Mastered and/or mixed by Rupert Clervaux

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)

"London has long had a pedigree of crossbreeding improv's various styles and generations, but few have been as successful as this" - Richard Pinnell, The Wire

~~~

In his review of Exta (Fataka 7), the critic Brian Olewnick commented that “there's a tendency on the part of [John Tilbury's] younger companions to defer a bit to him”, adding that, in his view, this was not “necessarily a bad strategy”. In this encounter, their first as a trio, John Edwards and Mark Sanders do not defer to Tilbury at all, and it proves to be perhaps the best strategy of all. 

This is a vigorous music of equals, the democratic clamour of three distinct personalities committed to occupying a common space and working together to create something collective without erasing their differences in the process. There's tension, even friction, at times between Edwards and Sanders' quickness and Tilbury's more measured approach, but it's a productive tension and one that enables all three to explore areas of their playing that perhaps aren't always foregrounded: Edwards' ability to wait and patiently twist long resonant notes out of near nothingness; Sanders' sense of space and sharp delicacy with small sounds; and Tilbury's thunderous density and energetic attack. 

It's a startling performance and one that, like all great improvisation, exceeds, and perhaps even upsets, expectations.

~~~

1. Part I - 38:11
2. Part II - 29:26

John Edwards - double bass
Mark Sanders - drums and percussion
John Tilbury - bird calls, piano and tape

Recorded by Katherine Arnold at Cafe Oto on 17 June 2013 
Mixed and mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray’s Inn Road 
Title from Martha Rosler, Culture Class (Sternberg Press, 2013) 
Music by John Edwards, Mark Sanders and John Tilbury (PRS)
Produced by Trevor Brent

~~~

http://recordings.fataka.net/products/529458-a-field-perpetually-at-the-edge-of-disorder-john-edwards-mark-sanders-john-tilbury-fataka-9

John Edwards, Mark Sanders, John Tilbury - A field perpetually at the edge of disorder (Fataka 9)

"Sounds hide within shadows, and what might be a discreet scrape on a cymbal could equally be an inconspicuously stroked guitar string. The musicians feed their material into the space, enough to be picked up by their feedback system, after which they ride their own sounds, penetrating inside the noise to throw its shapes." - Philip Clark, The Guardian

~~~

Utterly beguiling recording of two great improvisers at work in the Hara Museum, Tokyo in the winter of 2013. Drumset, percussion, guitar, amplifier - a simple set up that produces complex and extremely dynamic results, with immense swells of enveloping feedback, fragile cymbal scrapes that hover at the edge of audibility, ecstatic free-rock clatter and slyly resonant melodies.

~~~

Recorded by Taku Unami at Hara Museum, Tokyo on 17 February 2013 
Mixed and mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray’s Inn Road 
Music by Roger Turner (PRS) and Otomo Yoshihide (JASRAC) 
Produced by Trevor Brent

~~~

http://recordings.fataka.net/products/541032-the-last-train-roger-turner-otomo-yoshihide-fataka-10

Roger Turner & Otomo Yoshihide - The last train (Fataka 10)

Diane Cluck was one of the earliest people to play at Cafe OTO, first performing in in June 2008, just a few months after we first opened. We’ve been lucky enough to have her return to OTO half a dozen times since.  This recording is taken from her sold out April 2014 residency where she performed over two nights with cellist Isabel Castellvi. Hang player Manu Delago also guests on four of the songs.

Diane Cluck / voice, guitar, squeezebox
Isabel Castellvi / cello, voice, autoharp
Manu Delago / hang (7, 8, 17, 18, )

Recorded by James Dunn at Cafe OTO on Friday 11 April 2014. 
Mixed by James Dunn. 
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Grays Inn Road, London. 
Photograph by Dawid Laskowski.

——

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC from www.cafeoto.co.uk



Diane Cluck 'Draw Me Out' (DS007)

All of the new Phil Minton record, A Doughnut's End, all at once.

At times barely more than breathing, at others breaking into full-throated song, A Doughnut's End is a highly concentrated sequence of solo improvisations that captures the full range of Minton's vocal powers.

