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Fresh output from John Chantler's 1703 Skivbolaget - the new duo from two masters of very different string instruments. ‘The Air Around Her’ beguiled its audience when recorded live in a bakery at Edition Festival in 2016, and carries beautifully through to this release. Microtonal timbres meet gnarled defiance - the result is surprisingly symbiotic. Ellen Fullman’s Long String Instrument has been a long-term life-work of incredible ambition and dedication. The result is immediate, exciting and inspirational. Okkyung Lee has completed rewritten the possibilities for the cello in solo and group improvisation whilst maintaining a steadfast defiance to the many attempts to contain her work within pre-defined genres. ‘The Air Around Her’ was recorded on 20 February 2016 during the First Edition Festival for Other Music in Stockholm, Sweden at Kronobageriet — the former bakery to Swedish Royalty that dates back to the 17th Century and is now the site of the city’s Performing Arts Museum. The Edition Festival was given access to the space while renovations took place and Fullman allowed the requisite time to install and tune her long string instrument along the full 26 metre length of the room. --- Music by Ellen Fullman and Okkyung Lee. Recorded during the First Edition Festival for Other Music, Stockholm on 20th February 2016. Concert producer: John Chantler. Recording Engineer: Maria W Horn. Mixed by Ellen Fullman and Thomas Dimuzio. Mastered by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at Calyx, Berlin. Artwork by Bill Nace. Made possible in part by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists (2015). The title, "The Air Around Her" is a quote from "Vermeer Interiors" a poem by Margaret Rabb, from her book, "Granite Dives". This release has been supported by the Swedish Arts Council. © 2018 Ellen Fullman (BMI) / Okkyung Lee (ASCAP) Released by 1703 Skivbolaget in cooperation with Ideell Edition

Ellen Fullman & Okkyung Lee – The Air Around Her

Tracklisting: 1 - Country Dustbin [52:52] --- BOOK VERSION 72 page paperback featuring ALL of the lyrics to the longest song in history. Essential companion piece to the musik. Also an unputdownable piece of standalone verse. Dan Haywood's practice exists in the liminal space between folk, pop and outer-musics. Indebted to troubadour cultures as much as natural history, psychogeography and centuries of British poetry and prose, his work takes singer-songwriter culture to the edge of the cliff, tip-toeing off the precipice, occasionally flying freely over uncharted territory. For this new one-track album Dan uses the aesthetic language of American music (the cyclical dirge of blues and rock'n'roll, the organ funk of r'n'b, the rhythmic syntax of hip-hop) and folds them into a subjective template for his 'Country Dustbin': a song that attempts to come to terms with the clutter of a life in the 20th & 21st century. He utilises the Country Dustbin, in his own words, as “a bottomless pit when you need to dispose of a traumatic episode, a confession booth, a time capsule… an alembic to distil experience, a torch to illuminate a mystery, an arena for a reckoning.” From Los Angeles to Peckham, from Armenia to Perry Barr, switching between autobiographical scenes and stolen observations of the lives of British people, Haywood conjures poetry that walks a tightrope across the joyful, the sad, the wondrous, the banal. Unburdened by dogmatism or linearity, there are glints of Ted Hughes, J.H. Prynne, Robert Burton and Bob Dylan, whipping his observations to allegorical and metaphysical heights. Each syllable is wedded to the band’s hypnotic beat as organic sounds unfurl throughout the 53-minute duration of the piece.Following a slew of ambitious projects, beginning in public with his star-gazing New Hawks triple LP in 2010, and more recently a series from his high gain outfit Pill Fangs, 'Country Dustbin' finds an uncompromising artist playfully pushing songcraft to new places. -- “The best songwriter you’ve probably never heard of has delivered another diamond” Record Collector  “Very far out” David Berman

Dan Haywood – Country Dustbin

Resourcefulness is sometimes presented as a humble quality born of necessity. But it’s a foundational tenet of the exceptionally unconstrained members of improvising trio Tamarisk, consisting of Christina Carter, David Menestres, and Andrew Weathers. Their latest is a continuation of the interplay they’ve developed for a few years now on a handful of releases and while touring. Like the most bizarre sort of jazz combo, Tamarisk grazes the orbits of outré free improv, moody balladry, object play, staccato scraping, and the contemplation of vistas and landscapes. Vocals vacillate between polished and raw, reaching bravely toward the upper and outer ranges, long-intoned, with spoken word elements and dramatic pauses between broken phrases and wordless utterances, all awash in arrivals and departures. The recordings are anchored with a broad array of techniques that admirably deconstruct an understanding of pacing and conventional movement in music, instead favoring constantly fluctuating textures and timbral variety. Unhinged chords, dissonant counterpoints, sprinklings of prepared work, scraping, and bowing. This is a trio of sharp listeners who are unafraid of intimacy or dynamic extremes, and it enables a deep exploration into their own core. Tamarisk seems to ignore time altogether, dropping into a shared state of receptiveness that yields strange and compelling results throughout the album. --- Christina CarterDavid MenestresAndrew WeathersRecorded at Wind Tide, Littlefield TXMarch 29 - 31, 2022Mixed and Mastered by Andrew WeathersAlbum sequenced by E. Lindorff-ElleryArtwork by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by Small Fires Press

Tamarisk – Comes From Far Away From Here

The Dutch drummer and multi-instrumentalist Han Bennink has had a colossal impact and influence in the fields of free jazz and improvised music - not just as a percussionist but also as an organiser, designer and visual artist. Bennink trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterda and was strongly influenced by the anti-art of Dada. Out of what he calls 'a kind of involvement with things', Bennink reuses seemingly worthless objects from his immediate environment, such as broken drum skins and sticks. They are given a second life in his sculptures and installations. For his drawings and collages, Bennink draws on his personal memories and intuition. Birds and airplanes often return in these, symbols of the same freedom that he personifies during his performances. His artwork graces the covers of several corner stone recordings released on FMP, ICP, Incus, hat ART, psi and more. "It simply has to be beautiful and preferably appeal to an emotion as well. In [Bennink's] case that emotion doesn't have to be very dramatic or deeply hidden. You could rather call his art, his visual art anyway, light-footed, the way poems by Rutget Copland and Hans Verhagen can be." - Hans Sizoo, Jazzwereld nr 16.  Reprint of the now classic OTO tote, designed by Han Bennink and screenprinted onto a heavyweight canvas. Available in natural or black.  100% Cotton Canvas - 270gsm (8oz/yd²)Can be carried by hand or over the shoulder39 x 42 x 13 Double sided print - back says Cafe OTO - Han Bennink Photo by Corral

Han Bennink OTO Tote Bag - Natural

Screenprinted on thick, quality paper printed by Tartaruga. Design by Maja Larsson / Organ studio. We're delighted to present a four-day residency with one of the greatest living UK-based improvisers - Pat Thomas. Criminally unheralded, Pat is a fearless and uncompromising player who – despite coming from a background of free improvisation and new music – can feel as close to the worlds of noise and experimental music. His performances range in approach and texture from fearsome cacophony that can sound like a piano having its guts ripped out, with Pat thumping discordant clusters of keys with his fists or rattling the exterior wooden frame; to delicately soothing passages where his fingers glide over the keys, creating microscopic tones and resonant melodies that can hold an entire sonic landscape. The residency coincides with the release of Pat's new LP - The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari - on our own in-house OTOROKU label, which comprises four typically genre-defying and sonically dexterous pieces from one of the UK's most extraordinary pianists. "I can't quite think of anyone else who sounds quite like this: it is in a class of its own." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery "Thomas runs the gamut of techniques, splashing clusters, weaving contrapuntal lines and building elaborate structures from the inside out. Despite their variety, they share a fundamental quality – they truly sound like spur of the moment creations, not the final draft of ideas mulled over for weeks, if not months on end." - Bill Shoemaker, Point of Departure

Pat Thomas - 4 Day Residency A2 SCREENPRINT

OTOROKU

In house label for Cafe OTO which documents the venue's programme of experimental and new music, alongside re-issuing crucial archival releases.

Adam Bohman / amplified objects and stringsSue Lynch / tenor sax, clarinet, fluteCrystabel Efemena Riley / drums, metallics --- Recorded and mixed by Billy Steiger on 31st January, 2025. Mastered by Taku Unami. Artwork by Adam Bohman. Liner notes by Seymour Wright. Photographs by Crystabel Efemena Riley. Layout by Jeroen Wille.  ‘Me, you and Sue’ - the triangulation of improvisers Adam Bohman, Sue Lynch and Crystabel Riley, and the original name for the hand-picked three way of drums, wind and amplified objects responsible for Lynboril Lisinopril. The informality of their original name belies the groups origins - three players naturally drawn to each other via London’s longstanding Horse Improvised Music Club, each of them more concerned with the action of playing than the naming of their sounds.  However, the occasion of their first trio release forced a title, and Lynboril Lisinopril works perfectly - a play on the words Lyn(ch), Bo(hman) and Ril(ey), searched for and spat back at you. “The second word is what you get if you Google the made-up first word” remarks Seymour Wright in the liner notes - the second word being the name of a drug taken for lowering your blood pressure. And although probably not prescribable for hypertension, the music on Lynboril is approached with such a generosity and tenderness that it feels properly airy and light; as equally positive and playful as it is eccentric and uninhibited. Riley’s bouncy drums keep the trio in a state of permanent uplift, as if being buffeted along by a pleasant tailwind, each player perfectly unhurried in their turning over of a new sound. Alternating between tenor saxophone and clarinet, Sue Lynch is crystalline calm, blowing beautiful lines across the metallics of Riley and Bohman. When the trio dials up for their second half, the intensity lifts but the clarity remains - swirling skin patterns subverted with precision by each scratch and scrawl of the table and the punctuation of the saxophone. Grounding tonic from some of the best free musicians we know.

