Over a bed of disrobed electronic minimalism, each Pete Um vignette unveils itself like a sardonic commentary over newsreels, or a hidden diary of notes he's typed then deleted before posting on social media. At times taking on resentment towards the specifics of post-Brexit Britain, Pete takes aim at various reactionary targets amongst obscure poetical despondencies, laying these out between and around tongue-in-cheek observations about day to day life. Pete's own music finds itself nestled between different British pop, autodidact and avante traditions. Mark Perry's diaristic oddities, the spoken-word absurdity of the Bohman Brothers and Bowie's more stripped back numbers come to mind, but Pete is on an island of his own, broadcasting laconic waves of malaise, reminding us that we're not alone in this mess. --Pete Um - voice and synth -- Mastering & artwork by Oliver Barrett

claire rousay is one of the most revelatory young artists to recently emerge from America. Flipping her tools between domestic musique concrete, voice recordings, percussion and multi-instrumentalism, claire has already amassed a wide array of both solo and collaborative works exploring human relationships and self perception. For this new piece she passes the mic away from herself, allowing a set of friends to respond to the open call of "tell me about someone you love". She also gives space to Twitter personality roche (aka @kvetchkween) to read out a selection of voice tweets. Melding these clips with her own domestic rumblings, oneiric synth washes, Mari Maurice's creeking violin and Derek Baron's wistful flute, claire acts as a documentary maker, an assembler of multitudinous lives, thoughts and feelings shot through her own subjective lens. With her careful editorial touch, claire reveals the intersection where the domestic and the banal meet the dramatic and near-mythic. An experimental micro documentary that's maybe about the meaning of love and our relationships with one another, lifted from her twitter news feed and shot into the metaphysical world. -- claire rousay - field recordings, synth & editing - Derek Baron - flute Mari Maurice - violin Voice recordings from Michael Schoeffel, Ryan Walker, sabrina ghieuw and Twitter personality, roche (aka @kvetchkween) Mastered by Andrew Weathers Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

"Certainly always an enigmatic delicacy, this latest from Josephine Foster throws us further into the sublime. With two tracks that seem to complement and almost respond to each other, this latest from Café Oto’s series is a must listen and an exciting departure into fresh territory for this artist. On the first track, “Spellbinder”, Josephine takes us on a journey into the cyclical and interpenetrating layers of three humble instruments. Josephine plays them on top of each other, garnering chance encounters and interactions as she improvises in three through-composed layers, each time in partnership with her voice. She describes her instruments as beloved but imperfect, recalling the pump organ as having “a clumpy pump on the right with uneven delivery” and the folk harp as having “its flaws” but also realizing their advantages by embracing and embellishing their lack. This track is an ascent into the spiraling ephemeral state of being, with vocals weaving in and out chanting her setting of “om mani padme hum,” the sacred Buddhist mantra (translated into English as “Praise to the Jewel in the Lotus”) with each of the six Sanskrit syllables representing key aspects of the Buddhist teachings. In this piece, a cycle of chance encounters channeled through imperfect containers reaches some kind of noble truth here. On the second track “Experiment” Josephine truly goes into unchartered territory in this Cole Porter cover. In true homage to Porter’s lyrics, Foster has never presented a more “experimental” palette of synths and vocals and beats. “Experiment...Make it your motto day and night.Experiment...And it will lead you to the light.The apple on the top of the treeIs never too high to achieveSo take an example from EveExperiment… “ On Foster’s synth lines we almost think early Laraaji or Emerald Web but with the addition of Josephine’s voice I think more of the complex stylings of Robert Wyatt ‘s songcrafting. I also can’t help but think of Arthur Russell’s disco music experiments as it climaxes into a nice thick beat at the end created by Foster’s organ that seems to tie all the loose ends together. Both tracks on this record are cyclical in their own ways and their complementary nature to each other demands repeated listening, creating yet another cycle of the most experimental of earworms yet by Josephine Foster." -Ka Baird -- All music by Josephine Foster -- SpellbinderDouble trio for tenor recorder, lever harp, and pump organ and 3 voices Experiment (from Nymph Errant, by Cole Porter)synth/voice Recorded, mixed and performed by Josephine Foster Photo Silvia Camerin Mastering by Oliver Barrett