As he says in the accompanying notes, while there is continuity between this record and previous "doughnut" albums, this latest offering is "less optimistic than forty years ago" when he still "thought stuff would get better", an optimism diminished by the continued political dominance of "slush-spraying doughnut-scoffers". 

A Doughnut's End is a stark and affecting testament to one man's ongoing exploration of the potential of the human voice. 


Phil Minton - A Feralish Choir (Fataka 11)

Otoroku is proud to present the second recorded outing from the universe shifting free jazz trio of Evan Parker, John Edwards and Chris Corsano.  This trio have been playing together for 9 years, sometimes expanding into quartets with the like of Noah Howard, John Russell, Joe McPhee, John Coxon & Paul Dunmall.  

The material on this LP was recorded during a 4 night residency by Corsano at Cafe Oto in August 2014.  All material recorded live, no editing or post production. As raw and liberating as it was on the evening.

All compositions Evan Parker - John Edwards - Chris Corsano 

Artwork by Dennis Tyfus
Recorded by James Dunn at Cafe Oto on 22nd August 2014
Mixed by Rupert Clervaux at Grays Inn Road, London
Mastered by Andreas (LUPO) Lubich at Calyx, Berlin

Limited Edition vinyl in an edition of 500 copies. First 100 copies come with limited 11"x11" risograph print designed by Dennis Tyfus 

mail@cafeoto.co.uk / https://www.cafeoto.co.uk


Evan Parker / John Edwards / Chris Corsano - The Hurrah (excerpt)

BEATRICE DILLON - Drum programming, electronics, synthesizer, bass guitar, field recordings

RUPERT CLERVAUX - Vibraphone, drums, percussion, field recordings, additional drum programming


A Different River Once - Beatrice Dillon & Rupert Clervaux

BEATRICE DILLON - Drum programming, electronics, synthesizer, bass guitar, field recordings

RUPERT CLERVAUX - Vibraphone, drums, percussion, field recordings, additional drum programming

and EBEN BULL - Pocket trumpet and zither

The Same River Twice - Beatrice Dillon & Rupert Clervaux

Native - 'adrenal'

Native - 'Skewed Proof'

INTERVIEW > inverted-audio.com/feature/machine-woman-talks-up-genau-house-premieres-kassem-mosse-remix

Ahead of the release of her third effort 'I Can Mend Your Broken Heart' on @where-to-now-productions we caught up with Russian producer @machinewoman to talk musical background, production sidelights and Berlin surroundings. Stream @kmos slow-burning revamp within.

Machine Woman - I Can Mend Your Broken Heart (Kassem Mosse Remix) [Where To Now?]

Under a new alias, Lobster Theremin don Jimmy Asquith treats all to a dose of needle-breaking sounds at a nosebleed bpm. Asquith's tendencies for variety and deep, diverse breadth of musical talent is what Lobster Theremin has become known for. Any time that isn't spent heading up the revered label, is spent fabricating music that shares the Lobster manifesto. Having consistently catapulted talent such as Palm Trax and Manse onto our hard drives, it seems only fitting that the label boss is now displaying his own ability to kill it in the musical laboratory.

Tom Hang's upcoming The New World EP sees the label boss weave a narrative of escapism and delirium, from which “In The Deep” stands king. Toeing the line between immersive deep pulses, organ rupturing modulations and teetering melodies, “In The Deep” tackles techno from a number of angles – keeping you hooked throughout.

"In The Deep" emerges on 2nd October via Where To Now.

The New World

Pre-Order

Tom Hang "In The Deep" - Boiler Room Debuts

"Shipp’s manic repetitions, Butcher’s scalar blankets, and Lehn’s warm reverb remind the listener of certain eras of experimental improvisation and composition, but it isn’t the remembrance that contains the power, but the feeling that this is something fresh and new. It is a music that brings up new ideas and paradigms" - Nate Wooley (liner notes)

https://f-a-t-a-k-a.bandcamp.com/album/tangle

Tangle

John Butcher, Thomas Lehn, Matthew Shipp - Tiefenschärfe - Tangle (Fataka 14)

Nice Home

draftep

Frere

String Theory

Octo Octa drops a smooth, groovy house cut for Femme Culture's HeForShe Arts Week compilation!

