Deadstock copies of this rare 7" by Birdyak (Bob Cobbing & Hugh Metcalfe) from 1988, issued by Klinker Zoundz. As wild and wonderful as experimental, free improvised vocal music gets!

Available as a 320 MP3 or 24bit FLAC Tracklisting: Side A  ⁗ - 20:20  Side B ◠ - 19:09  Loud Object is the second solo release from artist Billy Steiger, following his self released 'Recordings, drawings and photographs from in and around Fr​î​dd 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 eventual 96-page novel Água Viva. Devoid of characters or plot, Água Viva appears always in suspension between the interior and exterior and impression and expression. Weird and formless (like the jellyfish ‘agua viva’ translates to in Portuguese) Lispector’s text deals less in the cerebral or the knowable realms of words, but more in the unknowable moment of experience. Its joy is found in its looseness, its meaning found in its lack of definition. Loud Object began as six sides of violin improvisations, four of them abandoned and the last of them added to or processed usings samplers in moments Steiger calls ‘wells’ - gaps or dips in the recording which could be filled or poured into. The process of filling up and taking away, of repeating and multiplying, of building tension between the finite and the lost -  all wrestle with actualisation. Which line will be drawn? In the liner notes for the LP, Evie Scarlett Ward writes, “The record holds loss.”Though the lines are fixed, its contents are fluid - forty minutes filled in and manipulated, before time moves on. Steiger’s relentless rearranging of convention means no two of his live shows are the same, and his decade-plus involvement in London’s free improvisation scene constantly surprises. Loud Object is no exception.

Avaliable as 320MP3 or 24bit FLAC from 7th October Tracklisting: Side A 1. la charnière I - 6:112. woe are we - 2:503. a unit has no unity - 3.004. indigos - 3:205. study of a flame - 4:32 Side B 6. la charnière II - 1:117. promise & illusion - 4:358. hush now you say - 2:569. tempera - 6:3610. mistakes & continue - 5:54 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 are reminded of the house of Penny Slinger in An Exorcism, an abandoned mansion of gothic hallways and inky corridors. “woe are we” twists violin and voice together into the sort of tension and high drama heard in “The Executioner” - Henning Christiansen’s soundtracks made for the films of his partner Ursula Reuter Christiansen in the 1970’s. Then things begin to soften, almost despite themselves. Distortion on ‘a unit has no unity’ can’t quite smother a rising tune on warped harp. The cello on ‘indigos’ - its voice pizzicato with a velvety sustain - brings comfort and clarity. Mordecai hums a line, feeling out the edges of a song in an intimate release of tension. We are across the threshold - into a romantic sort of nocturnal gloom that feels somewhat out of place in London’s experimental music scene.  Trained on viola da gamba as part of a renaissance youth group in the historic midland town of Stafford, Mordecai went on to study performance art in Brighton, later graduating in sound art in London. She performed with David Toop and Rie Nakajima as part of Allan Kaprow’s Yard at the Hepworth Gallery, as well as performing scores by Yoko Ono and George Brecht solo at White Cube Gallery as part of Christian Marclay’s Liquids exhibition. Later, various moves across the north of England found her working with Andrew Chalk and Tom James Scott (forming the trio CIRCÆA), Miles Whittaker (of Demdike Stare) and performing alongside free improvisers. A myriad of influences have crossed her path, her work slowly taking shape across music concrète, improvisation and performance art.  A more recent recording with Valerio Tricoli as ‘Mordecoli’ made during the development of Promise & Illusion found its final form as a cassette - a collage of sustained tones, ominous atmospheres and brief 4th wall dissolving vocal interaction. With both CIRCÆA and Mordecoli, Mordecai deals with landscapes - playing with the imaginary over the real and using improvisation as a useful way to dream.  On Promise & Illusion, Mordecai sharpens her focus and pivots toward the interior over the exterior - the landscape becoming a personal, psychological one - both comforting and strange.  --- Tracks 4, 5, 7 & 10 recorded and mixed by Adam Matschulat in December 2020. All others recorded and mixed by Ecka Mordecai. Mastered by Shaun Crook at Lockdown Studios, London. Artwork by Ecka Mordecai. Layout by Zofia Sobota.

