Paul Abbott

PROJECTS • WRITING • ABOUT

Selected projects:

Solo

WE GROW MUSIC! workshop Meteo Festival, 23-26/8/22

performance The Don and Moki Cherry Sessions, Argos

Growl, Rubs, Drops, Claps (Live Growth: Atelier Claus) residency, performance, release Bandcamp

NSULAR Digital & booklet Bandcamp(+)
So we oeandha perform the five theatre body or environment characters of nsular: Knee (Lover), Core (Pendulum), Back (Peacock), Limb (Leaf ) and Neck (Folds) [...]
NSULAR is the second of 3 ‘Rhythmic Figure’ projects, following DUCTUS (2019). 61 minutes of audio, across 5 tracks, and a 28 page booklet with new writing; written and recorded in Edinburgh and Brussels in 2020.

DUCTUS performance Talbot Rice Gallery

DUCTUS performance Serralves Em Festa

DUCTUS CD & booklet Bandcamp(+)
DUCTUS is an organic environment, a comedy of vibrations and signs, featuring the fictional characters DETECTIVE ENGINEER, QOSEL, and STRIKE.
DUCTUS is the first of 3 'Rhythmic Figure' projects. 51 minutes of audio, 12 tracks, 42 page booklet. DUCTUS was written and recorded in Edinburgh and Porto in 2019.

performance DESCARNADOR 1 Smup Parede Lisbon

Percebes performance No Noise #4 Sonoscopia

Paene recording OTOroku digital(+)
Live recording from Cafe OTO 9/4/18. Double digital release with Jake Meginsky.

performance Cafe OTO

Sphuzo digital & booklet Bandcamp(+)

see complete text

Sphuzo performance Cafe OTO

residency Prospectus A Year With Will Holder KW Berlin

Solo X performance Festival In Opposition—Art and Politics of Improvisation Kuda

performance Speeding and Breaking

QNO recording OTOroku digital (+)
Solo performance, live recording from Cafe OTO
Tender Interval performances Cafe OTO residency (+)
Tender Interval was a series of monthly solo performances, in the Cafe OTO Project Space, "that will mobilise paraphrased pasts and imaginary futures to intensively explore the present for a way out."
There is no origin nor terminus to our feelings
—Gregg Bordowitz
The series was composed of recurring ingredients (in particular): drums, technology, bodies, words and the building in which they are located. For each performance the composition of these elements was take form through a specific figure of existing materials taken from a range of sources.
more at Cafe OTO archive page

Queen Of the Shell text published in Cesura//Acceso #2

VAGUS CD & booklet PORTAA (+)

untitled acoustic drum kit solo Abject Bloc Limehouse Town Hall

Black Exhventalia performance Cafe OTO Project Space

Antrgor Reiz performance Cafe OTO

Collaborations

—with Will Holder

performance Very Good* F.R.David launch KW Berlin

F.R.David—Very Good* publication Uh books(+)
Uh books
F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, dealing with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practises. Like music, the issue’s “theme” is better off unaccounted for, and up in the air, like a flock of birds (creatures who feature heavily), circling around performance, listening bodies, given time, and loving relations.

launch Very Good F.R.David Launch Cafe OTO

—with Rian Treanor

performance Folds/Very Good* F.R.David launch Cafe OTO

performance Counterflows Kings Hall

—RP Boo Trio (with RP Boo & Semour Wright)

performance Badd Bonn Festival

DS134—31.12.18 digital release OTOrokuDigital(+)
Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Tuesday 31st December 2018. Details at release page
Chicago footwork originator and pioneer RP Boo alongside ever-radical, longstanding collaborators Seymour Wright and Paul Abbott in a special New Years Eve trio.

performance NYE 2019 Cafe OTO

performance Counterflows 2019

—The Creaking Breeze (with Ute Kanngiesser, Evie Ward, Seymour Wright, Billy Steiger)

Nathaniel Mackey and The Creaking Breeze Ensemble: Fugitive Equation CD, Digital. Fonograf Editions(+)
The first night Lit by Eclipse takes as its point of departure, reads and develops a letter from book five, Late Arcade; the second night Skeletal Water, X-Ray Water takes as its point of departure, reads and develops a letter from book two Djbot Baghostus’s Run.
Recorded during residency at Cafe OTO. Full description of the project here.

