We're thrilled to present two longform pieces from Yorkshire-based sound artist, Sophie Cooper. Composed during a week-long residency in the OTO Project Space in February 2022, Lean In was originally written for an 8-speaker surround set-up, here distilled into an equally expansive stereo version. Over 25 minutes, Cooper weaves fragments of on-site found radio sounds, processed trombone, electronics and voice to explore themes of broken family structures and the unspoken estrangement issue. We release this alongside the newly remastered companion piece, Intact, commissioned by hcmf// in 2019 and for which Cooper was nominated for an Ivor Novello Composer Award in 2020. Together, the pieces build upon each other in a way that uncovers new insights with each listen, revealing a multi-faceted work at once intimate and far-reaching in its emotional and sonic impact. "This release is a double A side of accompanying pieces both written during residencies for spatial audio systems namely the HISS (Huddersfield Immersive Sound System) for hcmf// and the set up at Café Oto project space. These versions have been designed to be listened to on stereo set ups. Both of the pieces deal with the topic of family estrangement using verbatim sourced with permission and support from a UK based charity called Stand Alone who support adults in this situation. Intact was the first piece made of the two in 2019 and Lean In was written in early 2022 so you’ll hear references to how people’s lock down experiences impacted on their estrangements in the second piece. It was really interesting to come back to this topic after a break and reflect on changes between the texts in both years." – Sophie Cooper, February 2023 -- Enormous thanks to: Everyone involved with the HISS, hcmf//, Cafe Oto, Arts Council England, Kathy Hinde and Matthew Olden for the support with these pieces. -- Cover photography by Maryanne RoyleMastered by Oli Barrett

Originally from Inner Mongolia, Deng Boyu has been active in the Chinese music underground since the late 1990s. His work spans numerous genres, as a drummer, solo electronics artist, improviser and collaborator to many musicians both in and out of China, including Mamer, Lao Dan, Lee Ranaldo, Marc Ribot, Akira Sakata, Theresa Wong and Federico Casagrande. Having hosted two of his releases on our site through the Old Heaven and Dusty Ballz labels, we're delighted to present《Inertion》on our in-house OTOroku imprint. Opening with the thrumming, pulsing hum of ‘Her Eyes Lost Their Luster’, Boyu hints at reverie but wastes no time in pulling the rug out, the lulling bass drone being intermittently disrupted with static bursts and fragmentary synth stabs before the two sonic factions coalesce in an increasingly dizzying scree of chirping electronics. Just as you think the palette has settled, Boyu abruptly changes tack once again, laying down a sparsely propulsive rhythm over which a stadium-sized guitar suddenly erupts, whose initial incongruity is instantly washed away in a surge of giddy euphoria; Boyu not so much setting fire to his guitar as the whole damn stage. Second track, ‘Like Blade of Grass’ doesn’t let up, with fuzz-drenched tones dancing around each other in percussive patterns that skitter and churn in a freewheeling clatter that constantly threatens to unravel whilst always keeping just ahead of itself. The titular closer, ‘Inertion’, piles on the Industrial Lynchian dread, beginning with a funereal march over which a digital analogue appears to be arguing with itself. All is resolved, however, as Boyu’s layered guitars unashamedly crash back in, releasing all the built-up tension in an all-too-brief rush of power-chord endorphins. There is an almost dizzying restlessness here, covering more ground in 20 minutes than most would manage in a triple LP. The result is anything but scattershot, however. Instead, Boyu crafts a collagic density consisting of myriad reference points all competing for space. There can be no neat outcome - these are not clues to decipher. Instead, Boyu builds around these competing approaches; tongue-in-cheek modern jesterisms versus considered sincerity; minimalist arrangements brushing up against maximalist sound; structured craft and tonal dissonance - not coming down on one side or the other but revelling in the clash. You might not have time to get comfortable but it’s a compelling and compulsive place to be.

