OTOROKU - Forced Exposure

$16.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

Sophie Agnel plays the whole piano. Its body matters as much as its strings. The keyboard's lid is just as good closed as it is open -- in fact it's best slammed open and closed rapidly. Joined by bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble, Three on a Match explodes the piano trio -- each player sparking off the other so quickly that it's impossible to figure out who lit the flame. Recorded at OTO in 2023, this was the second two-night residency for a trio that has fast become one of the label's favorite improvising groups. Each individually brilliant, Agnel, Edwards and Noble's enduring connection is in their seriously playful approach to their instrument -- in their way of looking at it as a whole and then tearing it apart, breaking it down into its raw materials -- wood, brass, steel. Born in Paris in the '60s, Agnel is classically trained and had a turn in modern jazz. 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. 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. Steve Noble surrounds his drum kit with whistles, tubes and towels alongside gleaming brass cymbals and gongs. Their stage is a heady mix of high and low -- the grand piano and the gong alongside rubber balls and tiny bells; players half stood up, reaching in, bending toward -- relentlessly working their instrument to unburden its sound from genre. Free improvisation is always a leap of faith, a test of commitment, and these three players are completely unafraid. The music switches deftly from super taut string manipulation to extremely loud percussive collisions. The trio can play microscopic mutations on a bass note and then scale up on the turn of a pin to plunge into huge, black chords and ricocheting sonority -- dissolving the boundary between body and sound. The crescendo of Part Two is shaped by such cumulative repetition that it feels like a confrontation -- a controlled test for breaking point. It's a totally exhilarating, skittering reprise -- short and energetic -- delivered with the kind of grounded abandon you hope to see improvisers play with but rarely do.

$29.50 IN STOCK

Solo Throat is the first solo LP from vocalist, composer and movement artist Elaine Mitchener. Drawing on the work of African-American and African-Caribbean poets Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire, Una Marson, and N. H. Pritchard, these twelve new vocal compositions disrupt semantic sense, play with the margins of lyrical translation, and give rise to new voicings. Elaine Mitchener is a veteran of vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde, traversing free improvisation, cross-disciplinary music theatre and contemporary composition with clarity and joy. Most recently, Mitchener has been improvising and composing with the written word as source material -- challenging classical ensembles with her piece, and commissioning composers Matana Roberts, Jason Yarde, and George Lewis to respond to the work of Sylvia Wynter. Her performance of Umbra poet N.H Pritchard's text "FR/OG" at OTO in 2021 was a revelation-- a solo vocal recasting of the powerful visual-material form that Pritchard uses to disrupt semantic "sense." Building on this performance, Solo Throat takes the work of Pritchard alongside poets Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire, and Una Marson as its source material. Its compositions are a loose translation -- a carrying from text to voice which holds multiplicity and celebrates the transformative power of literary possibility. Surrendered to the spacing and repetition of consonants and vowels, Mitchener's exceptional phonetic freedom gives rise to a sensuous experience which intensifies the roles of rhythm, timbre and breath in expressing meaning. Solo Throat comes together as much through difference as similarity. Mitchener's own solo improvisations sit alongside the work of Brathwaite, Césaire, Marson, and Pritchard, forming a constellation of unlikely alignments which make no aesthetic conclusion. Instead, Solo Throat is a site of encounter, an irreducibly plural de-composition of words into a heterogeneous assemblage of sounds and impulses, emphasizing what Anthony Reed calls, "the play on and the surplus of margins of lyrical translation to resituate other pathways of expression." Just as the poets cited use white space to complicate our act of reading, so Mitchener utilizes silence and multiphonics to complicate the act of voicing.

$16.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long-time collaborator Alan Licht. Celebrating thirty years of collaboration, Loren Connors and Alan Licht performed for two nights at OTO on May 5 and 6th, 2023. On the second night, with the stage lit in blue, Connors took up a seat on the piano stool whilst Licht picked up the guitar. What followed was the duo's first ever set with Connors on piano -- one of only a few times Connors has played piano live at all -- here captured and issued as The Blue Hour. Its spacious warmth came as a total surprise live, but makes complete sense for a duo whose dedicated expressionism takes inspiration from a vast spectrum of emotion. Both opening with single notes to start, it doesn't take long before a surface rises and begins to shimmer. A run up the keys, the drop of a feedback layer on a sustained and bent note. The two begin to exchange notes in tandem and brief touches of melody and chord hover. After a while, Connors picks up the guitar, stands it in his lap and sweeps a wash of color across Licht's guitar. Sharp, glassy edges begin to form, open strings and barred frets darkening the space. When his two pedals begin to merge, Licht finds a dramatic organ-like feedback and it's hard not to imagine Rothko's Chapel, its varying shades of blue/black ascending and descending in the room. When Connors goes back to the piano for the second side, the pair quickly lock into a refrain and light pours in. What is always remarkable about Licht is that his enormous frame of reference doesn't seem to weigh him down, and instead here he is able to delicately place fractures of a Jackson C Frank song ("Just Like Anything") amongst the vast sea of Connors' blues. Perhaps it's the pleasure of playing two nights in a row together, or the nature of Connor's piano playing combined with Licht's careful listening, but the improvisation on The Blue Hour feels remarkably calm and unafraid. There's nothing to prove and no agenda except the joy of sounding color together. Released in an edition of 400 LPs and 200 CDs. Artwork by Loren Connors. Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Saturday 6th May 2023 by Billy Steiger Mixed by Oli Barrett. Mastered by Sean McCann.