Post-metal sludge avantgarde powerhouse SUMAC around Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom) follow up their collaboration with legendary Japanese guitarist and singer/performer Keiji Haino on Thrill Jockey (American Dollar Bill – Keep Facing Sideways, You are too Hideous to Look at Face on) with another monolith - heavy and experimental at the same time --- Keiji Haino / guitar, voice, flute, taepyeongsoAaron Turner / guitarNick Yacyshyn / drumsBrian Cook / bass

We're very pleased to announce Pat Thomas's ‘The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari’ on our in-house OTOROKU label. Recorded live at OTO in May 2015 and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, the LP comprises four typically genre-defying and sonically dexterous pieces from one of the UK's most extraordinary pianists. In Pat's own words: The title for this album was inspired by the incredible automatic water clock invented by Badi' al-Zaman ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari. Al Jazari refers to the fact he was born in Al Jazira which lies between the Tigris and the Euphrates in what is now Northern Iraq. Badi al Zaman means prodigy of the age. He is known by historians of technology as the father of modern robotics. The Elephant Clock at seven metres high is a testament to his engineering genius, it utilizes Greek water raising technology, combined with an Indian elephant, Egyptian phoenix, Arabian figures, Persian carpet and Chinese Dragons celebrating the diversity of cultures in the world. This and other marvels of engineering can be found in his Book of the Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices translated by Donald Hill (Pakistan Hijra Council). Over 50 devices are mentioned. Amongst them the first analog computer, his remarkable Castle Clock, however, the debt the world owes this muslim genius is found in his remarkable water raising devices, particularly water raising device number 4 where for the first time a crank connecting rod system is used. The crank is considered to be the most important single mechanical device after the wheel, by 1206 this is found fully developed in Jazari`s machines predating Francesco di Giorgio Martini by 3 centuries. 'For Al Haytham' is dedicated to the great polymath genius who wrote the great book on vision, the first person to give us a true understanding of how we see. 'Lubb' is an Arabic word meaning innermost consciousness whilst to conclude proceedings 'Done' is loosely based on a well known standard. - Pat Thomas 26th May 2017 --- Pat Thomas / piano --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on the 4th May 2015 by Mark Jasper. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Photo by Fabio Lugaro. Design by Maja Larsson.

