Catalogue

Tone 29 – Philip Jeck “Suite: Live in Liverpool”

14th January 2009 » Permalink: Tone 29 – Philip Jeck “Suite: Live in Liverpool”

LP – 5 tracks – 31:49
[vinyl only through Autofact, USA]

Track list:

Side A
1. Press
2. Intro Roll

Side B
1. Live With Errors
2. All That’s Allowed
3. Chime, Chime

Recorded at Hive, FACT, Liverpool on 25th October 2006 as part of Touch 25, live to a M-Audio Mictrotrack 24/96
Edited by Philip Jeck April 2007
Cut by Jason at Transition 14th May 2007 on a Neumann VSM 70
Released on Autofact 14th January 2009
Design and photography by Jon Wozencroft

“Suite: Live in Liverpool” follows Philip Jeck’s acclaimed collaboration with Gavin Bryars and Alter Ego on a new version of ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ (Touch Tone 34). It is the companion release to his latest solo album, ‘Sand’; a set of five new compositions that highlight Jeck’s mastery of vinyl manipulation, personal and collective memories.
During the past year Jeck has refined and consolidated his unique sound, playing superb sets at last summer’s Faster than Sound festival and at York Minster for Spire. He has recently released ‘Amoroso’ [Touch # TS01, 7″ vinyl only with Fennesz] where he responds to Charles Matthews’s homage to Arvo Pärt.

‘Suite’ is at once elegiac, celebrational, mournful and uplifting. Those who have followed Jeck’s development since his first release, “Loopholes” (Touch TO:26) will observe his return to the industrial textures that coloured that collection, though here they are fused with his symphonic grace and continued development as a composer and live performer.
Philip Jeck studied visual art at Dartington College of Arts. He started working with record players and electronics in the early ’80’s and has made soundtracks and toured with many dance and theatre companies as we as well as his solo concert work. His best kown work “Vinyl Requiem” (with Lol Sargent): a performance for 180 ’50’s/’60’s record players won Time Out Performance Award for 1993. He has also over the last few years returned to visual art making installations using from 6 to 80 record players including “Off The Record” for Sonic Boom at The Hayward Gallery, London [2000].

Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Jeck makes geniunely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art not the gimmick.

This is Philip Jeck’s 6th solo album for Touch after ‘Loopholes’ [Touch # TO:27, 1995], Surf [TO:36, 1998], Stoke [TO:56, 2002], ‘7’ [TO:57, 2004] and ‘Sand’ [Touch # TO:67, 2008].
He recently performed on “The Sinking of the Titanic” with Gavin Bryars in Rome, about which Boomkat (UK) said: “The most noticeable addition is Jeck, whose expertise and unique style seems to fit like the final piece of the puzzle as his crackles and motifs melt into the architecture of the recording as if they had always been there. This additional layer of nostalgia brought forth by these found sounds adds a significant sense of history, forcing the mind back into hazy film footage and decomposed photos, a perfect match for the subject matter.”

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TO:76 – Fennesz “Black Sea” [CD]

14th November 2008 » Permalink: TO:76 – Fennesz “Black Sea” [CD]

CD – 8 tracks – 52mins
[also available on vinyl LP and as a CD/LP bundle.]

Track list:

1. Black Sea
2. The Colour of Three
3. Perfume for Winter
4. Grey Scale
5. Glide
6. Glass Ceiling
7. Vacuum
8. Saffron Revolution

Christian Fennesz used acoustic and electric guitars, synths, electronics, lloopp and computers

All tracks composed, performed, recorded and mixed by Christian Fennesz at Amann Studios, Vienna and C-street, Paris except “The Colour of Three” by Christian Fennesz & Anthony Pateras and “Glide” which was composed and performed by Rosy Parlane & Christian Fennesz (recorded live in Paris and then edited and mixed at Amman Studios).
Black Sea is Fennesz’s 4th solo album for touch and his first since Venice in 2004.

“Black Sea is the much-anticipated new album from Christian Fennesz, his first since “Venice” [Touch # TO:53, 2004], about which US magazine Stylus wrote:

“Fennesz does with sound what Stan Brakhage did with film, altering its very fabric and texture, employing disorder and error as forms of communication and expression. He forces you to learn a different method of perception and interpretation, to look beneath the chaos that seems to govern the movements of life and find the patterns beneath.” [Nick Southall]

Fennesz’s career has come a long way since “Instrument”, his debut for Mego in 1995, and his first solo album “Hotel Paral.lel which followed in 1998. “Endless Summer” [Mego, 2001] brought him to a much wider audience and “Venice” underlined his mastery of melody and dissonance. His songs usually embody the skilful application and manipulation of dense sonic textures with a genuine feel for the live, and real-time.

