Despite having known each other for many years, and having a long-held affinity for each other's work, this recording documents the first time Rie Nakajima and Phill Niblock had collaborated together. Recorded in September 2014, the work includes Niblock’s sound collage piece “Crick” and Nakajima performing in response to Niblock’s early seventies film "T H I R”. Also included in Niblock’s piece ‘Bag’ which was presented on the same night and features David Watson performing on bagpipes.  This recording is from Niblock’s original files.

All three sets from December's double 75 Dollar Bill shows. Settling into the Cafe from afternoon to late at night, this special trio formation of the band features long-time collaborator Andrew Lafkas on upright bass. Given the time their music stretches into half hour reveries, warmed through with the chatter and clink of the audience. Refracted Mauritanian and Arabic modal music, New York minimalism and blown-out folk combine here to create a moving space for contemplation.   --- Tracklisting: 1. Like Like Laundry - 30:252. WZN#3 - 19:433. 15 - 13:514. WZN#4 - 7:185. (intermission) - 3:356. intro/WZN#4 - 17:497. WZN#4 - 12:078. Water in the Lock - 5:309. Beni Said - 11:1710. I Was Real - 41:2711. WZN#3 (reprise) - 20:18. --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on Thursday 19th December 2019. Mixed by 75 Dollar Bill and mastered by James Dunn. Photo by Bradford Bailey. Thanks to Rick, Che and Chris Eckman. 

This week we’re pleased to be sharing a solo set from composer, improviser, performer and creative polymath, Alex Ward. Predominantly a guitar and clarinet player, Ward is regarded as one of the most technically accomplished performers of both free and composed music, and has recently played shows in the UK and US as part of the phenomenal This is Not This Heat. Having had his debut record put out on Derek Bailey's Incus, Ward has continued to play at an astonishing level ever since. His current work ranges from his formidably knotty guitar playing in avant-rock two piece Dead Days Beyond Help to his compositions-for-improvisers including Forebrace, the Alex Ward Quintet/Sextet, and his new ITEM series which returns to OTO in September.  After releasing his solo clarinet album in 2017 on the Weekertoft label, Ward's solo performances strive to bring acoustic and amplified playing into closer integration. '15.2.18' is a reminder of what a singular player he is, pulling open the full range of the instrument - from warm trills and woody overtones to overblown, amped up blowouts. --- Alex Ward / clarinet, guitar --- Tracklisting:1. 21:04 2. 5:08 --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on 15.2.2018 by Martyn Larcombe. Mixed by Alex Ward and mastered by James Dunn. 

Myriad interwoven textural fractures from Grace & Delete - aka no-screen laptop wizard James Dunn and bass clarinet boss Chris Cundy. "Dunn’s electronics are a masterclass in the resources of outdated technology. After being exposed to so much laptop texturing, the ear appreciates its limits. The electronics give Cundy’s contributions a jagged starkness, like coming upon a crude screenprint in an exhibition of digital printouts. The musicians are fully in control of their pitches and the music often proceeds by finding a harmony and then forcing it into crisis, unbearable tensions resolved into rhythmic exchange. Cundy also uses a Tinnitus Analyser to detect noises and elevate them into audibility. This provides the musicians with a stimulating randomness - the difference between the unexpected shapes generated by looking and drawing rather than simply doodling and reproducing habit, the eversame." - Ben Watson  In The Screwtape Letters C.S Lewis defines music as a "meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience," but it can also be a sped up inferno complete with the alien cries of the damned. Either way, the cat cannot get enough. She rolls on her back and flashes her claws in the air when this music plays. She is blown away by the concept of a bass clarinet; the longer a note lasts, the more she purrs; it seems to stretch her actual perception of time. She wriggles with pleasure; she twists and switches her tail; she forgets to close her mouth over her thirsty pink tongue. "Tinnitus!" she mews, "I have it! Come closer!" --- Chris Cundy / bass clarinet, alien toy James Dunn / electronics, tinnitus analyser ---   --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Paul Skinner on Friday 9th June. Mixed & mastered by James Dunn. Words by Patricia Lockwood - Priestdaddy

