Touch Newsletter #240

Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #240. Announcing “Migrations” by Simon Scott. We are now taking pre-orders for this vinyl and download release (official release date 26th June 2020). The vinyl is limited to 300 copies and comes with two bonus tracks, “Borderlands", and “Fen(ce)”, which is available immediately.

Two new tapes from The Tapeworm are now available. The first, “Long Decay and New Earth” by Jiyeon Kim, is a document of a performance and its rehearsal in Seoul, December 2019. The second is Not Now’s “Within the Beyond”, a six-track tape of dark electronics by Peter Hope and Henri Sizaret. Further details below.

Strafe F.R. present a new recording and video, “Friss”.

Back in stock – “Spire: Organ Works, Past, Present & Future” and “Spire: Live in Geneva Cathedral” – 2CD editions presented in beautiful oversized wallets with photography by Jon Wozencroft. Further details below… In addition, The Tapeworm’s Bandcamp is restocked with a handful of returns of out-of-print tapes by NYZ, Jay Glass Dubs, John Macedo, Sharon Gal, Mark Fell, Television Set (aka Sleeparchive), and more…

In an article titled “Need More Nature? Listen to 12 Essential Field Recordings”, The New York Times features four Touch releases: Chris Watson’s “Outside the Circle of Fire” and “El Tren Fantasma”, Jana Winderen’s “Energy Field” and “Eldfjall” by Jacob Kirkegaard.

Here’s a roundup of recent Touch: Isolation articles: Further., Igloo Magazine, Ambient Blog, BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, Xenographica, The New Lofi, The Times Literary Supplement, Map Magazine and A Closer Listen. 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. Visit touchisolation.bandcamp.com to subscribe.

Simon Scott
“Migrations”
Tone 70

Vinyl in an edition of 300 copies plus digital – with two digital bonus tracks when purchasing from our Bandcamp. Vinyl mastered at SPS Mastering. Cut by Jason @ Transition. Digital mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio (NY). Photography and design by Jon Wozencroft. Buy on Bandcamp.

A. Red Square 14’ 14”

Field recordings captured during a day under Moscow’s Red Square in the underground metro in 2015. It has a narrative of motion as my microphones move with me through a vast sounding environment. The space reveals the aural diversity of the people moving beneath the Russian city of Moscow, the complex acoustics, and complex rhythms mixed together in a subterranean space. These communitive sonic events transformed my perception of space and time as reverberant boundaries led my ear into unknown acoustic destinations.

AA. Murmurations 18’ 53”

Recorded in March 2018 at RSPB Strumpshaw Fen in, Norfolk, UK using DPA 4061 microphones. I was showing Australian sound artist Lawrence English around the Fens of East Anglia, when he requested we head to Buckenham to find a flock of crows roosting. I recorded the spectacular murmurations of thousands of crows, rooks and jackdaws, as the spring sun slowly set at dusk, and deer ran across the marshes. The field recordings are accompanied by a gradually shifting modular synth tone, that musically represents the slow change colours, until the light fell off the horizon.

Download only: The Borderlands 6’ 30” and Fen(ce) 7’ 06”

Both compositions were recorded in Holme Fen nature reserve, Cambridgeshire, with two JrF contact microphones on 22nd to 25thMay 2020. The long lines of wires and wooden posts stretched across the sunken landscape of the Fens follow the man-made drainage canals and rivers for hundreds of miles. Bowed, plucked and struck by natural phenomena (strong winds caused by climate change) and indigenous flora, reveals dynamic sonic intra-events and hidden acoustic ecologies.

Buy “Migrations” on Bandcamp

Jiyeon Kim
“Long Decay and New Earth”
TTW#129

Cassette only – limited edition of 100 copies. Composed, performed and recorded by Jiyeon Kim. Illustration: Lim Jin-kwang. Buy on Bandcamp.

