Monthly Archives: December 2010

Pioneering label of the year 2010

Lend Me Your Ears have named Touch as their “pioneering label of the year”.

They write: “Touch – LMYE’s pioneering label of the year: shepherding magnificent new releases by Philip Jeck & BJNilsen that were among the year’s best anywhere is qualification enough for recognition. But Touch went further, bringing Sohrab’s unmissable

A Hidden Place, Daniel Menche’s extraordinary Hover, early Hildur Gudnadottir goodness in the form of the Mount A re-release & further enhancing its Touch Radio series with 12 new instalments – including this Phill Niblock.”

earslend.blogspot.com

Pioneering Label of the Year 2010 | Lend Me Your Ears

Lend Me Your Ears have named Touch as their “pioneering label of the year” for 2010.

They write: “Touch – LMYE’s pioneering label of the year: shepherding magnificent new releases by Philip Jeck & BJNilsen that were among the year’s best anywhere is qualification enough for recognition. But Touch went further, bringing Sohrab’s unmissable A Hidden Place, Daniel Menche’s extraordinary Hover, early Hildur Gudnadottir goodness in the form of the Mount A re-release & further enhancing its Touch Radio series with 12 new instalments – including this Phill Niblock.”

earslend.blogspot.com

The Bee Symphony at The Rymer Auditorium, York | 17th December 2010

The Bee Symphony

Celebrating the bee in science and art
Friday 17 December 2010 at 7.30pm
Rymer Auditorium

The Bee Symphony, consisting of recordings of bees by Chris Watson (‘Autumn Watch’, ‘The Life of Birds’, ‘The Life of Mammals’, ‘Life in the Undergrowth’ and ‘Life in Cold Blood’), Mike Harding (Touch) and a vocal score by Marcus Davidson (Spire) will be performed live by Chris Watson and five singers from the University of York, conducted by Marcus Davidson. The Symphony was originally commissioned as part of Pestival and performed in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.

“The theme of the evening is really for people to become immersed in the sounds and rhythms of the insects.” Chris Watson

In addition to The Bee Symphony the programme will feature other sound performances and talks by scientists on current research on bees and the current perils that they face, including:

Irene Moon – My Queen and I: An introduction to the bees and their closest relatives, also a special episode for TouchRadio

Buy tickets at www.yorkconcerts.co.uk
The Bee Symphony microsite
www.marcusdavidson.net
www.chriswatson.net

The Wire on Wax Cylinders and EVP

Photo © Thomas Adank

The latest issue of The Wire features a four page article on EVP and Ash 9.4/PARC 4 – CM von Hausswolff’s and Michael Esposito’s “The Ghosts of Effingham”.

The Wire writes: “Revisiting his family farm with Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Michael Esposito captured the sounds of his ancestors for their wax cylinder project, “The Ghosts of Effingham”. Ken Hollings spools back to the days of Thomas Edison to investigate how obsolete recording devices and the dead voices captured on them have changed our perceptions of the material world.”

Buy “The Ghosts of Effingham” in the TouchShop
www.ashinternational.com
www.ashinternational.com/parc
www.thewire.co.uk

Philip Jeck Live in London | 9th December 2010

Announcing a special evening of performances at London’s Café Oto in December…
Buy tickets for The Tapeworm – Unleashed in the East – Café Oto 09.12.10

London Town’s finest tape-only label, The Tapeworm, presents its second night at Dalston’s Café Oto. Fine performances are to be expected from a splendid line-up of the label’s favourites.

Taking the train from Liverpool, just for you, the one and only Mr Philip Jeck. Flying red-eye from Brooklyn, Randy Gibson. Stretching their Oyster cards to the limits, London’s Zerocrop and Cathi Unsworth. From the other side of the planet we welcome New Zealand’s Adam Hayward. And playing the piano, Mr Andrew Poppy.

Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Philip Jeck makes geniunely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art not the gimmick. Most of Jeck’s audio work is released on Touch. Tonight for The Tapeworm, Jeck plays the Bass. Expect a performance of wall-destroying stature. www.philipjeck.com

Andrew Poppy is a London based composer who makes acoustic and electronic music and has recordings on a number of labels including Touch, Crépuscule and Zang Tuum Tumb. Minimal classical patterns collide with the textures of experimental pop music in an unusual body of work that actively seeks different contexts. There are collaborations with Impact Theatre co-op, Psychic TV, Liverpool Philharmonic, Erasure, Nitzer Ebb, the Royal Opera House, Claudia Brücken and Bernardo Devlin. Since 1989 he has developed a collaborative partnership with visual and theatre artist Julia Bardsley. Andrew performs solo or with his ensemble, which recently completed UK tour dates with ‘…and the Shuffle of Things’. Last month Philip Marshall asked Andrew to make two short piano pieces for a sound installation in Utrecht, each based on only four notes. The first live performance of Number Crunch 1 and 2 will be at Café Oto. “Bewitching, beautifully crafted and highly addictive.” – The Wire. www.myspace.com/andrewpoppy

Cathi Unsworth is a writer and editor who lives and works in London. She is the author of three pop-cultural crime novels, Bad Penny Blues, The Singer and The Not Knowing, and the editor of the short story collection London Noir, all published by Serpent’s Tail. Cathi has written on music, film, art, fashion and culture for Sounds, Bizarre, BFI Flipside, Mojo and Nude, amongst many others. Her collaborator on this release is Pete Woodhead, an electronic composer who cut his musical teeth as part of O Yuki Conjugate and The Sons of Silence and is now best known for his soundtrack contribution to the hit British zombie movie Shaun of the Dead. Pete and Cathi previously collaborated on the Transmissions Series that are available for free download on www.cathiunsworth.co.uk and continue to conspire on new projects. Tonight, Cathi will be doing a special reading for you all: www.cathiunsworth.co.uk

Zerocrop is the pseudonym of London based musician Parker, an independent artist who has been releasing albums through the website www.zerocrop.com since 2000. The music is hypnotic mix of complex vocal melodies and spoken word sequences on unsettling themes, set against a rich backwash of pedal steel, guitars and electronics. Zerocrop has remixed, written songs for and performed with the incomparable Billie Ray Martin and regularly creates the show music for award winning milliner Justin Smith. Zerocrop’s top pop performance for The Tapeworm – Unleashed in the East will see him and his band bring to life these songs with an affectionate punch. www.zerocrop.com

Randy Gibson is a Brooklyn-based composer and a student of seminal minimalist La Monte Young. He works with structure, evolutionary compositional models, and improvisation to create enveloping and ritualistic works in just intonation. His tape for The Tapeworm is titled Analog Apparitions – a pair of 30-minute compositions designed specifically to be recorded and released on cassette tape. Gibson follows in the tradition of prime harmonic just intonation pioneered by Young in the 60’s. Apparitions of The Four Pillars, the underlying composition on this tape, explores the depth of the harmonic series through standard just intonation methods and the use of higher prime harmonic relationships. In the 18 hours of recordings layered onto the two sides of the cassette you can hear the mechanism of the tape itself, the evolution of improvisations over seven recording sessions, and the purity of sine waves in complex prime-harmonic relationships. Tonight Randy will recreate his tape using a just intonation toy organ and boomboxes. This work was funded in part by the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center. www.randy-gibson.com

On 4 September 2010, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck off New Zealand’s South Island. The epicentre was 55km (35 miles) north-west of Christchurch, at a depth of 12 km (7.5 miles). There was widespread damage to buildings and roads as well as power cuts. A state of emergency was later declared in Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city with a 386,000 population. Adam Hayward is director at South Island Dance Network and at The Body Festival of Dance and Physical Theatre. On 4 September 2010, Adam watched the earthquake destroy his home. Tonight at The Tapeworm – Unleashed in the East, Adam will talk about the event and its aftershocks…

www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz
news.bbc.co.uk
www.tapeworm.org.uk
The Tapeworm on Facebook
www.cafeoto.co.uk