$29.50 IN STOCK

LP version. Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long-time collaborator Alan Licht. Celebrating thirty years of collaboration, Loren Connors and Alan Licht performed for two nights at OTO on May 5 and 6th, 2023. On the second night, with the stage lit in blue, Connors took up a seat on the piano stool whilst Licht picked up the guitar. What followed was the duo's first ever set with Connors on piano -- one of only a few times Connors has played piano live at all -- here captured and issued as The Blue Hour. Its spacious warmth came as a total surprise live, but makes complete sense for a duo whose dedicated expressionism takes inspiration from a vast spectrum of emotion. Both opening with single notes to start, it doesn't take long before a surface rises and begins to shimmer. A run up the keys, the drop of a feedback layer on a sustained and bent note. The two begin to exchange notes in tandem and brief touches of melody and chord hover. After a while, Connors picks up the guitar, stands it in his lap and sweeps a wash of color across Licht's guitar. Sharp, glassy edges begin to form, open strings and barred frets darkening the space. When his two pedals begin to merge, Licht finds a dramatic organ-like feedback and it's hard not to imagine Rothko's Chapel, its varying shades of blue/black ascending and descending in the room. When Connors goes back to the piano for the second side, the pair quickly lock into a refrain and light pours in. What is always remarkable about Licht is that his enormous frame of reference doesn't seem to weigh him down, and instead here he is able to delicately place fractures of a Jackson C Frank song ("Just Like Anything") amongst the vast sea of Connors' blues. Perhaps it's the pleasure of playing two nights in a row together, or the nature of Connor's piano playing combined with Licht's careful listening, but the improvisation on The Blue Hour feels remarkably calm and unafraid. There's nothing to prove and no agenda except the joy of sounding color together. Released in an edition of 400 LPs and 200 CDs. Artwork by Loren Connors. Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Saturday 6th May 2023 by Billy Steiger Mixed by Oli Barrett. Mastered by Sean McCann.

$16.00 NOT IN STOCK

Pat Thomas returns to OTOROKU for his fourth collection of solo piano improvisations, this time recorded in a studio setting at London's Fish Factory. For 25 years now, beginning with Nur (Emanem) and continuing through Al-Khwarizmi Variations (Fataka), The Elephant Clock of Al-Jazari (ROKU 019LP), and now The Solar Model of Ibn Al-Shatir, Pat Thomas has drawn on the Arabic world for titles for his solo piano work -- specifically the long-standing Islamic tradition of astronomical invention. For Thomas, the work of the polymaths he dedicates his music to has been sidelined by Eurocentrism, just as the Arabic origin of "jass" and the scalar, intervallic and polyphonic contributions made by Arab musicians have been routinely overlooked. Islamic innovation is at the heart of Thomas' solo projects and draws a direct link between his Sufi faith and a totally unique style of playing. Each of his solo piano records is a dedication -- not just to the innovators Thomas names but to the beauty of the universe in all its complexities. Starting standing up with one hand inside the piano and one on the keys, "The Solar Model" begins with single staccato bass notes appearing like chondrites in the darkness, occasionally tumbling towards a rhythm and then falling out of it. Metallic string work starts to pull towards an unseen center and eventually notes from the upper registers appear, clear and light. With both hands drawn to the keys, Thomas builds towards scintillating beauty, carried through "The Laws of Motion" and propelling listeners towards the A-side closer, "For George Saliba". The whole landscape of the A side swings with this one movement, until its energy is spent on one last sweeping rotation. On the B-side, "The Oud of Ziryab" notes to the instrument maker who added a fifth pair of strings to the Oud. The single bass notes of the first side are swapped for clusters, bursting together and decaying in space. Making use of the sustain pedal and the silence of a studio setting, it's one of the most open, lush recordings of Thomas at the piano -- more Muhal Richard Abrams than Monk, the lower end thundering under rapid, crystalline blues. "For Mansa Musa" brings back a swing instantly recognizable as Pat, with a huge euphoric lift halfway that crowns the record but the album's end title "The Birds are Singing" is more celestial, more chromatic -- a reminder that the spiritual matters just as much as the physical for Thomas.

$31.50 NOT IN STOCK

LP version. Pat Thomas returns to OTOROKU for his fourth collection of solo piano improvisations, this time recorded in a studio setting at London's Fish Factory. For 25 years now, beginning with Nur (Emanem) and continuing through Al-Khwarizmi Variations (Fataka), The Elephant Clock of Al-Jazari (ROKU 019LP), and now The Solar Model of Ibn Al-Shatir, Pat Thomas has drawn on the Arabic world for titles for his solo piano work -- specifically the long-standing Islamic tradition of astronomical invention. For Thomas, the work of the polymaths he dedicates his music to has been sidelined by Eurocentrism, just as the Arabic origin of "jass" and the scalar, intervallic and polyphonic contributions made by Arab musicians have been routinely overlooked. Islamic innovation is at the heart of Thomas' solo projects and draws a direct link between his Sufi faith and a totally unique style of playing. Each of his solo piano records is a dedication -- not just to the innovators Thomas names but to the beauty of the universe in all its complexities. Starting standing up with one hand inside the piano and one on the keys, "The Solar Model" begins with single staccato bass notes appearing like chondrites in the darkness, occasionally tumbling towards a rhythm and then falling out of it. Metallic string work starts to pull towards an unseen center and eventually notes from the upper registers appear, clear and light. With both hands drawn to the keys, Thomas builds towards scintillating beauty, carried through "The Laws of Motion" and propelling listeners towards the A-side closer, "For George Saliba". The whole landscape of the A side swings with this one movement, until its energy is spent on one last sweeping rotation. On the B-side, "The Oud of Ziryab" notes to the instrument maker who added a fifth pair of strings to the Oud. The single bass notes of the first side are swapped for clusters, bursting together and decaying in space. Making use of the sustain pedal and the silence of a studio setting, it's one of the most open, lush recordings of Thomas at the piano -- more Muhal Richard Abrams than Monk, the lower end thundering under rapid, crystalline blues. "For Mansa Musa" brings back a swing instantly recognizable as Pat, with a huge euphoric lift halfway that crowns the record but the album's end title "The Birds are Singing" is more celestial, more chromatic -- a reminder that the spiritual matters just as much as the physical for Thomas.

