OTOROKU 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.

Originally recorded and released in 1980, "Six of One" beautifully captures the detail in Evan Parker's high frequency split tones for which he is now perhaps better known. Five years on from "Saxophone Solos" and with circular breathing and polyphonics well worn into his live performances, Parker's experimentations here produce sustained passages of brilliant flight. Set into the echoes and resonances of a St Judes On The Hill church, the results are stunning.  "The recital commences with a split tone line of twining sine waves that expand and contract in telepathic collusion. Pitch dynamics narrow and redefine themselves more emphatically on the second piece where sliding legato rivulets born of Parker’s compartmentalized tonguing create the sonic semblance of up to three separate voices emanating from the single reed speech center. It’s a feat he’s accomplished innumerable times since, but every fresh hearing never fails to open an aperture into a style of improvisatory expression that is at once wholly alien and intensely mesmerizing. There’s also something strangely subterranean about the flood of sounds, like the rush percolating water through an underground aquifer system enroute to unknown tributaries. The third piece trades tightly braided tones for leaner and more linear phrases, but a vaporous trail of phantom notes still clings to the central line. And so it goes, with the illusion of repetition guiding the momentum, though Parker never explicitly repeats himself." - Derek Taylor, All About Jazz Transferred from the original master tapes and released in an edition of 500. 

OTOROKU is proud to reissue Evan Parker's first solo LP "Saxophone Solos". Recorded by Martin Davidson in 1975 at the Unity Theatre in London, at that time the preferred concert venue of the Musicians' Co-operative, Parker's densely woven and often cyclical style has yet to form; instead throaty murmurs appear under rough hewn whistles and calls - the wildly energetic beginnings of an extraordinary career.  Reissued with liner notes from Seymour Wright in an edition of 500.  --- "The four pieces across the two sides of Saxophone Solos – Aerobatics 1 to 4 – are testing, pressured, bronchial spectaculars of innovation and invention and determination. Evan tells four stories of exploration and imagination without much obvious precedent. Abstract Beckettian cliff-hanging detection/logic/magic/mystery. The conic vessel of the soprano saxophone here recorded contains the ur-protagonists: seeds, characters, settings, forces, conflicts, motions, for new ideas, to delve, to tap and to draw from it story after story as he has on solo record after record for 45 years. ‘Aerobatics 1-3’ were recorded on 17 June 1975, by Martin Davidson at Parker’s first solo performance. This took place at London’s Unity Theatre in Camden. ‘Aerobatics 4’ was recorded on 9 September the same year, by Jost Gebers in the then FMP studio in Charlottenburg, Berlin. Music of balance and gravity, fulcra, effort, poise and enquiry. Sounds thrown and shaken into and out of air, metal and wood. It is – as the titles suggest – spectacular." - Seymour Wright, 2020.

Live recording from Keiji Haino his concert at les ateliers claus on 7th October 2019 - Brussels, Belgium We all know Keiji Haino as a legendary musician and it's always a special experience to host him. The day prior to his concert at les ateliers claus, he came to Brussels and expressed his wish to do some record shopping. And so we did - in between soundcheck and the actual concert. Keiji Haino likes to hear unique sounds and performers and so we went on a search. In a certain store in Brussels I made him listen to one of my favourite albums by Igor Wakhevitch (Hator) - he listened and promised me half-jokingly his performance at les ateliers claus would be better.

Live recording from Michael Chapman's concert at Les Ateliers Claus on 11th April 2017. Recorded and mixed by Christophe Albertijn. --- Tracklisting: 1. Plain Ol' BobThurston's House It Aint So Sensimilia - 13:272. Caddo Lake - 6:493. Soulful Lady - 5:264. That Time of Night - 6:455. Memphis in Winter - 8:256. 2 Trains - 12:517. Shuffleboat River Farewell - 5:33

Allotropes (Jim Hoult & Stephan Barrett) focus on the subtle interplay of textures and timbres, quiet sounds and the space in between. Jim & Stephan first started performing together in 2016 as part of V22's Summer Club at Louise House curated by Andie Brown (These Feathers Have Plumes) and Helen Frosi (SoundFjord). During lockdown, the sense of a reconfiguration in their experience of time and space led to a long distance collaboration between their respective locations in Västernorrland County, Sweden and London. Named after the sweeping clouds of blue light and discrete pulses emitted by luminescent Ostracods, which resemble slow motion fireflies as they signal to the ocean depths at moonset, the resulting piece 'Night Signal' uses electronic manipulation to process tiny recorded extracts of clarinet multiphonics and bells scanned at tens of thousandths the time of their normal speed to reveal hidden timbres, creating atmospheres that slowly unfold, shift and develop, until eventually dissolving back into the the waves.