Black Sea features guitars that rarely sound like guitars; the instrument is transformed into an orchestra. Fennesz lists the elements used to make the compositions: “Acoustic and electric guitars, synthesizers, electronics, computers and live-improvising software lloopp.”
On ‘Glide’, Fennesz duets with Rosy Parlane (NZ) [www.rosyparlane.com], whose work is also released on Touch. Fennesz also teams up with eMego artist Anthony Pateras’s (AUS) [http://www.anthonypateras.com], whose prepared piano features on “The Colour of Three”. Fennesz pushes his work into a more classical domain, preferring the slow reveal to Venice’s and Endless Summer’s more song-based structures.

Jon Wozencroft’s artwork makes visible this carefully hidden world resting beneath the surface of “the first impression”. A series of shots, taken in quick succession as the tide recedes, reveals a world of specific activity only visible at a particular time and place, histories appearing and disappearing.

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TS08 – People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz “Withers in the Waking”

10th November 2008 » Permalink: TS08 – People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz “Withers in the Waking”

7″ vinyl only
Limited edition
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Cut by Jason at Transition

Track list:

Side A: In the Waking 5:55 [Locked groove]
Side B: Withers in the Whist 4:27

The 8th in the series of Touch Sevens, and the first to introduce melodic narrative. Both songs are results of the WFMU podcast series “Codpaste”, in which Vicki & Ergo publicly composed a series of collage compositions, deconstructing their respective practices, and a live soundtrack to Christian Marclay’s “ScreenPlay”. The series and soundtrack resulted in the online only album “Rhapsody in Glue”, from which these two songs are alternative versions.

“Withers in the Whist” takes one of Vicki & Ergo’s current staple obsessions: the melody line of Prokofiev’s ‘Troika’ from the Lieutenant Kije soundtrack (originally used in V & E’s work during a particularly snowy sequence of the Marclay film). This treatment dispenses with sampling entirely, instead using instruments to create variations on Prokofiev’s deceptively simple melody-line, tied together with impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. It is playing with Prokofiev like a bad child who loves it’s toys.

“In The Waking” began with Ergo replaying with multitracked guitars the main melodic motifs Vicki collaged in the composition “Carmic Waltz”, with Vicki then ornamenting the guitars with splashes of colour like a real painter of sound, all blended into a pot of carnival steam with Ergo’s wordplay. It is a fantasy for the dream the fairground has when the world is sleeping, but only takes place five minutes before the carousel wakes up

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TO:76D – Fennesz “Saffron Revolution”

20th October 2008 » Permalink: TO:76D – Fennesz “Saffron Revolution”

[Touch # TO:76D]
One track, Digital Download.
Taken from the forthcoming album ‘Black Sea’.

It is available from numerous download sites including:
World – Beatport
UK – Bleep
UK – Boomkat
USA – Thrill Jockey
GAS – zero inch

Reviews:

Boomkat (UK):

Cause for some excitement we’re sure you’ll agree, this digital-only single is the first indication of what’s to be expected from Christian Fennesz’s new album (titled Black Sea). The beginnings of ‘Saffron Revolution’ suggests that the core components of that singular, instantly identifiable Fennesz sound are all still very much in place: the digitally pulverised guitar melodies, the banks of sculpted fuzztones and most of all, the feeling of fluidity and weightlessness that seems to have defined all his post-Endless Summer output. There’s so much depth to the production here, and despite sounding so alien and otherworldly, the various layers of instrumentation make for a piece of music that’s got plenty of substance. The track seems to swell up to a near-overwhelming point of crescendo, all driven by a barrage of synth strings that sound more like a jet engine at full thrust than anything else. So it’s neither a major departure from what’s come before, nor a piece of music that screams ‘single’ in any conventional sense, but the sheer beauty and power of ‘Saffron Revolution’s sound design suggests Black Sea is very much on course for being one of 2008’s key releases. Immense.

