Monthly Archives: January 2012

Touch.30 live events, January and February 2012

Touch.30 Live in Lisbon, 27-28.01.12

Fim de Semana Especial n.º 3, Teatro Maria Matos
27th January programme can be viewed here
28th January programme can be viewed here

Bruce Gilbert & Mika Vainio
CM von Hausswolff
Jana Winderen
Leslie Winer
www.teatromariamatos.pt

Spire: Live at Passionskirche, Berlin, 5.02.12
as part of CTM.12 Festival

Marcus Davidson
Eleh
Hildur Gudnadottir
Charles Matthews
Jana Winderen
The Eternal Chord
Organology
www.ctm-festival.de
www.spire.org.uk

Touch.30: CM von Hausswolff interviews Mike Harding

as part of freq_out 8, Moderna Museet, Stockholm 17-19.02.12
www.modernamuseet.se
www.freq-out.org

TO:83 – Oren Ambarchi “Audience of One”

CD – 4 tracks – 53:51
Artwork & photography: Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Francois Tetaz at Moose, Melbourne

Track listing:

1. Salt – 5:30
2. Knots – 33:23
3. Passage – 6:41
4. Fractured Mirror – 8:20

On “Audience of One”, Oren Ambarchi presents a four-part suite which moves from throbbing minimalism to expansive song-craft to ecstatic free-rock. His previous solo albums for Touch exhibited a clear progression towards augmenting and embellishing his signature bass-heavy guitar tones with fragile acoustic instrumentation. Audience of One, while also existing in clear continuity with these recordings, opens the next chapter.
Remarkable in its confidence and breadth, but also in the sensuous immediacy of its details, this is the first time a single record has come close to encapsulating Ambarchi’s musical personality in its full range and singularity. The techniques and strategies developed in his refined improvisational work with Keith Rowe and his explorations of the outer limits of rock with Sunn O))) and Keiji Haino are both in evidence, alongside the meticulous attention to detail and composition of his solo works. And on the cover of Ace Frehley’s ‘Fractured Mirror’ which closes the record, Ambarchi even points to his roots as a classic rock fanatic, in an epic yet faithful version which extends the shimmering guitar patters of the original into a rich field of phase patters reminiscent of the classic American minimalism of Reich and Riley.

The album features a multitude of collaborators, who, far from appearing in incidental roles, are integral to the pieces on which they perform: on ‘Salt’, Ambarchi paints a hypnotic, chiming backdrop for Paul Duncan’s (Warm Ghost) vocals, and Joe Talia’s virtuoso drumming and driving cymbals are at the core of the epic ‘Knots’, in which Ambarchi, alongside a chamber arrangement by Eyvind Kang, weaves a net of frequencies and textures with the organic push and pull of a 70s psych jam, the bass response of a doom metal ritual and the psycho-acoustic precision of an Alvin Lucier composition.

On his previous records, Ambarchi’s signature guitar tone was the ever-present bedrock over which other elements sounded. At moments on Audience of One, this disappears entirely, as on the beautiful ‘Passage’, which, recalling the 70’s Italian non-academic minimalism of Roberto Cacciapaglia and Giusto Pio, is composed of overlapping tones from Hammond organ and wine glasses, Jessika Kenney’s voice, various acoustic instruments, and the delicate amplified textures of Canadian sound-artist Crys Cole. Rather than being provided by any particular sound, the unified feel of Audience to One stems simply from the unique, patient sensibility Ambarchi has developed over the last twenty years; abstracting musical forms into their barest forms, while somehow always managing to leave their emotive power intact. [Francis Plagne]

(A hi-res version can be downloaded here)

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Jon Wozencroft in Creative Review

The January 2012 issue of Creative Review is a music special with features on festivals, the future of the music video and much much more.

Touch’s Jon Wozencroft is interviewed for the magazine by The Wire’s Jennifer Allan about the tendency for “music’s more obscure genres to adopt distinctive, common visual styles.”

Read online at www.creativereview.co.uk [subscription required]

The Art of Listening 2

Transmedia presents: The Art of Listening 2, Touch’s residency in Brussels, January 16-20 2012. This residency is part of the Masters Degree course at Sint Lucas College.