lll人 (pronounced /el/) is Daichi Yoshikawa, Paul Abbott and Seymour Wright. This recording includes two bare twenty minute excerpts from separate performances at Cafe OTO. 1. lll人 = Daichi Yoshikawa + Paul Abbott + Seymour Wright2. Still finding, twisting and hammering out an expanding musical universe balanced only by its own logics – lll人 have few obvious comparisons. Their performances are consistent radical negotiations of the emotional, physical and social energies of the environments they sound out. 3. Fold out/roll up drumfeedbackreed sausage/pleat, holed and sliced. 4. [cropse after gannen begat gjerhan (ovo) ROKU11] 5. The tools are familiar, the listening is not; 6. The tools are familiar, the spaces are not. 7. Here are recordings of public longform negotiations of: a. the vast of V&A; cast rooms (walkthru); b. the theatron of Spanish Fighters (sitdown). 8. June 28, 2013 VandA cast-coated Huge room full cast of plaster. BORC Ljubljan Friday Spanski - spanski 2013 the 11th year 15 months dark room Escapade Winton, we're playing in front of the emergency; 9. More lll人: absorbing protoplasm dances of doppelnut learnings.   gjērhan, (!) From subterranea, sweat, haze and dedication emerging out of intimate and intense weekly meetings begun in 2009 – their first, 2012 public performance, squeezed into a London basement was a sheer, vexed and exhilarating smack of organic, heterodyning ideas, and taut, lowbeating lumps. Reemerge/revanish. With the economy of familiar/traditional raw tools feedback, drumkit, altosaxophone, time, space and emotion lll人 move from molten musical pasts to grow future pleasures in sound. The ingredients are familiar, but the listening is not. At its heart is a still, undecorated concentration fuelling an extreme testing of limbs, language and order. This has no concern with collapsing difference into a vogueish flattened mass froth, but searches – forensically, ceaselessly – for something to chew, in the challenge of discretion and integrity or asylum in the body of its instruments. Akilsakilan learning, Doughnut. Finding, twisting and hammering out an expanding musical universe balanced only by its own logics – lll人 have few obvious comparisons. Their performances are consistent radical negotiations of the emotional, physical and social energies of the environments they sound out. Perfectly Reasonable. [The second side was recorded at a summer fundraiser concert for Project Fukushima (This followed a solo performance by Evan Parker who later joined the group for a quartet) and the first as part of the inaugural INTERSECT festival four months later.] Recorded at Cafe OTO on 28 August 2013 (Fukshima) by Stuart Bannister and 7 December 2013 (Intersect) by Kate Arnold. Mixed by Paul Abbott. Mastered by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at Calyx, Berlin. Design by Paul Abbott. Inner sleeve by Paul Abbott, Cara Tolmie and Conal Mcstravick

Born in 1964, Yukihiro Isso is a Japanese Noh flutist (hayashi-kata fue-kata) from a family that has been playing this instrument since the 16th century. He received his initial instruction in flute playing from his father Yukimasa Isso and performed on the Noh stage for the first time at the age of nine. From his middle school years he began to listen to a variety of different kinds of music and studying new instruments including the recorder, flute and piano. An acclaimed performer of classical Noh repertoire, Isso is also an accomplished improviser and has performed with the likes of Cecil Taylor, Peter Brötzmann and John Zorn.. Born 1946, Roger Turner grew up amongst the Canterbury musical life of the 1960’s with a strong jazz foundation. Since 1974 work has been concentrated on exploring a more personal percussion language through the processes of improvisation. Solo work, collaborations with experimental rock musics & open - form song, extensive work with dance, film and visual art, involvements in numerous jazz-based ensembles, & workshop residencies have formed part of that development. Takanehishigu is the audio documentation of the first time these artists played together. The results are a breathtaking new music which remains respectful to the individual traditions whilst simultaneously subverting them. --- Yukihiro Isso / Nohkan (noh-flute), shinobue, dengakubue, gemshorn and recorder. Roger Turner / percussion --- Takanehishigu was recorded live at Cafe Oto on 23rd Sep 2015 by Shaun Crook Mixed by John Chantler. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by Paul Abbott. Edition of 500 copies.

Otoroku is proud to present the full recording of the first meeting between Bill Orcutt (USA) and Okkyung Lee (South Korea). Individually these players have focussed on an idiosyncratic approach to their chosen instruments and technique. Okkyung is one of the most singular voices to compromise the cello’s ‘classical’ origin, whilst Orcutt has spent many years developing a unique abstraction of traditional guitar blues. Live at Cafe OTO is an uncompromising combination of these individual elements and an ecstatic improvised assault of mind and sense. --- Okkyung Lee / cello Bill Orcutt / guitar --- 180 gram vinyl. Matte sleeve with artwork by Bill Orcutt. Limited edition of 700 copies.

Available as 320k MP3 or 24 bit FLACOTOROKU is proud to present a re-press of our first ever vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s legendary recording "The Snake Decides". Featuring four 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. “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.” - Brian Morton, 2018. 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 300 copies.