$28.50 NOT IN STOCK

One of Peter Brotzmann's final concerts, presented on Otoroku. When the label invited Peter to do a residency at Cafe OTO back in February 2023, it had no idea these would be his last ever shows and he played with such power it would have been hard for anyone present to believe he would never play publicly again. Recorded over two nights this grouping of Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone, John Edwards on bass, and Steve Noble on drums feels especially resonant and personal to Cafe OTO. The first time Peter performed at the venue back in 2010 it was in a trio with John and Steve, so it feels fitting that the last shows he ever played here should also have that trio at its core. There are moments of tenderness to Brotzmann's playing that feels specific to this small group -- one that cuts across three generations -- and in a space that's come to feel like home. Of course, there is dizzying, forceful, single-minded playing, but even amongst a relentless chorus of cymbal splashes and busy vibraphone clusters the lyrical, spacious moments are savored and held onto. As he remarked after at the end of the group's first visit to OTO, "the Quartet is, for us, a great adventure." Peter clearly wanted to play to the end. It was Peter's wish that these recordings should be made public and he was due to finalize the cover design on the week he passed away. Otoroku would like to thank Peter's family for working to fulfil Peter's wishes to release this material. Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on 10th and 11th February 2023. Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielesi. Photos by Dawid Laskowski. Pressed in the UK by Vinyl Press. Artwork by Peter Brötzmann. Design by Untiet. The 2CD version contains both sets from both nights. The discs are housed in a digipak on reverse board and will include photographs from the residency by Dawid Laskowski. The 2LP version (ROKU 033LP) is an edit of the music played on both nights. It comes as a gatefold 12" printed in reverse board outersleeves and includes a pull out with photographs from the residency by Dawid Laskowski.

$50.00 IN STOCK

Double LP version. One of Peter Brotzmann's final concerts, presented on Otoroku. When the label invited Peter to do a residency at Cafe OTO back in February 2023, it had no idea these would be his last ever shows and he played with such power it would have been hard for anyone present to believe he would never play publicly again. Recorded over two nights this grouping of Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone, John Edwards on bass, and Steve Noble on drums feels especially resonant and personal to Cafe OTO. The first time Peter performed at the venue back in 2010 it was in a trio with John and Steve, so it feels fitting that the last shows he ever played here should also have that trio at its core. There are moments of tenderness to Brotzmann's playing that feels specific to this small group -- one that cuts across three generations -- and in a space that's come to feel like home. Of course, there is dizzying, forceful, single-minded playing, but even amongst a relentless chorus of cymbal splashes and busy vibraphone clusters the lyrical, spacious moments are savored and held onto. As he remarked after at the end of the group's first visit to OTO, "the Quartet is, for us, a great adventure." Peter clearly wanted to play to the end. It was Peter's wish that these recordings should be made public and he was due to finalize the cover design on the week he passed away. Otoroku would like to thank Peter's family for working to fulfil Peter's wishes to release this material. Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on 10th and 11th February 2023. Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielesi. Photos by Dawid Laskowski. Pressed in the UK by Vinyl Press. Artwork by Peter Brötzmann. Design by Untiet. The 2LP version is an edit of the music played on both nights. It comes as a gatefold 12" printed in reverse board outersleeves and includes a pull out with photographs from the residency by Dawid Laskowski.

$29.50 IN STOCK

First vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker's duo with George Lewis. Transferred from the original masters, Otoroku has discovered that the original Incus LP was cut at the wrong speed -- and so, here is the first vinyl issue of the correct masters, or "mastas" as Adam Skeaping, legendary engineer who is also responsible for Six of One and Compatibles, fondly calls them. Skeaping, always working with the latest in recording technology for the time, has a knack for gaining access to remarkable spaces. Good spaces that were cheap because no one else had discovered them. The Art Workers Guild is a Georgian Hall in Bloomsbury, London, with lofty ceilings and hard wooden floors. It's the perfect room to exercise an instrument to its full length, to "run the full length of the staircase" in Parker's words. Two bells to ring off the floor and remain in dexterous, airy resonance. Recorded at 30ips on enormous reels, the recording captures all the fine filigree detail so celebrated on Parker's later Six of One, though here the listener is treated to tenor as well as soprano, plus, of course, George Lewis' trombone. Parker and Lewis first met at Moers festival, Lewis having just played excerpts of Coltrane's "Giant Steps" with Anthony Braxton. Living in Paris, it wasn't so hard for a young Parker to invite him for a session on his new imprint, Incus. Though having been part of the AACM, toured with Count Basie and made records for Black Saint, this would be Lewis' first foray into British improv, excited by the idea the Bailey and Parker were attempting to open up the notion of improvisation to include "the freshness of the immediate encounter." Lewis had not long recorded his solo, which mixes lively hints of Ellington and tender lyricism with total experimentation in three-part overdubbed trombone. From Saxophone to Trombone veers towards his wilder end of technicality, some of Lewis' rarer, starker improv -- all avant garde burbles and bubbles, breath control and scalar flights. It's a recording of two young masters, documented beautifully, and released for the first time on vinyl at its intended speed.

