"That night at Café Oto - September of 2019 it was - is one of those gigs that I’d really like to attend. Having listened to and watched live my share of free jazz, like many of you, I’m not easily impressed, or at least I pretend not to be. But this duo of two important figures of the London free jazz/free improv scene surely makes a difference. Wright’s duos and trios (to name a few: Gamut with Eddie Prevost, Blasen with Sebastien Lexer, About Trumpet and Saxophone with Nate Wooley) are mostly playful, less noisy and surely introvert events. EFV, on the resurrected Steve Noble’s Ping Pong Production, is much different than the aforementioned. Noble and Wright have known each other for quite some time, played together a lot. On this live date their focus seems to be the transcendence to a higher level of energetic and passionate playing. I mentioned Wright’s playing earlier because his free jazz blow outs (now that’s an aphorism, I know) were audible in rare moments in his recorded playing. On the contrary on EFV, he lets his voice be heard with intensity. At the same time his playing leaves enough room both for the listener to focus but also for Steve Noble to adjust, play along or lead. Since you follow this site, you are probably familiar with his prolific career that spans over three decades. Noble is one of the most important percussionists of our time in improvisation and that is no exaggeration. I, the listener, am the receiver of a constant flow of ideas and sounds from his drum kit. He has built a unique style of his own that engulfs total flexibility, in adapting with fellow players. But what about their playing as a duo? Well, in the small interview that accompanies this text, I am wondering if EFV is, something like at least, a culmination of their playing together. This is improvised music and the most enjoyable moments (I won’t say the “best”) come unannounced and impromptu. This cd provided the thought that certain ideas, like sketches, existed beforehand, materializing, though, into something not exactly as predicted. Which is great, isn’t it? I mean, this is the essence of improvisational music, if I’m allowed the liberty to give it some kind of definition… So, probably the biggest quality of this cd (apart from their playing which I enjoyed) is that you do not know what to expect next and that is the greatest quality in music I believe." (Free Jazz Collective) --- Steve Noble / drums, cymbals, percussion Seymour Wright / alto sax ---  Recorded in the Cafe OTO Project Space on 29/9/19 by Alex Ward. Mixed and mastered by Alex Ward. Photos by Dawid Laskowski. Design and layout by Noble and Conal Blake.  ---  

Experimental electronic artist Kirk Barley unveils a split release between his two different monikers. Utilising a similar set of tools and reduced sound palette for each, he bridges the gap between the two approaches, while also allowing room for each to flourish in their own distinct forms. Under his own name, Kirk embraces floating four world motifs. Juiced-up keys spurt and twinkle in an algorithmic maze, sprouting swirling motifs and melodies before dissolving in a synthetic water bath. On the 'Church Andrews' flip he lets these tools slip out of free motion and lock themselves into distinct percussive patterns. Similar to the approach of the likes of SND, Kirk teases the temporality in house and footwork styles to scribe his own skittering dancefloor style. Over both sides Kirk's improvised approach to sound energises each note, bass and snare clap and wandering phrase. Listening to his music is like watching plant life blossom, winding itself in and around towering city concrete in real time. -- Written & recorded by Kirk Barley / Church Andrews -- Cover by Oli Barrett

The Both is the duo of Pat Thomas (piano) and Steve Noble (drums), currently marking the 40th anniversary of their first meeting in Oxford back in 1978. --- Pat Thomas / piano Steve Noble / drums, percussion --- Recorded at Cafe OTO on 15th February 2018 by Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by Alex Ward. Design and layout by Noble and Blake. 

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!

Captivating 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/

Otoroku presents a daedal, multifarious set from artist, Patrick Ward, recorded on a bill alongside Moritz von Oswald at Cafe OTO in September 2024. Ward begins with a deep sub-bass rumble that seems to almost physically rise up out of the floor; a weighty mass that slowly but inexorably draws other sonic fragments into its own gravitational field, quivering and contorting as they orbit around it. The pressure builds, before abruptly the disparate elements coalesce around a single, urgently repeated refrain that snaps and slices in a persistent staccato that appears loaded with meaning but in a language unknown. This sense of warped and fractured vernacular continues, as stilted, stuttering voices spark and falter amidst the sonic debris tumbling around them; speech untethered from language, language severed from meaning. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that these voices are in fact overladen with significance; an abundance of spoken signs and symbols in a complex lexicon whose implications always remain tantalisingly out of reach. The voices shift, from an isolated repeated refrain, to multiple raised shouts that become engulfed by a growing wall of distortion that builds and erupts into a scattered and corrupted breakbeat before it too unravels, leaving behind only the gentle buzzing and intimate whirring of unknown apparatus.