Pitchfork (US):

… this lead track certainly keeps expectations very high. Beginning with some of Fennesz’ trademark neo-industrial gurgles, it folds in bits of guitar and strings rather beautifully, creating a cluster of sound that trembles, seeming to wait for something. And that something moves in gradually in the form of a massive cloud of distortion, a fine white mist of harmonics mixed with a dark undercurrent of rumbling bass. The tension between these elements is so well balanced, each individual element remaining in the mix even as the sound field becomes impossibly dense, that it’s no surprise that it takes a while to get it just right. And as it begins to draw down about five minutes in, you can’t help but wish that another full Fennesz album was following behind it. Soon. [Mark Richardson]

Tone 35 – Jacob Kirkegaard “Labyrinthitis”

12th October 2008 » Permalink: Tone 35 – Jacob Kirkegaard “Labyrinthitis”

[Touch # Tone 35]
CD – 1 track – 38:10

Special wallet limited edition

Commissioned by Medical Museion in Copenhagen, Summer 2007

Jacob Kirkegaard has turned his ears inwards: His new work LABYRINTHITIS is an interactive sound piece that consists entirely of sounds generated in the artist’s auditory organs – and will cause audible responses in those of the audience.

LABYRINTHITIS relies on a principle employed both in medical science and musical practice: When two frequencies at a certain ratio are played into the ear, additional vibrations in the inner ear will produce a third frequency. This frequency is generated by the ear itself: a so-called “distortion product otoacoustic emission” (DPOAE), also referred to in musicology as “Tartini tone”.

By arranging the tones from his ears in a composition and playing them to an audience, the artist evokes further distortion effects in the ears of his listeners. At first, each new tone can only be perceived “intersubjectively”: inside the head of each one in the audience. Kirkegaard artificially reproduces this tone and introduces it, “objectively”, into his composition. When combined with another distorting frequency, it will create another tone… until, step by step, a pattern of descending tonal structure emerges whose spiral form mirrors the composition of resonant spectra in the human cochlea.

(The effect in your ears will not appear when listening to the sound file at http://www.fonik.dk/works/labyrinthitis.html)

Paradoxical as it may sound: we can listen to our own ears. The human hearing organ – still often perceived as a passive unidirectional medium – does not only receive sounds from the outside, it also generates its own sound from within itself. As a matter of fact, it can even be “played on”, just like an acoustic instrument.

This is Jacob Kirkegaard’s 3rd album for Touch, after ‘Eldfjall’ [Touch # T33.20, 2005] and ‘4 Rooms’ [Touch # Tone 26, 2006]

Biography

Jacob Kirkegaard is an artist with an interest in the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time and hearing. His performances, audio/visual installations and compositions deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain inaccessible to sense perception. With the use of unorthodox recording tools such as accelerometers, hydrophones or home-built electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard manages to capture and explore “secret sounds” – distortions, interferences, vibrations, ambiences – from within a variety of environments: volcanic earth, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, crystals, ice… and the human inner ear itself.

A graduate of the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne, Germany, Kirkegaard has given workshops and lectures in academic institutions such as the Royal Academy of Architecture in Copenhagen and the Art Institute of Chicago. During the last ten years, he has been presenting exhibitions and touring festivals and conferences throughout the world. Among his numerous collaborators are JG Thirlwell, Ann Lislegaard, CM von Hausswolff, Philip Jeck and Lydia Lunch. He is a member of freq_out.

You can find out more on his website – http://www.fonik.dk

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TS07 – Jim O’Rourke “Despite the Water Supply”

13th August 2008 » Permalink: TS07 – Jim O’Rourke “Despite the Water Supply”

7″ vinyl only
Limited edition
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Cut by Jason at Transition

Track list:

Side A: Despite the Water Supply Part 1 4:12
Side B: Despite the Water Supply Part 2 4:05

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Tone 31 – Lawrence English “Kiri No Oto”

1st July 2008 » Permalink: Tone 31 – Lawrence English “Kiri No Oto”

CD – 8 tracks – 43:10

Photography & Design: Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

The Japanese phrase ‘Kiri No Oto’ loosely translates to the ‘sound of fog’ or ‘sound of mist’. In many ways it’s a collection that meditates on the sense of displacement and distortion that occurs in environments which undergo extreme mists, snowstorms and sea sprays. In the same way that visual objects loose their perspective, form and shape in these environments, the sound components that make up Kiri No Oto are not quite as they first might appear.

Utilising a range of divergent mixing techniques, analog filtering and ‘harmonic’ distortion, Kiri No Oto offers an expansive sound space in which the listener must choose to position themselves. Focus, like that in a fog, is in a constant state of flux as elements are brought into and out of perspective.

The first in a series of records employing this technique, Kiri No Oto explores the richness in the frequencies that are usually associated with extremes of volume and through this process the recordings position ‘the ear’ itself as ‘another layer of auditory fog’ as it begins to distort and alter the sounds it comes in contact with.