A collaboration at a distance. After a lockdown was imposed, something like a conversation emerged in a to- and fro- of writing and recordings. We were interested in the dynamics of encounter, interaction and (dis)orientation. The process has been marked by the stretches of time that shape this back and forth, by a certain lag, as we catch up with one another—a slowed-down, stretched-out kind of experience that is perhaps characteristic of lockdown itself.  Most of the sounds come from close to hand, everyday, tactile objects, accidents, or routines. And from the body as it rubs, carries, plays, waits, dawdles with its surroundings. The voices are chatting, syncopating, trying to change position, getting in a mess. - Rebecca Wilcox & Hannah Ellul --- Rebecca Wilcox & Hannah Ellul - all music & recording --- Cover design by Oliver Barrett

Nexcyia is an African-American/French sound artist and experimental ambient musician based in London and Paris. Working with found sound, Nexcyia weaves together harsh sound design and swooping soundscapes into works that bridge many moods, emotions and places through noise, granular synthesis, textures and rhythms. On new release 'Origin' he meditates on place, time and being, using thick brushstrokes of swelling synthesis to come to terms with the past and present. Loss and longing haunts each clouded drone, wandering melody and textural wash, creating dense layers that float around and encircle one another in a weightless space. Each track feels like a memory peered through a fogged window, watching as it slowly fades into the distance, or an orchestra heard playing a mile away, amplified over rivers and hills. Nexcyia takes us on a journey with no set co-ordinates, conjuring otherworldly music rooted somewhere that can't be found.

Grubbs and Walker are both guitar-playing former Chicagoans who’ve recorded for the Drag City label and currently live in New York. They’re practically the same person. After digging one another’s recordings for some time, they started playing together—duo, quartet, whatever you got—in 2019. This live recording from a broiling night at a neighborhood bar in Ridgewood, Queens documents their first duo performance. --- David Grubbs / electric guitar Ryley Walker / electric guitar --- Recorded by Jack Callahan at The Windjammer, Ridgewood, Queens, June 29, 2019. Mastered by Jack Callahan. Thanks to Alan Courtis, C. Spencer Yeh, and Asha Shehadri, with whom we shared a bill on this lovely evening. David Grubbs was a member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait, and has performed with the Red Krayola, Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, Susan Howe, Will Oldham, and many others. His most recent book is The Voice in the Headphones (Duke University Press, 2020). Ryley Walker is a guitarist and songwriter based in New York City. Multiple releases spanning multiple genres on Dead Oceans, Thrill Jockey, Drag City, American Tapes, and his own imprint—husky pants records. -- Cover design by Oli Barrett

Following on from his duo release with Crystabel Riley (as @xcrswx) on Takuroku Seymour Wright unveils two new solo tracks. These are half of a set of four remembering 'Rites' begun earlier this year (the other two have appeared on AMPLIFY and klasika.lsm.) Recorded as part of his live stream in an empty OTO in August 2020,  Seymour explores the traditions, structures, and spaces of OTO, the saxophone, and memory. 1. Natural Rite [angle] (2020, for Carole Finer) solo for alto saxophone on window, shutters, radiator and wall. 2. Knot Rite (2020, after Frances A. Yates, Jan Kopinski and Tina Brooks) solo for three alto saxophones and their feedback. --- Seymour Wright - saxophone --- Recorded 'live-stream' at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on August 21st, 2020 Mixed by Seymour Wright.

In January 2021, veteran Madrid-based electroacoustic improviser Wade Matthews met with London-based improviser and performer Blanca Regina to record four short improvisations. Now, these short cuts have become Shortcuts, four brief glimpses of how two experienced and creative improvisers understand each other in sonic dialogues as surprising to them as to listeners. Limited edition print version of the album available here. -- Blanca Regina: voice, electronics, objects and toys Wade Matthews: digital electronics, realtime processing of recordings and amplified objects. -- Recorded, mixed and Mastered by Wade Matthews at Smiling Cow Studio in Madrid, January 2021 Cover Photo: Etching by Blanca Regina made at Taller de Grabado Fernando Sandoval, Oaxaca, México 2018. 