Wishing you a great festive period with a very special free mix from The Sprigs! Spanning the yuletide gamut from cosy logfire vibes, to frost-flowered folk and joyful solstice celebrations, with just the right amount of wintery ghost story unease thrown in. A total treat and available for free download!  TRACKLISTING: - Mole's Christmas- Those Lovely Hula Hands - Menevät Miehet- Bröselmaschine - Lassie- Nataliya Serbina - Scho to za predyvo (Christmas Carol)- Ewan MacColl - Droylsden Wakes- Kάλαντα Xριστουγεννων- Tart - Great Sadness In An Italian Restaurant- Kuupuu - Sateet- Ulla Katajavuori - Sä Kasvoit Neito Kaunoinen- Cop Tears - Harmony 5 (The Lord Descended - William Billings)- Ippei Matsui & Aki Tsuyuko - Fuku-san Water- Mole's Christmas- Nour Mobarak - Winter Warm-Up- Wędrowiec - Ptasie Wesele. Śmiercicha / Bird Wedding- Nick Hoffman - Gabriel's Message- Peter Brötzmann & Han Bennink - No.13- Charlie Parker - White Christmas- Hailu Mergia - Zengadyw Derekou- Af Ursin - Valkea Joulu- Graham Road

US guitarists, Eli Winter and Cameron Knowler have been playing and performing together since 2018 but there’s an easy, natural affinity in their playing and interactions that feels informed by a much older collaboration. This warm, joy-infused set, recorded at OTO in May 2022, combines cuts from their 2021 album, Anticipation, alongside solo tracks and an unexpected improvised group closer, where the two guitars of Winter and Knowler are ably joined by members of Shovel Dance Collective and Maxwell Sterling on bass. The back catalogues of both Winter and Knowler draw to varying degrees from the American folk tradition, and in this collaboration the bluegrass-tinged side of their work is unapologetically present. But the duo cast the net wide in their palette, not only in their references to the likes of Robbie Basho, Daniel Bachman, Jack Rose and the UK’s Michael Chapman et al (explicitly so, in the case of the latter two, with covers here of Chapman’s Caddo Lake and Rose’s Fishtown Flower), but also in the weaving through of jazz-inflected, improvised sections and intricate assemblages of shifting tonality, with nods to the 20th century American avant garde scene which at times approach the yearning dissonances of Harry Partch or the effervescent contrapuntal chord structures of Conlon Nancarrow. Hints, maybe, but more than enough to leave the listener in any doubt of the depth of the well these two are drawing from (and for those somehow still harbouring reservations over the extent to which Winter and Knowler are kicking against the hermetically sealed reverence that sometimes afflicts those working within the folk tradition, the title of the third song of the set should put these fears to rest). Ultimately, it’s the mixture of dexterity and space, weight and levity that ends up being so transfixing; conjuring a late summer pastoral haze, with Winter and Knowler’s eddies and whorls of notes carrying the listener effortlessly along like a spinning leaf on the brook. But the sweetness is never cloying, and the easy, seemingly effortless interplay between the two is never less than purposeful. There’s an unhurried focus to the duo’s playing, calm but deliberate in a way that slowly but surely draws the listener in. What leaves the deepest impression is the generosity of spirit in which these songs are offered up; something that the joyous reception that Winter and Knowler are given by an enraptured audience at the end of this set fully attests to. -- Eli Winter / guitarCameron Knowler / guitar -- Mix, master and cover design by Oli Barrett

First ever meeting between two of the foremost purveyors of augmented guitar sounds working today, Oren Ambarchi and Julia Reidy. The set took place at OTO on the first night of a three-day event celebrating the life of Peter Rehberg, whose shocking and untimely death left such a hole in so many of the extended communities relating to OTO's programme. Such an emotionally charged atmosphere in the room could easily have proved overwhelming but Ambarchi and Reidy prove more than equal to the moment. Beginning with bright motes of sound that flicker and whirl around the space, the pair take their time, creating a slowly expanding sonic promontory, both bright-eyed and reflective. From this point they dive in, submerging the audience in increasingly dense chordal washes that inexorably build into a deep ocean swell of sound, dazzling on the surface but with monumental, shifting currents surging beneath. As the last fragments drift and dissipate, we are left with a clear, revitalised expanse, and a fitting epitaph to an incredibly influential figure. -- Mastered by Joe Talia

