Takuroku digital label

Takuroku

OTO Digital

OTOROKU RELEASES

Abby Thomas hosts an hour long show on Resonance 104.4FM at 11pm every 1st Monday of the month, and reposted here.

OTO Radio

TR134 - Jean-Luc Guionnet - Totality [excerpt]

TR147 - Keiji Haino & The Hard Rocks - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

TR160 - Joachim Nordwall - 'FORMS OF ECSTASY'

TR164 - Taku Sugimoto - G Major... [excerpt]

TR188 - gilgul - OS-22 [excerpt]

TR172 - Yumbo - 'The End Of A Song'

TR192 - Paul Abbott - 'Deorlaf Z (version) for XT Deorlaf X Live' [excerpt]

TR191 - Taku Unami - 'Stardust 3'

TR187 - The Mermaid Café - Alice

Solo Guitar 2 was recorded by Bill Nace in 2008, in a good-sounding room in Bennington, Vermont. 

This year the record, originally released as a now (nearly) extinct cassette, is reissued without it’s mysterious and (maybe?) long-lost sibling Solo Guitar 1 (Like any good punk demo -- which, both aesthetically and energetically, Solo Guitar 2 is -- the thrill of discovery is made only sweeter by the potential of future discovery). 

The vinyl release comes a little less than a year after Bill’s first “official” solo record, BOTH, which was released by Drag City in May, 2020. The two records don’t necessarily stand in opposition, but they are at different points on the spectrum of production, tone, mood, time, place, age, career. Where BOTH is softened by the warmth and precision of a studio, there’s a wildness to Solo Guitar 2 which approaches the experience of witnessing Bill perform live. 

Made up of mostly brief pieces -- songs, practically -- Solo Guitar 2 winds tight, then unwinds, or sometimes snaps apart. Crackling, itchy static morphs into heavy, watery vibration, layered on metallic rattle. There are moments where that Bennington room sounds as sterile and lonely as a deserted art gallery. And then it becomes spacious and warm, like a cathedral filling with the hum of the universe. 

The bulk of Bill’s releases are collaborations with other artists, who are drawn to him (at least in part) because he’s an innovative player and a deep listener. Those qualities hold, and in certain ways intensify when he’s on his own. As he takes a series of unlikely tools across his prone guitar with the grace and urgency of someone at a loom or an aircraft control panel, there’s a sense of reaching inward. But where some might meander or navel-gaze, Bill’s playing is a process of constant dynamic construction. What unfurls can feel intensely personal, and often -- for reasons I don’t always understand -- very moving. Bill isn’t interested in micromanaging his listeners’ experiences, but he does make room for us. 

Composer Pauline Oliveros observed that when we listen deeply to the world around us, we sometimes notice very subtle and quiet differences in sounds that we thought were familiar. As a result, she writes, “the slightest difference may lead you to a new creative relationship.” 

Bill is, I think, tuned in to these subtle and quiet differences. But, in a truly punk fashion, he flips this for the listener, making unfamiliar and not-very-subtle noise into something akin to (but also distinct from) familiar sounds: traffic outside your window, the soft roar of a conch shell to your ear, static between radio stations.Solo Guitar 2, full as it is of shades and moods and life, offers a fresh way of hearing. 

Margaret Welsh

Philadelphia, PA 2021

OM069 - Bill Nace "Solo Guitar 2" [sample]

MAP028 - Cucina Povera "Keruu"

TR190 - Patrick Ward - 'Retroflexion'

OTOROKU is proud to release one of the most engaging and beguiling Late Junction live sessions we’ve ever heard - the one off first meeting between Korean multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha and writer and performer Roy Claire Potter.

Park Jiha plays the saenghwang, a Korean mouth organ which she blows in long multiphonics to set pace for Potter’s words. Together 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 we are invited to listen and see a kind of music made visible in its inference. A truly very special record we are very proud to share.

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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 wilful humour.

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.