Creaking Breeze Ensemble with Nathaniel Mackey residency performances Cafe OTO(+)
Nathaniel Mackey and the Creaking Breeze Ensemble meet in London for the first time to develop two live performances based on letters from Mackey's From A Broken Bottle epistolary series. Inspired by Mackey's fictional music, these experimental performances will explore the mysterious balance between sound and word.
About Nathaniel Mackey
Cafe OTO Residency event pages

conversation with Keira Greene podcast Whitstable Biennale

Slack Fulcrum Twelfths (Green Vitriol) performance Whitstable Biennale(+)
..a moment of collective song; an imaginary glass bottom boat (as perspex cube); tidal dynamics; the physics of acoustic and atmospheric pressure. The trio perform their composition animated by the sea and the wind at the end of The Street, a shingle spit stretching out half a mile into the sea at low tide. The Creaking Breeze Trio will perform for 60 minutes, during the 30 minutes of ‘slack water’ time either side of the low tide mark at 16.47pm. The trio will perform with and during any weather.
About Nathaniel Mackey
Whitstable Biennale event page

Fictional Music, Experimental Composition and Performance workshop Whitstable Biennale

—XT (with Seymour Wright) + Anne Gillis

Q-02 & Cafe OTO residency/performances q-02 Cafe OTO(+)
Developing two new site-specific works, following the 'Our/s Bouture(s)' collaboration they started, in 2021.
Anne Gillis & XT 'Our/s Bouture(s)' Broadcast/Stream Cafe OTO(+)
[Dear Anne] "We imagine a room - OTO - which we move around (with sounds) in which we are planting bulbs, sprouts/roots, seeds, graftings/clippings (but these plants are sounds and movements), which grow and evolve organically, but can repeat mechanically. Many births!"
Anne Gillis and XT (Seymour Wright and I) have developed a new work remotely, together. Responding to the invitation above - recorded and assembled - in three locations: Paris (Anne), Brussels (Paul) and London (Seymour). It was played inside cafe OTO. Following this live 'broadcast', the recording was available to listen to for free online, for one week between 2 - 9 June, here

—XT (with Seymour Wright) + Pat Thomas

"Akisakila" / Attitudes of Preparation (Mountains, Oceans, Trees) LP, Digital Edition Gamut(+)
"In August 2018, musicians Paul Abbott and Seymour Wright (together known as XT) and Pat Thomas took part in a tribute to Cecil Taylor at London’s Cafe Oto, four months after the death of the US pianist. In advance of the performance, the trio looked to Taylor's “attitudes of preparation” to inspire them, and created a piece developed in response to their listening to, and discussion of, Cecil Taylor Unit's Akisakila, recorded in Japan in 1973. The audio resulting from this exercise was then used as a framework for the live performance. “We prepared the piece, transcribing elements,” they explain. “And developed a series of cycles – unit structures – made up of various voices of Cecil’s influences and associates (real and imaginary), and at the end the voice of Cecil himself.”"

—XT (duo with Seymour Wright)

Deorlaf Z (version) for XT Deorlaf X Live Digital Takuroku(+)
Seymour Wright and I had exchanged some ideas in advance of, to prepare for, our live performance for the launch of the XT 'Deorlaf X' OTOroku record, at Cafe OTO. I began to prepare some material based on our thoughts, and the Deorlaf X record. This congealed unexpectedly, into the 38 minutes which became this Deorlaf "Z" iteration. For the OTO event, the sounds were then reworked live (from Brussels), with Seymour's material (live in London). I'd said this: "The ingredients were those initial ideas: 'dub' mutations, Deorlaf (Dalston) & XT histories (memory) plus mutated bifurcations:—thinking about (distanced, as we are/will be for the 14th [July, 2021]) joins, connections, transitions (edges, bridges, membranes, blocks) intense and continual communication (pouring in/out, simultaneously: time, density, speed) across real and imaged spaces. I used the Deorlaf [X] section (beeps) as one draped, initial frame, the rest was a continual pouring in/out; ultra(s) close/far/fast/slow/low frequency/high frequency."

Deorlaf X LP/Digital OTOroku(+)
New music from XT: A reflective re-assembling of a dozen years working together. Deorlaf X is located in Dalston, and specifically at OTO. "A changing cast of OTO guests, audience and emotions hosted each time in a new London."

Palina'tufa 2xLP & digital Empty Editions(+)
Empty Editions Bandcamp
Recorded during a two week studio residency in Hong Kong, Palina’tufa departs from XT’s previous albums - primarily documentations of live performances - in its embrace of the recording studio as a form of instrumentation: a tool to sculpt, overdub and (re)assemble their chimeric sounds.

XT & Container 9.8.18 digital release OTOrokuDigital(+)
Cafe OTO page
First time trio from Ren Schofield, Seymour Wright and Paul Abbott. Seymour Wright: saxophone; Paul Abbott: drums, electronics; Ren Schofield: Roland 909, tape machine, delay. 2018.