Adam Bohman / Sue Lynch / Crystabel Efemena Riley – Lynboril Lisinopril

Sotto le Nuvole arrives as a limited edition one sided LP with artwork by Gianfranco Rosi. Designed by Maja Larrson. Produced, recorded and mixed by Daniel Blumberg. Recorded at Daniel’s flat, London and underwater in Baia, Italy. Additional recording by Alberto Landolfi. Mixed at Timeline Studio, Rome. Additional mixing by Stefano Grosso. Mixing Assistant: Giancarlo Rutigliano. Mastered and cut by Loop-O.In Gianfranco Rosi’s portrait of Naples, Sotto le Nuvole (Pompei: Below The Clouds), the ground shakes periodically. Between Mount Vesuvius and theTyrrhenian Sea, the fumaroles of the Phlegraean Fields hiss volcanic gas and steam. Below the sleeping volcano, modern day Naples emerges in black and white and fills with voices, with lives. From the traces of history and the concerns of the present, Rosi documents a city immersed in its continuous past, with Daniel Blumberg’s minimal soundscape hovering in a sonic space between liquid and air. Tasked with creating a soundscape that would suspend space within Rosi’s film, Blumberg called upon the extended technique of saxophonists Seymour Wright and John Butcher to create a gossamer fabric of traces and sounds abstracted from their instruments. Having transitioned from theoretical physics to the saxophone, John Butcher has always deeply considered space in the context of his playing. His concerns are with flow, density and how the saxophone is situated in the living world. Zeroing in on the core sonic properties of the mechanical and acoustic components of the saxophone, Seymour Wright has integrated its every breath, reed vibration, keypad clatter and hissed microtone of his alto into his own, unique improvisational language. In his work with these two seminal players, Blumberg makes his most concentrated soundtrack to date - reinforcing the film's sense of overlapping time and space, and pushing at the limits of experimentation. Initially recorded in Daniel’s flat in London, Butcher and Wright centre themselves around long, consistent tones, so soft that it seems breath is being gently pulled from the saxophone's bell by an invisible hand. Blumberg himself adds haunting bass harmonica, and recordings of Wright’s launeddas - a traditional and ancient triple pipe polyphonic reed instrument from Sardinia, Italy. Blumberg then travelled to the volcanic region of Baia, next to Pompeii. Once a flourishing classical Roman city loved by Nero, Baia slowly sank under hydrothermal pressure, leaving the city in a kind of geological purgatory. Using specialised geophones and hydrophones, Blumberg took those initial recordings and amplified them underwater, sending them calling out across the ruins of Baia’s mosaics, Nymphaeum statues and villas.  “It was important to me that the music was whispered in the same landscape that Gianfranco has worked for the past three years, so that you can hear the volcanic air gulping, the lapping of the waves, the steam and bubbles popping against John and Seymour’s saxophone breaths – an echo from a suspended time.”   What emerges is deeply melancholic, tender, subtle and right at the edges of audio technology. Submerged in an aquarian mausoleum, the mysterious vibrations of the saxophone and its bell become an echo of an echo, wading from the future into the past.  --- Seymour Wright / alto saxophone, launeddasJohn Butcher / soprano & tenor saxophoneDaniel Blumberg / bass harmonica

Daniel Blumberg – Sotto le Nuvole (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Play Monk arrives in a gatefold, reverse board 2CD designed by Maja Larrson. Cover photograph of Thelonius Monk at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco in 1968 by Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. Inside photographs of حمد [Ahmed] by Stefan Lacandler. Recorded and mixed by Benedic Lamdin on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd March, 2025 at Fish Factory Studios, London. Mastered by Andreas LUPO Lubich. Produced by Seymour Wright/OTOROKU. After 6 albums re-imagining the work of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, أحمد [Ahmed] turn to the material of Malik’s bandmate Thelonious Monk in the group's ongoing search for future music.  Before going on to develop his own groundbreaking approach to jazz, Ahmed Abdul-Malik worked in Thelonious Monk’s late 1950’s quartets - appearing on seminal Monk recordings: Thelonious In Action (1958) and Misterioso (1958), and the more recently unearthed Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall (2005). Abdul-Malik and Monk share a critical engagement with time - specifically in challenging its linear trajectory and offering sites and modes of synthesis and rupture instead. In their music, fragments of time are scattered and re-arranged in the present, an idea central too to the project of أحمد [Ahmed]. Over several decades, all four members of أحمد [Ahmed] have engaged with Monk’s standards in various individual and collective ways, but Play Monk, recorded in the same three-day London studio sessions as Sama’a (Audition), is the first released documentation of the group's versions of Monk’s music which began with a spontaneous interpretation of ‘Evidence’ in Novara, Italy, 2023.   Across 2CDs, أحمد [Ahmed] atomize Monk’s ‘standards’ - transforming each composition into a shifting quantum time artifact. The melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and spatial gestures of each piece become complex vernacular forms, creating a dialogue in time and a (red)shifting lens through which to view our material present. Into the fissures of Monk’s form, أحمد [Ahmed]  pour their own play - colliding and dancing with Duke Ellington, Cecil Taylor, Caribbean diasporic music, European improvisation and Jah Shaka in their pursuit of future music. “Monk’s music is not played so much as grasped, condensed and catapulted through the vagaries of time,” writes Fielding Hope. “Monk famously used to dance in circles. In flight from the numerical bind, أحمد [Ahmed] make music that sounds like it could float on forever.”

أحمد [Ahmed] – Play Monk

"أحمد [Ahmed] are crucial listening for anyone intrigued by the fertile space between free jazz, Arabic music and West African modes." - Boomkat "Pianist Pat Thomas, bassist Joel Grip, drummer Antonin Gerbal and alto saxophonist Seymour Wright push the source material to new musical planes that are nonetheless framed by a limitlessly wide history of black music." - Jazzwise  سماع [Sam'aa] (Audition) arrives in a gatefold, reverse board sleeve with liners by Fred Moten and designed by Maja Larrson. Recorded and mixed by Benedic Lamdin on February 28th, 2025 Fish Factory Studios, London. Mastering and lacquers cut by Andreas LUPO Lubich. Cover photo ‘Arteries, New York, 1964’ courtesy of the Estate of Evelyn Hofer. Produced by Seymour Wright/OTOROKU with the support of PRS Foundation. Known for their exhilarating live-to-record albums such as last year's critically acclaimed Wood Blues and Giant Beauty, سماع [Sama'a] (Audition) is the first of two releases that will surface after [Ahmed]’s first studio recording sessions at North London’s The Fish Factory in early 2025.  Since 2014, [Ahmed] أحمد have excavated and re-imagined the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, in an ever ongoing search for future music. Over a decade on, the group were given the opportunity to set up in the studio for the first time and, with the aid of meticulous engineer Benedic Lamdin,  سماع [Sama'a] (Audition) is the quartet's most detailed work to date.  Fastidious fans may recognise the album's tracklisting as that of Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s Jazz Sahara. After his success collaborating with the pianists Thelonious Monk and Randy Weston, Jazz Sahara was the first record Abdul-Malik made as a leader and was released in 1958. It used the flame of late Fifties jazz to light the wick of North African folk music and acted as a reminder of the Arabic origins of jazz, creating a distinct, unique sound that was far beyond its time. In Malik’s Jazz Sahara, there is no piano. The ongoing work of each member of [Ahmed] then is to think differently, to wonder how the music will work and to take a risk on trying it out - an extraordinarily compelling feat of imagination. Using group improvisation strategies and recording in single takes, سماع [Sama'a] (Audition) tackled the full suite of Jazz Sahara in just one session, with ‘Ya Annas [Oh, People’] and ‘Isma'a [Listen’] being previously unrecorded. 'Farah 'Alaiyna’, also released on 2019’s Super Majnoon, sounds unrecognisable - the slow, heady stomp and repeated phrasing of 2019’s embryonic [Ahmed] having been blast furnaced and sped up four-fold. The result is four kaleidoscopic, relative miniatures that move, unfold and re-imagine at a very different scale and proportion than [Ahmed]’s previous records. It’s a dizzying, euphoric music and an extraordinary record of a group moving through space-time like no other.

أحمد [Ahmed] – سماع [Sama'a] (Audition)

“In a concert, I show something with a beginning, a middle and an end. But, there is no end. Of course, there is no end. Because I am the music, and I am still here.” - Sophie Agnel  ‘Learning’ - Sophie Agnel’s first solo LP, feels like the dark, physical inversion of her excellent ‘Song’ which came out on Relative Pitch earlier this year. Sinking her unique sound into vinyl for the first time, the LP arrives as Agnel recovers from a brain tumour - a shocking discovery that will require Agnel to start again with the piano. It’s a terrifying prospect, but Agnel has been here before, having reorientated herself almost entirely away from her early classical training over the last 4 decades of her work.  ‘When I was young I had very good ears, oriole absolute. Then later I began to make strange sounds with my piano, to do different kinds of music. I was more interested in the sounds than the melody, for example. I remember once I sat down in a shop to try to read the scores of Schubert and there was a light [emitting] a very strong bzzzzzzz. And I couldn't listen to my oriole internal - I couldn't read the score. I was entirely subjugated by the sound of the light. And I understood that something had changed. Ten years before I could read and not hear the light. Now I understood that my ears were completely different. I was more open to the sounds of life.”  Born in Paris in the 60’s and playing her parents piano as soon as she could stand up, Agnel quickly grew tired of the classical world. What frustrated her was the strange disconnect between the frame of the piano and its keyboard - a weird boundary that seemed to form some hushed code of etiquette. “The first thing I put inside the piano was a plastic goblet. I’d seen a few pianists do it: Fred Van Hove, for example, put rubber balls inside his. But what didn’t appeal to me was that there seemed to be no link between the pianos outside and inside.”If you see Agnel play now, the body of her piano is littered with fish tins, ping pong balls, wooden blocks - not that you’d recognize their sounds. Having absorbed the language of the European avant-garde, Agnel is known for pulling the piano’s interior outside of itself by tipping her handbag into it. But these ‘strange sounds’ don’t just come from Cage - they also share the poetic force of Cecil Taylor and ‘Learning’ demonstrates that Agnel’s work on the piano's keyboard is just as important as what she’s littered on its strings. The record lets loose her ability to unleash a formidable sound mass and then rope it back to one single, clarifying note. With one hand, Agnel plays 88 tuned drums and on the other an enormous guitar - with the LP rotating through oncoming trains, and blues harmonica and feedback. It’s single minded stuff, borne out of a dedication to a wholly personal language of gesture, accumulation and deft reduction. “Maybe when I’m 80 I will not need anything,” Agnel says in a recent film made at her home. “I will do the same but with one note, and one finger. Maybe it's enough.” — ‘Learning’ arrives in a reverse board sleeve designed by Jereon Wille. Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on 6th June 2023 and 4th June 2024. Mixed by James Dunn and Benjamin Pagier. Side B edited by Benjamin Pagier. Mastered and cut by Loop-O. Front photograph by Aimé Agnel. Typography and layout by Jeroen Wille.