Danielle Price is a tuba player whose work explores the range of creative possibilities of the instrument, both in her own compositions as well as her extensive list of collaborations ranging from artists as diverse as Ashley Paul, Bill Wells, Oxbow, Ntshuks Bonga and Mats Gustafsson. After the Allotments sees this expansive approach in full flow, blending improvised and structured forms in delightfully unexpected ways. Across the five tracks, Price crafts an enviable parallel universe where singer-songwriters have traded their ubiquitous acoustic guitars for tubas. Opener, Seeking, sees Price’s breath gradually expanding into soft evocations under which a tentative tuba line deliberately draws out resonances both wistful and reflective, before Room In a Shared Apartment Looking For a Soul snaps back into focus, building a sparse, propulsive rhythm where utterances from both voice and tuba blend and unfurl in one fluid line that contorts and loops back on itself. Price’s brass melodies extend further on each new time around before splitting off from its rhythmic underpinnings and soaring upwards and outwards. Square Peg takes a sudden about turn, dialling the smokey jazz atmosphere up to 11 as a playful tuba walks the bass and almost audibly clicks its fingers along to Price’s yearning, soulful vocal, evoking Sofia Jernberg’s stellar work with Fire! Orchestra. Track four, I’ll Tell You That, pushes this interplay further, as voice and tuba exhort each other into ever more untethered contortions in an increasingly raucous call and response. After the minimalist palette of the first four tracks, the plaintive opening piano notes of the titular closing piece ring out like a bell. Price deftly glides across the keys, weaving a tremendous sense of calm like the freshness following a downpour, as her understated spoken vocal conjures up a deceptively everyday yet far-reaching scene that in a few short sentences seemingly captures a life.

“[This] collection of 14 live improvisations is a masterpiece in spontaneous strangeness… Time Trout’s album is a product of incredible musical intelligence.” – Louise Gray, The WIRE OTOroku is thrilled to present the debut album from Time Trout, comprising fourteen tracks improvised in real time. Seemingly summoned out of the ether, these songs arrive fully-formed, with an awkward, jagged personality that moves, all knees and elbows, with a bristling, roiling, unstoppable momentum. It’s a constant high-wire performance, with all four participants looking relentlessly forward lest a glimpse below causes the whole thing to drop. Thankfully, the balance is never in doubt. From the off, drummer Stephen Moses and bass guitarist Dave Mandl create a series of hypnotic locked grooves, that simultaneously draw you in and subtly pull the rug out from underneath you all at once; like repeatedly stumbling down the last couple of steps to the dance floor. Over this hypnotic ouroboros of a rhythm section, Marcus Cummins’ saxophone deftly feints and weaves between the cracks, running the gamut from tentative, staccato stabs to giddily whirling lyricism. The three instrumentalists constantly trade emphases in such an assured way that you quickly stop trying to focus in on one part and give yourself over to the single, intricate whole; running through which, like a bright red thread through the labyrinth, is Viv Corringham’s astonishing spoken word vocal performance. A restless stream of consciousness that seems to have the primal urgency of a message delivered in a dream, Corringham mixes Delphic abstractions with bracingly lucid implorations, the whole performance delivered with such seamlessness that it’s hard to tell whether the lyrics are channeling the music or vice versa. The answer, of course, is both. -- - Viv Corringham / voice- Marcus Cummins / soprano and alto saxophones, ocarina, bells, shruti box- Dave Mandl / bass guitar- Stephen Moses / drums, percussion -- Recorded by George Taylor at Collect Pond Studio, New YorkMixed by Mario Viele at Excello Recording, BrooklynMastered by Oli Barrett in The Shrubbery, Somerset Thanks to: Aaron Moore, Michael Evans, George Taylor, Dann Baker / Hugh Pool / Mario Viele (Excello), David Watson, Ed Baxter.

