Deorlaf X formed as a composite - a record made over an intense 3 days of the second Anthony Braxton residency here at OTO. Seymour and Paul have worked together for over a decade, finding strong mutual interests in sound, visual art and text. Here we asked the duo to share a little more about what they draw on over Deorlaf X, and how it might have influenced their sound.

"Deorlaf X is about the nexus of a specific set of coordinates- us (XT), you, our interests and influences - and how these coordinates converge on (and repercuss from) a specific space - Cafe OTO in Dalston, London.

This record is about our relationship with this convergence/nexus/re-percussion. And this relationship as an on-going dialogue between us, histories, potentials, fact, fiction, ideas, friends, audiences, and spaces. It’s the space we met in 2008, and where most of our ‘XT’ performances have taken shape / place. It’s also—humbly—about our relationships and history with Dalston and East London."

1. Love Call · Ornette Coleman
2. Ornette Coleman · In All Languages
3. Ornette Coleman · Science Fiction
4. Ornette Coleman · Song X
5. Anthony Braxton · Composition 117
6. Anthony Braxton · Town Hall 1971
7. Paulinho Da Viola · Nervos De Aco
8. Galaxy to Galaxy · Hi - Tech Jazz
9. Juan Atkins · Jazz is the Teacher
10. Hey Jolly Broom Man · The City Waites

"Thinking about how to make a document about this work we chose to return to, re-animate, re-work, and refill the material of these many recordings. We chose to take these respective compositions—each a structure for improvisation and learning—and to restructure them. To make them the material for a document of an ongoing—dozen years of work. An ‘overview of—and an immersion in—layers of the live, fossil unconscious’."

Anthony Braxton 'Composition 117' Anthony Braxton Composition Notes Book E, 1988, Synthesis Music, p.444

"We did this over three days in a studio in January 2020 working with Shaun Crook - the same three days over which the 2nd Anthony Braxton residency at OTO took place. We took the Légerian progression of one composition—Love Calls—and emptied it out. We shifted its fulcrum, the waves of its heart. We filled it with areas of other compositions: the four versions of A’a lava were folded and pressed into one (and poured into our instruments); a section of Submersa—‘nas ruinas da cidade submersa’— sunk under further waves of OTO; and we possessed the sounds of a Love Call with the happy dance of a spaced grid. It begins and returns with glimpses of reflection on Charlie Parker, and Ornette. XT structures sound an ongoing attempt to listen and learn about the rich and transformative affordances of the situations we occupy."

Paul Pritchford, 'Vibrational Cooking' in Healing With Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition 1993, North Atlantic Books, pp: 447-8.

XT & RP BOO - 31.12.18 (OTO Downloads)

Valerie Wilmer, 'Each Man His Own Academy' in Jazz People, 1977, Quartet Books, pp: 22-30.  Download PDF

Cecil Taylor, 'The Musician' (1968) in the liner notes to The Jazz Composers Orchestra, JCOA Records. 

Jayne Cortez, 'When I Look at Wifredo Lam's Paintings' - Callaloo, No. 26 (Winter, 1986), pp. 26-27. Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press