---

Park Jiha / yanggeum, saenghwang, piri

Roy Claire Potter / voice

---

Recorded and mixed on: 30 January 2020 by Rob Winter, Pete Smith and Andy Rushton at Maida Vale Studios, London for “Late Junction - Roy Claire Potter and Park Jiha in session”. Produced by Rebecca Gaskell, Katie Callin and Alannah Chance at Reduced Listening for BBC Radio 3. Originally broadcast on Friday 28th February 2020, apart from Track 4 which aired on Late Junction the 21st February 2020. 

Mastered by Katie Tavini. Original artwork: “Three Boys” by Claire Cansick. Liner notes by Frances Morgan.

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC

 

 

LP version arrives in a gatefold LP. Both CD and LP include a written response to the record by Frances Morgan.

ROKU029 - Park Jiha & Roy Claire Potter "Saenghwang For The Milky Boys"

ROKU031 - Ecka Mordecai "Promise and Illusion" [Study Of A Flame]

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, most notably in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Feminist Improvising Group and more recently with the likes of 'Les Diaboliques', Maggie Nicols’ talents stretch into song, dance, poetry, performance and composition. Whilst Cafe OTO was shut over lockdown we invited Maggie Nicols to follow up her brilliant Creative Contradiction’ (Takuroku 2020) with some time spent singing alone at the piano. The release comprises an LP of songs and a 2CD edition including a companion disk of free improvised meditations entitled, ‘Whatever Arises.’ The LP and 2CD contain different material.

ROKU032 - Maggie Nicols "Are You Ready / Sans Papiers"

MENTAL SHAKE

Our tenth OTOROKU release sees a return to the group that kick-started the label - the veteran German reedsman and free jazz pioneer Peter Broetzmann with the long-running London bass/drums partnership of John Edwards and Steve Noble. After the release of '…The Worse The Better' that group went on to play a series of devastating shows in Europe and to emerge as one of Broetzmann's finest working groups. Over the same period Peter was developing a deep rapport with Jason Adasiewicz, the upstart vibraphone player from Chicago. What seems on paper like an awkward pairing reveals itself on stage and on record as a symbiotic revelation. Adasiewicz's physical attack matching Broetzmann for impact whilst the extended sustain of the vibes opens up an eerie space for some of Broetzmann's most fertile lyricism.

The recording is from the last set of a two-day residency at Cafe OTO that brought these two groups together for an astonishing quartet. Adasiewicz and Noble struck up an immense partnership in rhythm. Edwards wrestled with a broken house bass and failing amplifier and still managed new levels of invention - stoking the others onwards. Broetzmann was clearly energised - I swear I saw him dancing at the side of the stage whilst exchanging a shattered reed. And for all the usual rhetoric of Free Jazz bluster and machismo, this is a meeting characterised by the joy of communal creation that makes you want to dance - even if only in your head.

----

Peter Broetzmann / alto and tenor sax, Bflat clarinet, Taragato
Jason Adasiewicz / vibraphone
John Edwards / double bass
Steve Noble / drums

----

Recorded live at Cafe OTO on 12 August 2013 by James Dunn.
Mixed by Rupert Clervaux at Grays Inn Road. Mastered by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at Calyx.

Design by Brö/Untiet. Drawing by Brö. Photocollage (on sleeve reverse) by Dawid Laskowski

ROKU010. LP/CD/Digital Download. Edition of 1000.

ROKU010 Broetzmann / Adasiewicz / Edwards / Noble - MENTAL SHAKE (excerpt)

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 humour, a la Henry Cow. 

Enlisting General MIDI to create frenetic, vital patterns of dis-organisation 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. 

On first listens we recalled 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 we asked to write the liners. Gretchen’s words are unsurprisingly as extraordinary as the record itself, so we’ll 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 Electro Magnetic 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.”

—

Artwork by Sunik Kim
Layout and design by Jeroen Wille 
Liner notes by Vymethoxy Redspiders
Mastered by Anotine Nouel at Sound Love Studios

All music by Sunik Kim
Track 1 edited by John Wall

—

OTOROKU
18-22 Ashwin Street
Dalston, London
2023

OTOROKU is distributed internationally by Cargo. For any further enquiries about this release, contact abby@cafeoto.co.uk.