The sounds sources for Kiri No Oto emanate from both instruments and found sound, with recordings on this edition made in Poland, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

Track list:

1. Organs Lost At Sea
2. Soft Fuse
3. White Spray
4. Waves Sheer Light
5. Commentary
6. Allay
7. Figure’s Lone Static
8. Oamura

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TS06 – Mika Vainio “Behind the Radiators”

30th June 2008 » Permalink: TS06 – Mika Vainio “Behind the Radiators”

7″ vinyl only
Limited edition
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Cut by Jason at Transition

Track list:

Side A: Behind the Radiator Part 1 – 2:52 +
Side B: Behind the Radiator Part 2 – 2:58 +

Locked grooves
Mika Vainio continues the series of Touch Sevens, 7″ vinyl-only releases, with this stunning record. The crackle… The fire of the analogue… Mika Vainio is the most adept at using crackle as a voice. Sound artists have used crackle ever since the reality of digital audio hit home, however there’s a big difference between this and how other practitioners use it…

Here are two tracks recorded by Mika in Berlin this February.

He has released 3 solo albums for Touch under his own name [Onko, 1997; Kajo, 2000 and In the Land of the `blind, One-Eyed is King, 2003. He is perhaps best known as part of the Finnish duo, Pan Sonic, and he also releases work as Ø for Finnish label, Säkhö Recordings.

7″ vinyl was the quintessential format for popular music. Today, it is an undervalued and mostly promotional medium, used as a fetishistic signpost to a time of musical authenticity and a “healthy” popular culture. It might seem like another retrograde step to launch a vinyl series just as the download format threatens to dominate, and indeed there is an element of “the rear view mirror”… the generation of Touch artists who grew up with vinyl [and cassette] still feeling a strong emotional attachment to it. This series is more than that… an overtly critical, non-digital statement is supported by treatments of audio work which cannot be applied to digital formats – the sonic texture, the use of a locked groove, the A & the B and the additional dimension of the visual counterpoint. As for the aspect of audience participation, we choose not to specify the RPM on the label, encouraging the listener to experiment with playback options and personal preferences. An attempt to make music that works at both speeds. The front cover might actually be the back cover…
http://www.phinnweb.org/vainio/

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TS03 – AER “Project”

2nd June 2008 » Permalink: TS03 – AER “Project”

7″ vinyl only
Limited edition
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Cut by Jason at Transition

Track list:

Side A: Headphones
Side B: Speakers

‘Project’ began as a film soundtrack for “The Overcoming of Hazard” by Brad Butler and Karen Mirza, whose 3 monitor installation piece was presented in the crypt of St. Pancras church in London, August 07. It uses four atmosphere recordings, short wave radio and an organ stop – an attempt to confuse inside and out. Mixed with Mathias Gmachl at Loop.ph using Digital Performer, one side is designed for headphone listening, the other for speaker playback. The recording of the 16mm projector was made with the assistance of Al Rees.

AER is the occasional recording name for Jon Wozencroft, art director and editor of Touch. For more information on AER, go here

about the filmmakers:
Karen Mirza is an influential figure in artist film and video, known both for her work and her curatorial practice. She has recently been appointed a director of the new LUX organisation, and has been a tutor in film and video at the Royal College of Art for several years. Her work has been screened at the Tate Modern, Dokument/Art Film Germany, the National Film and Television Theatre, ‘Other British Cinema’, The LUX centre ‘Monuments and mise en scene’ where it preceded Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’, the Whitechapel gallery and festivals in Australia, Holland and Germany. Karen recently completed a new body of work, ‘site/non site’ at Goliath visual arts space in New York. Through her activities as a spokesperson for experimental film, Karen has been asked to present her work at screenings in Paris, Berlin and India, as well as creating an evening for the London Film Festival. In collaboration with David Cunningham and Brad Butler, Karen is currently launching ‘where a straight line meets a curve’, her second film financed by the Arts Council.

Brad Butler graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Documentary Direction. He also has a first class degree in Anthropology from UCL. His documentaries have been screened on Channel 4 and the BBC, as well as the ICA, NFT, Hedah, Amsterdam. Mute Loops, D-Net, The Lux Centre for Film, Video & Digital Arts. Instit. Francais d’Architectur, Paris. Architecture Film Festival, Rotterdam, BBC British Short Film Festival, London. Experimenta Media Arts, Melbourne, Australia. New British Cinema, Cinema de Balie, Amsterdam, The Tate Gallery, London and multiple festivals across Europe and the US. In September 2000 he won and headlined BBC2’s talent 2000 competition, as well as winning the National Student Television Award in 1998. Brad has just directed his first feature length documentary in the US entitled ‘The Tunnel’, launched in Dec 2002. Brad is actively linked to the DocHouse initiative in London and is co-curator of the light reading series. In 1998 Brad Butler and Karen Mirza established no.w.here. Building on their training as film specialists, their vision was to create a cross-disciplinary, multi platform studio for experimental film. no.w.here have grown to become major activists in this area and now manage ‘Artslab’, a not for profit professional studio dedicated to film as a fine art practice. Artslab was launched in January 2003 and is the only lab in the UK to offer the filmmaker hands on manipulation of the film negative in post production and is a central meeting point for Independent filmmakers interested in the preservation of the film form.