Brighton's Duncan Harrison presents an all new work of bizarre and beautiful junk-concrete, pieced together from unedited phone recordings and spread between two channels (left and right audio). Like the two channels that unfurl the collection of unedited phone recordings, the sounds Duncan reveals are caught in dualities; the serious and unserious, the sad and ecstatic, the planned and unplanned; the musical and non-musical; the meaningful and meaningless. Whether twanging a guitar, walking into a rock bar, having chats with pals, rattling junk in a sink, making voice notes to himself, burping into the mic or rehearsing wrestling moves from memory, he provides a peep-holes to his inner and outer life, while never revealing a full picture. Through narrative juxtaposition, crude editorial cuts and double exposition, he plays a masked game of sleight of hand, unveiling layers of truth and untruth. "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person" said Oscar Wilde. "Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth." -- Duncan Harrison - all voice memos & editing

Fragile strength is what i've been Radiant resilience Changing before your very eyes Though often unseen- (from 'Trilogy') As Takuroku hits the milestone of 100 releases over the past 6 months, we couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than a debut solo release (yes, the first ever!) by Maggie Nicols. Maggie has been a familiar name around OTO over our 13 year history, lending her voice and talents to a series of unforgettable performances, including a session with Joëlle Leandre and Roger Turner, which remains one of our favourite archived live performances to this day. While she might be best known as an improviser, most notably in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Feminist Improvising Group and more recently with the likes of 'Les Diaboliques', her talents stretch into song, dance, poetry, performance and composition. This release, modestly recorded on her computer after teaching herself how to use Garageband during lock-down, brings forth her doubts, anxieties, loves and desires in a 13-part musical journey. Webbed through piano ballads, playful improvised ditties, stories, poetry and multi-layered vocal arrangements, 'Creative Contradiction' feels like a long-overdue catch up with a close friend. There's reminiscing, there's laughter, there's tears, there's chatter that floats on and off topic, there's things shared you don't feel comfortable sharing with others. When the world around us makes these sorts of relationships difficult or rendered void, intimacy through art can feel like an act of generosity: a hand outstretched in the darkness. Thank you Maggie for gifting us just that. --  Maggie Nicols:  voice, piano, electric keyboard and ceremonial drum    -- Recorded at home in 2020Mastered by Oliver Barrett Photo from a workshop a ‘Learning, Transformation and Technique weekend at ‘Hecate’s Haven' What needs Nourishing’ guided by Portia Wintersduring Additional musicians on Track 8:  Katerina Koblizek - voice & Olitar (guitar made out of a Palestinian Olive oil can by cellist and guitarist Steve Moyes)  Ludek Salac - guitar

German artist Tina Jander presents 'Ice Cubes', a durational piece for cello and field recordings. Pieced together from plucked melodic mantras and swelling bowed refrains on cello, Tina gifts each aural gesture space to gradually unfurl over time, elapse in and out of itself, and meet other gestures in a series of iterative phrases. Over the piece's duration new and pre-existing motifs are unveiled, creating patterns that seamlessly appear and disappear. The piece is peppered with occasional field recordings, providing an open window where these patterns meld into the everyday. Absorbing and sensitive work from an artist we look forward to hearing more from in the future. -- I think Tina’s work is brilliant, but what I love so much about ‘Ice Cubes’ is how it hovers around a particular place, detours then returns, without feeling forced or over thought. And this I think is a hard thing to do in a timeline - create a sense of time and pace that doesn’t feel too rushed or too static. There’s some great moments: the placement of an environmental recording, as if offered for our consideration and then just removed. And the underlying undulations of a cello placed outside its musical frame, simultaneously both fragile and grounded, a haunting subaquatic echo, a prelinguistic memory, drawing the listener impossibly close. - Mark Fell -- Tina Jander - Cello & field recordings -- Mastered by Oli Barrett