Potential

ROKU035 - Sunik Kim - Potential [sample]

"Cat's Flux" from ROKURE007 - Collective Calls (Urban) (Two Microphones)

Caius Williams – 'Ame' (from 'Gwannach' - Otoroku, 2023)

Blacks' Myths meets Black Top featuring Dirar Kalash & Soweto Kinch - 5.9.23 [excerpt]

Akhira Sano – 'Keep Making Selects'

Kim Myhr & Lasse Marhaug - 31.5.17 [excerpt]

Excerpt of the first five minutes from the forthcoming vinyl re-issue of 'Topography of The Lungs' - one of the key recordings in the development of free improvisation and originally the first release on Incus, the label founded by Evan Parker, Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley to document the music. 

This vinyl issue caps off a year celebrating Evan Parker's 70th Birthday. Evan plays a week of concerts at Cafe OTO and The Vortex from the 20-26 October. 

Release Date: 15 December 2014

Liner notes by Evan Parker (for the 2014 re-issue):

‘The Topography of the Lungs’ was the first recording I made as a "leader" - in the somewhat antiquated terminology of the times. What this means in simple terms is that I set up the date and invited Han and Derek to participate - after that it was a matter of open interaction.

The original notes make clear my enthusiasm for the work that Derek Bailey and Han Bennink had done as a duo and it was good of them to share their discoveries with me. It was the first release on Incus, a label that I set up with Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley with financial assistance from music journalist Michael Walters.  No accurate history of Incus Records has yet been written. After parting company  and when the conditions of my agreement with Derek Bailey had been met, it was issued as a CD, thanks to Martin Davidson, on my label psi.

Musicians of my generation were very happy when the CD superseded the LP. I remember clearly the initial argument that CD was an elitist format... Times and attitudes have changed and the LP has made a serious return, especially in the documentation of marginal musics. OTOroku is run by and, perhaps, largely for, a new generation of listeners who have an affection for the LP format that reminds me of my youth.

I am very happy that a label associated with one of the most important music venues in London is overseeing this release.

I often travel along Dawes Road in Fulham and pass the building where the recording was made.  It is on the first floor by a bus stop and was a small space with a dead acoustic, probably ideal for making low-budget rock demos, which encouraged very analytical listening.

The engineer, Bob Woolford, was not shocked by what we were doing. On the contrary he was then, and remains, one of the great engineers, along with Adam Skeaping and Michael Gerzon who enjoyed the challenges of recording alternative musics.

In the intervening forty-odd years since its first release, the idealism of the original notes has been battered almost sense-less by the Neo-Liberal (Neo-Fascist would be a more accurate term) moves to global hegemony. I take heart from the environ-mental, Occupy and anti-war movements and would encourage all younger listeners to find a way to live their lives as far as possible without interference and control by decisions made in corporate boardrooms. May the music here give you energy and fuel your imaginations.

					          EP  (August, 2014)



PRE-ORDER NOW

Evan Parker / Derek Bailey / Han Bennink 'Topography of the Lungs' [Excerpt] (ROKU(RE)001)

KYOSAKU - 11.9.23 [excerpt]

Beautiful, entrancing set from highland bagpiper, composer and improviser, Erwan Keravec.

In seeking out the more unusual sounds, and ways of playing and listening to his instrument, far from its original cultural setting, Keravec explores improvised music, free and ‘noise’ jazz. With an interest in movement and in settings associated with reinvention, he also writes, plays and improvises for dance.

In this performance, recorded in October 2022, Keravec lets the breath ebb and flow over 40 hypnotic minutes. Dense tones buzz and drone, woozily circling the room, occasionally breaking into brief peels of light before building up into rapturous hamonic clusters and almost-giddy uliulations. With a sound that seems to perfectly fill the room - and make full use of its own sonic idiosyncrasies - Keravec utilises a dizzying range of techniques that makes this solo instrumental set one to savour.