385 copies limited edition. Silkscreened chipboard jacket with obi (tan & white), inserts and a postcard On their latest release, An’archives dives into the past, disinterring a revelatory collection of recordings from Japanese free-sound quintet Gu-N. Formed in 1994 by Fumio Kosakai (Incapacitants, Hijokaidan, C.C.C.C.) and Hidenobu Kaneda (Yuragi), alongside Ikuro Takahashi (Fushitsusha, Kousokuya, LSD March), Ryuichi Nagakubo (C.C.C.C., Yuragi), and Morihide Sawada (Yura Yura Teikoku, Marble Sheep), Gu-N played regularly at Plan-B in Tokyo, but released little during their relatively short time together. Hazy and hypnotic, their laminar improvisations, four of which appear on this untitled album, are compelling, oneiric visions for the ear. In his liner notes for the album, Michel Henritzi writes that these Gu-N recordings situate the group within a broader trajectory of free improvisation and collective sound within Japan –Taj Mahal Travellers, East Bionic Symphonia, Marginal Consort, each of whom sprung, in many ways, from the radical vision and creativity of Takehisa Kosugi. But there’s a unique spirit here that aligns Gu-N with these predecessors, while also marking out singular territory. Kosakai’s background in noise, via his participation in Hijokaidan and Incapacitants, can be heard in the unrelenting oscillations and heavyweight drones that purr throughout each of these four tracks. Both Kosakai and Nagakubo were members of C.C.C.C., perhaps the clearest precursors to Gu-N in their psychedelic density, though Gu-N trade in C.C.C.C.’s volcanic energy fora more tempered, sensuous exploration of tone and time. There’s also a brutish element to Gu-N’s improvisations –see the saturated spectrum, rumbling and phasing throughout the album, and the crushing, almost Amon Düül-esque drum tattoos that Takahashi pounds out on the second track (recorded in 1998), punctuating the music from deep inside its hallucinatory murk. Elsewhere, as on the third track (one of three recorded in 1994), Kosakai’s cello scrapes out armfuls of buzz-tone as Sawada’s bouzouki trillsout, elastic and vibrant, across spindrift electronics and lung-spun winds.What’s most impressive here, though, is the way each player, formidable musicians in their own right, defers to the might of the communal and the collective. The quintet broke up in 1998, leaving behind scant recorded evidence –just one, self-titled CD, on Pataphysique, released in 1995. This LP is a most welcome addition to the small but blissful body of recorded work made public by this mysterious quintet of spirit channelers.

At the tender age of twenty-five, while he was working part-time at an Italian restaurant in Tokyo’s Kamata district Kazuki Tomokawa released his debut record, fittingly titled Finally, His First Album. While he had already penned hundreds of songs, including his first single “Try Saying You’re Alive!,” written on a long train ride past fields and rice paddies, it was this  recording that introduced  Japan to one of its most unique musicians of the postwar era. Each track, as record label exec Kiichi Takahara writes in the LP’s liner notes (here translated for the first time), is not a song but a “flesh-and-blood human being,” birthed by the singer-songwriter and the raw, guttural cries that would become a hallmark of his incomparable sound. 1970s Japan was a time and place marked by a profound desire for authenticity amidst the onset of television and media saturation. Tomokawa arrived on the scene as a musician with“the personality of a hydrogen bomb,” to borrow a phrase from his frequent collaborator Toshi Ishizuka. In an unwieldy interview included here, members of the notorious leftist band Zunō Keisatsu (Brain Police) put it bluntly: here was a man surrounded by the “disingenuous,” the “wishy-washy,” and the “superficial,” who was delivering “real life, unvarnished.” These songs are lullabies for the lost, staring not into the void but—as the fourth track declares—from inside it. Finally, His First Album is the first of three Tomokawa records to be reissued by Blank Forms Editions in conjunction with the US release of Tomokawa’s memoir, Try Saying You’re Alive!, the first-ever English translation of his writing. This debut captures the self-assured trademarks that Tomokawa would hone over the course of decades. Multiple tracks are performed in his native Akita dialect, a distinct and highly regional vernacular of northern Japan seldom heard outside the prefecture—and even more rarely heard in music. Tomokawa’s lyrics locate profound interiority in the rituals of everyday life, and are sung against sparse folk arrangements of tender, lilting chords—a prelude to the rock and electronic stylings to come in later years. A self-proclaimed “living corpse,” Tomokawa wallows, whispers, shouts, and cries, yet still, through his existential doubt, asks to be heard