Tanadonu Roll digital release Bandcamp(+)
Bandcamp page
From machine gun fire to a clearing, a shy dog’s ears twitched in time with sounds that for us were out of reach.[...]
—Lizzie Homersham

performance Gamut Festival

submersa performance Cafe OTO love calls performance Cafe OTO

Pah CD & digital Pleasure Of The Text(+)

Ae CD & digital self released

four day residency Cafe OTO

performance The Art School Glasgow

—yPLO with Micheal Speers

performance Cafe OTO

Stop Constant digital release Bandcamp(+)
micro-album of studies towards a speculative drum kit.
Recorded, edited, London 2017

—with Keira Greene

sound for film Folds

sound for film Eustatic Drift

—with Will Holder, Seymour Wright, Cara Tolmie

Drumming, speaking, singing, playing saxophone respectively performance KW Berlin

performance at residency Cafe OTO

—as ULAPAARC with Cara Tolmie

Eagress performance Hysteria PS/Y Camden Arts Centre

Queen Of The Shell performance Whitechapel Art Gellery

The Legal Team, The Gait, The Singer and The Chorus performance Plastic Words Raven Row Gallery

Acting and the Architect performance Counterflows

—lll人, with Seymour Wright & Daichi Yoshikawa

Vjerhanxsk CD self released(+)
Strange, intense and extreme lll人 is the trio of Daichi Yoshikawa, Paul Abbott and Seymour Wright.
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.

GJĒRHAN LP & digital OTOroku(+)
Cafe OTO page
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.
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.

performances 2014-2017(+)
NEXT Festival
Cafe OTO
Ulrichsberg Festival
No Wave Est Budpaest
Pocket Theatre Ljubliana
Akenbush Paris
Eyes Go Pop: Psychedelic Japan Series performance with Rikuro Miyai Tate Modern
Empty Gallery Hong Kong
Super Delux Tokyo
Ftarri Tokyo
Candy Tokyo
Hideous Porta London
De La War Pavillion Bexhil
Hideous Porta London
Cafe Oto
Hagenfest

—Cesura//Acceso with Gabriel Humberstone, Cara Tolmie, Christina Chalmers, Anthony Iles, Larne Abse Gogarty

About Cesura//Acceso(+)
Cesura was formed in 2014 as a place to think through the politics of music. The first issue was published in 2014, the second in 2017. Both issues are distributed by Anagram.

Cesura//Acceso held workshops, talks, radio shows, and put on gigs exploring the politics of music, poetry and performance.
Cesura Issue 2 Launch Cafe OTO(+)
Cesura//Acceso Journal Issue 2 Launch with performances and readings by Claire Potter, Federica Frabetti, Lisa Jeschke and Lucy Beynon, Vindicatrix, Billy Steiger.
Cesura//Acceso Issue 2 Journal(+)
Cesura Issue 2 distributed by Anagram
Issue 2, in response to the open call Corrupting Desires! Technique, Performance, and Control Cesura present a series of texts which deal with the problems of constraint, restraint and domination in relation to musical production, performance and reception. With new writing from Paul Abbott, Hannah Black, Nathaniel Mackey, Larne Abse Gogarty, Verity Spott, Irene Revell with Annea Lockwood, Paul Rekret, and Federica Frabetti with Mark Fell and contributions from Abject Subject Ensemble (Mattin, Farahnaz Hatam, Sacha Kahir, and Colin Hacklander), Naroder Bourniki, ESW, Danny Hayward, Sophie Hoyle, Sacha Kahir, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Claire Potter, Byron Peters and Tyler Coburn, David Morris and Kim O'Neil.

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Fred Moten Event Cafe OTO(+)
Event with Will Holder, Hannah Black, Sacha Kahir, Hypatia Vourloumis, Fumi Okiji.

Festival In Opposition Art and Politics of Improvisation Kuda

Broken Rudiments Workshops at Ljudskolan

Cesura//Acceso Issue 1 Journal(+)
Cesura Issue 1 distributed by Anagram
Cesura//Acceso is a journal about music and politics. Publishing a mix of commissions and open submissions, the journal asks what it could mean to practice politics through music or think music through politics. Featuring contributions from musicians, writers, artists, theorists and poets, Cesura//Acceso explores, unfolds and encourages interconnected spaces of experimental thought and practice in politics, music and poetics.

It's about: Cruel optimism in Bay Area punk, DJ Rashad and the ghetto thermodynamics of juke, the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill, dole autonomy and rave, Mary J Blige, Lyn Hejinian and lives un-lived, the poetics of turfing, forensic speech analysis, musings on Don Cherry in London, singing and factory work, the abject history of happy hardcore, poetry by Howard Slater and Martin Glaberman, an interview with Joe McPhee, incantations to de-harmonise the world, puking music and more...

Contributors: Sean Bonney, Anne Boyer, Seymour Wright, Stevphen Shukaitis, Howard Slater, Dhanveer Singh Brar, Commune Editions, Alberto Savinio, Kev Nickells, Anthony Iles & Eve Lear, Johanna Isaacson, Matteo Pasquinelli, Martin Glaberman, Emma Robertson Michael Pickering & Marek Korczynski, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Simon Yuill, Iain Boal

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