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Biosphere Wins Spellemann Award for ‘N-Plants’ [Touch # TO:84]

Congratulations to Geir Jenssen (Biosphere) for winning a Spellemann Award (Norwegian Grammy), in the Electronic Music section, last night in Oslo.

N-Plants was released in 2011 and is still available in the TouchShop.

Tom Lawrence on BBC Radio 4 | 10th January 2012

NATURE: The Water Boatman’s Song

BBC Radio 4, Tue 10 Jan 11.02, rpt Thur 12 Jan 21.02

Writer Paul Evans accompanies sound recordist Tom Lawrence on a journey in sound across Pollardstown Fen to hear the extraordinary sounds of an underwater orchestra of aquatic insects. Additional sound recordings: Chris Watson, Producer Sarah Blunt.
For over a year, sound recordist Tom Lawrence has been capturing the sounds of Pollardstown Fen in Ireland. These are no ordinary sounds, but the sounds of a hidden world; an underwater world, where an orchestra of creatures create an extraordinary and vibrant music. Above the water’s surface, grasshoppers and crickets stridulate; that is, they rub one part of their body across another to produce ‘those fiddling tunes so evocative of summer’. Below the surface, something similar happens as water beetles, water scorpions, great diving beetles, water boatmen and lesser water boatmen and hundreds of other species produce sounds day and night at over 2Khz, reaching 99 decibels in some cases – the equivalent of sitting in the front row of an orchestra “Tapping, knocking, hammering, drumming, clicking, creaking, cracking, croaking, buzzing, fuzzing, bleeping, winding, reeling, revving, puttering, pattering, humming, pulsing, squealing, shrieking…. the insects reveal themselves”. Writer and narrator Paul Evans meets Tom Lawrence and takes a journey into the Fen to hear these sounds for himself. Tom leads the way. His friend, Jim Schofield joins them, bringing with him a boat (an inflatable boat that they first have to pump up), and then the three men ‘wobble’ along reed-lined drains into the Fen. It’s a journey of revelations; not only does Paul encounter the underwater orchestra, but also Old Ireland and with it a magical adventure; They find a snake, haul up a bag of treasure, climb the steps of a Famine Tower, experience vertigo as they stand with their heads in the clouds high above the quarried land, watch Peregrines swipe through the air like sharp knives, and learn the story of a hanged man, his lost love and a vixen who wanders amongst the reeds, her piercing cry echoing through the darkness.
“Sadly, since the making of this programme, Tom has died, but this is a very beautiful and fitting tribute to his work.” (Jane Anderson, Radio Times)

“The Water Boatman’s Song” on the BBC iPlayer

TS30 | Jon Wozencroft “Touch.30” T-Shirt

“Touch.30” T-Shirt, designed by Jon Wozencroft.

Printed on a black Fruit of the Loom Super Premium T-Shirt.
Position of logo and type: Center Chest, 10cm wide.
Sizes available: S / M / L / XL / XXL

[please state size preference in the TouchShop comments box when checking out!]
We are also designing a postcard and various other items, so watch this space for further news…

Buy Jon Wozencroft “Touch.30” [T-Shirt] in the TouchShop

2012

Touch’s 30th anniversary year is documented on a micro-site which can be found here, The 30th year kicks off with a series of events and releases, including albums by Oren Ambarchi, Hildur Gudnadottir (CD and multi-channel version on USB stick), and Thomas Köner…

Tone 45.4 – Jana Winderen “Debris”

12″ White Label vinyl + 320 kbps MP3 download of the tracks
Cut by Jason @ Transition

Track listing:

Side A: Scuttling Around in the Shallows 11:25
Side B: Drying Out in the Sun 16:01

The fourth in the series of limited edition vinyl in the Tone 45 series. 100 copies only are available in the TouchShop…

Scuttling Around in the Shallows is from the quadrophonic installation of the same name showed at Galerie B-312, Montreal, Canada 8th January – 5th February 2011.

Drying Out in the Sun is from a four-speaker outdoor public installation at “Starfield Simulation #36”, Scaniaparken in Malmö, Sweden, 4th September – 2nd October 2011.

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