In a generation of musicians that came of age in postwar Japan, Kazuki Tomokawa stands as a pioneer of radical individualism—forging a sound and sensibility marked by shocking intimacy and blistering honesty. In his third album, A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth, released by Harvest Records in 1977, Tomokawa creeps “ever more inward,” as Kiichi Takahara writes in the record’s original introductory text—embracing an attitude pervasive amongst musicians of the time who interrogated the prosaic and the profound alike, eschewing politics and society in favor of an “attitude of total self-containment.” Tomokawa recorded the album over the course of a month—from August 24 to September 25, 1977—at Tokyo’s famed Onkio Haus studio in the bustling Ginza district. The arrangements, accordingly, are amped up: paired with the Black Panther Orchestra, Tomokawa’s “screaming philosopher” vocals find their match with the orchestra’s electric guitar, bass, piano, tuba, and ground-thumping drums played by the Brain Police’s Toshi Ishizuka—who appears on Tomokawa’s first three records and remains his collaborator to this day. “This is Kazuki Tomokawa in the flesh,” concludes Takahara. A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth is, in Tomokawa’s uncanny way, able to cut through facade and artifice in pursuit of truth. “You call that life?” he heckles, exhausted by the melodrama and nihilism of youth counterculture, “try saying you’re alive!”

La banque de jeu de pharaon is Thomas Dunoyer de Segonzac.  "Painter, activist and musician, Thomas Dunoyer de Segonzac is not afraid of multi-tasking. Among the key words that illustrate his career, let's list the label he runs (No Lagos musique), the numerous groups he participates in (Mamiedaragon, Bordigaga, Mouvelle, Le Gros, Bled, La Petite Paire des Peuples) or the awards he receives for his paintings (Novembre à Vitry - 2018). In this solo project, he plays minimalist nursery rhymes based on voices (a capella, here and there), samples, tape loops, sometimes field recordings... or not. Symphonie minute taste Ferrari-poulet... he tells us... We want more!" (Sonic Protest)

New pressing of the sold out LP. Second edition of 250pc.Includes 20 page 11" x 8.5" booklet of essays and rare photos of Nam June Paik. A spellbinding tribute from one multi-faceted artist to another. New York-based artist Aki Onda (b. 1967) conjured a transduction to the Korean multi-media pioneer Nam June Paik (1932-2006). Aki himself describes the project: “Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me occurred purely by chance. In 2010, I was spending four days at Nam June Paik Art Center in South Korea for a series of performances and had plenty of free time to wander. The building was packed with Paik’s artwork and related material. I have always felt a close kinship with him as an artist, and so it was a great opportunity to immerse myself in his works and ephemera. It was that night I made the first contact, via a hand-held radio in a hotel room in Seoul. It was literally out of the blue. Scanning through the stations, I stumbled upon what sounded like a submerged voice and I began to record it in fascination. I concluded this was Paik’s spirit reaching out to me.  The project continued to grow organically as I kept channeling Paik’s spirit over long distance and receiving cryptic broadcasts/messages. The series of séances, conducted in different cities across the globe, began in Seoul in 2010, and continued in Köln, Germany in 2012, Wrocław, Poland in 2013, and Lewisburg, USA in 2014. The original recordings were captured by the same radio which has a tape recorder, with almost no editing, save for some minimal slicing and mastering.  Paik is known for his association with shamanism, a practice that constantly surfaces in his works all through his career. In an interview, he stated “In Korea, diverse forms of shamanism are strongly remained. Even though I have created my work unconsciously, the most inspiring thing in my work came from Korean female shaman Mudang.” Paik himself was a master shaman and vividly used shaman rituals and symbols for staging his performances and installations.  These recordings also became a way for me to explore the mythic form of radio—a medium which is full of mysteries. The transmissions captured may be “secret broadcasts” on anonymous radio stations. There are in fact hundreds of those stations around the world, although the numbers dwindle as clandestine messages can now be sent via encrypted digital channels. Some of these stations were likely for military use or espionage or relics of the Cold War. But many others continue without apparent explanation. These are just some of the questions that remain unanswered.” Commissioned in 2017 by documenta 14’s radio program “Every Time A Ear di Soun,” these recordings were continually broadcast on eight radios stations around the world that year. Nam June’s Spirit is a beautifully formed homage, I cannot think of any other like it. An intimate, flickering language discovered through the air. The LP comes replete with a booklet of rare photographs of Paik. These images were shot on the set of Michael Snow’s film Rameau’s Nephew… (1974), although the scene was not included in the final cut. - Sean McCann, 2020