A: Rehearsal, 28 December 2019
B: Performance, 29 December 2019

Jiyeon Kim is Seoul-based musician and sound artist. Over the past decade she has devoted her time to developing a vocabulary based on field recordings and format-specific sound making, with close-listening deeply embedded in her practice.

As a musician, she integrates field recordings, acoustic piano and electronics with modern composition, sampling and improvisation techniques. She is also interested in the use of audio playback technology and data formats as instruments. As a sound artist, she presents sound installations, interdisciplinary performances and writings based on her listening experiences and her reflections on them.

She is a member of artist duo Weather Report who are based on Jeju island, Seoul, and who explore the medium of live streaming for remote listening and network performance practices. She also scored the documentary “Kim Gun” (2019).

She has performed at Cafe Oto (UK), Ausland (Germany) and Stazione di Topolò (Italy), and several local experimental live events in Seoul. Her audio works have been broadcast on Resonance.fm, NTS, KDVS and more. She has participated in artist residencies at Portobesebo (Italy), MoKs (Estonia) and Culture Space Yang (Jeju Island, Korea), and is part of the curated Touch Mentorship programme. Her listening practices are documented in “Experimental Music Since 1970” by Jennie Gottschalk (Bloomsbury, 2016).

Buy “Long Decay and New Earth” on Bandcamp

Not Now
“Within the Beyond”
TTW#130

Cassette only – limited edition of 100 copies. Written and produced by Not Now between Aqui and I reira 2019. Peter Hope: voice, SP75+DL4. Henri Sizaret: computer generated instrumentation. Mastering engineer: Kuvera B. Collage: D.M. Nagu. Buy on Bandcamp.

A1: Cage Glow
A2: Basilica
A3: P8 Sister
B1: Fleixh
B2: Dth@Wsh
B3: K Haut

Over three decades of pursuing an uncompromising path of innovative musical juxtaposing and singular vocal stylings, Peter Hope’s latest Not Now project pushes industrial techno into unchartered territories with the inspired collaborative input of electronic precisionist Henri Sizaret. In search of creative liberty the pair adopt spontaneous composition techniques in the construction of their other-worldly voodoo machinations, resulting in a wild ride through caustically sharp electronic mutations, intriguingly tarnished with the disturbed spirits of mangled blues and depersonalised dada vocal proclamations.

Buy “Long Decay and New Earth” on Bandcamp

Strafe F.R.
“Friss”

Strafe F.R. present a new recording and video, “Friss”, completed after their most recent release “Shadow Position” (Touch Tone 68).

View “Friss” on YouTube

“Spire: Organ Works, Past, Present & Future”
Tone 20

2CD – 17 tracks in wallet with booklet, photography and design by Jon Wozencroft. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering. With special thanks to all at St. Mary’s Church, Warwick, England.

Featuring the first fruits of collaboration between Fennesz and Sparklehorse, recorded in Geneva by Christian Fennesz and Scott Minor. Pieces from Touch regulars Biosphere, Philip Jeck, Benny Nilsen, Chris Watson. Newcomers include US free music composer and designer Tom Recchion, UK’s Scott Taylor, Icelandic artists Finnbogi Pétursson and Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, and one of Sweden’s premier performance artists Leif Elggren. Plus UK’s finest organist Charles Matthews, classical composer Marcus Davidson and Highly regarded Japanese field recordist Toshiya Tsunoda.

The thought of producing a compilation where the tracks were all either inspired by or more directly influenced by the organ had been frequently aired over the years. The conversations were always animated and expansive. The organ works of Arvo Pärt, those performed by Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, a pupil of Richard Rodney Bennett at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and others, have reached a wider non-classical audience.

Eventually Benny Nilsen arranged to visit St. Mary’s Church, Warwick and work with one of England’s finest, Charles Matthews. Crawling around inside the instrument, positioning microphones most appropriately in the Church, or ‘capturing’ the psalms composed by Marcus Davidson, Nilsen explored the possibilities with all the familiar lust of the avant-garde.