--

Recorded by Billy Steiger
Mixed and mastered by James Dunn
Cover photograph by Nicolas Godin

Erwan Keravec - 23/.10.22 [excerpt]

First solo release from vocalist, movement artist and composer Elaine Mitchener, whose work encompasses improvisation, contemporary music theatre and performance art. Solo Throat draws on the work of African-American and African-Caribbean poets Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire, Una Marson and N. H. Pritchard as source material for twelve new vocal compositions
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 (“the/e so/ou/nd be/t/ween”), and commissioning composers Matana Roberts, Jason Yarde and George Lewis to respond to the work of Sylvia Wynter (“On Being Human as Praxis”, Donaueschinger Musiktage, 2020). 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, Michener’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, emphasising 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 utilises silence and multiphonics to complicate the act of voicing and the way we listen.

Solo Throat

ROKU036 - Elaine Mitchener - "stretchedwoundspeaks" from Solo Throat

John Chantler And Daniel M Karlsson - 6.12.23 [excerpt]

Recorded Friday 26 September 2014 at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook. Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at Calyx. Photo by Dawid Laskowski.

Full concert recording available direct from Cafe OTO:
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/shop/king-ayisoba-live-at-cafe-oto-digital-download/

King Ayisoba - I Want To See You My Father (from Live at Cafe OTO / DS014)

Taken from 'The Snake Decides' LP

One of the final Incus releases and one that was written up in The Penguin Guide to Jazz as ‘an essential document of modern music’. Otoroku is proud to release the first ever vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s legendary recording The Snake Decides. Featuring 4  solos recorded in 1986 in St. Paul's Church, Oxford by the late Michael Gerzon. The Snake Decides is a groundbreaking example how far the language of a particular instrument can be taken.

From Brian Morton’s liner new notes: 

“The Snake Decides attracts a certain array of adjectives - intense, radical, fearsome, hypnotic, virtuosic – and occasionally allows a more ambitious reviewer to avoid platitude by talking more specifically about 32nd harmonics, circular breathing, multiphonics and Gerson's exact choice and placement of microphones. But this misses a point, too. Listening to this record, either for the first or the fortieth time, is an arousing experience.”

Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and housed in a reverse board sleeve with new liner notes by Brian Morton this is the ultimate document of one of the most important recordings in all of Parker’s extensive and exploratory catalogue. Edition of 500 copies.

Evan Parker - Leipzig Folly

Having released her 'Melancoholic' 7" on American Tapes back in 2012, it was super special to have Sharon Gal play a solo set as part of Wolf Eye's residency last year. 23.9.18 slinks around the demonic end of Gal's doings, akin to her work as Mama Wata (duo with Andie Brown) and Meltaot (with Edwin Pouncey). Bells and electronics summon malevolent birdsong and creatures lit by the light of a willo-the-wisp. 

---

Sharon Gal / electronics, vocals

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Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Sunday 23rd September 2018 byt Shaun Crook. Mixed & mastered by Jimmy Dunn. All music by Sharon Gal.

DS130 - Sharon Gal "23.9.18" [sample]

DS135 - Irreversible Entanglements and Pat Thomas - 5.4.18 [sample]

One of Stockholm’s most versatile and probing pianists returned to OTO last Autumn, and we're pleased to release both sets from the evening - a solo and a special duo. Having met in 2014 when playing with Johan Arrias, Lisa Ullén and Welsh violinist Angharad Davies reunite for a gorgeously spacious set. Both extremely technically accomplished but led by a sensitivity to so many musics, their duo set is a highlight.

DS131 - Lisa Ullén & Angharad Davies - 14.10.18 [sample]

Six months on and finally into summer we're buzzed to share the recording of Chicago footwork originator and pioneer RP Boo alongside ever-radical, longstanding collaborators Seymour Wright and Paul Abbott in a special New Years Eve trio. 

RP Boo, Seymour and Paul share a fascination with the musical history of Chicago – a source of which is of continual nourishment to their ongoing practice. While RP Boo’s footwork takes from the rhythmic structures of Chicago house and the samples, grooves and melodies of 60’s/70’s Chicago soul, disco and R&B, Seymour and Paul share a fascination with these musics, and bring to this lineage a long term engagement with Chicago’s jazz traditions, from Baby Dodds to the AACM. 

Expect spurred soul cut with condensed, triggered kit drums and sax. Samples from The Fog, Gerald Levert, Tweet and Evanescence(!) 

