Touch Newsletter #239
Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #239. We end the first stage of Touch: Isolation, with a new recording by Charlie Campagna.
The trees are swaying in the wind.
28 contributions later, and we still have no better idea of how this will pan out. We started Touch in 1981/82 with related (if not the same) conditions in operation – a right-wing political takeover swinging into action, with its claims for personal freedom masking the ideology of “me first”, the bias towards the privatised sector, media expansion and eventual digital/financial saturation. As Martin Hannett said to Jon Savage in his interview for “England’s Dreaming”, 1989, talking of the years that preceded (published in “Vagabond”) – “We could see the banana republic, floating above us.”
We see the endgame now, more critical than ever. How to act? With determination of course, remembering that old style methods of protest fuel the very conditions that validate more coercion.
When the Touch: Isolation project started just two short (or long) months ago, we had a clear idea that we must do something to support our artists and show the beauty and affirmation of the music that they make, against the odds (personal and macro). We’re seeking new ways of publishing music and art, that has value in the long term.
If it was difficult back then, to find an audience for the heady chemistry of Soliman Gamil’s “The Egyptian Music”, the angular rhythms of Strafe F.R. and their pioneering of field recordings as an essential element in music, to say nothing of The Hafler Trio… there was at least a culture for it, a distribution system, however compromised.
We have lived through the analogue to digital dimension. We have passed through the times when everyone loved CDs and wasn’t at all interested in vinyl. We have pioneered the possibilities of cassettes, only to be reminded that cassettes are not “hi-fi” enough. The rise of cassette labels, however, tells another story.
How are musicians and artists going to play live again in a small venue without reference to an audience – the eye, the ear and the group? It’s usually a gig that changes a persons’ relationship with their inner selves – “I went to this concert, and things were never the same again…”
We want you to think of this as a performance piece as well, a collaborative jigsaw. It has been carefully time-based. This being the 15th episode of the series…
We end with a recording of the Joshua Tree desert by Charlie Campagna. It came to us as an unforeseen contribution – that follows the spirit of the wild side, that we have tried to highlight from day one.
For the last two months we have published new pieces twice weekly each Monday and Thursday… We trust you will see this as a whole work; it’s never too late to catch up. We view it as a narrative hoping that ecology and the future of this earth is going to win through against the dreadful political and mediated mendacity that can only worsen the situation.
The subscription will remain open for the foreseeable future, so there is still time to support independent music, its artists and its fragile support systems. Thank you to everyone who has taken the plunge. Click here to subscribe.
“Touch: Isolation”
V33:40
Touch: Isolation – 28 new and exclusive tracks recorded by Touch artists. Photography by Jon Wozencroft, Hampstead Heath, March to May 2020.
You can still subscribe to the series.
Charlie Campagna
“Earth Day Isolation”
April 22, 2020 (Earth Day) – escaping the Glendale grind to an air traffic free desert environment. The recordings are made within the rock formations at Skull Rock, Joshua Tree National Park from 11am.
The microphones used were Sennheiser 8020 Omnis at a spaced (24”) ORTF configuration. The recording chain was a Sound Devices 302 transformer coupled preamp, running direct into a Sound Devices Mixpre 3 Recorder, 32-bit at 96kHz.
Subscribe to “Touch: Isolation” on Bandcamp
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 116…
Guerrilla Audio
www.simonfisherturner.com
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