As the brief widened, so did the responses… some contributors referred to earlier versions of the organ and its often highly political usage, others explored aged instruments themselves. Some studied the effects of the sounds produced on the physique and the psyche, others conceptualised the brief and either built their own or recorded natural or man-made phenomena which utilised the same basic process, wind through pipes. The organ represents the marriage between acoustic complexity and ritualised space. It is impossible not to be drawn upward, towards the spire of the church or cathedral, or to the huge and daunting forest of pipes themselves. The organ dwarfs all comers, and unlike other instruments, it is this non-musical element which makes the organ stand apart.

“Spire: Organ Works, Past, Present & Future” on Bandcamp

“Spire: Live in Geneva Cathedral”
Tone 21

2CD – 10 tracks in wallet with booklet, photography and design by Jon Wozencroft. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering. Please note – not all the tracks on the CD are on the Bandcamp site for copyright reasons… St. Pierre Cathedral, Geneva, was the crucible of the Reformation in 1534.

The second release in the Spire series is more than a document of “Spire Live”, which took place as part of La Batie 2004, at St. Pierre Cathedral, Geneva, on 5th September 2004. Curated by Eric Linder from La Batie, and Mike Harding, the dynamism of the event, where the audience rotated between three separate venues within the Cathedral precinct, is reflected in the individual recordings: Philip Jeck goes heavy metal in the crypt: BJNilsen comes over all moody in the side chapel, and Fennesz soothes and seduces in the same place.

All this is set up by Charles Matthews and Marcus Davidson on the main organ (four manifolds, computer operated) which dominates the time and place. Davidson plays Gorécki’s extraordinary Kantata for organ, (full stops on max employed here) which segués into BJNilsen’s ultra-heavy live organ and electronics next door. This follows Charles Matthews’s excellent renditions of pieces by Jolivet and Alexandra which, as the text by Thierry Charollais says: “The event seemed provoking and iconoclastic in contrast to the severe and austere atmosphere of the cathedral. Though some of the musical pieces were audacious, the music focused mainly on spirituality. It generated a different perception of the organ pieces, thus modifying our perception of the cathedral and making the event truly exceptional.”

And to finish, Fennesz soothed us with sound. His set evoked the rolling centuries in all their pain and beauty, leaving us at once becalmed and energised, but never oppressed under the weight of time.

“Spire: Live in Geneva Cathedral” on Bandcamp

“Touch: Isolation”
V33:40

Touch: Isolation – 28 new and exclusive tracks recorded by Touch artists: Jana Winderen, Chris Watson, Bana Haffar, Mark Van Hoen, Richard Chartier, Zachary Paul, fennesz sakamoto, farmersmanual, ELEH, Anthony Moore, Daniel Menche, Geneva Skeen, Simon Scott, Oren Ambarchi, UnicaZürn, Bethan Kellough, Strafe F.R., Yann Novak, Howlround, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Philip Jeck, Rosy Parlane, OZMOTIC, Claire M Singer, Heitor Alvelos, Sohrab, Fennesz and Charlie Campagna. Photography by Jon Wozencroft, Hampstead Heath, March to May 2020.

The cancellation of gigs and festivals has already severely impacted our artists creatively and financially. In addition it has denied you, our audience, the opportunity to see them play and support them. The notion of ‘independent music’ might, in effect, be pushed deeper into the self-isolation mode it is already struggling to break free from. We don’t need studios to the same extent, but we do need a stage, a physical reference and if not, a mental space with which to question the drive to online existence.

We set out to respond to these challenging times in a creative and helpful way. From March to May we published new pieces twice weekly every Monday and Thursday – a new exclusive track from one of our artists, each with a bespoke photograph/cover image. All the income received is collected from your subscriptions and put in a kitty, the proceeds of which are then divided up between the contributing artists.

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.

Visit touchisolation.bandcamp.com to subscribe

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 117…

Guerrilla Audio
www.simonfisherturner.com