Touch Newsletter #247

Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #247. Rediscovered buried treasure – Fennesz’s “plus forty seven degrees 56' 37" minus sixteen degrees 51' 08"” [Touch # TO:40] CD in digipak… Originally released in 1999, this marked the start of Touch’s long term relationship with Christian Fennesz… The first edition was released with a booklet in a landscape art format gatefold card/sleeve, and a jewel case version swiftly followed. This is the long-deleted third edition in a digipak, discovered deep in Touch’s archive, shrink-wrapped and as brand new…

Shipping this week, four new tapes from The Tapeworm: “Clock Resistance” by strom|morts, “My Body Did This To Me” by Gabie Strong, “The One-Legged Cyclist” by Os Senhores and “Retired Dilettantes” by Richard Francis and Frans de Waard. Very limited quantities remain at source. Further details on all below.

The latest episode of Mike Harding’s “Long Wave” show, with special guest Bana Haffar, has been archived at dublab.com

Fennesz
“plus forty seven degrees 56' 37"
minus sixteen degrees 51' 08"”
TO:40

CD in digipak. Final copies of this long-deleted CD, found in Touch’s archive. Buy “plus forty seven degrees 56' 37" minus sixteen degrees 51' 08"” on Bandcamp. Artwork and photography: Jon Wozencroft.

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“Recorded in his back garden using a Powerbook and a mixing desk, Fennesz’s second album “plus forty seven degrees 56' 37" minus sixteen degrees 51' 08"” (Touch) is an object lesson in just how far out there you can go with a little technology. Through layering, shaping and distorting sounds fennesz has created an intensely varied, often disjointed slice of outre electronica that encompasses mesmeric textures, harsh frequencies and churning sheets of noise. Recommended listening for anyone with an interest in the sonic manipulations of Oval, Pan Sonic or the Mego label, who released Fennesz’s “Hotel Paral.lel” debut.” [Andrew Carden in MOJO]

Buy “Clock Resistance” on Bandcamp

strom|morts
“Clock Resistance”
TTW#131

Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “Clock Resistance” on Bandcamp. Illustration: Helge Reumann.

A: Entropic Clock Resistance
B: Isentropic Clock Resistance

strom|morts is Didier Séverin, Olivier Hähnel and Mathieu Jallut. Composed and recorded by strom|morts between February and April 2020 at Power Drone Central Studio, Conthey, Switzerland. Mixed by Olivier Hähnel. Mastered by Lad Agabekov at Caduceus Studios, Gimel, Switzerland. Thanks are due to Pro Helvetia for support with this project.

Formed by Swiss post-metal veterans from Knut and Abraham, strom|morts’ goal is to compose music inspired by their Alpine environment and its weather, which glides over impassive mountains, evolving with the seasons. Such a landscape encourages deep listening – minimalist musics whose subtle evolutions reveal themselves over several minutes, disturbing the perception of time passing or even provoking, through deep and sustained concentration, a meditative state.

strom|morts write: “Clock Resistance is all about time and chaos, reflecting the behaviour of nature around us, embodying the cycles of life and death. The sinister yin yang of strom|morts symbolising the source and the end of everything we have known so far. Two drones were composed as an embodiment of this concept. This record was mainly made with modular synths for their flexibility, but you can hear here and there the ghost of a Moog Voyager. One drone is totally synced, the other one is free. One side’s got a guitar, the other one is synths only. Achieving symmetry, the two drones have the same timing.” – strom|morts, Conthey, Switzerland, 19 May 2020.

Buy “Clock Resistance” on Bandcamp

Gabie Strong
“My Body Did This To Me”
TTW#132

Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “My Body Did This To Me” on Bandcamp. Illustration: Gabie Strong.

A1: At Land and Sea
A2: Living in Thee Ende Tymes
B1: Post-exostoses
B2: “The Word for World is Forest”

Gabie Strong: guitar and effects. All tracks recorded and mixed by G. Strong unless noted. Executive producer: Mike Harding. Mastered by Ian Wellman.

Gabie Strong is the founder of Crystalline Morphologies community imprint, dedicated to releasing experimental sound works by historically underserved Los Angeles women, queer and non-binary artists. She has been working in experimental music since the early 90s.

The recordings on this cassette document a series of live performances from 2017-2019 in which the Los Angeles artist Gabie Strong asks, “What does the body sound like when it is making its own music?”

A hard-of-hearing interdisciplinary artist, Strong asks us to consider that hearing is subjective, based on how the brain translates the reception of sound. Each track documents a performative questioning in which Strong suggests that being deaf is not living in silence, but rather it is navigating a highly complex and nuanced soundscape of noise that is audible only to the deaf body. For Strong, deafness comes from her own skull working against her, closing off external sounds and sending scrambled messages back to her consciousness. Captured at Ende Tymes 9 Festival of Noise and Experimental Liberation, Land and Sea Oakland, Volume at Coaxial and the Sagehen Creek Field Station Experimental Forest, Strong layers the kinetic sound of contact mics running over her body and through her hair, ambiguous vocal utterances and amplified guitar feedback to create a visceral soundscape of her body.

