Digital Membership

  • The best of OTO's archive
  • Five downloads each month from OTO Digital and other labels
  • New labels added regularly
  • Discounts on records, books and more from our online store
  • Regular member newsletter
£15 MONTH £150 YEAR BUY FOR FRIEND

OTO Digital makes our archive available to all, combining high-quality live recordings from the Cafe alongside specially commissioned albums. Each recording is professionally mixed and mastered in house, and agreed with the artist. The label aims to reflect the diversity of Cafe OTO’s program, support new artists in getting an early stage release out, or showcase new or previously undocumented work from more established names.

OTO Digital also works closely with small independent labels to sell their releases through our shop. Each label is carefully selected, featuring artists with strong ties to OTO’s programme and some long out of print releases. The result is an extensive, constantly expanding catalogue featuring some of the most exciting new music being released today.

Your membership is invaluable in helping us do what we do; keeping our programme as exciting and far-reaching as possible, allowing us to fund incredible new recordings, and support and develop new artists.

Your membership payments also help to subsidise our free concession memberships [link], helping to ensure that OTO’s programme remains accessible to as many people as possible.

If you would like to support us further, you can opt to increase your monthly or annual membership payments when you sign up. Whatever the amount, your contribution is hugely appreciated.

FAQ

HOW DO THE CREDITS WORK?

We’ll add five credits to your account each month. Each of these credits can be used to download any recordings from the ‘Digital Downloads’ section of our website - including releases on other labels. If you have credits, you'll be given the option to download any of the available titles under the 'BUY' links.

There is no time limit on using your credits whilst you remain a member.

The website will show you how many credits you have left and when they will next refresh.

DO THE ARTISTS GET PAID?

Yes. When you download a recording as part of your digital membership we pay the artist £1. For downloads by non-members we pay the artists 50% of receipts.

WHAT IS THE RECORDING QUALITY LIKE?

All of the live recordings available will be professionally mixed and mastered and approved by the artists. Most recordings are sourced from the high quality multi-track hard disc recorder we installed in May 2013 and all are handled with the same attention to quality that we’ve given our vinyl LP releases.

Recordings are available to download as 320k MP3 / 24-bit FLAC files or 320k MP3 / 16-bit FLAC in the case of some older external labels.

DO YOU OFFER GIFT MEMBERSHIPS?

Gift Memberships are available across all Membership tiers in periods of 3 months, 6 months and a year. When purchasing the gift membership you will receive a pdf voucher with a unique membership code that can either be sent directly to the recipient or saved to be presented at a later date. Gift memberships do not renew.

I’VE LOST THE FILES I DOWNLOADED - CAN I RE-DOWNLOAD?

All of the album you’ve downloaded can be found on your profile page (log in to the Cafe OTO website and then click on your name in the top right of the screen) where you can re-download the files again at any point.

We would like to acknowledge Sound and Music and The Hub’s ‘Joining the Dots’ project for their support in the development of our digital membership offer.

Latest Downloads

Feedback Moves returns with a vinyl reissue of Pat Thomas’ New Jazz Jungle: Remembering. The album was originally released on CD in 1997, at a time when Pat had already spent years playing on the free improvisation circuit with the likes of Lol Coxhill and Derek Bailey. Thomas is largely known as a jazz and improvising pianist, but can be heard using electronics as far back as 1989 on an electro acoustic work called Monads and on the Bailey-led Company ’91 recordings. Thomas identified jungle’s weirdness and intensity and saw a space open for his own interpretation. On New Jazz Jungle: Remembering, he utilises his classical training and knowledge of the tonal systems used by 20th century composer’s Schoenberg and Webern, and fuses that with his earlier experiences using electronics, keyboards & sampling techniques. What we end up with is 10 tracks of bass heavy jungle breaks which are intersected with vocal and orchestral samples and layers of percussion rotating at varying time signatures. It’s in this fashion that the album seems to present itself: in layers. Layers of samples, keyboards and FX, deployed at varying speeds, never losing their intensity. The re-issue of this lost classic comes at a time when Thomas continues to go from strength to strength, having recently released various solo and collaborative works with a wide range of musicians and projects such as Matana Roberts, Elaine Mitchener, حمد [Ahmed], Black Top, XT and many more.2 x 12" vinyl w/ liner notes and interview by Edward George (The Strangeness of Dub, Black Audio Film Collective).Edition of 500.