Captivating and deeply felt new audio work by Blanc Sceol, aka the duo of Stephen Shiell and Hannah White. Originally commissioned for broadcast on the deep sea 'Radio Amnion' sound project, the piece is written for and performed on the bespoke, one-of-a-kind Orbit instrument, designed and made by Stephen and Hannah in collaboration with master luthier Kai Tönjes. Over the course of thirty minutes the piece drifts and unfurls in an entrancing, enveloping flow, utilising the instrument's unique sonic qualities to create something truly special. This recording is Blanc Sceol's response to a commission from Jol Thoms to create a new audio work for the June edition of his deep sea sound project 'Radio Amnion', where, each month at the time of the full moon, the abyssal waters of Cascadia Basin resonate with the deep frequencies and voices of invited artists, relayed in the sea through a submerged neutrino telescope experiment’s calibration system. Through the duo's sound and ecology work with Surge Cooperative on the Channelsea river they have found connection to Abbey Mills pumping station, Joseph Bazalgette’s Victorian ‘cathedral of sewage’, his overground homage to the underground network of pipes, an operational site that still moves water and humanure beneath the city today. This audio work captures the spinning frequencies of the Orbit, recorded in the chambers of the sewer substation, to be played out to the depths of the deep sea, creating a poetic resonance between these sounds and spaces, a spell of connection between the clear, linear, progressive features of our engineered water networks and the dark, wet, yielding, cyclical unknowns of the deep sea, where the sub station searches for neutrinos and on the full moon translates human-made frequencies into light and vibration for the seafloor. The words in the piece are a series of ‘one word poems’ created by participants from Blanc Sceol's ‘Sonic Meditations with the Full Moon’ sessions over the last year. Working with moon time through our deep listening practice, and the tidal phases of the Channelsea river, Orbit coordinates these cyclical flows in celebration of the fullness of the cosmic body that holds the tension between the earth and its inhabitants, and gives us all rhythm. Orbit the instrument:The Orbit consists of a red cedar decagon body, the resonating chamber, which is spun by one set of hands, bringing rhythm and flow with the changing pace of the orbit, as the other hands hold a bow to the ten strings, seeking out the varying chords and harmonic frequencies. As the two work together so the orbit begins to sing and soar, a myriad of changing, whirling pitch shifting drones. In 2017 Stephen created a prototype instrument, inspired by Uakti’s ‘torre’ and Walter Smetak’s ‘Ronda’, a plastic barrel strung with ten strings and played by two people - one who turns the barrel, and one who holds a bow to the strings. Many years and many tweaks later, in early 2023 we finally collaborated with master luthier Kai Tönjes to create an upgraded version, and ‘Orbit’ was born. -- Mixed and mastered by Ian ThompsonCover design by Oli Barrett from photos by Joe Thoms Originally commissioned by and broadcast on Radio Anion: https://radioamnion.net/

A collection of beautifully realised pieces from Tokyo-based sonic artist, Akhira Sano, whose work focuses on the imperfections and irregularities of form and sound. Across the album's eight tracks, clusters of notes gradually emerge and unfold in a way that appears minimal at first but soon becomes totally enveloping - it quickly becomes clear that the space left between the notes is perfectly shaped for the listener themself. It could be the time of year in which this album is being released, but there's a cozy glow to in front of's sound world that almost requires you to stop what you're doing and curl up inside it. This is a not an album which calls attention to itself, rather it draws the listener in through the understated intimacy of each composition - there’s a power in a fragility which is offered up so unselfconsciously. Nothing is hurried here, Sano gives each note its own time and space in which to emerge and the result is a soft, crepuscular, sonic blanket in which to wrap yourself in completely. -- All tracks written and recorded by Akhira SanoMastered by Oli BarrettCover design by Oli Barrett

A masterclass in sound and texture from the Stockholm-based duo of John Chantler and Daniel M Karlsson, recorded at OTO in December 2023, following on from their ‘Hell or High Water’ release on Chantler’s 1703 Skivbolaget label the same year. From a dual synthesiser setup, the pair craft an incredibly naturalistic atmosphere - electronics not so much imitating organic sounds as creating their own little pocket of life, fully realised. The set slowly awakens like frozen ground thawing in the first spring sun; little sonic tendrils budding and reaching and gradually coalescing together in symbiosis. Ebbing and flowing, the momentum builds inexorably in ever-intricate patterns of tension and release; fractal forms unfurling and intertwining with a density that never collapses into aimless blowout even when the volume reaches a tumultuous peak. Finally, energy expended all at once, the piece falls back into a last cluster of sighing tones, and the day is done. -- Recorded by Billy Steiger Mixed and mastered by Daniel M Karlsson