Buy: https://bleep.com/release/96172-various-artists-heforshe-x-femme-culture

Premiere: Octo Octa 'By Yourself (Clap Mix)'

" . . . everything here is circular. While the musicians are often playing continuously they only enter the foreground at distinct and isolated moments, as if circling through patterns in which they sometimes move into temporal zones indicating high volume. That sense of a score (or scroll or star map) is strong here. Parker employs circular breathing, initially for brief passages, later at greater length, reiterating short scalar phrases. The phrases are varied, first incrementally and then expansively, multiplying through overtones. There’s a sense that certain sounds – the tenor phrases, a particularly abrasive cymbal scrape – are being looped, entering at irregular intervals, sometimes triggered by one another, creating a sense of ongoing structure that’s further magnified by Coxon’s drones, occasional squiggly guitar figures and subtle references to blues. It’s subtle, continuous work." - Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure

"Something is going on here but we do not really know what. Coxon, who is a very unusual guitarist, can make his instrument sound like a toy clock or the zither in “The Third Man”, together with Parker’s elaborate sax techniques and Prévost’s almost unbearable high-pitched bowed sounds these sound splinters create an uncomfortable world, as if a man was on the run, afraid of something horrible." - Martin Schray, Free Jazz

~~~

Diverse musical elements - coruscating cymbal scrapes, shimmering amplifier hum, melancholy saxophone circlings, sharp hits of snare, string and reed, slow motion guitar riffs, deep tam-tam surges and floor tom rasps, hypnotic prepared piano figures, and hovering fragments of song-like melodies - fracture and coalesce in this single intense improvisation.

Featuring two of the foundational figures of free improvisation alongside a younger arrival, this recording captures the first meeting of this trio. They had all played together before separately, and the combination of familiarity and unfamiliarity proved productive: there's plenty of divergence and convergence here, and plenty of tension too - most interestingly, perhaps, in their differing approaches to repetition and tonality. At times coming uncomfortably close to each other, at times standing far apart, the trio moves inexorably towards a beautiful - and, in its simplicity, startling - conclusion.

~~~

1. Cinema - 54:53

John Coxon - electric guitar and prepared piano 
Evan Parker - tenor saxophone 
Eddie Prévost - percussion

Recorded by Tom Bugs live at The Cube, Bristol on 8 March 2008 
Mixed by Rick Campion at City University Music Studios 
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray's Inn Road 
Many thanks to Mark & Chiz (Qu Junktions) and all at The Cube 
Artwork by James Vickery 
Music by John Coxon, Evan Parker and Eddie Prévost

Hand-numbered edition of 500 CDs with 350gsm card outer cover and 150gsm paper inner cover with monochrome risograph print.

~~~

http://recordings.fataka.net/products/507327-cinema-john-coxon-evan-parker-eddie-prevost-fataka-1

Cinema (excerpt) - John Coxon, Evan Parker, Eddie Prévost - Cinema (Fataka 1)

"I can't quite think of anyone else who sounds quite like this: it is in a class of its own." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery

"Thomas runs the gamut of techniques, splashing clusters, weaving contrapuntal lines and building elaborate structures from the inside out. Despite their variety, they share a fundamental quality – they truly sound like spur of the moment creations, not the final draft of ideas mulled over for weeks, if not months on end. Their impact is enhanced by one of the more effectively engineered piano sounds in recent memory, one that puts the piano right in your lap. The value of this is felt immediately, as the first variation is brimming with above-the-staves clusters that are wincingly bright. Conversely, Thomas creates china-rattling thunder when he plunges into the bass register." - Bill Shoemaker, Point of Departure

"Une démonstration de force vraiment créative, intense, profonde et encore organique. Conseillé à tous les amateurs de piano." - Julien Héraud, improv sphere

~~~

A major solo statement, Al-Khwarizmi Variations traverses the history and the physicality of the piano.

Working both inside and outside the instrument's body, at times playing with recognisable musical material, at others going deep into sonic abstraction, Pat Thomas presents a compelling vision of what the piano can do in the 21st century.