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LP reissue of Collective Calls, the first duo LP from Evan Parker and percussionist Paul Lytton. Mythically alluded to as "An Improvised Urban Psychodrama In Eight Parts," Collective Calls utilizes electronics, pre-records and homemade instruments to wryly in/act self-investigation. On Collective Calls, only the fifth release to appear on the newly minted Incus label, percussionist Paul Lytton arrives with an arsenal of sound making sources to push Parker into ever new territory. Recorded in the loft of The Standard Essenco Co on Southwark Street by Bob Woolford (Topography of the Lungs, AMM The Crypt), Collective Calls has more in common with noise or music concrete than with jazz. Influenced as much by Stockhausen, Cage and David Tudor as he was by Max Roach and Milford Graves, Lytton's percussion is abstract, expressionist and at times totally mutant. Sometimes rolling extremely fast, then screeching almost backwards over feedback, Lytton gives Parker room to play some of his weirdest work. Parker is listed as performing both saxophones, but also his own homemade assemblages, including one dubbed the 'Dopplerphone' -- a length of soft rubber tubing (activated by a saxophone mouthpiece and manipulated to alter the rate of airflow) attached to a longer length of clear plastic tubing (whirled around the head whilst being played) ending in a plastic funnel. Thickening the brew even more, Parker would also add a cassette recorder, on which he would play back collected sounds and previous recordings of the duo. Imagining the set up in a 70s loft, it's an assemblage more akin to what today's free ears might see at a Sholto Dobie show, or spread out on the floor of the Hundred Years Gallery, the shadow of Penultimate Press lurking in a corner. It's a testament to Parker's shape shifting sound -- the ever present link to birdsong being at its most warped here -- terrifically free and unfussy, wild and loose from any of the dogma that might come in later Brit-prov years. This re-issue is presented in a specially made Wigston fold-over cover, litho printed with artwork from Alan Johnston and housed in a heavy polyurethane sleeve.

$29.50 IN STOCK

Musician, writer and filmmaker, Sunik Kim follows up The Bent Bow Must Wait to Be Released (Takuroku 2021) with their second LP -- a deadly serious dismantling of the limits of contemporary computer music, delivered with playful dexterity and a touch of slapstick humor, a la Henry Cow. Enlisting General MIDI to create frenetic, vital patterns of dis-organization made up of gleeful synthetic trumpets, wry orchestral sweeps and brutal key clusters, Sunik Kim explodes a kind of simplistic sound into complex, beautifully uncertain structures. Readers may laugh, but Potential is calmer than Kim's previous offerings. Rather than attempting to overwhelm or stun the listener into subjectivity, Potential is ever shifting; regularly breaking form and unfolding, discreetly nibbling at the concept of the spectacle and un-doing fatally closed systems of cyclic music. Reminiscent of Cecil Taylor's Unit Structures, Stockhausen's Gruppen, and even those weirdo attempts at making music from inside the world of Animal Crossing, Lil Jürg Frey. The overflowing ideas of Henry Cow (to which Kim dedicated a fantastically blended mix for the Wire in 2021) never drift too far from view, but contemporary counterparts lay few except for Yorkshire's most eminent polyceleratrix, Gretchen Aury, who was asked to write the liners. Gretchen's words are unsurprisingly as extraordinary as the record itself, so the label will close out the call to elicit a media response to possibly the wildest OTOROKU yet with their words: "Potential reads as a rare honest response to the disaster capitalist era of the apparent nearing end of the anthropocene, a cyborg music which is not hopelessly psychotic like so much contemporary and especially computer-requiring music, but lucidly possessed with rapture, pain, madness, empathy, ecstasy, torment, fragility; all those vital feelings and incentives which our atrociously depressing times seem engineered to quash and bleed out of us. This sound is a blistering electromagnetic pulse wave of revolutionary hope, exclaiming defiantly that history is not over, that the future is not 'history,' that there is still a vast multitude of ideas and identities burning brightly and resiliently, despite the fact that they are inconceivable to the tyrannical hegemonic axis of global capitalist tech-culture. I ask of you, listener, if you truly wish to plunge beyond the known, give yourself over in full to this record.'"

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Loud Object is the first solo LP from artist Billy Steiger. Both a visual artist and a musician, Steiger's debut plays as a two-sided experiment in markmarking and sound, as a kind of writing by ear -- metallic, brushed, wooden -- lines imprinted and pressed circular. The record takes its name from the discarded title of the several-hundred-page draft of Clarice Lispector's eventual 96-page novel Água Viva (1973). Devoid of characters or plot, Água Viva appears always in suspension between the interior and exterior and impression and expression. Weird and formless (like the jellyfish "agua viva" translates to in Portuguese) Lispector's text deals less in the cerebral or the knowable realms of words, but more in the unknowable moment of experience. Its joy is found in its looseness, its meaning found in its lack of definition. Loud Object began as six sides of violin improvisations, four of them abandoned and the last of them added to or processed usings samplers in moments Steiger calls "wells" -- gaps or dips in the recording which could be filled or poured into. The process of filling up and taking away, of repeating and multiplying, of building tension between the finite and the lost -- all wrestle with actualization. Which line will be drawn? In the liner notes for the LP, Evie Scarlett Ward writes, "The record holds loss." Though the lines are fixed, its contents are fluid - forty minutes filled in and manipulated, before time moves on. Steiger's relentless rearranging of convention means no two of his live shows are the same, and his decade-plus involvement in London's free improvisation scene constantly surprises. Loud Object is no exception. Recorded on February 12-14 2021 by Daniel Blumberg. Produced by Billy Steiger. Mixed by Billy Steiger and Shaun Crook. Mastered by Guiseppe Ielesi. Artwork by Billy Steiger. Layout by Oli Barrett. Liner notes by Evie Scarlett Ward.