Sophie Agnel – Learning

This residency was produced in partnership with Professor Paul Hegarty as part of the funded project on Innovative music in Japan, with thanks to University of Nottingham and the AHRC impact ‘accelerator’ fund for support. Huge thanks to Paul Hegarty and Sam Thorne. “Chwalfa” (Welsh for “dispersal, rout, upheaval, upset, or a confused or chaotic state”) documents the first return of Incapacitants to the UK since 2016. With the windows boarded up and the subs doubled, two ordinary looking blokes Toshiji Mikawa's and Fumio Kosaka obliterate OTO’s usual whisper hush with clipped out, scorched earth tape loops and pedal chains - creating such an excoriating din it transports the room to the planet’s furnace core and back again. It’s all music, all at once -  a whorling vortex delivered at time bending velocity.  For Vymethoxy Redspiders, who writes the release’s extensive liners, “[the music] is a transcendental outpouring of raw consciousness and firmamental emotion, more in line with the “fire music” of free jazz players like Albert Ayler and Dave Burrell or Sun Ra in his most apocalyptic moments of Moog sorcery than most of the things I long came to associate with the practice of Noise. Incapacitants’ unholy racket morphs from vista of tormented glitch shimmer to crater of obliterated tape loop to deafening light pouring down on disaster fathoms. I'm struck by how Modal or Raga-like it sounds at points, where a deep tremor drone burrs like a wide open plain; for a “pure” noise that is often considered “not musical” it sure hits me where music hits most affectingly and more so than most sounds daring to call themselves music!”  “Chwalfa” contains two tracks, one from each night of the residency. It arrives as a glass mastered CD in a digipak. Edition of 500 with liner notes by Vymethoxy Redspiders.  --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on the 6th and 7th of September, 2024 by Billy Steiger. Mixed by Oli Barrett. Deemed best left unmastered. Cover photo by Paul Watson. Layout by Abby Thomas.

Incapacitants – Chwalfa

OTOROKU Downloads

Download only arm of OTOROKU, documenting the venue's programme of experimental and new music.

A masterfully expressive solo Oud set from improviser and composer, Kareem Samara, recorded at Cafe OTO in February 2026 as part of a bill with Abdullah Miniawy Trio. Starting with a deceptively stark cluster of notes, Samara lays out his palette before leading us on. Gentle, probing motifs are intertwined with lyrical flourishes, conjuring a quiet, irresistible momentum. He weaves these threads together in an intricate, spiralling pattern whose lines seem to shift and recombine with every subsequent listen. There is a generosity to Samara's approach; nothing is hidden or overly adorned. He moves unhurriedly from one facet of the Oud to the next, presenting each in turn with a transparency that cannot help but draw you in. But, like a clear body of water, it takes a little while to adjust to this clarity before you can perceive the layers of depth below. When you do, you realise that there's a whole other world here, stretching out beneath the surface. Two thirds of the way into the set, the expanse of this world stretches out further still, with a sudden trilling of high-pitched notes, sounding like nothing so much as a flock of Blaise Bontems' singing-bird automata. But in this "birdsong" we can also hear echoes of the Oud and its amplification, both; its sound expanded and refracted into something new. So deftly does Samara incorporate the technological augmentation of the instrument that it's almost a shock when the unprocessed Oud is reintroduced. But it is immediately apparent that this is a dialogue not only between the instrument and itself, but with past and present also. In such a way Samara honours the traditions of the instrument whilst also giving us a brief glimpse of the future. -- Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli Barrett

Kareem Samara – 10.2.26

Free to download for one and all – if you're a member the download will not remove a credit. Oh Xmas Tree (trad)Jingle Bells (trad)Snow (Newman)Let it Snow (Styne / Cahn)Blood On The Snow (Gilfedder/ Wells)Black Xmas (Wells)Frozen Vaults (Wells)In The Bleak Midwinter (trad)Snowed In (Gilfedder / Wells)Hark The Herald Angels Sing (trad)Oh Come All Ye Faithful (trad)Winter Wonderland (Bernard / Smith) The NJTOS are, on this recording and in order of appearance;Bill Wells, Kate Sugden, Isobel Campbell, Aby Vulliamy, Lorna Gilfedder, Chris Geddes, Gerard Black & Audrey Bizouerne. Jingle Bells is performed by Göteborgs Indiekör conducted by Niclas Pettersson and arranged by Carl Magnus Juliusson, Fredrik Lindberg & Erik Karlsson from an arrangement by the NJTOS.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWWiAJgxUUI Blood on the Snow was released as a track on ‘Bill Wells Presents Lorna Gilfedder’ which is available on 7e.p.https://7eptokyo.bandcamp.com/ Apart from Frozen Vaults, all the other tracks are previously unreleased. The NJTOS Christmas Album is available on Karaoke Kalkhttps://karaokekalk.bandcamp.com/ Snowflake cover image by Jad Fair.Come all ye faithful! Just one more to round out the year, and we couldn’t be happier with this one. Back in 2010, Counterflows head honcho Alasdair Campbell asked composer and multi-instrumentalist Bill Wells to curate and arrange a ‘black xmas’ gig at the Tolbooth in Stirling. Of the tunes Wells arranged, most were released as The National Jazz Trio Of Scotland's Christmas Album (Karaoke Kalk), featuring members of Francois & the Atlas Mountains, Golden Grrls and The One Ensemble. Speaking to Bill recently, it turns out that there are a number of previously unreleased tunes, radio sessions and alternate mixes from the time around the record. After a touch of Bill's magic mixing, we're lucky to have an 'alternate' The National Jazz Trio of Scotland Christmas Album to share with you - all of which (with the exception of Frozen Vaults) are so far unreleased. Of course, you'll recognise these tunes of old, but the bright, crisp meloncholy that Wells and the extraordinary voices of Isobel Campbell, Aby Vulliamy and Lorna Gilfedder bestow upon each green bough of 'Oh Christmas Tree' might just put tears in your eyes as you blearily look into a bauble this year.  Classic cockle warmers 'Hark The Herald Angels Sing' and 'Oh Come All Ye Faithful' have been given a cool version of the Wells / Wilson treatment - it's the Beach Boy's Bus on it's way to a Faroe Islands - its frozen lakes iced and glassy yet incredibly warm and inviting. And yet, in the middle of it all, on Wells' original 'Blood on the Snow', one voice asks, 'what will they do back home / how will they deal with it / when will they get the news / that you didn't make it?', stopping the merriment in its tracks and tuning it's listener to the silence of snow. It's delicate, fragile stuff, direct and unflinching in its delivery.