Preparations is an event where 23 artists create a preparation each for the grand piano. Three pianists/groups are then tasked with constructing individual live performances with the adaptable unit of preparations. For this second iteration of Preparations, musicians Finn Carter, Dear Laika and Ted Mair & Ed Bernez performed on the grand piano with preparations made by Ryoko Akama, Zoë Annesley, Jasper Appleby Sherring, Grace Black, Joseph Bradley Hill, Yasmine Brennan, Kara Chin, Gabriele Ciulli, Jacob Clayton, Leo DMB, enorê, Georgia Gendall, Harley Kuyck-Cohen, Kiran Leonard, Ruoru Mou, Siân Newlove-Drew, Karanjit Panesar, Lou Lou Sainsbury & Gabi Dao, Harry Smithson, Aga Ujma, Jake Vine, Tiffany Wellington & Isobel Whalley Payne. Finn Carter - untitled: For the preparation of the piano, Carter decided to leave the preparations untouched during his performance of the piece, with the sculptures positioned as follows: Yasmine Brennan’s My Albion?? was draped over the cast iron frame in the centre, next to Isobel Whalley Payne’s Untitled clover handkerchief which was weaved between the strings. Joseph Bradley Hill’s Jerry (an old oil can with ball bearings inside and a cloth coated wooden wedge protruding from the underside) sat on the iron frame closer to the keys, accompanied by Harley Kuyck-Cohen’s Demerara, Coffee, Tobacco (a carved wooden cat with a rotating head and beeswax eyes). Moving further up the piano, the arms of Jake Vine’s Mermaid’s Purse (a leather pouch with ceramic buttons inside) were fed in-between the strings, followed only by Gabriele Ciulli’s M & Ruoru Mou’s Scratch - Ciulli’s engraved brake pad dulled the strings with its weight, with Mou’s elongated ceramic hand causing a light resonance. Grace Black’s Conical Side Effect (a metal cone with a connected battery compartment that causes an LED to flash if the compartment is jolted) protruding behind them accompanied by Jacob Clayton’s Fishing magnet to put inside a piano, which stuck firmly to the frame, leaving the plastic keyring attached to the magnet to dangle on the strings and be moved by the vibrations. Sian Newlove-Drew’s Physics Angel was deemed too perishable to sit inside the piano itself, so for all three performances the glow-in-the-dark candle angel resided on the outer ledge of the piano, looking out at the audience. Dear Laika - Small vessel in sea green: For the performance, Thorn began by using Aga Ujma’s a midwinter night's dream (a silver aluminium wiry net of bells) as a shaken percussion instrument and Leo DMB’s waste i saw lorelei to as a mallet to hit the lower strings of the piano. The lower half of the piano was heavily prepared with Georgia Gendall’s Tapestry of Breath (a vacuum packed Ryvita with toothpaste, tic tacs and broken spaghetti), Kara Chin’s Shopping List (a large photo-covered, raisin box-filled, tentacled object), Harry Smithson’s Pothole to Aven (wrapped in Isobel Whalley Payne’s handkerchief) & Jasper Appleby-Sherring’s Praise (cavolo nero) (a bronze cast of kale atop a wooden and metal plate with locator bolts) all sat along one set of strings. Near the end of the performance Thorn used Karanjit Panesar’s Small vessel in sea green as a slide against certain strings, bifurcating them so each one would play two separate pitches on either side of the pot, reaching a sound halfway between that of a slide guitar and ondes martenot/theremin.

As OTO approaches it's 16th year, The Uncertain Man continues his journey holding on to the shadow of a hot air balloon.These are the sounds that guide him along. Where will he land next?  Free to download one and all and you can get a copy of the full comic here. If you're a member neither download will remove a credit. Happy birthday to us.   

Take a deep breath, this one doesn’t let up for a second! Stockholm-based trio Kyosaku create a swirling maelstrom of sound from guitar, bass and drums that doesn’t so much press you back in your seat with its intensity as send you tumbling out the door and down the road. Recorded in September 2023 under their previous name of Missnöje, the group waste no time setting the pace but charge out of the gates as though this might be the last chance they've got. Finn Loxbo's squalling electric guitar and electronics setup races around the room whilst Elsa Bergman's gnarled and driven electric bass effortlessly weaves between the gaps with a playing style that is no less nimble for it's stomach-rumbling brawn. Through it all, Ryan Packard's seemingly indefatigable drumming rucks and surges in a way that leaves you reeling. This is no empty bedlam though; rather, there's a euphoric, galvanising joy to the sheer, relentless energy of it all. Kyosaku create the clamour; all you have to do is give yourself up to it. In Zen Buddhism, the keisaku is a flat wooden stick or slat used during periods of meditation to remedy sleepiness or lapses of concentration by administering a strike or series of strikes. No worries here, the strikes come thick and fast with an unrelenting fervour that should almost have you levitating by the end. But the Zen aspect is not lost, simply approached from a different direction. Noise can be meditative too, and Kyosaku create such an Augean tumult that by the end of this set's 35+ minutes you're left with a mind that feels shiny, gleaming and new. --  Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli BarrettCover photo by Erik Viklund

