Today, 11th March, is the official 41st anniversary of the founding of Touch in 1982…

First contact with New Order after their concert at the Newcastle Mayfair on 11th March 1982…

You can follow our progress year by year here…

LP + DL – 7 tracks

Release date: Friday 19th May 2023 – you can order your copy here

Track listing:
1. Clearing
2. Elemental
3. Ahi Al Samaa
4. Lifter
5. Save This Manual For The Future
6. Sit Still
7. All that is sometimes not considered

Survival is change

Intimaa’
from a deep place of un-belonging
searching and searching

Recorded and mixed by Bana Haffar in Asheville, North Carolina between June 6th and July 18th, 2022

Artwork & photography by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Simon Scott @ SPS Mastering
Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music (UK) Ltd.

Intimaa’ (belonging in Arabic) is a documentation of pieces composed for Touch’s 40th anniversary celebrations in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz in the Spring of 2022.

Pulling from ongoing research in weaving and textiles, the pieces are informed by the interchangeability of the weaver’s process with the sequencing of sound – from sourcing and preparing materials to be woven (recording, editing, and formatting samples), preparing the loom (programming the sequencer), and finally, weaving the cloth (playing back, manipulating, and recording the sequence).

Thank you to Touch for their ongoing mentorship and friendship.

LP + DL – 4 tracks

Release date: Friday 14th April 2023 – you can pre-order your copy here

Track listing:
1. Senzatempo
2. Floating Time
3. Motionless
4. Movements l – ll

Recorded 19/21 November 2021 in Turin, Italy at Superbudda studio
Audio engineer: Edoardo Fracassi

Cut by Jason @ Transition
Photography + design: Jon Wozencroft

“Senzatempo” became a lockdown record. In 2019, a year after our last concert as a trio with Christian Fennesz, the release of his “Agora” and our first publication for Touch – “Elusive Balance” – we met in Milan. We talked about ongoing projects, the evolution of our musical language and, as is often the case when we are all three together, the more frenetic and superficial aspects of contemporary society, the difficulty of letting ideas and projects mature and how music could still play a constructive role in that context. We left each other with the intention of talking at a distance about a new project, to be developed calmly, without any hurry.

In the months that followed, after e-mails in which we continued to discuss the project, we decided to work on the perception of time and to focus our attention on those periods of life in which time tends to dilate, to lose its boundaries, dedicating ourselves to the project without the fear of resting on indefinite moments of stasis – trying to take the time of creation as an ally, making the most significant ideas ‘sprout’, distilling emotions and crystallising them slowly.

Catapulted into the first wave of the pandemic, we began to work at a distance, We exchanged different types of sound materials, sometimes raw sometimes more structured and with Christian we tried to give musical form to a surreal calm, at the same time as magmatic, uncertain emotional states. In this phase of collective confusion and almost total isolation, the first drafts of ‘Senzatempo’ and ‘Movements I’ were born. In both tracks, we tried to structure chordal waves and melodies inlaid with counterpoints with broad architectures and sinuous movements, in a sort of ‘rubato’, with the idea of creating an orchestral breath to the entire album.

‘Senzatempo’ is characterised by a dream melody with a dense and continuous dialogue between a sharp guitar and percussive sounds floating on an abstract and flexible pulse. ‘Movements I’, later transformed into a two-part suite, is airy and meditative; an initial acoustic shock leads to a melody resting on relaxed chords and enveloping sounds studded with noise, glitches and fragments of field recordings.

After this initial work, we wanted to organise a studio session, but pandemic restrictions forced us to postpone and leave the music to mature further. The following summer, thanks to a residency project for young artists centred on the Senzatempo project and conducted by Christian and ourselves in central Italy, the opportunity arose for the first time to play the material produced thus far, and to experiment and focus on new musical ideas.

In November 2021, after a concert we did in Turin, we finally devoted ourselves to the drafting of the album in a studio session lasting some days. The final versions of the first two tracks were created, with the addition of a second part to ‘Movements I’, and ‘Floating Times’ and ‘Motionless Image of Eternity’ came into being.

In ‘Floating Time’, clouds of micro-sounds envelop an iridescent, sinuous melody in a sonic space delimited by sculpted percussive sounds. Lost memories seem to resurface. The end of the track takes up the beginning in a kind of ‘rondo’. ‘Motionless’ is counterpointed by telluric percussive sounds in a complex and detailed atmosphere. It seems as if nothing is moving in this sea of sound on which the guitar floats, when in fact everything is in motion in a simmer of textures and melodies that embroider counter-songs to the main refrain.

