Touch Newsletter #226

Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #226. Two new tracks, from Chris Watson and Bana Haffar, are now available to subscribers of Touch: Isolation – a project that will evolve over the coming weeks. A time to support independent music while it still exists! Further details below. Click here to subscribe.

Since the launch of the project, we have received files from Mark Van Hoen, ELEH, CM von Hausswolff, Geneva Skeen, Anthony Moore and Simon Scott. We are in the first stages.

In the meantime we have been promising to re-launch one of our earlier releases from SFR, “Santa Maria”… When recording studios cost an arm and a leg… “Santa Maria” by Strafe Für Rebellion was one of the very early artist-only releases on Touch, dating back to 1986. It is now available again as a digital release.

“Touch: Isolation”
V33:40

Touch: Isolation – A promise of at least 20 new and exclusive tracks recorded by Touch artists. A photographic counterpoint, the view from Hampstead Heath during the London lockdown. Addressing the distance between the micro and the macro – scenes that are familiar and universal, with forensic attention to the suspended nature of our time now. They are a bit nervous.

We will post a .pdf of these photographs to all subscribers having worked out how to do this in line with the Bandcamp parameters… People aren’t in the photos, by and large, because what is amazing about the need for ‘self-isolation’, no-one is talking about how this connects with the disappearance of privacy.

Subscribe at any point. Four tracks are now available. From our April 6th launch date, the sampler and the opening transmission by Jana Winderen and its amazing narrative; and, as of today, two new tracks from Chris Watson and Bana Haffar. We plan to upload the series twice weekly on Mondays and Thursdays…

“When will it end?”… Hopefully not with a bang but with a new optimism that our situation can be turned around. We mention this because there was a comment or two following the first announcement of Touch: Isolation that it was a shade dystopian. Not the intention at all. We are celebrating what we have, the community of artists we work with… As Eddie Cochrane once sang – “C’mon Everybody”! Our artists responded, with a bang… These newsletters will keep you informed of the sequence of uploads.

Chris Watson
“Gobabeb”

Recorded on location in the Namib desert and recomposed at Kenton Studios, March 2020.

Bana Haffar
“Conference of the Birds”

Subscribe to “Touch: Isolation” on Bandcamp

Strafe Für Rebellion
“Santa Maria”
TO:6D

Download – 2 tracks, 44m29s. Recorded and mixed at Grundfunk Studio by Michael Grund. Art direction by Jon Wozencroft. Now available on Bandcamp.

“Santa Maria” by Strafe Für Rebellion was one of the very early artist-only releases on Touch, dating back to 1986. It has never been available on CD. This bandcamp release has been sourced from the original quarter-inch master tapes, transferred by Bernd Kastner and S.M. Syniuga. The original artwork marks the first time we were able to afford phototypesetting for the whole project.

Download Strafe Für Rebellion “Santa Maria” on Bandcamp

Bana Haffar / Nour Mobarak
“You Are The Audience”
TTW#125

Cassette only – limited edition of 100 copies. Nour Mobarak: voice and FX. Bana Haffar: modular synthesizer. Mastered by Juliette Amoroso. Illustration: Nour Mobarak. Shipping now.

A: Live At Zebulon, March 18, 2018
B1: “You Are The Audience”, Live At Potts Gallery, May 18, 2018
B2: Primary Worker (Studio Version)

This cassette tape is a document of two live performances by the Haffar/Mobarak duo. Their mutual pleasure in variable tunings, granular synthesis, and structured improvisations shaped their collaboration.

A lifelong expatriate, Bana Haffar was born in Saudi Arabia in 1987 and spent much of her childhood in the GCC. Through her switch from 10 years of electric bass to modular synthesizers in 2014, Bana is attempting to dismantle years of institutional “conditioning” in traditional systems of music theory and performance. She is interested in exploring sonic disintegration and coalescence into new forms and synthesized experiences.

Nour Mobarak (Lebanese-American, born 1985 in Cairo, Egypt) is an artist working with writing, music, performance, sculpture, and film making. Performances include the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Stadslimeit, Antwerp; Cafe OTO, London, and Cambridge University, Cambridge; among others. Mobarak has participated in exhibitions at Miguel Abreu Gallery, Cubitt Gallery, Rodeo, Taaffe Place, LAXART. Her writings have been published by De Appel/F.R. David, The Claudius App, and The Salzburg Review among others. Her music has been released by Ultra Eczema (Antwerp) and Recital (Los Angeles).