  Phenomenal set from 2017 courtesy of the Norwegian duo of Kim Myhr and Lasse Marhaug, which followed the release of their debut album together, On The Silver Globe. The album’s title refers to Andrzej Zulawski's powerful, hallucinatory film of the same name, and from the off the pair conjure a similar uneasy, fractured atmosphere. Fragments of sound are looped and warped, circling round in a slowly spiralling groove which is never the same twice, but flows forwards with its own inchoate dream logic. As the momentum builds, so the soft tones of the first half of the set gradually erode and fracture into a densely insistent electronic scree which seems to fill the room - a synchronous interplay with a common target - before collapsing back down into a sparse, almost conversational electronic chatter. There is an insistence to these sounds that seems to have the same prophetic urgency of some of the most visionary characters in Zulawski's science-fiction epic, promising some deeper revelation that always remains tantalisingly just ahead. As with On The Silver Globe, there can be no easy resolution, but the real epiphany is of course - as ever - in the journey. -- - Recorded by James Dunn - Mixed and mastered by Lasse Marhaug

All proceeds from this release will be donated to MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians): https://www.map.org.uk/ Thrilled to be able to share the phenomenal first meeting of this ensemble, consisting of Washington DC's Blacks' Myths - aka Luke Stewart (electric bass) and Warren Crudup (drums) - alongside Pat Thomas and Orphy Robinson's longstanding Black Top project plus incendiary sax and guitar work from Soweto Kinch and Dirar Kalash. From the first stirrings it's clear that something very special has been captured here, the sextet slowly circling and building with inexorable momentum until the energy fully coalesces and nobody looks back. There's a dexterously symbiotic interplay that would be impressive for a group a couple of decades in; that you can hear this level of chemistry from a first performance together is extraordinary. There's so much to unpack across the set that it's hard to know where to start, the group covering more ground in just under an hour than most would manage over the course of a week-long residency. The long-honed, multilayered grooves of Blacks' Myths' bass and drums blend seamlessly with Black Top's ecstatic sonic range to weave an utterly immersive sound that drives relentlessly forward to thrillingly propulsive effect. Add the incredible musicianship of Soweto Kinch and Dirar Kalash weaving deftly throughout, and the result is this joyful, galvanising rallying cry of a performance which doesn't so much lift the spirits as cast them into the stratosphere. Here's hoping this meeting is not the last. -- Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli BarrettCover design by Dirar Kalash

False Self* works are electronic music compositions that explore identity, authorship and the delineation between self and other. The series so far, comprises of three albums: False Self plays music for six pianos (2021) A false memory of a sports party (2018) False Self (2016) The first two albums were created in collaboration, and sometimes antagonization, with a self authored SuperCollider algorithm — that I named False Self. I envision this algorithm as a fractured version of myself. False Self plays music for six pianos was composed whilst undertaking lessons with Jim Denizen Simm. Jim kindly indoctrinated me into his own working methods and some of the methods of his friends, many of whom are ex-Scratch Orchestra members; such as Michael Parsons, John White, Christopher Hobbs and Howard Skempton. These lessons led me to abandon SuperCollider in favour of working with more flexible, and to my mind, more interesting systems designed on paper. The compositions are experimental, system based works for six pianos. They deploy integer tables to arrange cells of slow, jazzy piano music. Each piano has eight cells of music and one silent cell. The cells mobilize as hypnotic cyclones of repetition, that move in and out of sync, to create complexity from simplicity. As the compositions progress, the cells extinguish themselves in a languid, stuttering fashion — before the process begins anew. Rudi Arapahoe 2021 Composed, recorded and mixed by Rudi ArapahoePerformed by False SelfProduced by Jim Denizen Simm Artwork by Oli Barrett *The term False Self is lifted from the psychiatrist Ronald David Laing's writing. I use the term to imply that there is another self working on the compositions with me.