The National Jazz Trio of Scotland – The Alternate NJTOS Christmas Album

2. otta - tonsättarcentrum123456789 (18:40) otta’s performance unfurled like a conversation with the piano, building on motifs and altering the layout of the preparations inside the piano to suit each individual exploration. Preparations that otta utilised include Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban’s ‘I never held emotion in the palm of my hand’ (a keyring holding locker keys, a plastic surfboard and dolphin and a small Lotto game, used as a rattle and to dangle over and between the strings), Alia Hamaoui’s peachskin velvet I & II (plastic name tags with pewter cast peach pips attached), Natalya Marconi Falconer’s Between Debris and Thing (an aluminium cast of a fennel husk), and one part of Pheobe riley Law’s shape placing (a unique morph of steel and rubber coating, laser cut into interesting flat shapes). Ellis Berwick’s Electreight (a bike bell sat on its own inverted base) is often returned to by otta as a flourish to mark beginnings and ends of different phrases. A large section of the performance involved bringing Joe Moss’ vibrating Loot Box up to one of the stereo microphones hanging above her head to create a consistent buzzing, whilst she continued to improvise on the piano below. The playful performance felt like an evolving improvised dialogue with the materials at hand, with otta adapting to the effects the preparations made to each refrain. 3. Gentle Stranger - just enough dirt (22:18)  Gentle Stranger’s performance differed from the other two in that there were three musicians or “six hands”  playing on the piano, with Alex McKenzie taking over the high end melodic section of the piano, Josh Barfoot  staying towards the lower end, controlling the majority of the percussive rhythm section of the piece, and Tom  Hardwick-Allan using extended piano techniques, singing and moving the preparations around the inside of the  piano whilst the other two played the keys. Hardwick-Allan began the performance on a tiny red toy piano  (prepared with Olivia Albanell’s Fat Wasp and Ellis Berwick’s Piammer) a metre or so stage left of the grand. The  two pianos were connected by a group phone call that echoed and fed back inside the body of the piano, with  Barfoot and McKenzie’s phones sat inside Hayett Belarbi-McCarthy’s Dear Obsolescence (antique silk) & Verity  Coward’s Wodge (a fake wodge of £20 notes) respectively. The phones were the first of many objects the trio  secretly brought to Cafe OTO that broke the rules for Preparations initially laid out by Joseph Bradley Hill. The  objects included a megaphone, a metronome, a cassette tape and mini-amplifier, an electronic mouse deterrer  and, technically, Hardwick-Allan’s shoes which fell off as Barfoot and McKenzie carried him from one side of the  piano to the other, dropping him onto the piano keys in the process. The performance moves through roughly  eight stages using these objects and the 23 already inside, with each section a different take on the prepared  piano’s possibilities. The performance reaches its end with a wail by Hardwick-Allan into the resonant body of  the piano (the sustain held down by a weight placed their earlier), followed by a ‘wedding song’ sung through a  megaphone from underneath the piano. Hardwick-Allan’s first touch of a key on the grand piano then became  the performance’s last. Three live performances from the third iteration of Late Works’ prepared piano event, Preparations, that took place at a sold out Cafe OTO on 23rd June 2025. For the event, 23 artists were asked to create a sculpture / ‘preparation’ each for the grand piano (shown on album cover above). Three pianists/groups  then had to construct individual live performances with the adaptable unit of preparations. Featuring artist and multi-instrumentalist Stanley Welch, singer and producer otta and experimental ‘post-clown’ trio Gentle Stranger, the playful live album shifts from a vaudevillian theatricality (Welch) to a motif-driven dialogue (otta) to dynamic, rule-bending episodes (Gentle Stranger), together demonstrating the diverse musical range of the  prepared piano. For this third iteration of Preparations, the pianists performed on the grand piano with preparations made by artists/musicians Olivia Albanell, Fan Bangyu, Hayett Belarbi-Mccarthy, Ellis Berwick, Zoe de Caluwé, Patrick Cole, Verity Coward, Mandeep Dillon, Natalya Marconini Falconer, Alia Hamaoui, Ellen Poppy Hill, Joseph Bradley Hill, Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban, Pheobe riley Law, Vita Lerche, Joe Moss, Eleni Papazoglou, Alexandra Phillips, Gillies Adamson Semple, Thirza Smith & Dominic Watson. The concept (by Joseph Bradley Hill) looks to the piano as an exhibition space, inviting the pianists to activate the sculptures as musical instruments/noise objects. The artists were given two main instructions: the preparation must sit comfortably on an open palm and not damage the piano in any way. Other constraints were organised with Cafe OTO based on their piano, which included using non-perishable materials. The pianists were given one hour each with the piano to work out how they would prepare it for the performance, and were encouraged to use as many of the sculptures as possible. The open nature of the event allows the audience to approach the piano in between sets and explore the effects every sculpture had on the piano for themselves. You can find out more about the rules at www.lateworks.co.uk/preparations 1 - Stanley Welch - Mothers, Dogs and Clowns (27:34) Stanley Welch’s set opened and closed with a tribute to David Bowie, or more specifically Bowie’s nose, the subject of Dominic Watson’s preparation David Bowie (Market Square, Aylesbury) (a pewter cast of the nose of a David Bowie statue). Welch then continued playing almost non-stop through the nearly 30 minute set, shifting through section after section of percussive, theatrical, almost vaudevillian sounds. Throughout, Welch used Joseph Bradley Hill’s Roller (With Hidden Paolozzi) to dampen the bass strings, and the main preparations that punctuated the performance were the lid of Joe Moss’ Loot Box slamming open and shut, and Vita Lerche’s Piano Bell sliding along the strings. A brief whistling interlude added to one of the more romantic refrains in the centre of the piece, and as Welch rattled towards the end, works by Vita Lerche, Gillies Adamson Semple, Patrick Cole, Eleni Papazoglou and Zoe de Caluwé were shifted onto the bass strings to provide him with a dense padding that converted to a loud thumping noise he used to great effect (and to close his performance).

Late Works: Preparations III – 23.6.25

A vital, utterly cathartic set from the trio of Camila Nebbia (saxophone), Andrew Lisle (drums) and Caius Williams (double bass) recorded at OTO in April 2025. Convened as a group at short notice, after pianist Kit Downes had to pull out of the original line-up alongside Camila Nebbia and Andrew Lisle, the trio nevertheless display the kind of instant symbiosis that feels honed over many years. Nebbia’s playing doesn’t let up for a second, showcasing her astonishing range on the saxophone from deeply sonorous exhalations, to delicate textural work, to a full-throated caterwauling that pins you back in your seat. Andrew Lisle’s highly dextrous, intricate drumming spans the whole gamut from skirring, scampering percussive clusters to the kind of forceful, unruly assail that borders on the rambunctious. And beneath it all, Caius Williams demonstrates exactly why he’s one of the most in demand bassists working today; crafting seeking, probing lines that provide the foundations whilst tipping the entire structure above off into new directions at the same time. The three of them cover a huge amount of ground, ricocheting from skittering downhill runs to a sort to bruising melodicism, to the kind of gleeful clatter that would have had Ayler sitting up. When all three get going it’s the kind of jubilant cacophony that can’t help but lift you off your feet, and in places it really swings, albeit the kind of swing that might require a swift trip to the chiropractor afterwards. The sheer, unbridled energy on display here might sometimes leave you gasping for breath, but this is no one-note onslaught. At times the trio pull it down so low you could almost here a Kernel bottle-top drop, with scattered harmonic notes weaving in and out of a raft of sighing, sloughing cymbals, the bass drawing out the atmospherics from down low. By the end, it's clear that the three of them have left nothing in the tank. Here's hoping it's not long before we see them back here. -- Recorded by Rory SalterMixed and mastered by Andrew Lisle

Camila Nebbia / Andrew Lisle / Caius Williams – Keen [Most Senses]

Delighted to present a hallucinatory offering from Ciaran Mackle, recorded as part of a bill of similarly mind-expanding artists at OTO in September 2025, that featured Rory Salter, Regan Bowering and Vespertilio folia ferens - aka the duo of Luciano Maggiore and Seymour Wright. In this set, performed entirely on a Bastl Microgranny granular sampler, Mackle contorts two parallel lines of highly-processed monophonic guitar samples, with each seemingly trying to clamber on top of the other at the same time. With the drama of a coat-tailed concert pianist, Mackle begins with a single chord, which immediately proceeds to unravel in a staggering, punch-drunk procession of woozy mellotron-infused notes. Melodic sequences circle back and forth, over and around each other in a way that would seem to evoke a kind of sonic amnesia, if not for the relentlessly insistent way that these sequences seem to be clamouring for our attention. Despite the spiralling, intertwining paths that each melodic line treads, there seems to be an inherent urgency for both to reach their destination. Each new phrase barrels forward with a dogged persistence that initially seems at odds with the many backtracks and digressions, but slowly but surely carves out its own inherent sense of logic. All too soon the destination is reached, and with a final emphatic flourish we find ourselves some distance from where we started out. -- Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli Barrett

Ciaran Mackle – 25.9.25

OTOHON

OTO’s in-house publications, dedicated to the visual work of artists engaged in new music.

Softcover, 272 pages27cm x 21cmISBN 978-1-03693-585-6OTOHON, 2026 "The discarded syntax of the office, parcels of food on paper and cardboard: all are mummified in photographic stasis in the book you hold in your hand. But still, at this moment, they are also rotting somewhere. There is no end to this: through words and music, sound and visuals, Adam Bohman always brings home the bacon,  his textures manifesting a world you thought had disappeared." - Sophie Sleigh-Johnson   Adam Bohman has been operating on the outer fringes of underground music for over forty years. Working with home-built instruments, found objects, tape cut-ups, collages and graphic scores, his music transmutes the quotidian bric-a-brac of English life into sound - incorporating elements of music concretè and sound poetry alongside free improvisation. Much lesser known however, is Bohman’s visual output. Since the mid 1970’s, Bohman has used pencil, pastel, crayon and ink to conjure creatures and demons, sepia-saddened prospectors and smoked-out cowboys onto sugar paper and repurposed card. His later work uses biro and sellotape to cake together collages of takeaway menus, tinned food and the photocopied litter of the workplace. This is the first collection of Bohman’s artworks in print, bringing together just some of the thousands of drawings, collages and concert posters that collectively represent over half a century's worth of scrawing, scraping, gluing and smudging images into being. From drawings made in adolescence to recent collages, ‘Drawings, Collages, Paintings’ collects Adam’s artwork alongside an interview and an essay by Sophie Sleigh-Johnson in an attempt to bring attention and understanding to the work of one of England's most important underground artists.

Adam Bohman - Drawings, Collages, Paintings

The book arrives as signed and numbered 24 page staple bound booklet, printed in black and white on Keaykolour 100% recycled paper. Printed by Aldgate Press. Thanks to Max Bondi for his advice. Written during a bout of illness that prevented Foster from playing and performing music, Kneel to Heal is the first illustrated chapbook from musician Josephine Foster and a grateful offering to the restorative power of nature. Across 24 pages, Foster muses upon the simple joys of just being in the world, her figures traversing a landscape of words and imagery that is both playful and deeply felt. There is an uncluttered simplicity to Foster's art, at once charming and profound; a sense of calm and openness reflective of her feeling during its making "of being drawn profoundly into and toward silence" Conjuring the easy fluidity of Shel Silverstein, or the dreamlike, transportive scenes of Marc Chagal, Foster's brushwork digs deep into the soil whilst looking up to the stars. There are no weighty proclamations, no authoritative conclusions, just a shared wonder and a sense of time unfurling alongside the book's creation that offers solace both in its giving and its receiving. The joys of the natural world may be fleeting but Foster seems to suggest that there is no cause for despondency in this, merely an acceptance that this is how reality is. Nevertheless, "what emerges from the mystery.. and that real reality.. will heal".