The music of ‘Senzatempo’ moves in balance between composition and improvisation. It is a symphonic work for an imaginary orchestra in which melodies, counterpoints, dynamics and sonorities define a structural breadth reminiscent of classical music.

CD – 5 tracks – 48:37

Release date: Friday 24th February 2023

Track listing:

1. Kecak! (Sanghyang)
2. Rahajeng Semeng
3. Sekala Niskala
4. Gong Ageng
5. Ramayana Melukat

Now available to order on Bandcamp

Mastered by Denis Blackham
Photography by Jon Wozencroft + Travelogue
Design: Jon Wozencroft

Recorded 6-16 February 2020 in Uluwatu, Ubud, Badung, Mount Batur and other locations in Bali, Indonesia.
Composed and mixed at the Castle in Stockholm, Sweden and at Dissimulata in Asheville, NC USA, 2022.

Travelogue [Bali] is the second in an ongoing series of collected international audio diaries (Travelogue [Nepal] was released by Touch in 2020). The premise is quite simple: the two meet at a mutually agreed upon destination along with the facilitation of something to record audio of these experiences on. The intent is to capture and augment these sonic documentaries of their travels which then are sculpted into soundtracks. This is done by sourcing the culture, environment, persons or events that make their voices available.

In February 2020, CM von Hausswolff and Chandra Shukla met in Bali, Indonesia, over the course of 9 days. Recordings were made at Pandawa Beach, Green Bowl Beach, Melasti Beach Ungasan, Uluwatu Temple, Pasar Senggol Gianyar, Pengosekan Kaja Ubud, Badung Market, Kintamani and Mt. Batur, Puri Saren Agung Ubud, Mandala Suci Wenara Wana (Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary) Ubud, Pura Tirta Empul Tampaksiring, Pandan Beach and Kelingking Beach Nusa Penida.

Special thanks to Dewa Alit and Salukat Gamelan, Dewa Sakura, Elisa Faires, Ivan Seng, Shannon Batten, Kecak Uluwatu, Made Surya and Dewa Aji Mangku. Also thanks to Ulrich Hillebrand and Gregor Krause.

DL – 4 tracks – 39:38

Release date: Friday 20th January 2023

Available to order now

Track listing:

1. fond du lac
2. rondo
3. american dream
4. geisterorchester

Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Simon Scott @ SPS

Orgelwerke began when composer Ted Reichman picked up a pile of rare organ vinyl from a library’s discard box. As he listened to this forgotten music late at night, he developed a process of transformation. He digitized them, turning them into loops and gestures, then reshaped them with tape, broken amplifiers and analogue echo boxes. It became something like a ritual, an exhumation of long-unheard music reanimated as glacial drones and ghostly symphonic movements — the sound of the cathedral transmuted into an enveloping shadow of pulsation, echo and glitch.

Ted Reichman composes electro-acoustic music, open-form pieces for improvising musicians, and film music. His long career in music goes back to his first recordings with Anthony Braxton in the early 1990s and his deep involvement in New York’s music community in the 2000’s. He was the original curator at Tonic on the Lower East Side of NYC, which became one of the world’s crucial venues for avant-garde music. He has made recordings for Tzadik, Skirl, and Tripticks Tapes, and produced and mixed albums for Wendy Eisenberg, Steven Long, Lina Tullgren/Alec Toku Whiting and many other experimental musicians. His film scores include Rick (with Bill Pullman and Sandra Oh), The Memory Thief, and the award winning documentaries Dear Mandela and Missing In Brooks County. He has been on the faculty of the Jazz Studies and Contemporary Musical Arts departments at the New England Conservatory of Music for over ten years, where he has developed a new curriculum on recording.

credits:

Recorded and mixed at Subtext Sound System
Thanks to Jason Coleman, Steve Long, Alec Toku Whiting, Tyler Gilmore and all at the MIT Radio Society

We are thrilled to present the final Touch.40 event of the year in the beautiful setting of San Fedele Auditorium, Milan with Jana Winderen (NO), Jacaszek (PL), Ozmotic (IT), Claire M Singer (SCT) & Geneva Skeen (US). Don’t miss this stellar line-up on what promises to be a momentous night. Hosted by Jon Wozencroft.

Further info and tickets: innerspaces.it

Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft

CD – 1 track – 30:37

Release date: Friday 2nd December 2022

Available to order now

Track listing:

1. CSound & Saz

Anthony Moore (b. August 1948) is a composer/musician, now based in the UK, formerly professor in Cologne for sound art and music working on the social and technical history of sound. He operates across many genres; ambient drone, musique concrète, electroacoustic, songwriting and immersive, multi-channel sound installations. He continues to compose, perform and release work on various labels such as Touch, Drag City (Chicago), P-Vine (Tokyo) and others.