A caustic, creeping session from two avante-heavyweights, dug up from our archive and splattered into our uncertain present.  While Alan and Aaron might be best known for their group projects (Reynols, Volcano the Bear etc), the two have formed a symbiosis over the course of a decade now, allowing time for their own brand of surrealist interplay to meld and ferment. Clustered piano chords, ghostly utterances, heavy guitar riffs, thudding drum work, trumpets and more are piled together and thrown into a swirling psychedelic mass. There's moments disquiet, before things break out into a free-wheeling cacophony. Drama, theatre, absurdity, beauty; masks on, masks off. A ritual summoned somewhere between earth and... well, who the hell knows? -- Aaron Courtis & Aaron Moore - all music -- Recorded by James Dunn at Cafe OTO on the 28th of February 2020.

A total of 7 'vocal' pieces for soprano saxophone and piano, some written by Jan Rzewski and some by Steve Lacy. Frederic Rzewski and Steve Lacy met in Rome in the late 60’s when both were participating in Musica Elettronica Viva. Lacy dedicated his “Cryptosphere” to Rzewski - a tune full of a kind of micro playing that would dominate Lacy's playing after his time in Rome. Lacy and Rzewski shared a fascination with poetry and language, and here Rzewski and his son Jan recall moments from two records Rzewski and Lacy made together - "Rushes" based on Russian poems, and "Packet" based on poems written by Judith Melina of the Living Theatre.  --- Frederick Rzewski / piano Jan Rzewski / soprano saxophone --- Frederic Rzewski in conversation with Evan Parker: "Steve Lacy. Well, the important thing about him was that he was a great composer. People think of him as a jazz musician, an improviser, which he was, but he was also a great composer. He wrote probably two hundred songs which nobody knows and he wrote pieces for all kinds of compositions for orchestra and so on. He wasn't just what it's fashionable to talk about, he happened to be a great artist and a great writer. He wrote tone clusters with dozens of notes. They looked like grape bunches - clusters of grapes! So, I was, you know, like any pianist - I would fake them. I would fake them, of course. What you don't learn in the conservatory but what I think any professional pianist knows is that you have to fake if you're going to play music of today, to play Steve Lacy. So I did that, but then in the rehearsal Steve would stop and he would say, "well wait a minute, that's not exactly right." Of course it wasn't right - he knew what he wrote you know. He was a serious composer and he wrote it down and he knew what he wanted to hear. And so I would have to really practice at it."  Cover photo by Fabio Lugaro.