Kneel to Heal – Josephine Foster

Printed on the Stanley / Stella Creator 2.0 tee -- nice unisex cut on fairwear black organic cotton. Set-in sleeve1x1 rib at neck collarInside back neck tape in self fabricTwin needle topstitch at sleeve cuff and hem CompositionShell: Single Jersey, 100% Cotton - Organic Combed Ring Spun / Heather Haze: 70% Organic Cotton - 30% Recycled Cotton, Combed Ring Spun, Fabric washedWe have collaborated with long term Cafe OTO friend Han Bennink to design the first ever OTO t-shirt. These are made on good quality fair trade Stanley/Stella tees - more info under the design detail.  The Dutch drummer and multi-instrumentalist Han Bennink has had a colossal impact and influence in the fields of free jazz and improvised music - not just as a percussionist but also as an organiser, designer and visual artist. Bennink trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterda and was strongly influenced by the anti-art of Dada. Out of what he calls 'a kind of involvement with things', Bennink reuses seemingly worthless objects from his immediate environment, such as broken drum skins and sticks. They are given a second life in his sculptures and installations. For his drawings and collages, Bennink draws on his personal memories and intuition. Birds and airplanes often return in these, symbols of the same freedom that he personifies during his performances. His artwork graces the covers of several corner stone recordings released on FMP, ICP, Incus, hat ART, psi and more. "It simply has to be beautiful and preferably appeal to an emotion as well. In [Bennink's] case that emotion doesn't have to be very dramatic or deeply hidden. You could rather call his art, his visual art anyway, light-footed, the way poems by Rutget Copland and Hans Verhagen can be." - Hans Sizoo, Jazzwereld nr 16. Photo by Corral

Han Bennink Tee

The Dutch drummer and multi-instrumentalist Han Bennink has had a colossal impact and influence in the fields of free jazz and improvised music - not just as a percussionist but also as an organiser, designer and visual artist. Bennink trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterda and was strongly influenced by the anti-art of Dada. Out of what he calls 'a kind of involvement with things', Bennink reuses seemingly worthless objects from his immediate environment, such as broken drum skins and sticks. They are given a second life in his sculptures and installations. For his drawings and collages, Bennink draws on his personal memories and intuition. Birds and airplanes often return in these, symbols of the same freedom that he personifies during his performances. His artwork graces the covers of several corner stone recordings released on FMP, ICP, Incus, hat ART, psi and more. "It simply has to be beautiful and preferably appeal to an emotion as well. In [Bennink's] case that emotion doesn't have to be very dramatic or deeply hidden. You could rather call his art, his visual art anyway, light-footed, the way poems by Rutget Copland and Hans Verhagen can be." - Hans Sizoo, Jazzwereld nr 16.  Reprint of the now classic OTO tote, designed by Han Bennink and screenprinted onto a heavyweight canvas. Available in natural or black.  100% Cotton Canvas - 270gsm (8oz/yd²)Can be carried by hand or over the shoulder39 x 42 x 13 Double sided print - back says Cafe OTO - Han Bennink Photo by Corral

Han Bennink OTO Tote Bag - Black

out of stock

Tracklist: 1.  Nights on Saturn (communication) - 41:47 حمد [Ahmed] – the quartet of Pat Thomas, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Seymour Wright – make music of heavy rhythm, repetition and syncopation set deep into an understanding of jazz and the obscure depths of its history. Recorded live at Cafe OTO at the launch of the previous record 'Super Majnoon [East Meets West]’ the group work and rework the music of the late musician Ahmed Abdul-Malik to create a stamping, swinging, relentlessly propulsive record where profundity and physicality root right back to ecstatic feeling --- "The journey of self-discovery, communing with the eternal sound. A musician steeped in multiple worlds; oceans apart yet closely connected in ancestral memory. Musicians such as Ahmed Abdul-Malik were able to experience the global community of sound warriors, drawing inspiration from ancient cultures to support personal investigation. The connection was made clear, the music of Africa would certainly influence the African in America despite the atrocities of the Middle Passage, chattel slavery, and continued racist violence that sought to sever any connection to the continent. The beauty of Malik’s investigation is this original fusion of new music (Jazz) of the African in America with ancient music of Africa. It is a shining example of collaboration in culture, where the music is allowed to shine for itself. This is the inspiration that is being tapped, being explored in this collaboration where rhythm is the basis for the sound. Just like Malik, they allow the spirit of the collective push the sound as the music develops into exalted chaos. Joy Be Upon Us!" - Luke Stewart --- Arranged by [AHMED] Pat Thomas - Piano Joel Grip - Bass Antonin Gerbal - Drums Seymour Wright - Alto saxophone --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO, London, December 5th, 2019. Recording: Shaun Cook Mixing: Billy Steiger Mastering: Mikey Young --- Inner-sleeve text: ' Origins Revisited' by Pat Thomas (2004) Cover photo of Ahmed Abdul-Malik at the Cabana Club, New York City, 1965 Produced: Astral Spirits / Seymour Wright --- Released: Astral Spirits, 2021

[Ahmed] – Nights on Saturn (communication)

"Their 5th album finds the band in a studio again, in their label Trost Records hometown Vienna, with time and the desire to try something new. Seven compositions in the disctinctive strong FULL BLAST nature get an exciting electronic treatment by Michael Wertmüller (sounds/electronics by Gerd Rische- head of Berlin Acadamy of Electro-acoustic Music 1995-2014) during and after the recording." "With all the projects Peter Brötzmann is currently working on, Full Blast -- with the precise and dynamic Swiss rhythm section of Marino Pliakas and Michael Wertmüller -- is the most consistent and the longest-running. Their fifth album finds the band in a studio again, with time and the desire to try something new. Seven compositions in the distinctive, strong Full Blast nature get an exciting electronic treatment by Michael Wertmüller (with electronics by Gerd Rische, recorded months before his death in October 2015) during and after the recording. For mixing the band decided to work with Gareth Jones (well-known for his work with Einstürzende Neubauten and Depeche Mode), whom they have used with Pliakas's band Steamboat Switzerland before. Full Blast have created an album that in its nonconformity and richness in variety stands on his own in contemporary jazz."  --- Peter Brötzmann / reeds Marino Pliakas / e-bass Michael Wertmüller / drums Gerd Rische / electronics --- CREDITS:Recording: Martin SiewertProduction: Konstantin DrobilMix: Martin SiewertMastering: Martin SiewertArtwork: Peter Brötzmann

Full Blast – Risc

Available as a 320kps MP3 or 24bit FLAC Luke Stewart Exposure Quintet · Harp and Concrete Silhouette Pt. I (feat. Avreeayl Ra, Edward Wilkinson Jr, Jim Baker, Ken Vandermark & Luke Stewart) "Back in 2018, I was invited by Dave Rempis to participate in the Exposure Series at Elastic Arts in Chicago. The Series was for me a shining example of artist-lead organizing of different yet connected communities around the Music. From my standpoint, it is yet another in the continuum of such actions, specifically in Chicago, and has been a major inspiration for my work as an artist and for the material on this recording. The ensemble was assembled by Mr. Rempis, and was the first time the group had ever played together. The experience was immensely moving and was a major event in my own musical development, having the chance to lead a collective ensemble of true pillars in Creative Music. Later that year, I was invited back to Chicago by Ken Vandermark for the Option Series at Experimental Sound Studio. It was then when I was able to schedule a recording and subsequent concert with the group, revisiting the material conceived by the ensemble earlier that year. As for the actual composition, I wanted to showcase the collectivism of the sounds produced in that first meeting. With that in mind I listened back to the first recording and transcribed different movements, motifs, and themes, plus added a few original composition ideas. We then recorded these collective compositions, first in a private recording session, second in front of an audience at Elastic Arts, where the Quintet first met. What is presented here on this double album is a collection of both sessions. I want to convey again the collectivity of the Quintet. The concept of being a (C)omposer is a result of centuries of musical hierarchy, regarded and celebrated as the ultimate form of a musical artist. The example set out by the journeys of many in Improvised Music, including the gentlemen on this recording, allows for exploration of "composition" in true collective non-hierarchical form. There are no single series of notes, timbres, and dynamics conceived previously by an individual that was then imposed. Rather the Music was allowed to be presented with equal representation from each individual. The "Composer" here, is merely the organizer of the spirit energy of the ensemble. This is the nature of the beautiful offering that This Music provides." - Luke Stewart, July 2020.  --- Luke Stewart - Bass, Compositions Edward Wilkerson, Jr. - Reeds Ken Vandermark - Reeds Jim Baker - Piano Avreeayl Ra - Drums --- Released: Oct 2020, Astral Spirits

Luke Stewart – Exposure Quintet

"Bassist Joëlle Léandre and pianist Elisabeth Harnik have only been playing together since 2016 but this debut CD – a recording from their third ever performance – reveals a duo who have already developed a highly simpatico and sophisticated approach to spontaneous composition that draws equally on elements of free improvisation and contemporary classical music. Rather than the waxing and waning 40 minute set that presently constitutes a lot of live recordings, there is an adroit attention to form in operation here, as the duo present half a dozen perfectly shaped and finely delineated miniatures, ranging from six to 11 minutes long. For much of the time, Léandre favours a high, tightly controlled arco full of fragile harmonic overtones that often sounds more like a cello than a double bass. When Harnik responds with pellucid splashes and rippling hazes, the two are capable of creating sustained moods of gentle wonder and delicacy. Léandre adds an element of enigma with her slightly off-mic vocalising: somewhat absent-minded, more overheard than performed, it´s ephemeral, transitory and soothing in its wordless calm, evoking the private musings of a washerwoman at work or a nursing mother cooing her love. One almost feels compelled to lean in and strain the ears, searching for fleeting meaning in her mysterious mutterings.Many of the pieces are so balanced and sensitively executed that they possess a kind of inevitability. Call it perfection if you prefer. By contrast, the more abstract and experimental gambits gleefully ride a puckish unpredictability: the scritch-scratch of agitated piano strings and polystyrene squeak slotting into Léandre´s multiphonic gossamer arco textures; dirge-like dabs of unhurried bass with arachnoid scuttlings in the body of the piano. But, even at its furthest extent, this music emanates a warmth, a patience and, yes, as the title suggests, a tenderness that´s rarely heard." - Ken Vandermark --- Elisabeth Harnik / piano Joëlle Léandre / double bass --- Mastered by Jean-Marc Foussat. Artwork by Lasse Marhaug.

