The OTL Show is broadcast from Soho radio every Sunday at midnight.

Evil Dick “The OTL Show Theme” 1:46
AMM All-Stars (Andrew King – electric guitar; Barbara Mukoda – flutes; Out To Lunch – acoustic guitar) Resonance, Southwark 18-iii-2026 3:56
Tenores di Bitti “Cantu a passo torratu” Intonos (New Tone, 1994) 10:07
Frank Zappa feat. Terry & Dale Bozzio as Harry & Rhonda “Drop Dead” Thing-Fish (Barking Pumpkin 3LP, 1984) 7:56
Africa Open Improvising (Esther-Marie Pauw – flute; Garth Erasmus – sax, ghaita; Carina Venter – cello; Pierre-Henri Wicomb – prepared piano; Jacques van Zyl – electronics, rubber chicken; John Pringle – percussion) “Sextet Item 12” ix-2025 6:53
Captain Beefheart “Dirty Blue Gene I” Brown Star (1971) 2:52
AMM All-Stars “Jugged Ebrious” 4:54
Captain Beefheart “Liitle Scratch” Brown Star (1971) 4:46
AMM All-Stars “Beakers Aching” 2:59
Xenochronic AMM All-Stars aka Xammas “Out of the Frying Pan into the Xenochronic Fire” Captain Beefheart “Frying Pan” Brown Star (1971) + AMM All- Stars One for Shepp 11-iii-2026 54:09>>58:13 + Out To Lunch Splash’n’Klang 10-ix-2019c 4:05
AMM All -Stars (Robert “Sugarlips” Goldsmith – sax; Barbara Mukoda – flute; John Trice – guitar; Out To Lunch – guitar; Mario Guarnieri – percussion) “Blowpipe Boogie” Resonance 25-ii-2026 2:15

The Second Viennese School of Backwater Blues

Chris from Albuquerque’s Review

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With a pluck from OTL’s acoustic guitar and a breath from Barbara Mukoda’s flute, giving the illusion of pleasant simplicity, we’re ambushed by an opaque, goosebumpy kind of multi-voice beauty that has, personally speaking, haunted me for the rest of the day. There’s something about the room sounds of the woodwinds plus Andrew King’s electric chords plus the close-up and uncomfortably intimate plucks, clicks and actual breaths from Watson’s acoustic corner that sticks to the nervous system, regardless of the brevity of this opening piece. I was compelled to go back and listen to it a few times, hours later. Licking a fjord will certainly satiate one’s thirst.

King’s guitar sustains are deftly metamorphosed into prolonged vocalizing, as we’re suddenly hearing a Sardinian form of doo-wop (that’s how I hear it, anyway) which is addictive in its own right, once the jarring first voice has finally settled into the ears. When the harmony singers join in, one wants it all to go on and on, and doesn’t find ten minutes too long. If there’s such a thing as an active and kinetic trance, this be it. A brilliant bit of editing has Harry, a character from Zappa’s Thing-Fish, reacting to the Tenores di Bitti performance as if it’s just taken place on a stage in front of him. Didja get any onya down dere?

Ike Willis thus plays the part of one of the Tenores di Bitti singers reacting to Harry and Rhonda’s spat, bringing some interesting parallels to mind between Thing-Fish, the napkin-dangling minstrel who represents bigoted approaches to Broadway by white well-to-dos, and our 21st-Century knee-jerk reaction to the “foreignness” of the Sardinian singers. OTL will soon make a comment about a nearby radio-station receptionist asking, “Is that African?” Granted, it’s meant to be an observation of the nationalism-defying congruence between different age-old musical forms, but after all we’ve just heard, the unwittingly racist connotations of lumping of everything non-Western sounding into the generic term “African” can’t help but spring to mind.

(The Bozzios are so damn funny. They’ve made me laugh all over again. Haven’t listened to Thing-Fish in quite a while. Must get back to it.)

OTL surprises the ear by joining in at the very end as one of the cast, before we quite realize that this is actually our DJ speaking. He invites a bit of irony by taking the receptionist’s cue and treating us to seven minutes of exciting improvisation from South Africa, former seat of Apartheid. Clever as hell, in the context of the Zappa musical’s take on bigotry (and OTL’s remarks about nationalism). What adds yet another layer of conceptual continuity is that this Africa Open Improvising piece sounds like something the Mothers of Invention might have played on stage around 1968 or ’69. Well, plus a ‘cello.

