Anne-F Jacques/Takamitsu Ohta, Oto to Secchi

track done in collaboration with Noémi Büchi for Biodiversità compilation. Symbiotic Chants 2022

photo: Jean-Marc Avila [ https://jeanmarcavila.com ]
Mixing and Mastering: Suoni Speziali

Symbiotic Chants

Feldermelder & Noémi Büchi - Chasing Crispr Variants

https://continuous-tone.bandcamp.com/album/restless-leg

This new release by Continuous Tone is a stereo mix of a live performance presented at Café OTO earlier this year. Kate Carr and Iain Chamber invited Tom to respond to their theme of “Rubbish Music” in which they take discarded objects as source material for live improvisations. The subsequent composition employs a pair of modified kitchen pedal bins as musical instruments; close mic’d, with the lids opening and closing periodically to modulate the sounds passing through and ‘prepared’ with bamboo sticks placed on the speaker cones inside so that low frequencies vibrate the metal lids. 
credits
released November 7, 2022

Recorded by Pedro Subtil at Café OTO, July 10th, 2022
Mixed by Tom White
Mastered by Taku Unami

Restless Leg

Soft Close (excerpt) from Restless Leg (Continuous Tone)

me and who? (off key 3 days cover)

NTR07 - Apparitions [sample]

"Soulcaster" is the third solo record by Brooklyn-based composer/performer Joanna Mattrey. Following Live in Accord and various Notice Recordings-curated performances in the Hudson Valley, this album is a further development in our years-long friendship. With "Soulcaster", Mattrey scrapes, scratches, and wails on viola, prepared viola, and a tromba marina, built by Webb Crawford. Mattrey’s love of unique and unusual sounds has inspired her to alter the pure tone of the viola through preparations with styrofoam, plastic toys, chains, and other objects. But the newest sounds in her arsenal come from the tromba marina, which has one primary playing string and thirteen sympathetic strings. Rather than gently coaxing out the harmonics, as the historical playing style suggests, Mattrey employs a raucous and roaring approach.

The title, "Soulcaster", is borrowed from Brandon Sanderson’s book series, "The Stormlight Archive". In the fantasy series, a soulcaster is an instrument that transforms one object or life form into another. Mattrey’s practice connects heavily to the idea of transformation. She uses preparations and objects not only to create new sounds from her instruments, but to embrace the unknown. No matter how many times the same object has been used, depending on the vibrations on a given day, the preparations might bring out totally different sounds. This randomness creates a joyful challenge for Mattrey, who believes that especially during improvisation, music has its own life that activates and guides the sound forward. Mattrey surrenders to this energetic line of sound over the eleven tracks featured on this tape.

NTR076 - Joanna Mattrey - Soulcaster - [Sing Out]

"A Beaded Gesture" captures Sandy Ewen and Jason Nazary in a bewildering live set recorded at Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. Ewen’s prepared guitar and Nazary’s drums and percussion share a deeply stimulating dynamic. Ewen has recorded with such diverse folks as Tamio Shiraishi, Roscoe Mitchell, and id m theft able, while Nazary has worked with Travis Laplante, Chris Williams, Notice Recordings alumnus Leo Chang, and the late great Jaimie Branch, among others.

Having admired both their relentless collaborative energies over the past few years, it is with great joy that we present this tightly woven, roiling, playful, and cathartic album from two vital players in New York City’s free improv scene.

NTR077 - Sandy Ewen - Jason Nazary - A Beaded Gesture - [Made Way For Ice]

"Magnet Blues" presents Zhu Wenbo and Zhu Songjie’s unique and utterly bizarre take on American blues, as if filtered through layered variations of darkness. Throughout the recording, we hear barely audible vocals, minimalist, smart, and subtle guitar work, and the folkish atmosphere of what sounds like distant train activity and dying radios. Instrumentation is notable here: Songjie uses the peculiar Casio EG-5 electric guitar, with a built-in cassette deck, while also playing harmonica. Wenbo plays a Fisher-Price toy cassette player, sings, and also plays harmonica. Throughout bursts of noise and rustling midrange timbres, Zhu and Zhu navigate an understated, focused, and dreamlike realm of song and texture.