Leandre-Harnik – Tender Music

A 1987 performance between legendary German free-jazz saxophonist/clarinetist Peter Brotzmann and the late legendary American free-jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock performing live at Jamkulturfabrik in Esch/Alzette, Luxembourg. "Both players engage, respond, bluster, and resolve these eleven pieces with a mutual purpose and a reciprocity of sound. Raw and beautiful like a Paul Gauguin painting." - All About Jazz  "A surprising trademark of this album is the contrast between quiet, meditative, almost mellow passages which are confronted with brutal, distorted and wild parts like in Track 10, it’s an emotional back and forth that structures the music but also affords the listener’s permanent concentration. Another very unusual and exciting characteristic – especially of the first four tracks – is the fact that Brötzmann and Sharrock play harsh, minimalistic – almost hard-rock- like – repetitive breaks (sometimes in unison) which float either into real tunes (for Brötzmann standards) or angry outbreaks." - Free Jazz Collective --- Peter Brötzmann / alto/tenor/bass-saxophone, tarogato Sonny Sharrock / electric guitar --- There is only one prior release existing of Brötzmann and Sharrock as a duo (vinyl-only on Okka Disc 2003). This live recording from the archives of Peter Brötzmann was mixed by Lou Malozzi in Chicago, mastered by Martin Siewert in Vienna.

Brötzmann / Sharrock – WHATTHEFUCKDOYOUWANT

Previously released on accompanied by “Gone, Gone Beyond”, “The Mirror” is the dreamy soundtrack of an a/v project from collage artist extraordinaire Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us.With ‘’The Mirror’’ Bennett continues her eternal disassembling of popular music by exploring how the narrative of familiar sounds/songs can change dramatically under a new context, with that context always changing, in a never-ending flow.Each song is singular. And each song is a collage of and undefined number of other songs from other artists. It sounds familiar because that has been the modus operandi of People Like Us since the early 1990s. But “The Mirror” plays with the notion of familiar, driving around a collection of famous pop songs/artists, messing around with the memory of the listener and, of course, his unique comprehension of those specific songs applied in a new context.Because of the use of familiar pop sounds, “The Mirror” is often grandiose. Like an epic film only with highs, never letting the listener down or letting him doubt the power of pop. Even, of course, when the coordinates are twisted, mixed, over or underrepresented. Each moment feels like something that could only happen in a parallel universe. Although that may sound naïve, it’s just a lost thought of reaction to the beautiful collages of People Like Us in “The Mirror”. This mirror doesn’t reflect an image of ourselves or an image of pop. But an image on the way memories drift and are being constant rebuilt. An unfinished collage.

People Like Us – The Mirror

Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie returns to Black Truffle with Nist-Nah. Like his previous solo record on the label, the abrasive hip-hop concrète of People Pleaser (BT027), Nist-Nah finds Guthrie branching out in a new direction, this time in a suite of six percussion pieces primarily using the metallaphones, hand drums and gongs of the Gamelan ensembles of Indonesia. The music presented here is grounded in Guthrie’s travels in Indonesia and study of various forms of Gamelan music, from the stately suspended temporality of the courtly Javanese Gamelan Sekatan, to the delirious, thuggish repetition that accompanies the Javanese trance ritual Jathilan, to the shimmering acoustic glitch of contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alit and his Gamelan Salukat. However, far from an exercise in exoticism, Nist-Nah develops out of Guthrie’s extensive work with metal percussion in recent years (as heard, for example, on his 2015 LP for iDEAL, Sacrée Obsession), where gongs, singing bowls and cymbals are used to build up walls of hovering tones and sizzling details. Though Guthrie is broadening his palette to explore Gamelan instrumentation and pay tribute to his love of this sophisticated yet elemental percussion music, the pieces presented here are equally informed by Guthrie’s interests in free jazz, electro-acoustic music and diverse experimental music practices, exploring long tones, extended techniques, and non-metered pulse.Nist-Nah presents a variety of approaches across its six pieces, from the crisp, precise rhythmic complexity of the opening title track to the droning textures of ‘Catlike’ and ‘Elders’. On the epic closing ‘Kebogiro Glendeng’, Guthrie offers an extended, layered rendition of a Javanese piece belonging to a repertoire primarily used for warmups, beginner’s groups and children first learning Gamelan, elegantly gesturing to his own amateur status while using the piece’s insistently repeated melody as an extended exploration of the hypnotic effects of repetition, falling in and out of time with himself to create woozy, narcotic effects until the piece eventually dissolves into a wavering fog.

Will Guthrie – Nist Nah

Artist's statement: "I met Jonas Frickas in 1999 when he opened for my band at a show in Gainesville FL. He was the first person I ever saw get an entire room full of kids moving, using only a single mic and loop pedal. Our orbits occasionally intersected over the decades of DIY until in recent years we both settled in the Northeast. During covid, our lives became interconnected more as my queer upstate NY community members began to visit and organize with the rural land project where Jonas lived outside of Brattleboro. In August 2022, Jonas invited me to play a benefit for Defend The Atlanta Forest at The Buoyant Heart, a DIY space in Brattleboro. There, I met activists from Atlanta who would later host me for an incredible show in the Welaunee Forest in fall 2022. Inspired by the forest and the queer/trans activists who had come to defend it and to Stop Cop City in spring 2023, I made an entire record, Sympoiesis, dedicated to the forest. In March 2023, two days before the record's release, Jonas died mysteriously on stage immediately after playing a show in Tallahassee FL, the same night that the police raided the Atlanta Forest and charged dozens of innocent attendees of a dance party with domestic terrorism. Later that year, I found myself returning to Brattleboro to play a memorial for Jonas. I find myself writing here all around a grief that I have not yet processed or come to terms with: Jonas' absence from this text, now from our lives. But his memorial—which took place in two venues to accommodate the enormous crowd—drew hundreds of people from the entire town of Brattleboro and from DIY art and music communities around the USA and was the top story in the local newspaper that day. Afterwards, I lingered in town for several extra days, feeling kind of aimless and crazy. My friend who I had intended to visit took ill from the stress and grief of the memorial so I stayed instead at the eerie Colonial Motel on Route 5, unsure of why I remained in town but unable to pull it together to leave and return home. There, in the seductive desuetude of Room 210, I often found myself slipping into a kind of fugue state, losing many minutes of the hour, staring at a painting that hung on the wall. The painting depicted a white bench that appeared to glow softly within a virgin forest in Autumn. It occurs to me now that I do not know if this painting hung only in my room or is a feature of the motel and is in every room. To have something to do while I waited to see if my friend would get well, I arranged to record in the studio Jonas had built at the Birge Street warehouse space. For two nights I played for Jonas in his old room during the Full Moon. These tracks were the first two takes on the first night. After the second night, I finally felt like I could leave and go home. RIP dear Jonas Frickas." - Erica Dawn LyleErica Dawn Lyle has been described by Pitchfork as a “punk hero,” which, though true, feels like an insufficiently specific term to describe her multifaceted presence and work. Colonial Motels is in fact rawly personal, a ladder out of an abyss of mourning as well as a determination to persevere and connect. Playing less but achieving more, this album captures the engaging intensity and directness that defines Lyle’s art, performance, and activism. Part I builds on patient looping and guitar body play, then gradually disintegrates into a gale of analog and digital noise stabbed with howling guitar calls. A blaring coda strips the electric guitar down to the primes before an abrupt end. Part II starts intense and cathartic, and stays that way, a heavily textured sonic wall which slowly undulates like an animated topographical map simultaneously receding and growing. The pieces seem to encourage a listening level that could be described as provocative, and Lyle’s guitar contains elements of squallish noise, employing to its advantage the overload of all apparatuses involved. But it also contains a masterful degree of space in which to catch the hypnotic repetition of desert blues, subtly weird pedal experimentation, unselfconscious playfulness, and aural hallucinations. Astonishingly, these pieces feel meditatively paced even as they reach peak intensity, enabling the listener to briefly rest in contemplation while in the eye of a storm about which most guitarists can only cower or fantasize. --- Erica Dawn Lyle - electric guitarRecorded by EDL, Aug 1 2023 at The Buoyant Heart, Birge Street, Brattleboro VTimprovised, single takes --- Mastered by Grant RichardsonPhotograph by EDLLayout by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by Small Fires Press

