Chwalfa by Incapacitants
“Chwalfa” (Welsh for “dispersal, rout, upheaval, upset, or a confused or chaotic state”) documents the first return of Incapacitants to the UK since 2016. With the windows boarded up and the subs doubled, two ordinary looking blokes Toshiji Mikawa and Fumio Kosaka obliterate OTO’s usual whisper hush with clipped out, scorched earth tape loops and pedal chains - transporting the room to the planet’s furnace core and back again. It’s all music, all at once, in a whorling vortex of time bending velocity.
For Vymethoxy Redspiders, who writes the release’s extensive liners, “[the music] is a transcendental outpouring of raw consciousness and firmamental emotion, more in line with the “fire music” of free jazz players like Albert Ayler and Dave Burrell or Sun Ra in his most apocalyptic moments of Moog sorcery than most of the things I long came to associate with the practice of Noise. I'm struck by how Modal or Raga-like it sounds at points, where a deep tremor drone burrs like a wide open plain; for a “pure” noise that is often considered “not musical” it sure hits me where music hits most affectingly and more so than most sounds daring to call themselves music!”
Credits
Recorded live at Cafe OTO on the 6th and 7th of September, 2024 by Billy Steiger. Mixed by Oli Barrett. Layout by Abby Thomas.
This residency was produced in partnership with Professor Paul Hegarty as part of the funded project on Innovative music in Japan, with thanks to University of Nottingham and the AHRC impact ‘accelerator’ fund for support. Huge thanks to Paul Hegarty and Sam Thorne.
License
All rights reserved.Recommendations
OTOROKU began releasing recordings from the live program of Cafe OTO in 2012.
The label is part of OTOProjects - a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (CIC) that has been set up to manage the programme at OTO. Any profits from OTOROKU are put back into supporting its work with musicians.
All sales are split with artists 50 / 50.
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