OTO favourites Rie Nakajima and Akira Sakata team up for a delectable 2nd release together, seeing Akira's exploratory saxophone wind-around, lean against and coalesce with Rie's dexturous kinetic sound world.  "Our second album ‘Umihiko Yamahiko’ was recorded at Bar Isshee on 11 December 2020 in Tokyo. Only 10 audience members were allowed in the room, which created a very intimate and shy atmosphere as usual. There was a zoom recorder quietly sitting on a chair. It belongs to one of the audience members. He said it’s his hobby to record live concerts. He wanted to archive as many show as possible and publish these 50 years later. We laughed that most of us wouldn’t be here by then. He kindly let us use the recording to publish it from TakuRoku. Only 3 months after!! That must be really too quick for him." -- Rie Nakajima - objects Akira Sakata - saxophone -- Mastered by Oli Barrett

“Snow on snow, snow on snow” "Every year these words of Christina Rossetti’s run through my mind over and over. And so began my first piece of choral music, weaving together both Harold Darke's and Gustav Holst’s settings of In the Bleak Midwinter. Eight parts, or two quartets, repeat two bars of music in two keys at the same time. I premiered the piece with The Part Singers on my birthday in March 2019 accompanied by a recording of a silver fridge made from the inside. This winter I have stitched us together; each voice recorded separately from a different living room. Earlier in the summer I was mixing a remote performance of Charles Villiers Stanford’s Blue Bird and received a time-stretched version of the piece in my inbox from Duncan. The word “blue” - captured from the heart of Stanford’s setting and suspended like fog, gradually moving and yet absorbing everything into itself. I felt like I had caught the reflected image of the bird in Mary Elizabeth Coleridge’s poem and it dawned on me to release our pieces together." - Eleanor Cully -- The Part Singers: Louise Alp, Roshan Battiwalla, James Beattie, Ruth Bostock, Eleanor Cully, Frances Durning, John Harman, Chris Kneale and Ruairidh Pattie Snow on snow: composed, edited and mixed by Eleanor Cully Mastered by Jorge Boehringer In Blue: composed, edited, mixed and mastered by Duncan Chapman Cover image: Natalie Boon

Maria Chavez and Jordi Wheeler present their first recorded release for Takuroku, The Kitchen Sessions: 1-5, 2020, an audio result of a 2 day Recording Residency at the legendary theater The Kitchen in NYC. Due to Covid 19 quarantine restrictions, the Kitchen, like Cafe OTO, has had to temporarily close, but is still providing the venue as a resource for artists to use during this difficult time. The NYC venue offered Maria a 2 day Recording Residency in their main space with an onsite engineer and access to their Steinway B grand piano. Maria presented her new instrumentation set up for the Recording Residency: 4 Numark TTX turntables 4 RAKE Double Needles (8 needles in total invented by Randal Sanden Jr.) 2 Xone DJ mixers She invited one of her regular collaborators, Jordi Wheeler, most recently a member of Amen Dunes, to bring his multifaceted talents on prepared piano, bass guitar, and electronics to the session. These recordings are the result of active listening and improvisation with a new configuration of instruments inside the legendary theater space. The Recording Residency at the Kitchen provided a safe space for Maria, (currently on medical sabbatical while recovering from a rare brain surgery in the Spring of 2019 and who expects to return to public performance in 2022-23) accommodating her current condition while allowing the duo to experiment with her new/ larger set up at lower volumes frequencies and generally reacquaint themselves with each other after over a year and a half of not being able to perform together. Chavez and Wheeler have been performing as a duo since 2015. Their sound piece “Is Made Uneasy” is the intro to Maria’s long form sound piece, Between a Gunshot & a Whisper, as part of Every Time An Ear Di Soud for Documenta14 in Kassel, Germany. Their duo work has been presented by Cruces Espacio de Arte in Madrid, Spain, as part of the Abasement Series at Max Fish, NYC and has aired on KunstRadio, Vienna, 3cR Melbourne, Australia, the Lot Radio, Brooklyn.