Erica Dawn Lyle – Colonial Motels

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC   Tracklisting: Gnarlage Of Self 1. 10 Banks Of The River Nein 2. Extinct Lord 3. Galling Truth 4. Bent Oath Scenario 5. It's A Fuck On (From Jeuvre's "Time Under Hark") 6. Decalage For 3 TVs In Layering Off Dario 7. Decalage In Vivid Counts 8. Degnarlage In Test Card Frame 9. Prelude To Speedo Foyer 10. Make Your Own World Now (From Hadbegor's "Sleep Yer Lives") INTROSPEX / ORTRESPOX 11. INTROSPEX12. ORTRESPOX "The  Godfather  of  Wild  Pop." "'Trouble  Number'  is  a  major  retrospective  of  four  decades  of  peerless,  visionary,  and  feral  production  from  Gwilly  Edmondez  -  the  dad  from  Yeah  You.  This  90  minute  package  cherry  picks  from  hundreds  upon  hundreds  of  hours  of  psychoanalysis  through  pop  waste,  performed  by  Gwilly  upon  himself  since  the  founding  of  his  '80s  outfit  Radioactive  Sparrow.  Bewildering  and  basically  incomparable  in  its  entirety,  'Trouble  Number'  mongrelises  strains  of  hip-hop,  black  metal,  folk,  power  balladry,  more  more  more,  with  a  properly  prophetic,  popwise  soul.    Pay  your  respects." Says  Gwilly: Gwilly  Edmondez  just  grew  as  a  character  project  in  the  mid-1980s,  offshoot  from  the  to’l-spon/non-com/pop-kak  invention-pool  that  was/is  Radioactive  Sparrow,  itself  founded  by  a  group  of  Bridgend  (13-year-old/non-voter)  elements  in  1980.  Gwilly  is  a  solo/collaborative  improvisation  that  started  out  making  fake,  unwritten  rock,  then  progressed  in  the  1990s  to  real  unaccompanied  rock,  before  settling  into  a  mode  of  practice  defined  by  sampling,  tapes  and  vocals.  Over  many  years,  Gwilly  has  struck  up  many  material  partnerships  and  misadventurist  associations  of,  with  the  likes  of  James  Joys,  Val  Persona,  Faye  MacCalman,  Karl  D’Silva,  Tobias  Illingworth,  Laura  Late-Girl,  b-cátt,  Odie  Ji  Ghast,  THF  Drenching,  Tony  Gage,  Richard  Bowers,  People  Like  Us...  But  in  the  end  none  more  so  than  Elvin  Brandhi.  ‘Gnarlage  of  Self’,  the  C30  album,  was  made  on  Newcastle’s  hottest  day  in  2017,  in  an  upstairs  room  in  Heaton,  recorded  by  Dario  Lozano  Thornton  with  Schoeps  MK2/MK8  pair  to  Sonodore  preamps  in  one  take  subsequently  edited  and  disorganized  by  Dario.  ‘Gwilly  Edmondez:  A  Retrospective  Mixtape  Made  Questionably  &  Unquestioningly  by  Himself’  started  out  as  a  kind  of  slapstick/slapdash  best  of...  but  quickly  became  its  own  entanglement  of  old  stuff,  new-but-unused  stuff  made  for  the  C30,  and  bits  of  recent  live  sets.  The  first  half,  side  one,  tries  to  bungle  blindly  into  the  nature  of  supplication,  confession  and  self-condemning  introspection  –  find the  self  then  kill  it;  side  two  starts  on  the  other  side  of  death  inhaling  wafts  of  cheap  air  freshener  as  a  means  to  hallucinate a personal  history  that  never  could’ve  happened  anyway,  before  scrambling  back  through  the  rear  end  of  personality  only  to  be  consigned  to  liturgical  palliatives  in  a  manner  carried  out  by  his  countless  forebears  of  the  cloth.  It  could  only  end with “Walken’s  Kiss”,  a  sardonically  pronounced  cliffhanger.  --- Music  & Artwork by Gwilly Edmondez. Mix and Edits by Dario Lozano Thornton and  Gwilly  Edmondez.

Gwilly Edmondez – Trouble Number

Available as a 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC   Tracklisting: 1. Schism 19:452. Eremozoic 14:35 "Stumbling into the Age of Loneliness I carry cloudy glass bottles to the edge of the Pacific. After 100 years in dirt beneath San Francisco they breathe fresh ocean air, fill with the energy of breaking waves. Microphones inside, ear to conch, I hear shadows: scurrying, wing flaps, chirps and chatters, whimpers and bellows. So many creatures, once emerged from the sea, now gone. How many vessels would the disappeared fill? What is the weight of a lost species? I make an offering of listening to help me carry all these ghosts we made." ⟶ Cheryl Leonard Life through the computer. We all have had to grapple with it over the past year, as we attempt to wring as much meaning, intimacy, experience and variety as we can from our shiny boxes of electronics. Concerts, plays, ballet, meetings, dates, dinners, coffees and conferences all became just a click away. Some of us cocooned ourselves in soundscapes lost, from old streams from noisy bars, to recordings of natural locations we could no longer get to. It was by turns revelatory, empty, full, sad and comforting. In Schism’s title track Cheryl E. Leonard treats us to her own imaginings of the world within her laptop; a pulsating, flickering, stuttering morass of coil pick up recordings, set amid the co-mingling of crickets, squirrels, birds, bats, and sounds played on natural-object instruments. She asks: “What does it mean when our mediating technologies have both the power to connect us to and distance us from the ecosystems we are part of?” Certainly this is a question which predates the pandemic, but it is one which we grapple with now with a set of new knowledges which speak to both the possibilities, and the shortcomings of a life lived digitally.In addition to her laptop recordings Leonard also turns to mics placed inside bottles to render the second piece on this release, Eremozoic. In the context this simple gesture takes on new resonances; a separation, enclosure, limitation which captures and reverberates particular tones, while missing others entirely. When I think of the computer in this era, I think of it like this, it exists as both echo chamber and conversation; alienation and hope. I think many of us have felt the last year, a little like life was lived inside a bottle. With this release Leonard reminds us of what we lost during the pandemic, but more profoundly what we might lose more permanently as we continue into the climate crisis. - Kate Carr --- Composed, performed, and recorded by Cheryl E. Leonard Mastered by Thomas Dimuzio at Gench Studios   Liner Notes by Cheryl E. Leonard Words by Kate Carr  Artwork and design by Juliána Chomová  Stone composition and photography by Ester Sabik  Risograph print by Kudla Press  Photography by Zoltán Czakó Dedicated to Patty Chen-Wei Liu Released by mappa as MAP026 in 2021

Cheryl E. Leonard – Schism

"Born in 1945, Guo Yongzhang has performed zhuizi - a traditional Chinese style of narrative singing - for half a century. An artform whose history spans over a century, zhuizi originated in Henan province. Its main musical instruments are the zhuihu, a two-stringed bowed lute, and the zhuibang, a wooden percussion played with foot tapping.  Almost completely blind, Guo Yongzhang is known for his peculiar, resounding yet smooth vocal style. He sings with deep feelings and great verve. Lyrics deal with both the hardships and good values of life while always maintaining a sense of humour. Despite being long regarded as a folk master, Guo has continued to play tirelessly among ordinary people, often travelling from village to village and performing for a whole day at a time. As he nears the end of his life, Guo regrets that nowadays, few people wish to learn the art ofzhuizi. He worries that this precious art form may soon be lost.  This release, titled after one of Guo Yongzhang’s most well-known songs, Lao Lai Nan, commemorates his performance at the 5th Tomorrow Festival. Guo co-headlined the last day of the festival with French prog-rock act Gong on May 20, 2018. His performance was recorded live and is due to be released on both CD and LP by the Old Heaven label in November 2019. --- Guo Yongzhang /  Zhuihu, Zhuibang, Vocals --- Recorded in the late-1980s, Released in 2018

Guo Yongzhang – Lao Lai Nan (Old Man’s Blues)

This deluxe CD/DVD is packaged in a heavy duty tip-on style gatefold sleeve with a glued in 12 page accordion style booklet. Sonambients: The Sound Sculpture of Harry Bertoia is a deluxe CD/DVD package containing historic recordings made in Harry Bertoia's Sonambient barn.The DVD, a film titled Sonambients: The Sound Sculpture of Harry Bertoia, by Jeffrey & Miriam Eger, was shot in 1971 and follows Harry Bertoia in performance and interview throughout his Sonambient barn deep in the Pennsylvania woods. This film offers a rare opportunity to follow the artist in practice, listening carefully as he moves contemplatively through his sculptures and gongs. Interview footage offers rare insight into Bertoia's inspiration and process.A separate CD contains four exclusive, recently discovered audio recordings. Included are the two earliest known collaborative tapes from Harry and brother Oreste, morning and evening sessions dated October 12, 1969, as well as a collaboration between the Bertoia brothers and their sister Ave who sings in careful unison with the overtones being produced by the sculptures. With the passing of Oreste Bertoia in 1972, these recordings mark the last meeting of all three Bertoia siblings.A 16-page booklet includes many never before seen production stills shot by Jeffrey Eger. These iconic images capture the essence of the artist in practice. All of this is packaged in a heavy duty, tip-on style, gatefold sleeve printed with metallic inks at Stoughton Printing in California.