Buy Bana Haffar / Nour Mobarak “You Are The Audience” on Bandcamp
More information on www.tapeworm.org.uk

The Pathfinders
“Imagine Something Yesterday”
TTW#127

Cassette only – limited edition of 127 copies. Digital resurrection by Stanley Gravett at Holy Mountain Studios. Mastered by Simon Scott at SPS Mastering. Cover by Jane Plüer. The Pathfinders logotype by Malcolm Garrett (after DRU). Shipping now.

A1: The Dancing Years
A2: Police Surgeon II
A3: Long Shadows
A4: The Listening Trees
A5: One Of Jupiter’s Moons
A6: Radio Silence
B1: Beheading Of…
B2: Something Abstract
B3: One Step Ahead
B4: Classic
B5: Bigger Noise
B6: Police Surgeon
B7: Horse’s Mouth
B8: Other Clothes
B9: Iron Man Rusts

Recorded by The Pathfinders – Roger Cleghorn and Malcolm Garrett – “Imagine Something Yesterday” is a compendium of playful explorations with analogue synthesisers and distorted found sounds, made without an actual release in mind.

Former art and design students at Manchester Polytechnic, The Pathfinders were sharing a flat together in London when Malcolm was establishing his graphic design studio, Assorted iMaGes, on Tottenham Court Road and Roger was studying for a Fine Art MA at Chelsea.

These experiments from the 15th floor of a tower block in the Isle of Dogs, London were captured directly on a reel-to-reel tape recorder over a period of a few months at the tail end of 1980 and the beginning of 1981. Further embellishments were made at Chelsea School of Art. The equipment used included Yamaha CS-10, ARP Axxe, EMS VCS3, TEAC A-3340, Bang & Olufsen Beogram 1202 and Beolab 1700.

Listeners may identify the aural influence of electronic pioneers such as Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno, Cabaret Voltaire or Throbbing Gristle and they would not be wrong as these were indeed some of the musicians whose records were frequently played at home by The Pathfinders around that time.

With almost 40 years having elapsed since recording, memories are sketchy with regard to who made what noise where – The Pathfinders could hardly be described as being musicians who jammed together – but everything ended up compiled onto a couple of cassette tapes, where they have languished ever since – the ‘master’ reel-to-reel tapes seemingly lost forever. Only one track from these sessions, “Long Shadows”, was previously published, on Touch’s 1983 “Meridians 1” compilation. “Imagine Something Yesterday” features almost all of the other surviving recordings. A tantalising additional 14 minutes of sound remains unreleased, the full running time being just too long for comfortable release on one cassette.

The Pathfinders remain Roger Cleghorn and Malcolm Garrett.

Buy The Pathfinders “Imagine Something Yesterday” on Bandcamp
More information on www.tapeworm.org.uk

Candura
“/II”
TTW#128

Cassette only – limited edition of 100 copies. Composed, recorded and produced by Candura. Mastered by James Plotkin. Illustration: SavX. Shipping now.

Founded in Lisbon, 2018, Candura is Andre Hencleeday and Pedro Coragem. Their debut recording, “/I”, was released through GreySun Records (Portland, OR, USA) in October of the same year. In 2019, the duo presented a new composition live at Galeria Zé dos Bois, Out.fest, Amplifest and during the closing of Rui Chafes’ exhibition “Desenho sem fim (Endless Drawing)” at Casa da Cerca. This piece now becomes the duo’s second published work, “/II”.

Buy Candura “/II” on Bandcamp
More information on www.tapeworm.org.uk

Guerrilla Audio

Guerrilla Audio is a series of audio raids by Simon Fisher Turner.

guer·ril·la
ɡəˈrilə/
noun
noun: guerilla
a member of a small independent group taking part in irregular fighting, typically against larger regular forces.

Each audio edit will be posted for 14 days and then removed from the site, although the information about each guerrilla activity will be archived, but without the audio. There will be two postings per month with the first (also featuring Klara Lewis & Rainier Lericolais) on 1st August 2015, so please check in regularly to listen to the latest offering. We are well into the third year and have just posted episode 113…

Guerrilla Audio
www.simonfisherturner.com