★Otoroku
Mental Shake
*2025 stock* CD version. Cafe OTO's tenth Otoroku release sees a return to the group that kick-started the label -- the veteran German reedsman and free-jazz pioneer Peter Brötzmann 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 Brötzmann\'s finest working groups. Over the same period, Peter was developing a deep rapport with …
The Quartet
Huge tip! It is a huge honour to announce the publication of Peter Brotzmann’s final concerts on Otoroku. When we invited Peter to do a residency at Cafe OTO back in February 2023 we 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 …
The Solar Model of Ibn Al-Shatir
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.
Three On A Match
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.
The Blue Hour
Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long time collaborator Alan Licht.
Solo Throat
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-disciplin…
If I don’t make it, I love u
‘If I don't make it, I love u’ is Still House Plants’ third LP and the fullest embodiment of their sound to date. Where ‘Fast Edit’ formed with quick attachment and jump cuts, ‘If I don't make it’ is shaped by persistence - a commitment to the songs that makes the music solid, warmer and accepted. Marking the trio’s decade of friendship, this is the first record written whilst all live in the same city since 2017's ‘Assemblages’. The band rehearsed it relentlessly, playing for nobody except them…
The Topography of the Lungs / Collective Calls / From Saxophone & Trombone (3LP Bundle)
** The three recent Otoroku reissue LPs in a special discounted bundle ** Otoroku, the in-house label for the London venue, Cafe Oto, returns with three new stunners from the legendary Incus catalog - the seminal imprint jointly founded by Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and Tony Oxley - the first ever vinyl reissues of Evan Parker / George Lewis’s stunning “From Saxophone & Trombone” (1980), and Evan Parker / Paul Lytton’s mind-bending “Collective Calls (Urban) (Two Microphones)” (1972), as well a…
The Topography of the Lungs
2023 Much-needed Repress. Finally reissued, 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. Outstanding deluxe vinyl edition of one of the most iconic free improv LP ever made, a landmark album in the British avant garde.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 t…
Collective calls (urban) (two microphones)
Tip! 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 utilises electronics, pre-records and homemade instruments to wryly in/act self investigation. Having just recorded the cliff jumping Music Improvisation Company with Derek Bailey, Christine Jeffrey, Hugh Davies and Jamie Muir, Parker was at the point where [he] was thinking, ‘what’s the next thing?’ On C…
From saxophone & trombone
Tip! First vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s duo with George Lewis. Transferred from the original masters, we discovered that the original Incus LP was cut at the wrong speed - and so, we present 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. Goo…
Potential
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 i…
Are You Ready?
*the LP and 2CD contain different material.* First physical solo release from legendary vocal improvisor, dancer, and performer Maggie Nicols, and the follow up to Creative Contradiction (Takuroku 2020).
While she might be best known as an improviser (most notably in Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the Feminist Improvising Group and more recently with the likes of Les Diaboliques, Maggie Nicols’ talents stretch into song, dance, poetry, performance and composition. When Cafe OTO was shut over lockdo…
Promise & Illusion
Promise & Illusion is the first LP from Ecka Mordecai, following the release of her solo Critique + Prosper on Takuroku in 2020. Cello, voice, horsehair harp, violin and field recordings combine to spin narrative melody, rich intimacy and melancholic landscapes.
Composed around an exploration of la charnière (from the French ‘hinge’), Promise & Illusion begins with the sound of footsteps and a door opening and closing repeatedly, unsure whether to let us into the mysterious interior beyond. We a…
Loud Object
Loud Object is the second solo release from artist Billy Steiger, following his self released 'Recordings, drawings and photographs from in and around Frîdd Newydd' in 2016. Both a visual artist and a musician, Steiger’s Loud Object 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 ev…
Are You Ready?
First physical solo release from legendary vocal improvisor, dancer, and performer Maggie Nicols, and the follow up to Creative Contradiction (Takuroku 2020).
While she might be best known as an improviser (most notably in Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the Feminist Improvising Group and more recently with the likes of Les Diaboliques, Maggie Nicols’ talents stretch into song, dance, poetry, performance and composition. When Cafe OTO was shut over lockdown we invited her to follow up the wonderful …
Live at Cafe Oto
CD version. Japanese bluesman Kan Mikami is nothing less than an unalloyed force of nature; a skin-shredding blast of frozen wind from the poor, rural north of Japan that he calls home. In the late 1960s, like thousands of other Japanese young people Mikami made his way to Tokyo in search of a life different from that of his parents. Since then he has forcefully carved out a space for himself in the culture as a modernist poet, a raging folk singer, an author, an actor, an engaging TV personalit…
The Worse The Better
CD version. Recording of the stunning first set performed by the trio of Peter Brötzmann, Steve Noble and John Edwards at Cafe OTO in January 2010 during Brotzmann's first residency at the venue. This was also the first time the trio had played together. Recorded at Cafe OTO by Shane Browne, mixed by John Edwards and Mastered by Andres [LUPO] Lupich at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
"Does the world need another Brötzmann album? Probably not, but as the inaugural release on Cafe OTO's in-house hi…
Blue Notes for Mongezi / Blue Notes for Johnny
This bundle includes the following items:"Blue Notes for Mongezi" (2LP, 1976)Otoroku is proud to 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 …
Blue Notes for Mongezi
Otoroku is proud to 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 com…