Harry Bertoia's Sonambient Archive – The Sound Sculpture Of Harry Bertoia

2xLP; DVD, libretto, large 16p Booklet in printed cardboard box A music drama composed by Sven-Åke Johansson and Alexander von Schlippenbach, performed and recorded at Hebbel Theater, Berlin, 12.11.1994 In the programme, Johansson describes his observations of construction workers who "spend a good part of their lives – when it rains or snows, while changing clothes and so on – in these so-called construction wagons, usually set up in the immediate vicinity of the construction sites." The drama thus at the core employs an approach very typical of him: observing everyday activities and reinterpreting them artistically. What makes it unique is the combination of art forms: (absurd) theatre, dance, song and free jazz all are equal parts. Never, one of these becomes a simple accompaniment of the other. They alternate and mix, eventually leading to a Babylonian confusion that becomes meaningful in itself. Despite or maybe even because of its uniqueness, this opera is one of Johansson's key works. "... Über Ursache ..." was performed three times between 1986 and 1994. The audio recording of the premiere at the Stuttgart State Opera was released by FMP as a standard double LP in 1989. The 1994 audio and video recordings from the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin are presented here for the first time, packaged as a lavish box set with two LPs, a DVD, a 16-page booklet with photos and liner notes by Johansson, Konrad Heidkamp and Peter Ablinger, plus 20-page libretto – an edition that this spectacular work has deserved for a long time.  Cello – Tristan Honsinger Harp – Anne Le Baron Percussion, Drums – Paul Lovens Piano – Alexander von Schlippenbach Saxophone, Clarinet – Wolfgang Fuchs Saxophone - Dietmar Diesner Vocals – Shelley Hirsch Vocals, Accordion – Sven Åke Johansson Libretto-text by Sven-Åke Johansson & Shelley Hirsch Design by Teresa Iten Cover and Drawings by Sven-Ake Johansson

Sven-Ake Johansson & Alexander von Schlippenbach – ...über Ursache und Wirkung der Meinungsverschiedenheiten beim Turmbau zu Babel by

Directed by Ludo MichCamera: Ludo Mich & Rufus J. BohezMusic: Arthur and his group ‘Live’Editing: Robbe De HertSound: Jules GorisSubtitles: Jan MatthéOriginal flyer art: Georges ‘mafPrint’ Smits Duration : 14:54 min.Year : 1971English subtitledArthur Is Fantastic is a b/w Fluxus film that portraits Arthur Indenbaum and turns him into a work of art by obliterating the boundaries between art and life. Arthur Indenbaum was the son of an American diamond dealer who had come to Antwerp in the late 1960s to be trained in his father’s business. Soon, however, Arthur found his way into the lively art and music scene of Antwerp of the period where he liked to get high, hang out with friends and play music with his band ‘Live’. At the time Gallery Vacuum was an art space run by artists and musicians Luc Deleu, Filip Francis and George Smits, who were an integral part of Antwerp’s alternative scene. On 6 May 1970 Arthur, with his extraordinarily big physical build and fuzzy hair, was exhibited as a live sculpture in Gallery Vacuum during a one-night show in which Ludo Mich took part as well. Ludo’s film Arthur Is Fantastic not only documents this gallery event but also shows fragments of a day in the life of Arthur: we see him get up, take a shower, smoke his first joint of the day, have a huge breakfast, play the guitar and walk the streets of Antwerp before arriving at Gallery Vacuum. Apart from being a strong and humorous Fluxus work of art this film is in hindsight a loving document of the early 1970s.

LUDO MICH – Arthur Is Fantastic

A duo for saxophone and synthesizer. Johns/John lock into a series of cycles and frequency systems that while loosely in the tradition of the patterned saxophony and accompanying string drone of La Monte Young and the Theatre of Eternal Dream Music’s B Flat Dorian Blues. The pair obliterate the instrumental hierarchy that Young espouses for an altogether more unknowable intensity of experience. -- John Chantler / synthesizer Johannes Lunds / alto saxophone  --- Liner notes: Two Dreams For Endless Skies Music makes my mind drift uncontrollably. When I saw John Chantler and Johs Lunds perform at Copenhagen’s Mayhem venue I had a vision: I awake suddenly to discover that I have been sleeping on a beach. It’s a rainy early morning and I’m laying on my back in the open on the sand, the hood of my jacket blinding my peripheral vision. I have no idea how I got there and only see grey clouds above and hear the waves and wind. I stare into the sky blinking from light speckles of falling rain, my mind reeling from two dreams. I try to stem the rapid decay that dreams inherently suffer from: 01 Static I’m a child living on a west coast Canadian island and the nights I hate most are the silent ones. To fall asleep to anything other than silence is preferable – rain the best, howling wind reassuring, a violent storm just fine – it’s an emptiness broken sporadically by a creaking tree, a snapping branch and other terrifying small sounds that emanate from the encroaching forest. It’s the terrifying absence of background sounds that makes me aware of how far away from everything I am here. It makes me claustrophobic – the dark edges of the forest encroach, the only thing keeping them from closing in is the light outside the front door washing the dark green trees, ferns and rocks with a creepy dim light. Around this time, while I start to understand my fear of silence, I am given a portable radio. I spend nights slowly panning the tuning dial through the shimmering static noise of the radio spectrum, picking up the odd AM channel that somehow has made itself audible all the way out here where I am. Faint songs blend into speech into rich hisses into warbling glissandi and squeaks and pops – engrossing noises that I imagine come from orbiting satellites, distant planets and other worlds. 02 Waves In the next dream I travel with my father to the northern tip of Vancouver Island. We hike through the forests of Cape Scott Park towards the sea. It takes us all day to get there. Along the trail I listen to the relentless roar of the wind and crashing waves coming off the ocean. The coast persistently seems just over the next hill but doesn't appear – the white noise grows more wearing and the hike turns to a slog. The park we are in contains a series of overgrown fields and dilapidated farm houses. Built by late 19th century Danish colonists, they were abandoned just over a decade later when the roads and utilities the government had promised didn't materialise. The settlements have a spooky peacefulness, beautiful but mournful in the subsuming nature. Through ghost farms and fields, then some low bushes, we finally arrive at the shore. Here the white noise of wind and waves takes full hold. The white-capped sea churns out to the horizon and the pale bright sandy beach stretches to either side of us for kilometres. Far down the beach we see a number of large dark lumpen shapes plonked upon the sand. As we walk towards them the shapes slowly reveal themselves to be a colony of recently deceased sea lions. In the heat of the blaring sun some of the giant cadavers have become bloated enough to cause their boiled and steaming guts to explode out onto the beach. Dotted in constellations around the carcasses and across the shore are hundreds of brightly coloured size 10 Nike running shoes, all for the left foot. A shipping container must have fallen off a freighter during a heavy storm, breaking apart and dumping the left footed shoes into the sea, where they drifted to the shore and washed up on this beach. They look so peculiar and fake against the guts and endless nature – vibrant running shoes, floating through infinite space, bobbing across the swelling grey sea, in the brilliant rays of sunshine, or the luminous light of the moon, blown on by howling wind through the slow motion murk of my memory. A large black bear emerges from behind one of the giant sea lion carcasses and raises itself up onto its hind legs. I jump up but instead of the beach I am back in the venue and my ears are ringing. Finish There’s an idea that the essential human use of music is as a mask – that at its core music is a way to drown out all the external noises that our most inner primordial self automatically processes as a warning, setting our nerves alight. What this understanding of music might mean for, say, love songs, dance or noise music is hard to fathom, and the idea becomes too reductive to be interesting. But it is useful sometimes, inasmuch as the idea connects music directly to animals, landscape and endless cosmos – dumping us humans and our machines and activities into what was once called nature. Sound and silence drift uncontrollably, endlessly, until they find music. Music makes our minds drift uncontrollably but gives us an interface with the world. Nathaniel Budzinski

John Chantler & Johannes Lundes – Endless Sky

Still Light, Outside is the fourth album by John Chantler, and one which marks his departure from London and his relocation to Sweden. Over the four month period leading up to his departure, Chantler made several hours of raw recordings of the pipe organ at London’s St John-at-Hackney church. These were then subject to extended processing at Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudion EMS and combined with additional electronic parts created there. Still Light, Outside is an extended suite in four parts that combines passages of stark minimalism centred at the bodily invasive extremes of the organ’s register with striking explosions of colour; massed chords shot through with heavy distortion and electronics that operate according to their own dream logic. --- Recorded August–November 2014 at St John-at-Hackney, London & Elektronmusikstudion EMS, Stockholm. Additional recording/mixing January–March 2015. Mastered by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at Calyx, Berlin. Design: John Chantler / Photography: Fabio Lugaro  --- John Chantler / pipe organ, processing --- Recorded August–November 2014 at St John-at-Hackney, London & Elektronmusikstudion EMS, Stockholm. Additional recording/mixing January–March 2015. Mastered by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at Calyx, Berlin. Design: John Chantler / Photography: Fabio Lugaro. Thanks to Bradford Bailey, Lawrence English, James Hammond, Mike Harding, Carina Thorén & Kate Walters. This work was made possible with support from the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body.

John Chantler – Still Light, Outside

COVID-19 FUNDRAISER This special item has been generously donated to help us to raise funds to see us through this extremely difficult period. As you can imagine we are under huge pressure at the moment and are working flat out to ensure Cafe OTO survives this. The impact of this situation is extremely acute for small venues like ours and we need all the support we can get to pull through.Many thanks to Xper. Xr - one of the pioneers of Chinese industrial noise music in the 80's - for donating this unique object with a history! "Relic, hammer, circa 1993" "Part of an instrument used at the 1st Hong Kong International independent Music Festival. At approx.10pm on the 3rd September, 1993, Xper.Xr. and the gang were shredding the stage with an angle grinder, hammers and other utility tools, while attempting to blow up a bicycle inner tube. At a crucial moment during the set, venue staffs intervened and decided to unplug the set; commotions ensued both on and off stage and in the heat of the moment, this fateful hammer broke off the handle, missiled through the air, and went straight into the forehead of a front row audience, drawing blood. The operator of this piece was an original member of the Orphic Orchestra, a childhood friend of the artist, who has unfortunately passed away on the 8th March, 2020, at 12:44pm. Traces of blood from that evening might still be present on this object, but will require forensic tests to reveal." One of a handful of experimental musicians to emerge in musically conservative Hong Kong in the eighties, the cryptically named Xper.Xr gained a measure of notoriety as arguably the first Chinese ‘industrial noise’ musician. Please note that whilst postage costs are included in the price of this item, we may be unable to send this out until we re-open. Please email us at info@cafeoto.co.uk if you have any queries, otherwise we will drop you a line after purchase to arrange delivery when possible.

XPER. XR'S HAMMER