Anthony Moore recently conducted a lengthy interview with Julian Cowley for The Wire, which appeared in their October ’22 edition in the form of a 6 page feature length article.

“Touch.40 live at Iklectik. I received an invitation to perform at the 40th anniversary gathering, June 2022. Previous works for the label, “Arithmetic in the Dark” and “Isoladrone2020” illuminated the landing strip for a new work. It should be continuous – a further play on moving and remaining. I wanted to balance the digital output of a CSound orchestra with an analogue instrument and chose the Turkish saz, a sound I’ve loved and lived with for the last 6 decades. I prepared the ground for the live performance with a graphical interface for CSound and an e-bow for the Saz (along with some short pre-recordings of picking and strumming). Then, a few days before the concert, I got Covid. On the suggestion of Jon and Mike I recorded a live performance-for-one, (myself at home) which was played back at Iklectik. Unedited, unchanged, here it is.” (amoore st leonards 220807)

Three pairs of thin, wire strings on the Turkish saz are struck, and the resulting sound is harmonised, filtered and then sustained in an infinite but gradually shifting chord of harmonics. In addition, an ebow is used to excite the strings in realtime. This sound is natural, untreated, and adds layers to the sustained chord. Subsequently, two Csound programs running in parallel are ‘fed’ the natural sound of the saz and the output is heavily effected with filters, resonators, vocoders etc. These sonic gestures are allowed to take over as the original chord fades to leave the more transparent sounds of the Csound outputs. The organum returns with much more warm, low end. The saz transformations thin out to leave a keening call. And finally the last minutes are filled with a deep chord which fades to silence.

DL – 2 tracks – 1:02:50

Mary Prestidge writes: “I’m recalling the joy Philip had in spinning 70’s disco dance music for my 70th birthday bash in 2018.

Philip’s experiments with turntable and vinyl began over 40 years ago using these 12″ singles. It marked a moment of belief that he could take these sounds further…

Play on…”

Philip Jeck’s birthday 70 years ago today, 15th November 1952

Release date 15th November 2022
Now available

Track listing:

1. Philip Jeck – Live in Torino 35:33
2. Philip Jeck & Jonathan Raisin – The Long Wave, Live at Liverpool Philharmonic 27:27

Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft

DL – 4 tracks – 41:56

We are now taking pre-orders for Patrick Shiroishi’s first solo album for Touch, Evergreen, having previously collaborated with Zachary Paul on the exquisite Longitude: Live at Roughage (2018.)

Release date 1st November 2022
Now available

Track listing:

1. a place where sunflowers grow 11:10
2. there is no moment in which they are not with me 9:32
3. a trickle led to a quiet pool, where still, black water reflected the night sky 9:06
4. here comes a candle to light you to bed 12:18

All tracks composed, performed and recorded at Orange Door in September 2022. Field recordings taken at Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles in 2021.

Patrick Shiroishi – synths, clarinet, field recordings, voice & tenor saxophone

Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Simon Scott @ SPS Mastering

Story told by Yukio Kawaratani

Patrick writes: “I can’t recall the first time I was introduced to Touch but it might have been around 2017, right before a duo recording with Zachary Paul in the spring of the following year. I do, however, remember the winter when i dove into their catalogue and discovered artist upon artist of tremendous weight and vision who created worlds in their recordings… it was inspiring and something that I have kept with me through the years.

Since that time five years ago, correspondence with Touch became little by little, more and more frequent. In early September 2022, Mike contacted me about putting something together for the label with a deadline of a few weeks. I first thought of a collaboration with Bana Haffar, someone for whom I have huge respect on many different levels and was lucky enough to travel with and play some shows for the label’s 40th anniversary celebration in the Bay Area earlier this year… unfortunately the timing didn’t work out. I pondered about other potential partners, ultimately deciding on the idea of presenting a solo work.

Familiarising myself with the Touch back catalogue, I wanted to create a work that was unique in its own world. Someone reading this may or may not know that I have been diving into my family history and processing that through music. Last year, I took a couple of trips to Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles, where several generations of Shiroishis are buried and a place often visited when growing up. Sitting there with my Zoom recorder on, at what seemed like the peak of the violence towards Asian Americans, i felt at peace being close to them.

The foundations of this album are from those recordings. The first half is built upon one I made during daytime and the second half from a recording in the evening. The music took on many forms and was worked on daily in the mornings, which is something that was very different from my usual practice. As the album was getting close to being finished, I sent it over to Mike and Jon and with their guidance helped to shape the music towards its final form.

