Monthly Archives: May 2009

Jana Winderen – Heated: Live in Japan on BBC Radio 3 | 27th May 2009

A lengthy extract of Jana Winderen‘s CD ‘Heated’ [Touch # Tone 36] was played by Fiona Talkington on Late Junction on BBC Radio 3 last night. You can hear the episode here for 7 days. The live recording, along with a 7″ vinyl and cassette release, is available in the TouchShop here.

Stephan Mathieu’s Sugo Nepalese Bolognese

800g ground beef + 200g ground jerky
roast gently until medium, add 1 bottle of nice red italian, until the ground meat is just covered. Let it simmer softly for at least 2hrs while slowly adding the rest of
the vino to keep everything covered.

Add

600g peeled and mashed tomatos plus grated ginger, ground cumin, cardamon, coriander, seasalt and black pepper for seasoning half way through and a proper dash of pasta water just before serving.

Add some fresh peppermint leaves and enjoy with Fusilli.

Tone 38 – Biosphere “Wireless – Live at The Arnolfini, Bristol”

Touch # Tone 38
CD in Digipak – 62:12
Artwork & Design: Jon Wozencroft

Recorded live at The Arnolfini, Bristol, 27th October 2007 by the doyen of sound recordists, Chris Watson, using 2 x Sony ECM 77s with a Nagra P11 Ares flash card recorder, and from desk to hard drive. The recording was mixed, edited and mastered by Touch stalwart BJNilsen, in Berlin during March 2009.

This concert was part of Touch 25 Live, which also featured a performance of Storm [by Chris Watson & BJNilsen]. Biosphere is Norwegian composer and performer Geir Jenssen, and this is his sixth release for Touch. In the early 1990s he was a pioneer of so-called “ambient techno”, but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring. His last album, Dropsonde, wasn’t a soundtrack like the interwoven Substrata, nor an episodic journey in the way that Autour de la Lune is. It pushed new directions towards the jazz colors of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, while re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread. Here Geir Jenssen takes this further, incorporating samples of field recordings by Jony Easterby and trumpet by Anders Karlskås, invoking a sparser, more arresting sound. A landmark release for Biosphere, his first live album, heralding new beginnings without jettisoning the past…

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Touch Presents: Live in London – Two Reviews and a Reminder

Many thanks to all who attended Touch Presents, live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. A fine review of the evening has been posted over at the Mapsadasical blog, and Drowned in Sound acclaim the “triumphant performance” with a 9/10 review.

The next Touch Presents… in London is now only a week away.

Touch Presents, live at The Roundhouse

16th May 2009, as part of The Short Circuit Festival.

Philip Jeck [UK] and the Gavin Bryars Ensemble [UK/FR] – “The Sinking of the Titanic”
Biosphere [NO]
Hildur Gudnadóttir [IS] & BJNilsen [SE]
+ an installation by Chris Watson
+ in the bar, Sheikh Ahmed selecting sounds from the Touch catalogue

Further information at www.roundhouse.org.uk
Book tickets online

Philip Jeck on “The Sinking of the Titanic” in The Guardian

Visit www.guardian.co.uk to read “Sinking of the Titanic: the watery sound meditation returns”, an article previewing the Gavin Bryars Ensemble / Philip Jeck performance next weekend at Touch Presents… at the Roundhouse.

“For his prologue, Jeck used a test tone record that had been lying around without a case for years. “What I’m trying to set up, it’s like an empty ocean, with bits that are like a premonition for things that are going to come,” he says. Amid the static from this battered record come foghorn-like tones and hisses like a diver’s air supply – this is a transmission being excavated from the past. “Philip is a genius, no doubt about that,” says Bryars.”
[nb: Jeck is not a DJ!]

www.guardian.co.uk: Sinking of the Titanic: the watery sound meditation returns
Further information about Touch Presents… at www.roundhouse.org.uk
Purchase The Sinking of the Titanic in the TouchShop