NTR078 - Zhu Wenbo - Zhu Songjie - Magnet Blues - "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"

@noemibuchi x Avant Radio

"In this mix I want to manifest my passion, respect and love for all the selected artists, and bring together different worlds of musical genius. The aesthetic commonality that connects all these works has allowed me to enter into dialogue with the artist by including unreleased live recordings of myself. I am interested and inspired to observe how different, similar or even very different musical worlds function, but also to discover the universal commonality, the unique power of music through it, which no other medium in art expresses the way music does.
I'm mainly interested in compositional ideas and processes and I am fascinated by certain happenings in these selected passages. The power of innovation is both startlingly beautiful and almost frightening at the same time. With this mixing work I want to enter and influence this innovative power, by setting sounds, passages or accents in a new way. It triggers an indescribable euphoria in me.
Thank you very much for all this wonderful music, and thank you for listening."

Noémi Büchi is a Swiss/French composer and sound artist that creates electronic, symphonic maximalism. Her music is defined by a delicate synthesis of textural rhythms and electroacoustic- orchestral abstraction. She explores the potential of consonance and dissonance, contrasts rhythmic physicality with disruption and playfully emphasizes irregularities, creating an expansive listening experience marked by detail and elevation.
After her studies in electroacoustic composition, musicology and german literature, she already played at various festivals and was awarded a culture prize of the city of Zürich. Her 2019 debut EP ‘Matière’, released through Light of Other Days, drew widespread acclaim. In 2020, she released a second EP ‘Prismic Passages’ on the Leipzig- based tape label Visible Dinner. -OUS Records will be releasing her debut album ‘Matter’ and its prelude ‘Hyle’ in 2022, as well as the debut album of Musique Infinie, a collaboration between Noémi Büchi and Swiss/Italian composer and installation artist Feldermelder.
She explores the potential of consonance and dissonance, contrasts rhythmic physicality with disruption and playfully emphasizes irregularities, creating an expansive listening experience marked by detail and elevation.

Noémi Büchi - Avant Radio mix n.119

T.A.P.

Presented as a re-creation of two live sets performed in 2019, Patrick Gallagher deftly melds field recordings, a "fairly standard" synthesis toolkit, and prepared electric guitar into two peerless electro-acoustic compositions comprising his debut album for ENXPL (enmossed x psychic liberation).

As the album's title implies, "Set In the Bardo" embraces indeterminacy in all respects. An extreme range of timbrel variety and complexity is employed, from pure sine waves to nearly-incomprehensible sonic blasts. With a formal education in mathematics, Gallagher's astute arrangements modulate between smooth glissandos and abrupt interruptions, reflecting the compositional process used: salvaging hitherto-abandoned recordings and live snippets from the artist's archive. Post-processing was eschewed on the album in order to preserve the improvisatory nature of a live performance, giving an organic quality to the album which is often lost in academic compositions.

While "Set In the Bardo" was created in pre-pandemic times, it also functions well at this particular juncture of history. We have been 'set in the bardo' ourselves, and Gallagher has made an engrossing set of pieces - encapsulating and unfolding sonic uncertainties as we venture through trying times. Well worth many listening sessions; high volume and high fidelity during playback are recommended.

---

Patrick Gallagher is a sound artist and composer currently residing in Philadelphia, PA. He cut his teeth in the North Carolina avant-garde underground, perfecting his composition processes with numerous live performances as well as releases on Tone Log, Hot Releases, Refulgent Sepulchre, and other independent labels. 

releases January 29, 2021

mastering :: Jack Callahan

cover artwork :: Autumn Casey

design ++ layout :: Robin JM Vanderheyden

a portion of Side A was recorded live at Rhizome (Washington, DC) by Steve Sanford

all proceeds to The Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project (Philadelphia, PA) :: www.yasproject.com

Set In The Bardo

Patrick Gallagher - Untitled [Set In The Bardo Side B Excerpt] (ENXPL05)

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

NTR076 - Joanna Mattrey - Soulcaster - [Sing Out]

cafeOTO

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