To celebrate the announcement of our Blue Notes reissues we're offering a special price for the two LPs when bought together. This bundle includes 1 copy of Blue Notes for Mongezi + 1 copy of Blue Notes for Johnny.

To celebrate the announcement of our Blue Notes reissues we're offering a special price for the two LPs when bought together + Lous Moholo-Moholo's Spirit's Rejoice! This bundle includes 1 copy of Blue Notes for Mongezi + 1 copy of Blue Notes for Johnny + Spirit's Rejoice!

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.  --- Tracklisting: Side A  1. Saenghwang for the milky boys - 06:10 2. Yanggeum for Trwyn Du, at Penmon - 7:41 Side B 3. Piri & Yanggeum for a flooded town - 8:35  4. Saenghwang for King's Palace tonight - 3:57  5. Yanggeum for snapped ankle - 6:05  Full recording of 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. --- 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.

Tracklist: 1.  Nights on Saturn (communication) - 41:47 حمد [Ahmed] – the quartet of Pat Thomas, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Seymour Wright – make music of heavy rhythm, repetition and syncopation set deep into an understanding of jazz and the obscure depths of its history. Recorded live at Cafe OTO at the launch of the previous record 'Super Majnoon [East Meets West]’ the group work and rework the music of the late musician Ahmed Abdul-Malik to create a stamping, swinging, relentlessly propulsive record where profundity and physicality root right back to ecstatic feeling --- "The journey of self-discovery, communing with the eternal sound. A musician steeped in multiple worlds; oceans apart yet closely connected in ancestral memory. Musicians such as Ahmed Abdul-Malik were able to experience the global community of sound warriors, drawing inspiration from ancient cultures to support personal investigation. The connection was made clear, the music of Africa would certainly influence the African in America despite the atrocities of the Middle Passage, chattel slavery, and continued racist violence that sought to sever any connection to the continent. The beauty of Malik’s investigation is this original fusion of new music (Jazz) of the African in America with ancient music of Africa. It is a shining example of collaboration in culture, where the music is allowed to shine for itself. This is the inspiration that is being tapped, being explored in this collaboration where rhythm is the basis for the sound. Just like Malik, they allow the spirit of the collective push the sound as the music develops into exalted chaos. Joy Be Upon Us!" - Luke Stewart --- Arranged by [AHMED] Pat Thomas - Piano Joel Grip - Bass Antonin Gerbal - Drums Seymour Wright - Alto saxophone --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO, London, December 5th, 2019. Recording: Shaun Cook Mixing: Billy Steiger Mastering: Mikey Young --- Inner-sleeve text: ' Origins Revisited' by Pat Thomas (2004) Cover photo of Ahmed Abdul-Malik at the Cabana Club, New York City, 1965 Produced: Astral Spirits / Seymour Wright --- Released: Astral Spirits, 2021