Buy “My Body Did This To Me” on Bandcamp

Os Senhores
“The One-Legged Cyclist”
TTW#133

Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “The One-Legged Cyclist” on Bandcamp. Illustration: Anselmo Canha, 1986.

A: One Leg
B1: The Other Leg
B2: The Other Other Leg

Recorded at various live venues, studios and rehearsal rooms in Portugal, 1985-1990. Revisited 2018: Edited, sequenced and mixed by Heitor Alvelos. Mastered by Anselmo Canha. Cover illustration by Anselmo Canha, 1986.

“This tape gathers a series of demos and live recordings of a short-lived Portuguese band from the 1980s: Os Senhores (1985-87, briefly resurrected in 1990).

Paradoxically, our objective lack of formal musical training and relative scarcity of musical skills provided us with a potential degree of freedom. And oh, we were free to be our vicarious selves: the female singer was a Siouxsie devotee, the male singer was heavily into Krautrock, the guitar player wanted to play the blues, the drummer just wanted to hit stuff. The bass player and the keyboard player held it together somehow. This seemingly impossible mix of aesthetics could have produced something special; instead, we tended to cancel each other out. We were just too often caught between the dilemma of pursuing said freedom (and risk illegibility, even to ourselves), and the desire to prove our worth within the familiar canons.

As a consequence, there is little of musical or aesthetic interest in these recordings: their value is essentially documentary, more of a snapshot of a given era. Yet their release provided us with an opportunity to revisit the source material and have a go at reconfiguring it into something else that, while remaining faithful to its original references, would make a somewhat better statement in itself.

We tried quite a few approaches, to no avail… some worked sonically but distanced themselves too much from the original, thus losing the plot; other attempts just seemed dragged down by the linearity of the original compositions.

In the end, we opted for a more straightforward approach in the re-working of the original sources: we had various recordings play simultaneously, without further tweaking. Whatever fell on top of whatever else, so it stayed.

In this way were able to preserve the original sonic, structural and contextual aspects of each recording, while somehow amplifying the tightrope of chaos/ineptitude we traversed throughout those two years. And just as decisively, through this process of superimposing, we were able to reveal a few odd juxtapositions that, had we had the vision back then, could have been infinitely more promising than the elusive post-something format we obsessively kept hunting down.

So what do you know: the first release by Os Senhores, over three decades after we split (and not very amicably, as rock and roll would have it). Hey, it took us slightly longer than originally expected. And we are all now back in touch: old age has its perks.” – Heitor Alvelos, Porto, 16 March 2020.

You can read Heitor Alvelos’ full text at heitoralvelos.wordpress.com

Buy “The One-Legged Cyclist” on Bandcamp

Richard Francis and Frans de Waard
“Retired Dilettantes”
TTW#134

Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “Retired Dilettantes” on Bandcamp. Illustration: SavX.

Recorded at Geluidwerkplaats Extrapool, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Modular electronics, field recordings, computer and tapes. Mixed by Frans de Waard.

The first time Richard Francis and Frans de Waard met was in Tokyo, Japan and they talked a lot. The second time was in Boston, USA and they danced all night long. The third time was in Nijmegen, The Netherlands and they recorded a lot of music together. During the course of a very long day they recorded in Frans' studio using a small modular set-up, Korg MS-20, computer, tapes and field recordings, all captured on a multi-track tape where it kept sitting for quite some time before Frans decided it was time to make heads 'n tails out of it. The usual process of editing and mixing resulted in the release that is now called “Retired Dilettantes”. No track titles as both sides are to be seen as one composition all together. From delicate static and complex electrical textures to the bursting of loud drones.

Buy “Retired Dilettantes” on Bandcamp

The Eternal Chord
“Mutatis Mutandis”
Spire 7.1D

12 tracks, 1:42:06. Digital download with .pdf booklet. Touch will pay all receipts to the artists; any donations above that will go to support the label. Buy “Mutatis Mutandis” on Bandcamp. Photography: Sydney Russell.

1. Olivia Block - Flue 09:17
2. Marta De Pascalis - Alexandria 08:30
3. Richard Chartier - State 08:32
4. Faith Coloccia - Voice 1 Grapheme 07:55
5. Daniel Menche - Minimal 11:09
6. Jiyeon Kim - Organ Tapes 1 05:48
7. Philip Jeck - 75 bus 07:24
8. Dahra - Abadan (Perpetuum) 11:00
9. Orphax - Aeternus 12:54
10. Jiyeon Kim - Organ Tapes 2 06:40
11. Fennesz - Crystal Canyons 04:44
12. Faith Coloccia - Artifacts (bonus)

“Mutatis Mutandis” - featuring 12 exclusive new compositions, using source material from “Semper Liber” by: Fennesz, Faith Coloccia (inc. bonus track), Richard Chartier, Philip Jeck, Orphax, Olivia Block, Jiyeon Kim, Dahra, Daniel Menche and Marta de Pascalis [UK, USA, Senegal, South Korea, Italy, Netherlands, Austria].

Buy “Mutatis Mutandis” 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 sales 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.

“Touch: Isolation” is now available to purchase as a complete album, 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.

Buy from touchisolation.bandcamp.com

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 124…

Guerrilla Audio
www.simonfisherturner.com