$26.00 IN STOCK

Promise & Illusion is the first LP from Ecka Mordecai, following the release of her solo Critique + Prosper on Takuroku in 2020. Cello, violin, voice, horsehair harp, and field recordings combine to spin narrative melodies, rich intimacy, and melancholic landscapes. Promise & Illusion begins with the door to Mordecai's recording space opening and closing repeatedly, unsure whether to let performer or listener in. "woe are we" is sharp, uncomfortable but unafraid, as violin and voice twist together with a sort of tension and high drama that is reminiscent of The Executioner, Henning Christiansen's soundtracks made for the films of his partner Ursula Reuter Christiansen in the 1970s. Then things begin to soften, almost despite themselves. Distortion on "a unit has no unity" can't quite smother a rising tune on warped harp. The cello on "indigos" -- its voice pizzicato with a velvety sustain -- brings comfort and clarity. Mordecai hums a line, feeling out the edges of a song in an intimate release of tension. Mordecai's inclination towards a romantic, nocturnal gloom feels somewhat out of place in London's improvised experimental music. Trained in renaissance viola da gamba in Stafford as part of a youth group, Mordecai went on to study performance art in Brighton. Quickly distracted by the offerings of the sound art course instead, she dialed into the work of improvisers David Toop, Rie Nakajima, and Clive Bell, performing in art galleries and re-purposed off-site locations. A move north put her in touch with Miles Whittaker of Demdike Stare, and Andrew Chalk, and Tom James Scott, with whom she has collaborated as part of CIRCÆA. Slowly her work has taken shape amongst this myriad of influences. A recent recording with Valerio Tricoli made at a similar time to Promise & Illusion found its final form as a cassette -- a collage of sustained tones, ominous atmospheres and brief fourth wall dissolving vocal interactions. With CIRCÆA and Tricoli, Mordecai's previous work has dealt with landscapes, playing with the imaginary over the real, though improvisation is a useful way to dream. Solo on Promise & Illusion, she studies small details instead, the thoughts given space in the imaginary, both comforting and strange.

$18.00 IN STOCK

First physical solo release from legendary vocal improvisor, dancer, and performer Maggie Nicols, and the follow-up to her brilliant Creative Contradiction (Takuroku, 2020). While she might be best known as an improviser (Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Feminist Improvising Group, Les Diaboliques), Maggie Nicols's talents stretch into song, dance, poetry, performance, and composition. When Cafe OTO was shut over lockdown, they invited her to follow-up the brilliant solo Creative Contradiction. "Songs" -- seemingly contradictory to the practices of free improvisation -- have been a vital part in Nicols's relationship to music. It was singing bebop with pianist Dennis Rose which nurtured and challenged Nicols, allowing her to develop her own skills and sound amongst a repertoire of standards swung in clubs and pubs. Singing alongside Julie Tippetts in Centipede showed her how heady experimentation could be woven into composition, and a more recent recording with pianist Steve Lodder is simply titled The Maggie Nicols Songbook. Are You Ready? recalls Nicols's own compositions from memory, working out tunes and turning them over. New routes down old paths form in moments of improvisation and all wrong turns are played out with joyous discovery. What John Stevens dubbed Maggie's "ability to find the 'rhythmelodic'" meets a willingness to be understood and to understand. Solo at the piano, Nicols is still firmly rooted in the collective however -- "Are You Ready / Sans Papiers" sets the words of poet Vicky Scrivener to tune; a tale of migration and struggle which is as important to Nicols as the songs her mother wrote. "Whatever Arises" - a companion disk to the 'Songs', is a meditation of sorts, a process of 'following the energy' which has its roots in John Stevens' work. "Improvisation gives the confidence to compose," Nicols told us in an interview about some of her archival tapes, and here the two are as important as each other. Beginning with breath and repetition, "Whatever Arises" allows Nicols to find new voices, accompanied by the piano and over dubbings of her tap shoes on the concrete floor. Brilliantly she is able to share her moments of discovery with the listener, finding comfort in vulnerability. Whilst rooted in Stevens' work, Nicols' improvisational techniques is also reminiscent of Pauline Oliveros's Sonic Meditations. Recorded at Cafe OTO July 15-17 2021 by Shaun Crook. Mixed by Shaun Crook. Mastered by Sean McCann. Artwork by Annalisa Colombara. Lettering by Rosella Garavaglia. Layout by Maja Larrson. Double-CD version includes a companion disc of freely improvised meditations entitled, "Whatever Arises".

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. First physical solo release from legendary vocal improvisor, dancer, and performer Maggie Nicols, and the follow-up to her brilliant Creative Contradiction (Takuroku, 2020). While she might be best known as an improviser (Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Feminist Improvising Group, Les Diaboliques), Maggie Nicols's talents stretch into song, dance, poetry, performance, and composition. When Cafe OTO was shut over lockdown, they invited her to follow-up the brilliant solo Creative Contradiction. "Songs" -- seemingly contradictory to the practices of free improvisation -- have been a vital part in Nicols's relationship to music. It was singing bebop with pianist Dennis Rose which nurtured and challenged Nicols, allowing her to develop her own skills and sound amongst a repertoire of standards swung in clubs and pubs. Singing alongside Julie Tippetts in Centipede showed her how heady experimentation could be woven into composition, and a more recent recording with pianist Steve Lodder is simply titled The Maggie Nicols Songbook. Are You Ready? recalls Nicols's own compositions from memory, working out tunes and turning them over. New routes down old paths form in moments of improvisation and all wrong turns are played out with joyous discovery. What John Stevens dubbed Maggie's "ability to find the 'rhythmelodic'" meets a willingness to be understood and to understand. Solo at the piano, Nicols is still firmly rooted in the collective however -- "Are You Ready / Sans Papiers" sets the words of poet Vicky Scrivener to tune; a tale of migration and struggle which is as important to Nicols as the songs her mother wrote. "Whatever Arises" - a companion disk to the 'Songs', is a meditation of sorts, a process of 'following the energy' which has its roots in John Stevens' work. "Improvisation gives the confidence to compose," Nicols told us in an interview about some of her archival tapes, and here the two are as important as each other. Beginning with breath and repetition, "Whatever Arises" allows Nicols to find new voices, accompanied by the piano and over dubbings of her tap shoes on the concrete floor. Brilliantly she is able to share her moments of discovery with the listener, finding comfort in vulnerability. Whilst rooted in Stevens' work, Nicols' improvisational techniques is also reminiscent of Pauline Oliveros's Sonic Meditations. Recorded at Cafe OTO July 15-17 2021 by Shaun Crook. Mixed by Shaun Crook. Mastered by Sean McCann. Artwork by Annalisa Colombara. Lettering by Rosella Garavaglia. Layout by Maja Larrson.