OTO wishes you all a great time over the festive period. To celebrate People Like Us have treated us to this special Holiday Mix. Available for free download. Enjoy! Tracklisting: Matthijs Vlot - HelloLionel Richie on HeliumPeople Like Us and Wobbly - HelloThe Evolution Control Committee - HelloAnimals Within Animals - HelloAE - Tape Cuts HelloKen Nordine - HelloThe Evolution Control Committee - HelloCurd Duca - Cassettedʳᶤᵖ⁻₁₃₃ - ·•● ｆｌｅｘButtress O’Kneel - The Britney Spears RecordsButtress O’Kneel - RhapsodyWΔll Flowers - Subliminal RomanceNew Dreams Ltd Initiation Tape - PSR41Limahl - The NeverEnding Story (Indecorum Vaporized)Buttress O’Kneel - NeverendingButtress O’Kneel - Rhapsodybd594 - Bohemian RhapsodyButtress O’Kneel - Martian RhapsodyLes Baxter - Lunar RhapsodyThe Evolution Control Committee - Spandau FiletErgo Phizmiz - Welcome AudioOtomo Yoshihide - TEACGwilly Edmondez - Break Up The PieceRoy Smeck - Waltz Of YesteryearBBC Radiophonic Workshop - Christmas CommercialAelters - Pal-Xmas Cheap GiftDJ BC - Jesu Joy Of Man's DesiringSvein Tuba Johannessen - Oh. What A MealStimmhorn - SchneeGeorge Winston - Skating (Remastered 1996)Unknown - ChariotsAdam Bohman - At HomeVoicedude - Santa Benz Rank Sinatra - Last ChristmasGoulburn Poultry Fanciers Society - Last ChristmasAdam Bohman - At HomeVince Guaraldi - SkatingAntzz - CrimboThe Kleptones - A Night At The Hip Hopera (excerpt)Blood Brothers - Under PressurePeople Like Us & Gwilly Edmondez & Hearty White & Caterina Robertson - BoxesPeople Like Us - ForeverL'Atome - The Air Beneath My MaskLuiz Henrique - Mas Que NadaDirt Bike Boy - Dolce Vita Felicity Glitch MixMatmos - SchwittUrsGwilly Edmondez - Grevious Bodily CharmChristo Graham - Muppet Christ Superstar

A rare solo set from composer, percussionist and sound artist Susie Ibarra. Using the full breadth of a unique set up, Ibarra takes a meditative journey across her kit, taking time to find familiar rhythms and knots and allowing them to offer up new space and sound. Delicate, dynamic and extremely focused, Ibarra finds expressive harmonics in gongs and brushes alike, with refreshingly melodic, even pastoral, results.  "Rhythm Cycles is a drum solo that I consider as a performance meditation. I love to perform this piece as it is possible to always arrive at new places while returning to familiar cycles that make so much sense to me. This piece is constructed to weave through certain tempos and hit points during a solo performance that arrive at melodies and textures and phrases grounded in specific rhythms and polyrhythms. The piece cycles through each of these sections and allows me to improvise through a flexible structure, sometimes returning to a section at moments and other times moving forward to create a new rhythmic environment.” - Susie Ibarra. --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Thursday 7th November 2019 by Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. “Rhythm Cycles” by Susie Ibarra is a commissioned solo performance by the Bagri Foundation for their series " At the Cutting Edge" performed at Cafe OTO. Many thanks to the Bagri Foundation for the support of this release.  About Bagri Foundation The Bagri Foundation is a UK registered charity, inspired by unique and unexpected ideas that weave the traditional and the contemporary of Asian culture. The Foundation, with its roots in education, is driven by curiosity and a desire to learn, and aims for each project to challenge, engage and inspire. Through a diverse programme of film, visual arts, music, dance, literature and talks, the Bagri Foundation gives artists and experts from across Asia and the diaspora, wider visibility on the global stage. Recent projects include At Home in the World, a series of digital commissions; Tantra: enlightenment to revolution at the British Museum; Object, Story, Wonder: Museum Collections Revealed; and From Here to Eternity: Sunil Gupta, A Retrospective at The Photographer’s Gallery, London. www.bagrifoundation.org                   

Proud to present a full recording of the inaugural confluence of THAT, a new trio featuring Pat Thomas, Gwilly Edmondez and Otto Willberg, together handling responsibility of making some respectable music. Captured in one extended rush, this release captures the moment when various orbits finally collide head on, resulting in heady combustion or wet patter. At certain points sounding like a performance arguing with itself, at others sounding like nothing so much as Looney Tunes performing the collected works of Chopin simultaneously in the Garden of Earthly Delights, this is a recording at once beautifully unhinged, wide-ranging and deep. A true one of a kind. -- Recorded by Shaun Crook Mixed by James Dunn Mastered by Oli Barrett Cover art by Gustav Thomas

