Thursday 19 March 2020, 8.30pm
For our fourth fundraiser night, the great drummer, singer, composer and founding member of This Heat, Charles Hayward performs a rare solo set; O Yama O's Rie Nakajima and Keiko Yamamoto are joined by violinist Billy Steiger and percussionist Marie Roux in entrancing deconstructions of Japanese folk music; and we welcome back Merlin Nova, who collages voice, synthesizer, violin, field recording and other instruments into an intoxicating music that encompasses abrasion and reverie and everything in between.
"Suddenly we are closer to music being made than we have been for many years or longer even, so alarmingly close as to feel warmth and discomfort, as if studying the sole of a foot from a few centimetres away or holding a private whisper within an enclosed hand and feeling its trembling desire to be free; but also so far away distant as to feel each vibrant, pungent ingredient within its box or jar or bowl or packet or bottle or air-tight translucent container or brown paper bag painstakingly stirred, shaken, scattered, poured into the heated cauldron of what we call recording, its imaginary rooms and its production, though my better self prefers not to speak about or analyse the notion of ‘the studio’, this being a working up of spaces that are social, a vision of something beyond us but not quite beyond us because its existence as a listening object is real enough to make us pause and question how it was lost or never found." - David Toop on O Yama O
CAFE OTO FUNDRAISERS
For over a decade OTO has been presenting a back-to-back seven-day a week programme of some of the most exciting music being presented today. A vast number of musicians and audiences have come through our doors over that time.
In the first few years of Cafe OTO we scraped by on equipment we had begged and borrowed. Musicians showed extraordinary generosity in donating bits of equipment and we brought bits and pieces as and when we could. There has always remained a huge discrepancy between the ambition and scale of our programme and the equipment we have to present it.
We recently tried to redress this imbalance by applying to Arts Council England for a capital grant and where extremely grateful to them for supporting us and awarding the grant. This has already made a huge difference to the venue, but as part of that agreement we have to raise an additional £21,200 ourselves.
Charles Hayward is an English drummer/singer/composer and was a founding member of the experimental rock groups This Heat and Camberwell Now. He also played with early European improv group Mal Dean's Amazing Band and gigged and recorded with Phil Manzanera in Quiet Sun as well as a short stint with Gong. Since the late 80's he has concentrated on solo projects and collaborations including Massacre (with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith), Monkey Puzzle Trio, Albert Newton (with Pat Thomas and John Edwards) and This Is Not This Heat which toured the UK, Europe, USA and Japan between 2016-2019 performing expanded versions of This Heat’s oeuvre to unfaltering critical acclaim. Hayward’s latest group, Abstract Concrete, formed from London players from a diversity of European underground scenes, released it’s self-titled debut album in November 2023.
Rie Nakajima is a sculptor living in London. She has been working on creating installations and performances by responding to physical characters of spaces using combination of motorised devices and found objects. Fusing sculpture and sound, her artistic practice is open to chance and the influence of others. She has exhibited and performed worldwide. She has collaborated with Ikon Gallery(Birmingham), Museo Vostell Malpartida (Cáceres), Tate Modern (London), Serralves Museum (Porto), ShugoArts (Tokyo), Hara Museum (Tokyo) and many others. Her frequent collaborators includes David Cunningham, Keiko Yamamoto, Pierre Berthet, David Toop, Haruko Nakajima and Akira Sakata.
Merlin Nova is sound, song and movement. Her work is conceptual and merges her music and theatrical background. At the moment she is asking questions and runs a play group for adults called the Players' Circle. Nova released her ‘creepy, funny and all out terrifying’ (The Wire) debut album BOO! (2020) and her energetic choral EP Big Heart, long time love (2021). She has worked with Slow Dance, NTS, Young Turks, Café Oto and BBC Radio 6 Late Junction and has performed across the UK and Europe.
https://www.instagram.com/_merlinnova_
https://www.merlin-nova.com
Alexis Taylor is a singer, musician, producer and writer, best known for his work with Hot Chip. He has released 5 solo albums, most recently 'Silence' on Orbistor, and one in collaboration with artists such as David Pajo (Slint, Aerial M), Jennifer Herrema (Royal Trux, Black Bananas) and Brian DeGraw (Gang Gang Dance), which could be played simultaneously with his own ‘Piano’ album. Alexis has also worked at the intersection of improvised music and song, with About Group (Charles Hayward, John Coxon, Pat Thomas, and latterly Susumu Mukai and Rupert Clervaux).