---

RB boo / cdjs

Seymour Wright / alto saxophone (actual and potential)
Paul Abbott / drums (real and imaginary)
---

Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Tuesday 31st December 2018 by Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by Paul Abbott.

31.12.18 DS134 - XT & RP Boo - 31.12.18

Otoroku is extremely proud to present the first vinyl reissue of one of the most legendary free jazz records ever produced. Originally released in 1978 on Ogun recordings, Louis Moholo Octet’s Spirits Rejoice! is a high achievement in the movement of the era as it soars beyond oppression with a raucous and spiritually uplifting surge of movement and melody 

Featuring Harry Miller, Johnny Dyani, Keith Tippett, Evan Parker, Nick Evans, Radu Malfatti and Kenny Wheeler, this is former Blue Note artist Louis Moholo’s first album under his own name and is a classic example of the cross-pollination between South African and British players. Mongezi Feza’s ‘You Ain’t Gonna Know Me ‘Cos You Think You Know Me’ alone is enough to make your life a better place.

From Matthew Wright’s new liner notes: 

The South African melodies, now so familiar, were wholeheartedly taken on board by the individual musicians, their unity of purpose mirroring the belief in the strength of the collective. Stunning solos, often close to the edge, feature throughout –  Evan Parker and Keith Tippett on “Shine Wherever You Are”; the contrasting trombone styles of Nick Evans and Radu Malfatti on “You Ain’t Gonna Know Me...”; the octet sounding like a full big band; and behind them, the relentlessly rhythmic urgency of the piano, bass and drums. Add to this Kenny Wheeler’s moving and all-encompassing trumpet on the elegiac “Amaxesha Osizi” and the joyous flamboyancy of “Wedding Hymn” with Parker’s relatively straight-ahead tenor and Tippett’s dextrous piano solo over a bed of riffing horns, (fast) walking bass lines and a supreme sense of swing. Louis’ early hero, Big Sid Catlett, would have loved it!

This 2019 re-issue has been made with permission and in association with Ogun records. Features an exact reproduction of the original artwork and liner notes along with new liner notes from Matthew Wright. Remastered by Giuseppe IIelasi and packaged in a high gloss sleeve this is the definitive release of one of the absolute free jazz classics of the 20th Century.

Edition of 1000 copies.

Spirits Rejoice!

Louis Moholo Octet - You Ain't Gonna Know Me 'Cos You Think You Know Me

Pleased to present the full recording of Pat Thomas' moving tribute to Duke Ellington on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of his birth. According to Thomas, Ellington "never stopped discovering, never played the same tune in exactly the same way twice", and the same could be said here. The tunes are all there, but they emerge unpredictably, warped and hammered through the body of the piano in Pats own way. The second set was an hour long, with Pat rolling through' Rockin’ in Rhythm', 'Isfahan' and 'In a Sentimental Mood' in a collage of heavy harmonics, serious swing and a wicked appreciation for exploration. An absolute pleasure to be in the room for this one, and tremendously happy to share the recording. 

"Deconstructing and reconstructing as part of the interpretative process is second nature to Thomas. The obvious is kept at his arm’s length so from tangential start points, unforgettable melodies would creep back to plant flags firmly in the ground." - London Jazz News

DS139 - Pat Thomas Plays Duke Ellington [sample]

Abby Thomas selects some favourites from 2019 including microtonal music from Kyle Gann, a guitar and jew harp duo by Bill Nace & Chik White, futurist drama from Wokchiech Rusin and Doreen Kutzke's early yodel recordings. 