Kuljit Bhamra, Evelyn Glennie and Charles Hayward improvise together for the first time as part of Trestle Records ongoing One Day Band series and to mark the release of One Day Band compilation volume 1 on vinyl and download. A masterclass in percussive improvisation from three exceptional musicians from three very different fields of practice.  The One Day Band sessions are an ongoing programme of recorded improvisations hosted by Trestle Records. This will be the first time that the session has left the studio to be recorded live in front of an audience. The idea is to facilitate an environment for musicians to meet and collaborate with one another on a record made in a day. Often the musicians are meeting for the first time in the studio itself whilst other times we ask an artist to curate the participants. This often results with people inviting musicians or friends they have wanted to work with but haven't yet had the opportunity / reason.These recordings are owned equally by the artists who make them. We provide the studio, engineer, mix and master the session for it then to exist on www.trestlerec.com to be heard for free. This is purely an environment for experimentation and improvisation with the results available to whoever may be interested. -- Kuljit Bhamra - tabla Evelyn Glennie - percussion Charles Hayward - percussion -- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on the 24th of August 2019 by Shaun Crook

Delighted to present a release featuring three live performances from the Late Works: Preparations event that took place at Cafe OTO on 20th September 2021. For the event, 23 artists were asked to create a ‘preparation’ each for the grand piano (shown on album cover). Three pianists then had to construct an individual live performance with the adaptable unit of preparations. Featuring GLARC regulars Finlay Clark (Still House Plants) & Max Syedtollan (Horse Whisperer) & Slow Dance signee Aga Ujma, the playful live album shifts from dynamic refrain-based contemporary classical sensibilities (Clark) to flowing melodies and improvisations full of pop influences (Ujma) to theatrical avant-garde baroque-tinged experiments (Syedtollan), together showing off the range of musical possibilities with a prepared piano. Finlay Clark: For the preparation of the piano, Finlay placed the majority of the preparations close to the hammers in the central space of the piano, so that they could easily reach into the belly to shuffle the sculptures around whilst still playing with the other hand. Isobel Neviazsky’s “Figure”, Daisy Harvey’s “Clover” & Jack Bidewell’s “middlegame” were three of the preparations sat in the centre of the piano, creating a harpsichordal sound. Finlay often shuffles these around during the performance, as well as Mathilda Bennett-Greene’s “Hounds of Love Tastes like Gum”, a metal Smint case with metal prongs and lychees stuck on and a secret model figure shut inside. Early on in the piece, Finlay picks up Ralph Parks “The Duke and I” (inbetween picking up Louis Eager’s “Piano Keys”) to pluck the treble strings whilst simultaneously playing a refrain on them. In the middle of the performance, Clark reaches deep into the piano to shift Tawfik Naas’ “Seed” from where it was sat in one of the piano’s iron cavities, leaving it to teeter on the strings. A few of the larger sculptures sat much closer to Finlay throughout the performance (Tom Sewell’s 5000-year-old bog wood “Peg”, Angus McCrum’s “Höhepunktinstrument” & Laila Majid’s “Vertebra 2”), and near the crescendoing finale of the piece they are all used to interact with the strings closest to the pins. Aga Ujma: For the performance, Aga didn’t touch the preparations once they were in place, and opted to shuffle them around by hitting the keys at various strengths. The bottom section of the piano was set up to have snare-like qualities by combining Tawfik Naas’ “Seed” and Katharina Fitz’s “Rendezvous” together. The middle section - like Finlay’s - had many sculptures inside to rattle on the strings. One of the most effective preparations in Aga’s performance is Siyi Li’s “Untitled” stickers which were used to weave and attach a £10 note to the strings. The result is a set of peculiar vibrations that extend the sound. If you have ever tried to use the new pound notes to play an LP on your record player you will have heard a similar sound. Ujma frequently uses Joseph Bradley Hill’s “Knucklebone”, a red Tupperware from the Cafe OTO kitchen with two black dice inside, to contribute to the snare noise, though midway through the performance it gets bounced up and wedged sideways between the strings - when you hear Aga slamming the lower octaves of the piano she is trying to dislodge the Tupperware from its string! Daisy Harvey’s “Clover” almost came flying out of the piano at this point. From here until the end, Aga uses her voice as a preparation, rejecting the use of a vocal mic to allow her voice to merge with the sound of the piano.