Extremes entwine in his playing: solidity and flow; seriousness and laughter; uproar and imperturbability.

~~~

1. Variation 1 - 4:16 
2. Variation 2 - 4:55 
3. Variation 3 - 7:34 
4. Variation 4 - 8:06 
5. Variation 5 - 5:04 
6. Variation 6 - 1:28 
7. Variation 7 - 6:13 
8. Variation 8 - 4:55 
9. Variation 9 - 5:47 
10. Variation 10 - 1:57

Pat Thomas - piano

Recorded by Rick Campion at City University Music Studios on 19 June 2011 
Mixed by Rick Campion 
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray's Inn Road 
Artwork from a 15th century Mamluk tile, adapted for print by Paul Abbott 
Music by Pat Thomas (PRS)

~~~

http://recordings.fataka.net/products/507982-al-khwarizmi-variations-pat-thomas-fataka-4

Variation 8 - Pat Thomas - Al-Khwarizmi Variations (Fataka 4)

"from the very beginning hits you with complex percussive elements that will perplex you while you silently mouth WTF! . . . makes me think that Igor Stravinsky's "Rites Of Spring" was spliced with Edgard Varèse's "Densities". . . . Hands down one of the best records of 2013 thus far!" - Chuck Bettis, Downtown Music Gallery

"bombards the listener from every direction, leading to fever-pitch moments where the border between live drum kit and digital sound file disappears, amounting to what sounds a hybrid of The White Noise, Evol’s Punani Rubber and Stockhausen’s Kontakte all on 78 rpm, playing forwards and backwards at random." - Christopher Olson, The Liminal

"The Mori/Noble duo’s interactions are as bold as they are complex and incessant; gestures in sound, in which physical impulses are expressed spontaneously, honed only by the seasoned improvisors’ spontaneity and instinctive rapport; their sound is capricious and compulsive." - Tim Owen, Dalston Sound

"the flow of ideas is absolutely unrelenting and largely resistant to description in words or comparison with existing improvisers" - Matthew Earnshaw, Felix

“Noble and Mori allow their playing to roam free, its guiding principles being a mutual desire to generate propulsive, rhythmic music and to respond to one another with reactions which are uncannily in sync. The end result is a stunning, adrenalin-inducing tour de force." John Eyles, All About Jazz

"Mori's manipulations, ranging from fizzing splutters and exhalations to insectoid hums amplified beyond bearing, veer dizzyingly toward and away from the Englishman's trajectory. At best they stagger into a crazed syncopation of sudden silences and lurching clatter . . . One of the most appealing elements of Noble's arsenal lies in his deployment of an array of untethered cymbals and gongs, smote as if part of a deranged gamelan orchestra . . . whatever the weather, they prove an inspired twosome." - John Sharpe, The New York City Jazz Record

~~~

Ikue Mori and Steve Noble first played together in 2010 at London's Cafe Oto. It was immediately evident to everyone in the room that something had clicked and a very special combination had emerged.

Apparently operating according to some sort of shared dream logic, Mori and Noble’s music is always unpredictable but never incoherent, switching suddenly between ominous abstract soundscapes and exuberant rhythmic interplay, peppered with strange recurrences, idiomatic fragments and vertiginous changes of perspective, and characterized by a strong sense of forward momentum.

From her beginnings drumming with the seminal no wave unit DNA, Mori has always had a distinctively percussive sensibility, and her deft electronic manipulations merge perfectly with Noble’s fiercely physical handiwork. Drums and their digital double: the similarities and differences overlap and interrupt, crystallize and dissolve, split and converge into a fast-flowing torrent of compelling musical activity.

~~~

1. Seismic Waves - 6:21 
2. Montparnasse Derailment - 3:25 
3. Combustion - 2:54 
4. Convection - 3:59 
5. Atmospheric Pressure - 6:23 
6. Black Death (Steve’s March) - 5:52 
7. Land of Famine - 11:20 
8. Inferno - 3:26

Ikue Mori - electronics 
Steve Noble - drums, percussion

Recorded on 16 November 2011 at Eastcote Studios, London 
Mixed and mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray’s Inn Road 
Music by Ikue Mori (Tohban Djan Publishing BMI) & Steve Noble (PRS)

~~~

http://recordings.fataka.net/products/513487-prediction-and-warning-ikue-mori-steve-noble-fataka-6