These new releases from Cafe OTO’s in-house label showcase two pianists who have proven firm favourites as performers at the venue – both of whom demonstrate idiosyncratic brilliance.

Parisian pianist Sophie Agnel was classically trained and played jazz before becoming disillusioned with its harmonic and timbral limitations. She’s since developed an approach to improvisation that claims every part of the piano as a potential sound source – keyboard, body, pedals and strings prepared with ping pong balls, wooden blocks and more. London’s crack rhythm team of John Edwards and Steve Noble are the perfect companions: all three are dedicated to deconstructing the possibilities of their instruments in service of total freedom. Together, they conjure maximalist melodramas of sustained tension that seem to invent strange worlds from moment to moment. Crammed with incident, constantly taking risks, the three pieces on their new album – recorded live at Cafe OTO – don’t just avoid conventional genres but effectively propose brand new ones. Truly epic in both ambition and scale.

Pat Thomas (pictured) has long been one of the UK’s pre-eminent improvisers and has recently been enjoying widespread acclaim through his work with the astonishing quartet (ahmed). He’s frequently to be encountered in a solo setting, too, and this intimate studio date offers a tight and fascinating focus on his praxis. The title track is named after the work of a 14th century Arab astronomer, and displays a suitably methodical logic, with blunt, isolated low-end notes patiently gathering into geometric clusters. On ‘For George Saliba,’ a complex, two-handed fugue coalesces into jaunty mutant stride. No matter how free and far out he goes, an underlying sense of compact structure is always present. Thomas has a uniquely uncategorisable voice, but perhaps sits closest to Sun Ra’s ability to situate wild, spontaneous fancies within a sophisticated and scholarlymusicality.