For his first solo show in the UK, Vainio side-steps the direct intensity that Pan Sonic are so well known for and instead subtly plays with the potential of the room's PA. Carefully modulated frequencies create a surprisingly warm and seductive narrative that is openly personal but yet less brooding than much of his other work. Download as a FLAC and rejoice in its technical composition.  --- Tracklisting: 1. 11.01.13 - Mika Vainio (45.24) --- Recorded by James Dunn at Cafe OTO on Friday 11 January 2013.  Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by James Dunn. Photograph by Fabio Lugaro. 

"At each concert that I have ever given (quite a few) at Cafe Oto I have tried to do something different or at least with a different line up. This concert in 2017 I was lucky enough to be able to call on two long time collaborators in Pat Thomas and Tim Hill, one that I have never played with before, Orphy Robinson and Michael Thieke with whom I have collaborated with both in Rome and Berlin on a few occasions in recent years. This concert was another version of my Spirit Songs collection of text made by cutting up Thomas Pynchon’s two novels, Gravity’s Rainbow and V, and singing them over a freely improvised score. There are a few versions, obviously all different and it was a great pleasure for me to have this group to help me help indulge in yet another version. Thank you and thanks to Cafe Oto for being. The text/poem ‘Rum’ is by the great poet trumpet player Shake Keane and is from an edition of his collected poetry work titled published by The House Of Nehesi, that I picked up in St.Lucia. I particularly liked this poem because it reminded me of The Caribbean Club in Reading where I learned to love many things including the sound of dominos being played on sunday in the back bar by the elders. William Burroughs said something like ‘Cut into the present and the future will appear.’ The future will be improvised and the subtext will be cut up, re-arranged and tweeted I am sure." - Mike Cooper --- Mike Cooper - lap steel guitar / electronics / vocals and all song text apart from Lord Franklin (traditional)Pat Thomas - keyboards / electronicsOrphy Robinson - midi vibraphone / electronicsTim Hill / baritone and alto saxophones / electronicsMichael Thieke / clarinet --- Recorded by Tom Mudd at Cafe OTO on 29.9.17 Mixed and mastered by Oliver Barrett

A total trip from long-time collaborators, Australian drummer / percussionist, Will Guthrie, and Parisian artist, Jean-Luc Guionnet! Across 31 restless minutes Guionnet cranks the uneasiness with electronics that swell and stutter, whilst Guthrie's drums deftly probe and pierce, making tentative forays into the swirling tones and static before both ramp up the propulsive energy in a dizzying, cathartic barrage from which Guionnet's saxophone erupts. A second, shorter coda set brings back the introspection, letting the pieces fall and settle in a series of stop-start divinations before eventually drawing things to a close, though with no easy resolution.  -- Will Guthrie / drums & percussionJean-Luc Guionnet / organ & saxophone -- Mixed and mastered by James Dunn Cover design by Oli Barrett Echiums grown by Mary Woodfield

Thrilled to release a rare live recording from New York-based, Japanese artist, writer, theorist, and composer, Yasunao Tone. An original member of the Fluxus movement and Group Ongaku, and a pioneer since the early 60s in sound art and digital composition, Yasunao Tone, has worked with John Cage, Merce Cunnigham, Yoko Ono, Robert Ashley, and Florian Hecker to name just a few.  Invited to perform at Cafe OTO by Russell Haswell as part of his three-day residency here in November 2015, Tone gave a sublime performance, presenting two versions of a piece, mixing abrasive and meditative qualities to transcendent effect. The two parts of the performance act as disorientating reflection of the other; overlapping and reprising in places but allowing subtle shifts in tonality and dynamics to shift the emphases and take the listener to whole new places entirely. Overwhelming, coruscating, transportive, soothing, and enlightening - at times all at once - this is an essential document from a true visionary.  --- Recorded by Shaun Crook Mixed and mastered by Oli Barrett Cover design by Oli Barrett Thanks to Russell Haswell