$16.00 IN STOCK

Full recording of one of the most engaging and beguiling Late Junction live sessions -- the one-off first meeting between Korean multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha and writer and performer Roy Claire Potter. It's an unlikely pairing which works from the first breath. Park Jiha plays the saenghwang, a Korean mouth organ which she blows in long multiphonics to set pace for Potter's words. They unfurl a scene slowly in front of you, rich and focused, shifting your field of vision and drawing you in, elsewhere. It's impossible not to follow, not to look for where they point. When the piri sounds for a flooded town on the B side, the water flows between your own feet; Potter's words a sometimes frightening hörspiel in scouse. Though the details are fine, the space each artist gives one another and their instruments, their language, is given to the listener in turn. A careful melody picks out a route for words with no fixed meaning, a body with no fixed direction, and you are invited to listen and see a kind of music made visible in its inference.

Influenced by linguistics and performance theory, Roy Claire Potter makes performance, text, drawing, installation and film, and often collaborates with musicians and sound artists to make audio for music festivals and radio. Across the wide range of their practice, Roy tells stories built from fragmented, intense images that depict moving bodies or domestic scenes and architectural settings. Roy's interest in subtext and narrative sequencing is felt in the way they use fast-paced talking or reading speeds, and restricted or partial views of space. Complicated social or group dynamics, and the aftermath of violent events are common themes in Roy's work and are usually treated with a dark, sometimes willful humor.

Park Jiha creates exploratory music rooted in traditional Korean instrumental performance. To this session she brings three instruments: a Korean hammered dulcimer called a yanggeum, a saenghwang which is an instrument made of 24 slender bamboo pipes attached to a bowl and played like a harmonica and a double-reed bamboo flute called a piri, which sounds similar to an oboe.

Recorded and mixed on January 30, 2020 by Rob Winter, Pete Smith and Andy Rushton at Maida Vale Studios, London.

$28.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Full recording of one of the most engaging and beguiling Late Junction live sessions -- the one-off first meeting between Korean multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha and writer and performer Roy Claire Potter. It's an unlikely pairing which works from the first breath. Park Jiha plays the saenghwang, a Korean mouth organ which she blows in long multiphonics to set pace for Potter's words. They unfurl a scene slowly in front of you, rich and focused, shifting your field of vision and drawing you in, elsewhere. It's impossible not to follow, not to look for where they point. When the piri sounds for a flooded town on the B side, the water flows between your own feet; Potter's words a sometimes frightening hörspiel in scouse. Though the details are fine, the space each artist gives one another and their instruments, their language, is given to the listener in turn. A careful melody picks out a route for words with no fixed meaning, a body with no fixed direction, and you are invited to listen and see a kind of music made visible in its inference.

Influenced by linguistics and performance theory, Roy Claire Potter makes performance, text, drawing, installation and film, and often collaborates with musicians and sound artists to make audio for music festivals and radio. Across the wide range of their practice, Roy tells stories built from fragmented, intense images that depict moving bodies or domestic scenes and architectural settings. Roy's interest in subtext and narrative sequencing is felt in the way they use fast-paced talking or reading speeds, and restricted or partial views of space. Complicated social or group dynamics, and the aftermath of violent events are common themes in Roy's work and are usually treated with a dark, sometimes willful humor.

Park Jiha creates exploratory music rooted in traditional Korean instrumental performance. To this session she brings three instruments: a Korean hammered dulcimer called a yanggeum, a saenghwang which is an instrument made of 24 slender bamboo pipes attached to a bowl and played like a harmonica and a double-reed bamboo flute called a piri, which sounds similar to an oboe.

Recorded and mixed on January 30, 2020 by Rob Winter, Pete Smith and Andy Rushton at Maida Vale Studios, London.

$29.50 IN STOCK

OTOROKU present the first vinyl reissue of Blue Notes for Johnny, a defining statement by one of the greatest ensembles in the history of jazz. Recorded in mid-1987 by Blue Notes -- then reduced to the trio of Dudu Pukwana on alto sax, Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums, and Chris McGregor on piano -- it encounters the band 25 years after their founding embarking on an inward meditation through collective music making dedicated to Johnny Dyani, their former bandmate and friend. Blue Notes were founded in Cape Town in 1962, and stand among the most important ensembles in the history of jazz. Artistically brilliant and groundbreaking, they were also the first widely visible multiracial band in South Africa. As a mixed-race band under apartheid, this group of friends and like-minded artists -- Chris McGregor, Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Dyani, and Louis Moholo-Moholo -- existed within a context that viewed their mere existence as a dangerous and subversive act. Following the untimely passing of Johnny Dyani in late 1986, the last three members of the original line-up -- McGregor, Pukwana and Moholo-Moholo -- reformed to pay tribute to yet another of their fallen brothers. Blue Notes for Johnny, the group's second musical memorial to a band member, incorporates a considerably broader range of touchstone and practices than its predecessor, nodding toward the band's foundations in be-bop and post-bop without abandoning where they had journeyed along the way. Internalizing equal elements of hard-bop, modalism, and free improvisation, it is a startling creative statement, imbued with a tension that renders an equally radical and sophisticated challenge; a furious tide -- slow in pace and it slow to reveal itself -- masquerading in gentler forms. Both Dudu Pukwana and Chris McGregor would pass away three years later in 1990, leaving Moholo-Moholo -- who continues to carve a groundbreaking trajectory across the world of jazz -- as the last surviving member. Transferred from the original masters and featuring an exact reproduction of the original artwork. Remastered by Giuseppe Ilelasi.