Hoping that you listen to this music in one sitting and think about your ancestors as you do – we all come from somewhere, and there is not a moment when they are not with you.”

Patrick Shiroishi is a Japanese-American multi-instrumentalist & composer based in Los Angeles. He is perhaps best known for his extensive and intense work with the saxophone. Over the last decade he has established himself as one of the premier improvising musicians in Los Angeles, recording and playing solo and in numerous collaborative projects. Shiroishi may well be considered a foundational player in the city’s vast musical expanse. [Chris Lowenthal]

To survive for 40 years as an independent music project is the ability to bear witness to the massive changes in cultural production – and to hold a candle for artistic freedom and sonic invention. Touch.40 Café Oto is a home-based lighthouse in Dalston, London, and likewise AB in Brussels (in September), where longstanding friends and supporters have asked us back. We invite you to these celebrations of past, present and future. As everything gets more atomised in terms of inner and outer worlds, we intend this as a beacon of our collective commitment to joy, pleasure, life, the challenge of being human in these uncertain times.

[We are sorry to inform you that owing to unforeseen circumstances, Jana Winderen & Budhaditya Chattopadhyay will not be able to perform. But we are delighted that Jacaszek can headline at such short notice]

Saturday October 1st 2022
Café Oto, 18–22 Ashwin Street, London E8 3DL [map]
Tickets and info

Jacaszek
Simon Scott
Howlround
Claire M Singer

+ A Short Film by People Like Us

www.cafeoto.co.uk
www.touch40.net

Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft

CD – 6 tracks – 72:21

Release date: Friday 23rd September 2022

Track listing:

1. First Sleep
2. Of Endless Light
3. Dawn
4. Pulse
5. Blue Drift
6. Walking Field

Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham
Recorded by Jeremy Lemos

CLEARED is the longstanding project of Steven Hess and Michael Vallera, based in Chicago, Illinois. Of Endless Light was recorded by Jeremy Lemos at Electrical Audio in Chicago and mastered by Denis Blackham. The six tracks complete the longest release to date by the duo, who were resolute in utilizing the maximum time available on the compact disc format. CLEARED has produced a series of critically recognized recordings since its self-titled debut in 2011. Working with the Touch label on The Key (recorded in spring 2019, released in October 2020) was a leap forward, prompting remixed tracks by Philp Jeck, Fennesz, Bethan Kellough, and Olivia Block.

Of Endless Light is noctambulant, a walk through formal sonic spaces and colors beginning with the cascading, bell-like tones of the opening track, “First Sleep.” The husks of a city’s industrial past are summoned: warehouses hollowed out for condominiums, dust-covered factory floors, a distant grind of machining, clouds of metallic particles, and the persistent background hum of traffic. These remnants contrast with hints of the sterile present of a city no less cruel than its industrial past. “Dawn” opens with a grey drone and scattered electronic rhythms as wiring, and extended guitar lines suggest the opening of another cycle of the day into evening. “Pulse” offers a hypnotic pattern that suggests the movement of people through the city’s core, slowly overlain with cymbals evoking the shimmer of sunlight cleaving off the windows of distant buildings. The album appropriately concludes with “Walking Field,” methodically moving forward via a cloud of meditative clicks and looping melodies.

Of Endless Light is a patient listen, distilled into a sonic environment specific to Hess and Vallera’s lens. Cleared created its crepuscular moods using the core methodology of their previous records while expanding their music’s range, artistry, and subtlety. Deploying careful instrumentation, sampling, and mixing to experiment with tone and atmosphere, Of Endless Light breathes and drifts through layers of sound that veil, reveal, and intrigue. The result gives a listener much to discover, examine, experience, and consider – as well as the incentive to return again and again. [Bruce Adams, 2022]

Fennesz
Simon Scott
Razen
Valery Vermeulen

Tickets & info: www.abconcerts.be/en/agenda/touch40

Photo: Jon Wozencroft

Now available on all streaming platforms for the first time… Youmna Saba‘s first two albums, Njoum & Arb’een (40)

Youmna Saba (Beirut, 1984) is a musician and musicologist whose current research focuses on the musical dimension(s) of the Arabic language, as a tool to generate new methods of working with electronics.

She released 4 albums to this day and collaborated with musicians of different backgrounds, like Kamilya Jubran (PL), Mike Cooper (GB), Jean Marc Montera (FR), Floy Krouchi (FR), Kyungso Park (SK), among others.

She took part in international programs and residencies (Hwaeom Residency, South Korea 2017, Sound Development City, 2016, Gyeonggi Creation Center, South Korea 2013…) and is a 3-time laureate of the music residency program at La Cité Internationale des Arts, in Paris (2020-2021).