Tracklisting:

John Tchicai - Lied (Treader, 2005, reissued 2018, repressed 2019)

Kyle Gann - Hyperchromatica: V. Star Dance (Other Minds, 2018)

Rip Hayman - Dreams of India & China (Recital, 2019)

Pancrace - In The Evening (Penultimate Press, 2019)

Andaleeb M. Wasif - ERAY DEWANAY NAY FITRAT HE AJAB PAEE HAI (This Insane
Lover Of Yours Has A Habit Of His Own – So Unique) (Little Axe, 2019)

Humming Dogs - Le Passage (bison, 2019)

Bill Nace & Chik White - s/t (Open Mouth, 2019)

Wokchiech Rusin - Dance (The Funnel, Akashic, 2019)

Wokchiech Rusin - Sacrifice (The Funnel, Akashic, 2019)

Doreen Kutzke ‎– Schicksalsjahre Einer Jodlerin (Edition Löwenwall, 2019)

OTO Radio - Highlights from 2019

1st ever TN live show, Cafe OTO, Jan 6 2018 

Putative track sublisting: Go Decay!; Mercurial Seal; The Fire of Hate; Towers, Open, Fire; Fresh Borg Shining Fight/Agitator; Born in the Wrong Time/Destroyer/Buddy/Under the Void

(ft. Brigitte Fontaine, Babyfather, Areski, David d'Ath, Peter Gutteridge, Cameron Bain, Herman Meville, Peter Perrett and Celia Mancini)

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Madame Tlank / voice, violin, glockenspiel, grand piano

D.Velimirovich / soprano saxophone voice

clinical wasteman / backing tape, voice, Yamaha SU-10, gtr

---

Mixed live & recorded by James Dunn; post-mixed/"mastered" by clinical wasteman (i.e. James is not to blame for anything)

DS146 Triple Negative - Dio Boia

This moth we preview our new in-house digital imprint, TakuRoku, featuring works made in response to the current lockdown. 

https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/shop/category/takuroku/

Tracklisting:

1. Malvern Brume - Gaps In The Persistant Hiss 
2. James Rushford - Ouarzazate
3. xcrswx - Look Book
4. Red Brut - Not Live in Japan
5. Ashley Paul - Window Flowe
6. Steve Gunn - Spring in Brooklyn 1

As well as being an outlet for some incredible new work created over the past few weeks, TakuRoku aims to provide a way to help sustain both Cafe OTO and the artists involved through these incredibly challenging times. 50% of the profits from each purchased download will go directly to the artist, and artists will continue to receive the usual split from titles downloaded with membership credits.

We've got some amazing recordings in the pipeline so stay tuned over the coming weeks! In the meantime, hope you're al all safe and well.

OTO Radio - Takuroku Preview

Old Heaven is an independent bookshop which opened in Shenzhen in 2003. In the last decade or so the shop has gradually established itself as a record label and publisher. The label has released a dozen titles on CD, cassette and vinyl, including live recordings from the OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival & Tomorrow Festival by familiar names Otomo Yoshihide and Ruins.

Importantly though, Old Heaven documents the creative output of a loose group of new and old local artists at the same time. Younger musicians like Deng Boyu and Lao Dan sit in the catalogue alongside 1990s Chinese underground like dombra pioneer Mamer, groups like Puppet & IZ, and zhuizi singer Guo Yongzhang. 

Tracklisting:

1. Mamer - Aylanew 旋转 Rotating

2. Mamer - 星空 Kengistik

3. IZ - Cradle

4. IZ - Shadow

5. Puppet - 羊 Sheep

6. Guo Yongzhang - 老来难 Old Man’s Blues / 十大劝 Ten Commandments

7. Shinpei Ruike, Hiroaki Mizutani and Shinnosuke Takahashi, Lao Dan, Deng Boyu - Burning Bookshop  

8. Deng Boyu - 旷 Kuang

9. Li Daiguo & Lao Dan - 奔波儿灞 Benbo’erba

OTO Radio - Old Heaven Special

Abby Thomas airs new and forthcoming tracks from Cafe OTO's new digital imprint Takuroku, including music from Tim Parkinson, Wojtek Rusin, Phew, Marja Ahti & Judith Hamann, Chik White and Frederic Rzewski. Tracklisting below.

www.cafeoto.co.uk/takuroku

Thanks to James Dunn for this sad photo.