$35.50 IN STOCK

2025 restock. OTOROKU present the first vinyl reissue of Blue Notes for Mongezi, one of the most passionate celebrations of a life in music ever laid to tape. Recorded in late 1975 by Blue Notes, then reduced to a quartet -- Dudu Pukwana on alto sax, whistle, percussion, and vocals, Johnny Dyani on bass, bells, and vocals, Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums, percussion, and vocals, and Chris McGregor on piano and percussion -- and issued the following year by Ogun, the album is a kairos; the first commercial release by one of free jazz's seminal ensembles, captured them 13 years after their founding -- at the height of their powers -- delivering an explosive dirge dedicated to Mongezi Feza, their former bandmate and friend. Blue Notes were founded in Cape Town in 1962 and stand among the most important ensembles in the history of jazz. Artistically brilliant and groundbreaking, they were also the first widely visible multiracial band in South Africa. As a mixed-race band under South African apartheid; this group of friends and like-minded artists -- Chris McGregor, Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Dyani, and Louis Moholo-Moholo -- existed within a context that viewed their mere existence as a dangerous and subversive act. In 1964, as the pressure mounted, they joined an exodus of musicians leaving for Europe, eventually settling in London during the following year. Not long after arriving, and facing continued economic peril, the group buckled. Johnny Dyani left to join Don Cherry's band. Moholo-Moholo and Dyani followed suit and joined Steve Lacy on tour, and the remaining members morphed into a number of ensembles that eventually grew to become Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath. In late 1975, Mongezi Feza suddenly passed away at the age of thirty from pneumonia. Nine days later, on the December 23rd, following the memorial service to their friend, Pukwana, Dyani, McGregor, and Moholo-Moholo gathered in a rehearsal room in London and set out to play. The resulting double-LP coalesced into four long-form movements that occupy a side each, collectively unleashing an onslaught of free jazz fire, fluidly covering a remarkable range of moods and tactical approaches across its length. A frenzied funeral dirge, a cry, and catharsis, the record rises and falls between playful and joyous movements of deconstructed song, rhythmic and vocal tribalism, and churning, instrumental free expression. A decidedly African vision of free jazz, coalescing as a collective expression of celebration and loss on a cold London day. Transferred from the original masters and featuring an exact reproduction of the original artwork. Remastered by Giuseppe Ilelasi.

$23.50 IN STOCK

New music from XT (saxophone player Seymour Wright and percussionist Paul Abbott) in the form of an exhilarating, super compressed, reflective re-assembling of a dozen years working together. Re-animating free improvisation with a Chicago house palette, Deorlaf X is made up of frenetic slabs of mutated multiphonics and triggered percussion, suspended in bouts of possessed reflexive quiet. Where the duo's 2019 release Palina'tufa (EE 004LP) on Empty Editions focused primarily on a response to the real (and imagined) landscapes of Hong Kong, Deorlaf X is located in Dalston, and specifically at OTO. Wrung through Shuan Crook's studio over three nights, the recordings dug from XT's archive aren't simply "duo" -- instead they actively draw on their public and social contexts, involving the influence of audience, engineers and other visiting musicians -- Ghédalia Tazartès, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Senyawa, RP Boo, and others. "A changing cast of OTO guests, audience and emotions hosted each time in a new London. XT structures sound an ongoing attempt to listen and learn about the rich and transformative affordances of the situations we occupy." The resulting record puts a pin through a dialogue between Abbott and Wright, between histories, potentials, fact, fiction, ideas, friends, audiences, and spaces. The heavy use of referencing recalls the footwork or house traditions of sampling across all manner of influences; what's recalled is primarily the structures of jazz -- Ornette Coleman, Charlie Parker, Anthony Braxton -- but also Ann Quin, Clarice Lispector, Anna Halprin. What's created in recall is a kind of diary, a hyper remembering -- a blisteringly warped kind of future music. Recorded by James Dunn, Shaun Crook and Paul Skinner. Assembled, mixed and re-recorded January 19, 20, and 21, 2020 by XT at Lockdown Studio, Cable Street. Engineer Shaun Crook. Sounds/design by XT. Cover painting Leon Kossoff, Dalston Junction No.3, June 1973 oil on board, 20.5 x 25 cm.

$27.00 IN STOCK

Two Duos is pressed from cellist Okkyung Lee's most recent OTO Residency; the first side a duo with Jérôme Noetinger on Revox B77 and the second with Nadia Ratsimandresy on Ondes Martenot. Cut together, the two meetings seem to raise three cellos in the search for expressive voice: the cello, it's magnetic reproduction, and the dual controls of the machine invented to expand on its musical qualities. On the A side Noetinger's opening tape hiss establishes a current; an electrical partner who gives Lee room to slide across and stretch out. Progressively the cello is returned, duplicated and manipulated with increased velocity and distortion. Noetinger draws out the full extent of Lee's extended technique; rewinding strands of Lee's horse hair and transmuting her percussive attacks into shuddering echoes, before letting his own concrete interjections spin the duo's sonic tussle into an almost romantic daydream. On side B the ondes (invented by French cellist and wartime radio operator Maurice Eugene Louis Martenot and so loved by Bernard Parmegiani, Varese, and Messiaen) seems shaken from classical tradition and those long, drawn out horrorscapes it has come to be associated with. In a duel with Lee, Ratsimandresy grasps the ondes's extraordinary capacity for dexterity, nuance, and speed, hounding Lee's cello in a bid to drive her instrument out of the past and into the future. Two fantastic pairings and a testament to the freshness with which Lee and her collaborators continue to work with their instruments. Personnel: Okkyung Lee - cello; Jérôme Noetinger - Revox B77; Nadia Ratsimandresy - Ondes Martenot. Recorded live at Cafe OTO. Mixed and mastered by Lasse Marhaug. Design by Maja Larrson.