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Tone 28 – Spire Live “Fundamentalis”

23rd May 2008 » Permalink: Tone 28 – Spire Live “Fundamentalis”

[vinyl only through Autofact, USA]
Art Direction & Design by Jon Wozencroft
Compiled and edited by Mike Harding October/November 2006
Cut by Jason at Transition, London, on a Neumann VSM 70 March 2007

Track list:

Side One
Philip Jeck – Live in St. Michel & St. Gudula Cathedral, Brussels
[as part of Les Nuits Botaniques] 7th May 2006
16:36

Side Two
1. Charles Matthews – Live in St. Michel & St. Gudula Cathedral, Brussels
[as part of Les Nuits Botaniques] – plays Giacinto Scelsi: In Nomine Lucis 7th May 2006
11:29
2. Marcus Davidson – Live in Masthuggs Church, Göteborg
[as part of the GAS Festival] – Standing Wave 4th October 2005
9:11
locked groove

Side Three
BJNilsen – Live in Masthuggs Church, Göteborg
[as part of the GAS Festival] 4th October 2005
19:36

Side Four
Fennesz – Live in St. Michel & St. Gudula Cathedral, Brussels
[as part of Les Nuits Botaniques] 7th May 2006
16:02

Spire Live – Fundamentalis is a collection of live tracks recorded at various Spire events held throughout 2005 and 2006. Released in association with US label, Autofact, Touch presents a selection of tracks performed by the main performers of Spire: Fennesz | Philip Jeck | BJNilsen | Charles Matthews | Marcus Davidson. Improvised pieces from Fennesz, BJNilsen and Philip Jeck contrast with a performance by Charles Matthews of a scored composition by Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, ‘In Nomine Lucis’, and Marcus Davidson’s self-penned ‘Standing Wave’, which ends side two with a locked groove. Cut to preserve and enhance the bottom end frequencies, Fundamentalis is not merely a document; the tension between and within the individual pieces is palpable. Fennesz’s set “…evokes the rolling centuries in all their pain and beauty, leaving us at once becalmed and energised, but never oppressed under the weight of time.” Electronics breathe new life not only into the organ, but also into the setting. But successor does not mean replacement. Ultimately, it’s the majestic sound of the organ, so steeped in centuries of tradition, that one remembers above all else.

Spire is one of the most innovative projects around, drawing on the full canon of organ works, from the very first annotation in the Robertsbridge Codex from the 14th Century, to max msp patches and software sampling… With two CD releases and 9 performances in cathedrals and churches throughout Europe, Spire remains a potent live force in harnessing the sounds of the ages.

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TS05 – Oren Ambarchi – Destinationless Desire

1st May 2008 » Permalink: TS05 – Oren Ambarchi – Destinationless Desire

7″ vinyl only
cut by Jason @ Transition
artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft

Track list:

Side A: Highway of Diamonds 5:55
Side B: Bleeding Shadow 6:38

Electric guitars, organ, samples, bells, percussion and motorised cymbal recorded at BJB Studios, Sydney with additional overdubs made at home 2005-2007. Gratitude to Fairport Convention and Boris D Hegenbart.

Oren Ambarchi is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with longstanding interests in transcending conventional instrumental approaches. His work focuses mainly on the exploration of the guitar, “re-routing the instrument into a zone of alien abstraction where it’s no longer easily identifiable as itself. Instead, it’s a laboratory for extended sonic investigation”. (The Wire, UK).