1. Chik White - Fuse Box from "217"
2. Goodiepal - [forthcoming]
3. Wojech Rusin - "Hannahsize" [forthcoming]
4. Time Parkinson "They've Got A Good View Of The Shard" from "Here Comes A Monster"
5. Toshimaru Nakamura "Nimb" [sample]
6. Phew - "Stomping In The Dirt" [forthcoming]
7. Marja Ahti & Judith Hamann "Portals" [sample]
8. Valentina Magaletti "Tutti Alcirco"
9. Wojech Rusin "Radiation" [forthcoming]
10. Chik White "Utility Box"
11. Frederic Rzewski played by Bobby Mitchell "Songs of Insurrection"

OTO Radio - Takuroku Time II

Taken from 'Rhythmic Landscapes', out now on Takuroku - www.cafeoto.co.uk/takuroku

"I wanted to make something which reflected a scene of nature, outside of the city, somewhere which has become more and more attractive to be over the last few months... So I made these synthesised percussion sounds to be almost real and wooden, which are weaving in and out across different tempos, playing patterns that are somewhat regular, but always changing slightly. This is meant to be analogous with the dawn chorus, or any scene of nature where lots of different small events are happening, layered, at once... But I only had the dawn chorus, so I recorded that at 4am on Monday morning. These individual bird songs weaving in and out, repeating, different birds joining and leaving throughout. So it's meant to be 3 different sound environments, or imaginary frames of an environment at 3 different moments." 
- Cam Deas

TR049 - Cam Deas - 'Rhythmic Landscapes 2'

The first in a series of two new releases by French tape-based experimental artist Jérôme Noetinger, who has treated us to countless unforgettable live sets at OTO. In this collaboration with Anthony Laguerre, each musician sent a 15 minutes improvisation to the other. Then each one made his own edit based on these two sequences.


"There is a great tradition of exchange and correspondence work in experimental music. In the 80's, there were a lot of cassettes with musicians who had never met each other but were exchanging sounds by mail. Nowadays it's even simpler and more obvious. The imposed period of confinement - in France between March 17 and May 11 - was ideal for restarting such projects.

Among those I was able to start, I was very happy to continue a new duo with Anthony Laguerre. A CD named "DnT" was released in the shadow of the pandemic on March 5th on the Dutch label Aagoo in the REV.Lab series. Anthony is a drummer, sound engineer, ingenious multi-instrumentalist and we also created together a small workshop to repair Revox tape recorders." - Jérôme Noetinger

Anthony Laguerre & Jérôme Noetinger
"Propagations"
"Propagation 1" (15'45") edit by Jérôme Noetinger.
"Propagation 2" (14'53") edit by Anthony Laguerre.
March / April 2020.

Propagations

TR050 - Anthony Laguerre & Jérôme Noetinger - Propagation 1 [sample]

Free improvising drummer and visual artist Terry Day talks us through his archives, selecting cuts from his extensive performance history going back to 1965 to the present.

Performers includes in the archive include: Mike Figgis, Pat Thomas, John Edwards, Evan Parker, Hannah Marshall, Satoko Fukuda, Eunjung Kim, Steve Beresford, Peter Urpeth, Neil Charles, Adrian Northover, Dawid Frydryk, Ansuman Biswas, John Russell, Davey Payne, Charlie Hart, John Butcher, Alison Blunt, David Leahy, Beibei Wang, George Khan, Maartje ten Hoorn, Sylvia Hallett, Sue Ferrar, J.F Pauvros, Katie Perks, Jerry Hunt and Tony Hymas.

Thanks to Terry Day, Blanca Regina, Pierre Bouvier Patron & Steve Beresford.

OTO Radio - Terry Day

TR100 - Maggie Nichols - Shadow and Light Source Both

As you can imagine we are under huge pressure at the moment and are working flat out to ensure Cafe OTO survives this. The impact of this situation is extremely acute for small venues like ours and we need all the support we can get to pull through. Please donate what you can, if you can. Thank you. 

Cafe OTO opened in April 2008 with the aim of providing a home for creative new music that exists outside of the mainstream. It comprises one large cafe/performance space open during the day serving food and drink with an evening programme of live music almost seven nights a week. 

OTOROKU is part of OTOProjects - a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (CIC) that has been set up to manage the programme at Café Oto. Any profits from OTOROKU are put back into supporting what we do and will help us to continue programming the best musicians and performers from all over the world.

www.cafeoto.co.uk

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