Two sides of experimental music from the SWANA (South West Asia & North Africa) region and diaspora, co-released in a limited run of 50 cassettes with collaborators Another Sky Festival. Side A mixed by Zeynep Ağcabay. Side B mixed by Dakn داكنْ. Proceeds from this release will go to the Palestine Red Crescent Society. Recorded at OTO and Bishopsgate Institute at the first edition of the festival, from 29 September-1 October 2023. Over three days and nights Another Sky brought together 26 artists whose heritage spans Armenia, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia and Türkiye, eliding genre and category through beats, improv, ambient soundscapes, pieces composed for classical and non-western instruments, moving image and more. Side A - Mixed by Zeynep Ağcabay: Sampled artists: AZADI.mp3.آزادی /// Jad Atoui جاد عطوي, Vibrant Pools (2023), co-commission by Another Sky & Irtijal Festival, performed by Atoui with Distractfold Ensemble (Daniel Brew, Alice Purton) /// Mariam Rezaei, SING (2023) /// Sam Salem أسامة سالم, The Way Up & The Way Down (2023), performed by Noam Bierstone /// Nour Mobarak نور مبارك, Subliminal Lambada (2023), co-commission by Another Sky & Counterflows Festival Side B - Mixed by Dakn داكنْ: Curse لا نعترف Deeds مش ارقام Dues غرب إحلم Had هون Feels ك لا شيء Needs إطفي خلص Sampled from Zeynep Toraman, An emotional rollercoaster just for you (2018), performed by Distractfold Ensemble (Rocío Bolaños, Daniel Brew, Linda Jankowska, Alice Purton, Kasia Ziminska) /// Sam Salem أسامة سالم, The Way Up & The Way Down /// AZADI.mp3.آزادی --- Recordings from Another Sky Festival at Bishopsgate Institute, 29 September 2023, and Cafe Oto, 30 September and 1 October 2023, London. Audio technical director Dan Ehrlich, sound technician & recordings for Cafe Oto Billy Steiger, mastering Oli Barrett, side B tracks 1-5 mixed by Muqata’a مُقاطعة. Side A mix © Zeynep Ağcabay. Side B mix © Dakn داكنْ. All sampled recordings © the composer. Logo by 40MUSTAQEL 

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.  Recorded at OTO in 2023, this was the second two night residency for a trio that has fast become one of our favourite improvising groups. Each individually brilliant, Agnel, Edwards and Noble’s enduring connection is in their seriously playful approach to their instrument - in their way of looking at it as a whole and then tearing it apart, breaking it down into its raw materials - wood, brass, steel.  Born in Paris in the 60’s and playing her parents piano as soon as she could stand up, Agnel is classically trained and had a turn in modern jazz. What frustrated her was the strange disconnect between the frame of the piano and its keyboard - a weird boundary that seemed to form some hushed code of etiquette. “The first thing I put inside the piano was a plastic goblet. I’d seen a few pianists do it: Fred Van Hove, for example, put rubber balls inside his. But what didn’t appeal to me was that there seemed to be no link between the piano’s outside and inside.” If you see Agnel play now, the body of her piano is littered with fish tins, ping pong balls, wooden blocks - not that you’d recognize their sounds. Steve Noble surrounds his drum kit with whistles, tubes and towels alongside gleaming brass cymbals and gongs. Their stage is a heady mix of high and low - the grand piano and the gong alongside rubber balls and tiny bells; players half stood up, reaching in, bending toward - relentlessly working their instrument to unburden its sound from genre.  Free improvisation is always a leap of faith, a test of commitment, and these three players are completely unafraid. The music switches deftly from super taut string manipulation to extremely loud percussive collisions. The trio can play microscopic mutations on a bass note and then scale up on the turn of a pin to plunge into huge, black chords and ricocheting sonority - dissolving the boundary between body and sound. The crescendo of Part Two is shaped by such cumulative repetition that it feels like a confrontation - a controlled test for breaking point. What happens if we keep going?   As so we left Part Three as the last encore of the residency. It’s a totally exhilarating, skittering reprise - short and energetic - delivered with the kind of grounded abandon you hope to see improvisers play with but rarely do.