7″ vinyl was the quintessential format for popular music. Today, it is an undervalued and mostly promotional medium, used as a fetishistic signpost to a time of musical authenticity and a “healthy” popular culture. It might seem like another retrograde step to launch a vinyl series just as the download format threatens to dominate, and indeed there is an element of “the rear view mirror”… the generation of Touch artists who grew up with vinyl [and cassette] still feeling a strong emotional attachment to it. This series is more than that… an overtly critical, non-digital statement is supported by treatments of audio work which cannot be applied to digital formats – the sonic texture, the use of a locked groove, the A & the B and the additional dimension of the visual counterpoint. As for the aspect of audience participation, we choose not to specify the RPM on the label, encouraging the listener to experiment with playback options and personal preferences. An attempt to make music that works at both speeds. The front cover might actually be the back cover…

Continue reading →

TO:67 – Philip Jeck “Sand”

2nd April 2008 » Permalink: TO:67 – Philip Jeck “Sand”

CD – 7 tracks – 44:50
Design and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

Track list:

1. Unveiled
2. Chime Again
3. Fanfares
4. Shining
5. Fanfares Forward
6. Residue
7. Fanfares Over

” … the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity”
(from ‘The Chariot’ by Emily Dickinson)

Sand was recorded live in Holland and England in 2006/7 and edited in Liverpool January, 2008 using Fidelity record-players, Casio SK keyboards, Behringer mixer and sony mini-disc recorders.

Following Philip Jeck’s acclaimed collaboration with Gavin Bryars and Alter Ego on a new version of ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ (Touch Tone 34), ‘Sand’ is a set of seven new compositions that highlight Jeck’s mastery of vinyl manipulation, personal and collective memories.

During the past year Jeck has refined and consolidated his unique sound, playing superb sets at last summer’s Faster than Sound festival and at York Minster for Spire. He has recently released ‘Amoroso’ [Touch # TS01, 7″ vinyl only with Fennesz] where he responds to Charles Matthews’s homage to Arvo Pärt.

‘Sand’ is at once elegiac, celebrational, mournful and uplifting. Those who have followed Jeck’s development since his first release, “Loopholes” (Touch TO:26) will observe his return to the industrial textures that coloured that collection, though here they are fused with his symphonic grace and continued development as a composer and live performer .
Philip Jeck studied visual art at Dartington College of Arts. He started working with record players and electronics in the early ’80’s and has made soundtracks and toured with many dance and theatre companies as we as well as his solo concert work. His best kown work “Vinyl Requiem” (with Lol Sargent): a performance for 180 ’50’s/’60’s record players won Time Out Performance Award for 1993. He has also over the last few years returned to visual art making installations using from 6 to 80 record players including “Off The Record” for Sonic Boom at The Hayward Gallery, London [2000].

Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Philip Jeck makes geniunely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art not the gimmick.
This is Philip Jeck’s 4th solo album for Touch after ‘Loopholes’ [Touch # TO:27, 1995], Surf [TO:36, 1998], Stoke [TO:56, 2002] and ‘7’ [TO:57, 2004]. A companion vinyl release to Sand, ‘Suite: Live in Liverpool’ [Tone 28/FACT11] is being released on US label Autofact later this Summer.

He recently performed on “The Sinking of the Titanic” with Gavin Bryars in Rome, about which Boomkat (UK) said: “The most noticeable addition is Jeck, whose expertise and unique style seems to fit like the final piece of the puzzle as his crackles and motifs melt into the architecture of the recording as if they had always been there. This additional layer of nostalgia brought forth by these found sounds adds a significant sense of history, forcing the mind back into hazy film footage and decomposed photos, a perfect match for the subject matter.”

Philip Jeck in the TouchShop

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TS01 – Fennesz/Jeck/Matthews “Amoroso”

18th March 2008 » Permalink: TS01 – Fennesz/Jeck/Matthews “Amoroso”

7″ vinyl only
cut by Jason @ Transition
artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft

Track list:

Side a: Fennesz/Matthews 3′ 34″
Side b Jeck/Matthews 3′ 24″

Am`o`ro´so
n. 1. A lover; a man enamored.

adv. 1. (Mus.) In a soft, tender, amatory style.
Charles Matthews plays the Grand Organ in York Minster, during Spire Live [http://www.spire.org.uk] on 20th January 2007. This release is a homage to Arvo Pärt…
Arvo Pärt is often identified with the school of minimalism and more specifically, that of “mystic minimalism” or “sacred minimalism”. He is considered a pioneer of this style, along with contemporaries Henryk Górecki and John Tavener.

About the players:
Charles Matthews: “I felt you were pure music, not human flesh, music through time, music played from the Universe, without boundaries.” [an audience member, July 2007] Born in 1966, Charles Matthews studied at the Royal College of Music, London, and was an organ scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge. His teachers have included Beryl Tichbon, Gwilym Isaac, David Pettit, Patricia Carroll, Nicholas Danby, Charles Spinks and Dr Richard Marlow.

Charles pursues a varied career as pianist, organist, composer and teacher, performing and broadcasting for radio and television within the UK and internationally. He has won numerous awards, perhaps most notably the first prize in the 1999 Franz Liszt Memorial Competition in Budapest. His recordings have been issued by Olympia, Priory, Guild and Touch; he is the organist for the Touch project, Spire, which also includes Christian Fennesz and Philip Jeck.