Following on from his preposterous 'MUJZIK MONSTRØSA SPEEDRUN', which was released in 2020 on Takuroku, Goodiepal returns with an all new radio-based experimental sound work. On 'The Pole Imposter & The Databar' he embraces his ongoing audio-based crypto-academic documentation of the strange sides of European computer music. As ever with Goodiepal's work, it's best for words to pare back and let the piece speak for itself. --- Cover design by Oli Barrett

Italian duo Rosso Polare treat us to their 2nd album, following the wonderful 'Lettere Animali' album, which was one of our highlights of 2020.   Cani Lenti is a collection of duels, some may say. As the two minds of Cesare Lopopolo and Annna Vezzosi converge, a dichotomy of harmonious and contrasting sounds ebb, swirl and clatter in and amongst themselves. Using techniques from call and response improvisation, tape manipulation, experimental music and free-form folk, their approach to music making feels both atypical and familiar, organised and free-flowing, rooted and landless. Like the films of fellow Italian film-maker Alice Rohrwacher, Rosso Polare's music feels grounded in the earth, but sprouts and spreads in strange and often anachronistic ways.   The duo describe this album as it’s a struggle – a skirmish – that strives to resemble filmic sonorisations and forgotten sounds. Together they lead us on a journey into the depths of Chthonian Music. Fans of the likes of Sun Araw, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and General Strike - dive in!   --   Written and performed by Cesare Lopopolo & Anna Vezzosi --   Recorded between Milan and Brescia in 2020-2021 Mixed and produced by Cesare Lopopolo Mastered by Alexander Pustynsky Album art by Anna Vezzosi

"Having brought together two entirely independent solo improvisations like this, one from near the start of the lockdown and the other very recent, and finding that they fit together so well that I must have been  following the same pattern albeit on two very different instruments, what does that tell me? Have I merely folded time on itself without any corresponding fold in space and thereby gone precisely nowhere? Have those intervening months vanished in the attempt? And what can I call the fruits of that attempt? An imaginary duo between present me and early-lockdown me, made real by a stray thought taken too far (because I hadn't intended to put the two together when I recorded them). Have I learned nothing? By themselves, each is both an attempt to reach beyond time in itself, by touching the infinite variability of the reality beyond illusion and, by that very variability (and unpredictability) a blow struck against the homogenising forces of consumerism, a wrench thrown in the gears of the satanic mill. But when combined, then, the variability is multiplied. Not by dialogue (since each was blind to the other) but the stark fact of their separation in time and the events that they book-end. 50,000 dead, give or take. Have we learned nothing? Must the same battles be fought over and over again every single time? Will we still follow the same pattern, when this is all over?" - Massimo Magee, London, 11 May 2020 Cover image: '144 Pills' by MiHee Kim Magee

Dusting off the earthy sounds of American old-timers Hobart Smith, Dock Boggs and Dink Roberts, as well as Irish singer Margaret Barry, London-based Jacken Elswyth lets their influence flood their consciousness and weave itself into 7 stirring tracks. Side-stepping any revivalism, Jacken allows each track the space to trail its own path, letting the spindling strings of their banjo knot their own patterns and colours. With occasional accompaniment by shruti box and melodeon, there's a trance like nature to each proceeding, situating Jacken's work firmly in the tradition of the "avant-folk" (see Henry Flynt's experiments in country music), but very much tempered to their own voice, as if the listener is being given an intimate private view to Jacken's memories: both past and present. --- Jacken Elswyth / banjo --- Recorded and mixed by Jacken Elswyth. Mastered by Oli Barrett.  Cover design by Oli Barrett from a photo by Molly Budd.

"Drum improv: polyrhythms, Bonham and Roach and Graves and Art and Bacon and blastbeats and that voice in the fire escape and nowhere and potatoes and the earth and chickens and greeness and moon observance, solos for solo and duo dancing. We all miss being with people. We’re all doing things to keep going, knowing how much worse the experience of the Other could be. One day maybe we’ll play music with other people in a room." -- Blood Music - Drums & electronics -- Recorded live at The Park Studios rehearsal room, September-October 2020. The cover is a sketch of Dogen with stuff coming out of and into his eyes. Play loud.