Youmna holds a master’s degree in Musicology, focusing mainly on the parallels between classical Arabic music and Arabic visual art.

To survive for 40 years as an independent music project is the ability to bear witness to the massive changes in cultural production – and to hold a candle for artistic freedom and sonic invention. 

Touch.40 Iklectik is a home-based lighthouse in the centre of London and we invite you to this celebration of past present and future.

As everything gets more atomised in terms of inner and outer worlds, we intend this as a beacon of our collective commitment to joy, pleasure, life, the challenge of being human in these uncertain times.

Full programme

Tickets: £18.50 day / £30.50 whole event

Friday doors open 6.30pm

Gavin Bryars – a tribute to Philip Jeck
katt newlon & Franz Kirmann
Anthony Moore
Jay Glass Dubs
Fennesz

Saturday doors open 5pm

Simon Fisher Turner
Fennesz
Clara
Bethan Kellough
Bruce Gilbert
Claire M Singer
Carl Michael von Hausswolff

On Saturday there is due to be a train strike. Iklectik isn’t far from Waterloo (also Lambeth North is half a kilometre away), on the underground and can be easily reached by bus. It’s then a 10-15 minute walk to the venue… we suggest you allow extra time for travelling. There’s a good app called Transit which has live local transport times and options.

Photo: Jon Wozencroft

buytickets.at/iklectik/693011
iklectikartlab.com/jon-wozencroft-sound-seminar-after-the-wheel/
facebook.com/events/697650168146348/

After the Wheel

“You can’t reinvent the wheel” – So goes the saying to describe a futile attempt to improve upon what has gone before. Nevertheless, the last ten years has seen a relentless abstraction of this – in the UK, a deceitful attempt to return to “past glories” alongside a series of fiscal measures that punish the poor for the crime of being poor.

From its genesis during the times of the horse and cart to today’s driverless cars, the wheel keeps on turning, creating massive fortunes for the fortunate few, but the energy needed to drive it is another matter entirely.

Nikola Tesla proposed the principal of free energy a hundred years ago. It could come from wireless networks for nothing, but that was not allowed to happen. Tesla died in his New York hotel in 1943 in relative poverty and apparently with a mere $100 to his name. This may be exaggerated, but clearly Tesla never achieved great wealth despite his numerous inventions, most of all the feat in having developed the means of electrical current distribution.

Elon Musk, meanwhile, is currently the richest man in the world. Notably, his key company appropriated the name Tesla – whose electric cars provide a platform to numerous means of wealth accumulation. Musk made $171bn during the first year of the Covid pandemic and increased Tesla’s market capitalisation 13-fold since the end of 2019*. Next up – Twitter. Musk has bid $44bn to acquire the company. The sum is roughly equivalent to the total budget President Biden’s administration has dedicated to combatting climate change.

Musk has plans for brain implants that connect to the internet, AI initiatives in addition, and if it all goes haywire, there’s always Life on Mars.

Might he be aware of one of Nikola Tesla’s unresolved inventions, “The Thought Machine”, that intended to be able to project an individual’s retinal images onto a screen? Does he take Twitter to be an improvement on this?

After the wheel, the spiked wheel of fortune. After the car, 20th Century symbol of forward freedom , the automated vehicle – 21st Century symbol of living in reverse, bonded behind a screen of algorithmic passivity.

If we can’t reinvent the wheel, we had better reinvent the superhighway, and drive in a different direction.

*Source: “Elon Musk, Twitter and the internet economy”, Will Dunn, The New Statesman,
29 April 2022

Empty Bottle Presents
40 Years of Touch

Saturday May 21, 2022
6:30 PM Doors

The Hall of Mortals, International Museum of Surgical Sciences

Cleared with Olivia Block (Collaborative Performance)
Jonathan Thomas Miller
Touch

Tickets

The Chicago Reader

Jon and Mike are deeply saddened to tell you that Philip Jeck died peacefully on Friday after a short illness. A remarkable man and a wonderful artist, he has been one of the kingpins of our work for 30 years. But with Philip it was never just the work, more the love, the spirit and the dedication. He touched so many with his wit, his zest for life and his wisdom. We will miss him terribly and our love goes out to Mary and Louis.

To give your full attention to someone or something is an act of generosity and love that is at the heart of dynamic communication. The attention economy, however, is an engine of distraction.
Can it be resisted?

iklectikartlab.com/jon-wozencroft-sound-seminar-the-attention-economy/

buytickets.at/iklectik/653627