Beefheart’s earnest pseudo-Howlin’ Wolf voice is always welcome. I’ve never heard the Brown Star album, and now I want it. It doesn’t appear to be officially available, however, so this radio-bound source is our lucky break, apart from some sneaky downloading from a certain video website. We’re reminded here that all the Captain really needs is a guitar to sing with, never mind all of the elaborate instrumentation with which producers tended to clutter up and try to radio-fy his official ’70s stuff. The blues harp he’s blowin’ here is just a (very cool) extra.

The guitar keeps going after the singing has been supplanted by some eerie whispering, and it takes a second to realize we’re now hearing a stunning AMMAS piece that guitarrishly continues the hypnotic drone of Tenores di Bitti and harmonizes with the flute and acoustic in a way that could be described as delicate and diatonic. OTL isn’t having any of that, and adds some human mouth percussion and plucked-string drumming. Sorry, mate: it actually fits beautifully.

This and the next gorgeous stretch of AMMAS music bookend another Beefheart blues, and the singer makes a somewhat provocative choice by not singing. The inclusion of this 1971 instrumental adroitly keeps the sharply percussive plectrum work going, performing a trademark OTL temporal displacement as he jumps backward over the years to bring his guitar to the Beefheart session. What follows is a funny story about how a magazine writer gets less free stuff if he’s known to be truthful, and some duly truthful words of wisdom to recording artists.

The AMMAS playing in “Beakers Aching” features the same players as before, but this bit isn’t concerned with conventional harmoniousness, even accidentally: the freedom and mischievousness here exhibit some wildly imaginative musicianship, the uncannily impromptu use of deliberate dissonance explored for its sheer attractiveness, with none of the instruments acting as mere colouring, but rather with each being crucial to the sound, which I happen to find captivating. Warning: AMMAS music is habit-forming. Be sure to always exceed recommended dosage.

And there’s some magnificent goodies in store for us as a double finale’: a pair of AMMAS pieces, the first of which has them conspiring xenochronically with the Captain! It’s rare for OTL to do this sort of thing, so this is a special delicacy, and I’m glad he’s allowed himself to go with his gut. Van Vliet’s involvement carries on with the show’s overall tied-togetherness, of course, and this is some outstanding stuff. I looooooove the household percussion and how it finger-flicks at the synapses when heard in tandem with the inspired AMMAS instrumentation.

To send us off, the live, non-xenochronic improvisation returns, this time with Sugarlips adeptly playing a ‘cello-sounding sax — clever return to Africa Open Improvising, innit! — with John Trice and OTL violently collaborating on guitars (what? Oh, yes, one CAN collaborate violently), and Mario Guarnieri thankfully keeping himself from pulling percussive punches, giving the whole shebang some cosmic bedrock. The contrast between those aggressive ingredients and Mukoda’s absolutely radiant flute playing is a dish the likes of which you’ll taste nowhere else. Every one of these shows is a gift. We mustn’t take any of them for granted. LISTEN!

chris

ammasfan

Out To Lunch’s Reply

Wow, Chris …. what a review!!!

It illuminates my own passion for Joyce and Zappa that you deem everything I do a deliberate construction (playing AOI because the receptionist at Fora mentioned Africa, comparing Sugarlips’ sax to Carina’s ‘cello, balancing dissonance and harmony, pursuing an anti-racist polemic), when in fact it’s simply the result of lining up the tracks which have struck me ear during the week … and pursuing a discussion of apartheid I’ve been having with Peter and Melanie over the years. You explain to me why I do things: the neurotic (“mad”?) artist can ask for nothing more!

Whenever a show goes well, “coincidences” arise, reminding me of the way a real Zappa album (unlike the ZFT’s posthumous scavagings) contains musical and verbal motifs which reflect each other (and the other albums … and other things). It’s not so much a matter of “clever” segues. AOI was scheduled to be played, so not a response to the receptionist’s question “is it African?” (in her defence, it’s a pretty intelligent observation, the nearest thing to the Sardinian singers I could cite – outside Thing-Fish’s “The Crab Grass Baby” – would be “Erora” by the Lijadu Sisters from Nigeria). One of the things that people used to find implausible in my interpretations of Zappa (less so now that he’s dead and deemed a “classic”) was detailing his intricate weave of significant motifs … but I’m beginning to think this intricacy stems from Zappa tracking the connections between things in the real world rather than embroidering a complicated design. If you’re developing a picture of the real world, it’ll be lurid and beautiful and scary and fractal even if you include accident and spontaneity. Especially if you do. Once you’ve explained everything to the funders and to the public there’s nothing left for the art to do (why most artworld stuff is so goddamn EVENTLESS & BORING).

Cheers
OTL
ammas

Image: “The Multicoloured Monster” MS Paint by Out To Lunch 29-ix-2026