This is a drum solo about: 1. Life cycles of make-up (decomposing) and rhythm cycles of drums (decomposing); 2. Documentation of materials from a time (pre- June 2020) when colours of skin (Black and Brown) would be left over barely used within the 'aspirational' image making sector; 3. Discontinued make-up (the updated formulation of this skin make-up contains 3 types of silicone) and theethics of ingredients changing with time; 4. Time, drum-time and the changing smell of plant based time-responsive make-up; 5. 4D moved to 3D (party poi movements), collapsed to 2D (skins), painted and then reimagined back to 4D (time).   -- Credits: Drums Crystabel Riley Recorded by Adam Matschulat at Cafe Oto Mixed by Crystabel Riley Camera footage layer 1 by Zara Miller and Amy Dickson Camera and Make-up layer 2 Crystabel Riley          

Koichi Yamanoha (Grimm Grimm) strips back his wide-screen psychedelic pop and gifts us 6 instrumental ditties on new mini album 'Recalling'. A delectable selection of exotica, swamp-like dirges, oneiric keyboard refrains, uneasy easy listening and foggy melancholia. Collected from a mixture of solo bedroom recordings and playful vignettes made with friends, 'Recalling' takes snapshots of memories and brings them into the present. 'Crack', a whimsical improvisation on drum machine and synth, recalls the usually bustling tennis court beside his house during the first lockdown in April. 'Near the dam' swims through a memory of the Takizawa Dam in West Tokyo, rendering a sense of cinematic wonder in a set floating keyboard motifs. 'Behold a Pale Horse', the only track made before lockdown, documents a session with Victor Herrero in his house, with Koichi's theremin painting brushstrokes of electronic melancholia over Victor's wistful acoustic guitar. 'Recalling' sees Koichi plant new seeds in his practice and watch them grow, both coming to terms with the past and creating memories of the future. A treat for fans of his technicolor pop and new fans alike. -- Performed, recorded and mixed by Koichi Yamanoha (Grimm Grimm) at home in London 2020 Guest musicians:Victor Herrero - guitar on track 5Paz Maddio - synth on track 3 

Allotropes (Jim Hoult & Stephan Barrett) focus on the subtle interplay of textures and timbres, quiet sounds and the space in between. Jim & Stephan first started performing together in 2016 as part of V22's Summer Club at Louise House curated by Andie Brown (These Feathers Have Plumes) and Helen Frosi (SoundFjord). During lockdown, the sense of a reconfiguration in their experience of time and space led to a long distance collaboration between their respective locations in Västernorrland County, Sweden and London. Named after the sweeping clouds of blue light and discrete pulses emitted by luminescent Ostracods, which resemble slow motion fireflies as they signal to the ocean depths at moonset, the resulting piece 'Night Signal' uses electronic manipulation to process tiny recorded extracts of clarinet multiphonics and bells scanned at tens of thousandths the time of their normal speed to reveal hidden timbres, creating atmospheres that slowly unfold, shift and develop, until eventually dissolving back into the the waves.

Xisco Rojo's music dropped into our inbox in the Autumn of last year, and we've been addicted since. Having cut teeth in the noise, jazz and improvisatory scenes of Berlin, Philadelphia and Madrid, he began his solo project in 2013, combining elements of Western and Eastern traditions to form a unique personal style, rich in counterpoints, mysticism and lyrical depth. Axial Tilt is a single durational improvisation that meditates on the paradigm shift in everyday life since the start of the pandemic. Utilizing 12-string acoustic guitar with an e-bow and a slide, the natural environment sounds of the room and subtle guitar double tracking, he unfolds a raw and beguiling sound world, slowly gliding from rustic sustained high notes and glacial harmonies through to percussive motifs and soft atonal clusters. Each delicate pick, touch and rumble of his guitar is lifted into an open space without limits, with each gesture floating in and out of itself in a seemless motion. This is some of the most tactile, considered and singular guitar playing we've heard in some time. A real treat.