Christian Fennesz: Fennesz uses guitar and computer to create shimmering, swirling electronic sound of enormous range and complex musicality. “Imagine the electric guitar severed from cliché and all of its physical limitations, shaping a bold new musical language.” – (City Newspaper, USA). His lush and luminant compositions are anything but sterile computer experiments. They resemble sensitive, telescopic recordings of rainforest insect life or natural atmospheric occurrences, an inherent naturalism permeating each piece. He lives and works in Vienna and Paris.

Philip Jeck: Philip Jeck studied visual art at Dartington College of Arts. He started working with record players and electronics in the early ’80’s and has made soundtracks and toured with many dance and theatre companies as we as well as his solo concert work. His best kown work “Vinyl Requiem” (with Lol Sargent): a performance for 180 ’50’s/’60’s record players won Time Out Performance Award for 1993. He has also over the last few years returned to visual art making installations using from 6 to 80 record players including “Off The Record” for Sonic Boom at The Hayward Gallery, London [2000].

Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Philip Jeck makes geniunely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art not the gimmick.
7″ vinyl was the quintessential format for popular music. Today, it is an undervalued and mostly promotional medium, used as a fetishistic signpost to a time of musical authenticity and a “healthy” popular culture. It might seem like another retrograde step to launch a vinyl series just as the download format threatens to dominate, and indeed there is an element of “the rear view mirror”… the generation of Touch artists who grew up with vinyl [and cassette] still feeling a strong emotional attachment to it. This series is more than that… an overtly critical, non-digital statement is supported by treatments of audio work which cannot be applied to digital formats – the sonic texture, the use of a locked groove, the A & the B and the additional dimension of the visual counterpoint. As for the aspect of audience participation, we choose not to specify the RPM on the label, encouraging the listener to experiment with playback options and personal preferences. An attempt to make music that works at both speeds. The front cover might actually be the back cover…

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TS04 – Fennesz “Transition”

27th February 2008 » Permalink: TS04 – Fennesz “Transition”

7″ vinyl only

These three tracks are based on 8 different guitar recordings made at Amann Studios, Vienna, between 2005-07. The acoustic guitar was recorded with an AK c12 microphone. Other sounds were made using a Fender Stratocaster and a Vox ac15 amp.

Track list:

Side A: On a desolate shore 5:14
Side B: A shadow passes by 3:21

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Tone 34 – Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego “The Sinking of the Titanic (1969-)”

2nd January 2008 » Permalink: Tone 34 – Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego “The Sinking of the Titanic (1969-)”

CD in Special wallet + postcard – 1 track – 72:37
[postcard image by Andrew Hooker]
Artwork by Jon Wozencroft

This version of Gavin Bryars’s seminal piece, The Sinking of the Titanic, was recorded at the 49th International Festival of Contemporary Music at The Venice Biennale on 1st October 2005 at the Teatro Maliban.

Gavin Bryars – Double Bass
Philip Jeck – Turntables
Alter Ego – Strings, Brass, Wind, Percussion, Keyboard, Tape Recorder and sound design

Track list:

1 Track – The Sinking of the Titanic (1969-) – 72:37

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TS04D – Fennesz “On a Desolate Shore a Shadow Passes By”

2nd December 2007 » Permalink: TS04D – Fennesz “On a Desolate Shore a Shadow Passes By”

Exclusive digital download available through Boomkat, iTunes and all good download stores…

Track list:

1. On a desolate shore a shadow passes by – 8:01

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TO:78 – Oren Ambarchi “In the Pendulum’s Embrace”

2nd November 2007 » Permalink: TO:78 – Oren Ambarchi “In the Pendulum’s Embrace”

CD – 3 Tracks – 41 minutes

Oren Ambarchi continues his otherworldly investigations with “In The Pendulum’s Embrace”, a dark twin to his landmark 2004 album “Grapes from the Estate” [Touch # TO:61]. Returning again to the hallowed halls of BJB Studios in Sydney, Ambarchi expands the scope and range of his unique musical language, incorporating an even broader pallette of instruments and sensibilities. Despite the use of glass harmonica, strings, bells, piano, percussion and guitars, it’s startling that the world created is still unmistakably his own, and that there is such a cohesion of vision throughout the albums’s three lengthy pieces. With this record there’s an even more tenuous coexistence of fragility and density; sounds as light as air mingling with wall shaking low-end. The converted already know the kind of trance-inducing euphoria of Ambarchi’s music. Newcomers will be scouting the back catalogue…

Track list:

1. Fever, A Warm Poison
2. Inamorata
3. Trailing Moss in Mystic Glow

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TO:75 – BJNilsen “The Short Night”

2nd October 2007 » Permalink: TO:75 – BJNilsen “The Short Night”

CD – 7 tracks – 48 minutes

Using location recordings, weather, birdsong and radio, BJNilsen continues to map and explore uncharted territory.

