspiel, guitar and musical saw (7) Molly Linen - vocals (8) Dan Bridgwood-Hill - violin (8,11) Paddy Steer - lap steel (11) Zola Mooney - words and vocals (11, also end of 2) Sam McLoughlin - electric guitar, bass and keyboard (11,12) Marley Moat - violin (12) Other instruments played by Otis Jordan

"A classically trained Chinese bamboo flutist, Lao Dan picked up the saxophone again around 2013 as he went wildly astray in the world of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation. While demonstrating an ever-growing ability to deliver explosive force and intensity in his free playing, Lao Dan keeps a brutal honesty in his approach to the instrument. He plays ‘jazz’ as what it is, not what it’s supposed to be. Navigating constantly between the East and the West, Lao Dan embraces a unique aesthetics which fuses all his past influences into a voice of glorious mayhem and sheer zaniness.Recorded in June 2019, this is a solo set in which two instruments – tenor saxophone and Zheng, also known as the Chinese zither – were played successively and simultaneously by hands and feet. The recording was made in one go with no overdub or effect added. Lao Dan never learned to play the Zheng properly before this very first attempt. As a result, he didn’t struggle at all to play it in an awkward way, while with the saxophone he did, as always, try very hard to do that.The cover art, created by Shenzhen-based artist Tiemei, is a portrait of Shennong, the Deity of medicine and agriculture in ancient Chinese mythology. The three tracks in Chinese Medicine are named after three species of herb each believed to have unique medicinal properties. It is our responsibility to remind you to take them with extra caution. In Chinese medicine, after all, every drug is a thirty-percent poison."

Pleased to present a beautiful, otherworldly set from France-born, London-based violin and viola player, Agathe Max, recorded at OTO in August 2024. Beginning with tentatively scattered pizzicato notes that fall like a fine rain about the room, it isn’t long before an elegiac solo line emerges, weaving a bittersweet reverie of loss and longing. Fragments of voice and birdsong combine with the strings to expansive effect and soon you find yourself far from the confines of a concrete-floored room in East London. As the set progresses, Max’s poignant, yearning playing style is filtered and reflected back upon itself, sometimes as an equally melodic partner, and sometimes twisted and modulated into something much more uncanny. Layers of bowed notes entwine with tumbling electronics to create an enveloping bed of dreamy phantasy. Through it all, staggered, loping percussion paces the sonic landscape, as much to provide an anchor through the soaring string work as it is a rhythmic device. A feeling of weightlessness abounds throughout this set - a pervasive timelessness that makes the sense of bewilderment all the stronger when, after 20 minutes or so the spell breaks and you find yourself back in the room. Thankfully, Max has one last, loftily ascending coda to offer though; as legato strings swoop and glide in ever rising patterns, a driving rhythm roots us to the earth and it is all we can do to gaze up at the spiralling airs disappearing away into the ether. -- Recorded by Kevin ShoemakerMixed and mastered by Oli BarrettCover by Oli Barrett

X-Ray Hex Tet = Seymour Wright / Crystabel Riley / Edward George / Pat Thomas / Paul Abbott / Billy Steiger Reading Group is proud to present the debut album of a new ensemble of some of the most adventurous artists in and around London’s contemporary music scene. X-Ray Hex Tet is the confluence of Seymour Wright (alto saxophone), Crystabel Riley (drums), Edward George (words and recordings), Pat Thomas (piano and electronics), Paul Abbott (real and imaginary drums), and Billy Steiger (celeste and violin). Wright and Abbott, elsewhere as XT, have developed a private language in their uncompromising explorations of the “histories and logics of the saxophone and drum kit.” Wright and Thomas make up half of the extraordinary research ensemble [Ahmed], named after legendary oudist and bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik. ([Ahmed]’s Giant Beauty is undoubtedly one of the best releases of 2024). Here, the music is transformed through the quasi-narrative presence of Edward George, the seminal scholar of dub and founding member of the great Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998). Artist and multi-instrumentalist Billy Steiger provides subtle textural sway beneath the chaos on the violin, as well as eerily unaffected punctuation on celeste, shimmering in the corners as if in the postapocalyptic final moments of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony. The percussive core of the group is carried by Crystabel Riley, frequent collaborator with Wright and formerly of the power noise trio Maria and the Mirrors. Her drums move through the storm with geological heft, rolling like a small avalanche. From the sound of this album, recorded live at the Taktlos Festival in Zurich in 2023, the music of X-Ray Hex Tet appears well-nigh impossible to represent. After ascending to its vertiginous heights, though, what comes to mind is a small undercanon of music about history: not in any facile programmatic way, but in its very logic, on the level of form. (Think of Matana Roberts’s Coin Coin cycle, Iannis Xenakis’s Persepolis, Morton Feldman’s Coptic Light.) X-Ray Hex Tet intends towards totality, as a striving, as a gravitational pull. Our feet are swept up in Riley’s cascading drums and we reach out for some resolution to ground us but grasp only shards of alto saxophone, a cacophonous web of samples, gossamer string textures, and electronic whirrs. George’s voice emerges out of this thicket and hovers above it, intoning the names of—or reappearing as—those who have most recently represented the violent threshold of history. From this angle we are both under the avalanche and being blown away from it like a composite recording angel of history: there is no place outside the storm from which to reflect upon it.