TRIM is an improvising quartet brought together by Dominic Lash (guitar) with Phil Durrant (modular synth), Steve Noble (percussion) and Rachel Musson (saxophones). After Musson was unable to make this show, Colin Webster was recruited on saxophone duties, resulting in two absolutely barnstorming sets under the freshly coined banner of TROM. You know how it is. Times are hard, things get stressful. Sometimes you’ve just got to blow off steam by blasting the doors off an unassuming Hackney music venue and sending the audience barreling down the street. Such was the case at OTO on 29th April this year, when Lash, Durrant, Noble and Webster summoned up the kind of utterly cathartic sonic scree that made a wonderful irrelevance of this having been their first ever performance as a quartet. Make no mistake, this is no one-note performance - the group cover a hugely varied amount of terrain over the two sets' combined near-80 minute run-time - but the sheer sense of exuberance on display here is hard to ignore. A rapidly rotating interplay sees all four musicians trading shapes that mutate and evolve with an almost breathless momentum. There's an exhilarating sense of new forms being created in realtime, forms that seems to blur and shift depending on your vantage point. Whatever angle you come at it, however, this one doesn't let up for a second. On this basis we look forward to welcoming back both TRIM and TROM here, with hopes for TRAM, TREM and TRUM too at some point in the future. -- Recorded by Billy SteigerMixed and mastered by Oli Barrett

With live music and group-based rehearsal and recordings severely restricted in 2020, Dominic Lash gets to work on his own, exploring the rarely-embraced option of playing with recordings of himself on guitar and double bass. Neither a classic call and response or palimpset based approach to double tracking, Dom's volant weaving makes it hard to decipher which recording was made first. Both hands are used to colour the canvas, giving the illusion that lines of each instrument are leading each other down different paths. In a set of winding melodic phrases, splintered guitar stabs, bowed double bass refrains and harmonic embraces, Dom unveils conversations with himself. A dialogue that is both a reckoning and peacemaking with himself and his thoughts within 4 walls. in memory of Simon H. Fell (1959-2020) and John Russell (1954-2021), with love and gratitude Everything about this album has in one way or another been influenced by these two master musicians (but please don't hold them responsible). --   Dominic Lash - double bass, guitar, recording   --   Cover design by Oliver Barrett

Dom Lash / double bassAxel Dorner / trumpetRoger Turner / drums --- Tracklisting: 1. Pit Stop - 5:242. Brunswick Square - 16:233. The View Of The Far Hills - 5:434. The Local - 3:435. Squall - 11:526. Bzzz - 3:46 --- Tracks 2 & 5 recorded live at Cafe OTO on 21st April 2015 by Tom Mudd. Track 4 recorded live by Simon Reynell at Portland Works, Sheffield. Tracks 1, 3 & 6 recorded live by Simon Reynell at St James’ Church, Midhopestopes, on 24th April. Edited, mixed and mastered by Axel Dorner.

Both great improvisers, but even better storytellers, Davies and Lash carve a huge narrative with this simple approach to strings. As soon as their bows hit string they are growing and swelling together until their huge swathe of sound looms over the room and fills OTO's every nook and cranny. And then, all of a sudden, it disappears - leaving just a ticking, a bowing of floorboards under an invisible, shifting weight. Detailed minutiae with gigantic effect from two of the UK's best.  --- Angharad Davies / violin Dominic Lash / double bass  --- Recorded by Mark Jasper on Thursday 5th May 2016. Mixed by Abby Thomas. Mastered by James Dunn.  --- Tracklisting: 1. 22:32 - 22:32