A follower to 2005’s Fade to White [Touch # TO:65], BJNilsen develops his work further, based on field recordings and electronics. This time he adds harsher yet clearer harmonies with musical elements to the compositions, creating a beautifully complex and detailed study. Recorded in 2006-7 with mostly analogue equipment, using up to 50 year-old tapemachines, filters and generators that end up being the soft cushion in these cold location recordings.

Location recordings from Mälaren, Stockholm, Sweden; Coombe Gibbet, Berkshire, England and Landakot, Vatnsleysuströnd, Iceland.

Telefunken M10 and M5, Studer B67, Ferrograph Series 4, Bruel and Kjær Sine-Random Generator and Frequency Analyzers. Also Monowave, Sequential Circuits ProOne, Korg MS20, Esq1, MOTU 828MK2, Ableton Live, Logic Audio 6
Morin khuur on Black Light played by Hildur Ingveldardóttir Gudnadóttir

Track list:

1. Front
2. Finisterre
3. Pole of Inaccessibility
4. Viking, Cromarty…
5. Black Light
6. Icing Station
7. Viking North

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TS02 – Chris Watson “Oceanus Pacificus”

27th September 2007 » Permalink: TS02 – Chris Watson “Oceanus Pacificus”

7″ vinyl only – not available for digital download
Limited edition of 1000

Artwork & Photography by Jon Wozencroft | Cut by Jason @ Transition
The voices and rhythms of the Humboldt current around the Galapagos Islands recorded April 2006 using a pair of Dolphin Ear Pro Hydrophones onto a NAGRA ARES-Pll digital audio recorder.

Chris Watson, originally from Sheffield but now resident in Newcastle, England, is the world’s leading wildlife sound recordist. After co-founding Cabaret Voltaire with Richard Kirk and Stephen Mallinder, he left in 1981 to work for Tyne Tees Television and he also joined The Hafler Trio. He then left to become the sound archivist for the Royal Society for Protection of Birds. He is now working full time as a freelance sound recordist.
This is the first release in a new series of Touch 7″ vinyl only releases, ‘Touch Sevens’

Track list:

1. 3m
2. 10m

Locked grooves on both sides…

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Tone 32 – Fennesz Sakamoto “Cendre”

28th May 2007 » Permalink: Tone 32 – Fennesz Sakamoto “Cendre”

CD – extended digipac
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft

11 tracks – 51:56

This release features a duet between Christian Fennesz [guitar/lapop] and Ryuichi Sakamoto [piano/laptop] – a continuing collaboration between two highly regarded composers. Their first, ‘Sala Santa Cecilia’, was a 19 minute overture from their live performance in Rome in November 2004 [Touch # Tone 22, 2005]. Bill Meyer in Magnet (US) wrote: “Cross-generational encounters are never a sure thing, but this one strikes sparks” and Max Scaefer in Cyclic Defrost (USA): ” a moment of much beauty, not to mention anticipation for the promised full-length effort to come.” Tom Sekowski adds in Gaz-eta (USA): “We can only hope this astonishing collaboration will turn into something more tangible, more permanent.”

So now we have ‘Cendre’… Cendre was recorded between 2004 and 2006 in New York City by Ryuichi Sakamoto and in Vienna by Christian Fennesz. They came together for the mix in New York City in February of that year. Fennesz would send Sakamoto a guitar or electronic track and Sakamoto would compose his piano piece. This process was also reversed – Sakamoto initiating the track with a piano composition and Fennesz responding. Meanwhile they met for live shows, or communicated via digital means to compare notes, swop ideas and develop themes… And the cyclical process continued right up until the final mix.

Ryuichi Sakamoto and Christian Fennesz blend the unstructured and imaginative qualities of improvisation with the satisfying sculpture of composition. Sakamoto’s piano, his style reminiscent of Debussy and Satie, perfectly complements Fennesz with his powerful blend of shimmering guitar and passionate electronics.

Together they have combined to create 11 tracks of satisfying and challenging possibilities…

Track list:

1. oto
2. aware
3. haru
4. trace
5. kuni
6. mono
7. kokoro
8. cendre
9. amorph
10. glow
11. abyss

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