$17.50 IN STOCK

Double-CD documenting the magic meeting of one of the all-time great rhythm sections in jazz: percussionist Hamid Drake and bassist William Parker, with London's brilliant Black Top (Orphy Robinson and Pat Thomas) and Elaine Mitchener. Across two sets the quintet are infectiously energetic and inspired, striding from synchronized heavy groove to star bright solos, whilst incorporating dub effects, guembri, and sumptuous blues piano playing. Formed by Orphy Robinson and Pat Thomas but always realized with an ever-changing number of invited musicians, Black Top's blend of lo-fi samples, dub effects and experimental electronics has been daring free improvisation since 2011. Their virtuoso performances draw on their Afro-Caribbean roots with delicious spontaneity and humor; the histories of Ridley Road Market, the LIO and Islamic West Africa are sounded out side by side on iPad, marimba and vibraphone. Having met in 2006, Black Top played with bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake as part of their residency at Cafe OTO in 2016; forming a quartet grounded in transatlantic kinship but which looked outward to the Caribbean, calypso music and Saharan Gnawa rhythms. When Parker and Drake returned to OTO in 2019 Black Top reformed again, but this time with the brilliant addition of vocalist Elaine Mitchener. Over the last few years, the clarity with which Mitchener has explored vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde has been stunning, but here the range in her influences is manifest, moving effortlessly between phonetic and poetic experimentation and spoken word, all the while at ease with soul soaked jazz and dissonant free fall. A hand drum duet with Hamid Drake astonishes before being laced perfectly with cosmic theremin and Parker's fantastic acid shehnai. Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Sunday July 28th 2019 by Paul Skinner and mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Photos by Dawid Laskowski and artwork by Oliver Pitt.

$165.00 NOT IN STOCK

OTOROKU present a reissue of Evan Parker's legendary box set Collected Solos. Originally issued in 1989 and long ago sold out, Collected Solos brings Evan Parker's first four solo LPs issued on Incus -- Saxophone Solos (1976), The Snake Decides (1986), Monoceros (1978), and Six of One (1982) -- together, alongside a cassette featuring extra cuts from the sessions at FMP studios which didn't make it onto Saxophone Solos, and an accompanying booklet written by the late writer, Paul Haines. Housed in a specially made and screen-printed box and numbered in an edition of 250, the collection celebrates Evan Parker's remarkable commitment to a creative life and work.

"Years on we are still interested, fascinated and compelled to listen to this physical, spectacular and wholly original music at the heart of Evan's remarkable creative living. It is an inspiring example, study and celebration of commitment to creating (in) life." --Seymour Wright

$25.50 IN STOCK

2022 restock. OTOROKU reissue Evan Parker's first solo LP Saxophone Solos. Recorded by Martin Davidson in 1975 at the Unity Theatre in London, at that time the preferred concert venue of the Musicians' Co-operative, Parker's densely woven and often cyclical style has yet to form; instead throaty murmurs appear under rough-hewn whistles and calls -- the wildly energetic beginnings of an extraordinary career. Reissued with liner notes from Seymour Wright in an edition of 500.

"The four pieces across the two sides of Saxophone Solos -- 'Aerobatics 1' to '4' -- are testing, pressured, bronchial spectaculars of innovation and invention and determination. Evan tells four stories of exploration and imagination without much obvious precedent. Abstract Beckettian cliff-hanging detection/logic/magic/mystery. The conic vessel of the soprano saxophone here recorded contains the ur-protagonists: seeds, characters, settings, forces, conflicts, motions, for new ideas, to delve, to tap and to draw from it story after story as he has on solo record after record for 45 years. 'Aerobatics 1-3' were recorded on June 17th 1975, by Martin Davidson at Parker's first solo performance. This took place at London's Unity Theatre in Camden. 'Aerobatics 4' was recorded on September 9th the same year, by Jost Gebers in the then FMP studio in Charlottenburg, Berlin. Music of balance and gravity, fulcra, effort, poise, and enquiry. Sounds thrown and shaken into and out of air, metal and wood. It is -- as the titles suggest -- spectacular." --Seymour Wright, 2020

$25.50 IN STOCK

2022 restock; originally recorded and released in 1980, Six of One beautifully captures the detail in Evan Parker's high frequency split tones for which he is now perhaps better known. Five years on from Saxophone Solos and with circular breathing and polyphonics well-worn into his live performances, Parker's experiments here produce sustained passages of brilliant flight. Set into the echoes and resonances of a St Judes On The Hill church, the results are stunning. Transferred from the original master tapes by Thomas Hall at Abbey Road Studios and released in an edition of 500.

"The recital commences with a split tone line of twining sine waves that expand and contract in telepathic collusion. Pitch dynamics narrow and redefine themselves more emphatically on the second piece where sliding legato rivulets born of Parker's compartmentalized tonguing create the sonic semblance of up to three separate voices emanating from the single reed speech center. It's a feat he's accomplished innumerable times since, but every fresh hearing never fails to open an aperture into a style of improvisatory expression that is at once wholly alien and intensely mesmerizing. There's also something strangely subterranean about the flood of sounds, like the rush percolating water through an underground aquifer system enroute to unknown tributaries. The third piece trades tightly braided tones for leaner and more linear phrases, but a vaporous trail of phantom notes still clings to the central line. And so it goes, with the illusion of repetition guiding the momentum, though Parker never explicitly repeats himself." --Derek Taylor, All About Jazz, 2002