Catalogue

Tone 27 – Chris Watson – BJNilsen “Storm”

2nd April 2007 » Permalink: Tone 27 – Chris Watson – BJNilsen “Storm”

CD – 3 Tracks – 50:09

Chris Watson writes:

“During December 2000 several significant storm fronts developed across the North Sea and Scandinavia.

Benny remarked to me that he had recorded some of these on the Baltic coast and proposed a collaborative cd project based around our mutual interests in the rhythms and music created when the elements combine over land and out to sea.

We spent the next few years gathering recordings on our respective coastlines and islands during the very active weather windows during the autumnal equinox and winter solstice. This was focused around our following one particular cyclonic system, which veers over Snipe Point on Lindisfarne to the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, and finally descends upon Öland and Gotland where Benny listened in with a favourite pair of Sennheiser omnidirectional microphones.”

Chris Watson
Newcastle upon Tyne August 2006

Track list:

1. Chris Watson – No Man’s Land 15:51

Late October on the strands of Budle Bay where dense layers of transient alien voices are swamped by a full moon tide creeping across the island’s silver causeway.
Now lapping out of the gathering gloom an immersive sea wash is filling then draining away carrying slow currents from here to another place.
There are no reference points in this darkness.
Glimmer dawn in the gaping mouth of a sea cave below Tarbet Gulley where the siren songs of Cromarty, Forth & Tyne ebb and flow with the swell.
Draw in close but hear now a fresh voice from beyond the horizon.
Recorded during the months of October & November from 2000 to 2005 on the North East coast of England and Scotland. Microphones; Sennheiser 2 x MKH 110’s binaural pair, MKH 60/30 M&S rig, DPA 2 x 4060’s spaced omnis. Recorders; Nagra lV-S, Nagra Pll and Sound Devices 744T. Edited and Mixed in Boston July 2006

2. BJNilsen & Chris Watson – SIGWX 18:50

Viking, Forties; Cyclonic North East gale 8 backing North later 3 to 4.Thundery rain, moderate to good.
Mixed in Boston and Stockholm June & July 2006

3. BJNilsen – Austrvegr 15:28

A black ruthless sea. Heavy winds making it impossible to stand up straight, icy rain hitting your face like needles.
Recorded on the southeast coast of islands Gotland and Öland, Sweden, using a pair of Sennheiser 110 binaural mics straight to a Tascam DA P1 DAT during December 2003 and July 2004. Locations used included cottages, sheds, barns, fields and the coast. Edited and Mixed in Stockholm 2006

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Tone 30 – Marhaug | Asheim “Grand Mutation”

2nd March 2007 » Permalink: Tone 30 – Marhaug | Asheim “Grand Mutation”

CD – 5 tracks – 56:30

Lasse Marhaug: electronics
Nils Henrik Asheim: organ

Lasse Marhaug and Nils Henrik Asheim started their collaboration in 2004 at the All Ears festival in Oslo, Norway. This turned out as a fruitful meeting between two musicians of very different backgrounds. Marhaug’s feedback to Asheim’s organ sounds in the Oslo concert started to reflect how the work was to develop. Asheim is working with half-stops and subtle playing techniques that create multiple layers of sound with a vibrating or fluctuating character, as well as with the power of the full organ. Marhaug’s tools belong to the world of sine wave oscillators and noise generators. The aim was to set a sonic frame into which they could both gradually tune.

The two musicians met again in June 2006 just before Oslo Cathedral (which contains Asheim’s favourite instrument) closed down for a few years of renovation work. One day of soundcheck and musical work and one night of recording produced an improvised flow of one hour, afterwards structured into five tracks.

The recording was made in a live setup on the organ loft. Nils Henrik Asheim was sitting at the organ console and Lasse Marhaug right behind, playing his electronics through a loudspeaker system in order to make the electronics and the acoustic organ sound blend as close to each other as possible. Sound engineer Thomas Hukkelberg used two custom-built condenser mics for the organ, two Shure KSM 44 for the electronics and two Neumann U87 by the altar for the ambience. He used a Millennia Media HV-3 preamp and an Apogee AD-16X converter. The recordings were made at night to avoid unwanted ambient city sounds. The final mix was made by Marhaug in January 2007.

Track list:

1. Bordunal
2. Phoneuma
3. Magnaton
4. Philomela
5. Clavaeolina

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Tone 23 – Fennesz “Live in Japan”

2nd February 2007 » Permalink: Tone 23 – Fennesz “Live in Japan”

[vinyl only through Autofact, USA]

Track list:

A. Live In Japan
B. Live In Japan

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Tone 26 – Jacob Kirkegaard “4 Rooms”

26th April 2006 » Permalink: Tone 26 – Jacob Kirkegaard “4 Rooms”

CD – 52 minutes

Launch event: 25/26th April 2006 @ The Marble Church, Copenhagen
Available to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster
4 Rooms won for Jon Wozencroft the Qwartz 4 award for Best Artwork
4 ROOMS; empty memorials

The work aims to be a revelation of four abandoned spaces inside the Zone of Exclusion in Chernobyl. It deals with a sonic experience of time, absence, and change – in an area haunted by an invisible and inaudible danger, amidst the slowly decaying remains of human civilization.

This is Jacob Kirkegaard’s 2nd CD for Touch, after Eldfjall [Touch # T33.20]. Born in Denmark, now living and working in Germany, here he explores one of the worst man made disaster in history. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded on April 26, 1986; clouds of radioactive particles were released, and the severely damaged containment vessel started leaking radioactive matter. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from the city and other affected areas. Despite the fact that radiation is still being emitted from the nuclear disaster site, the 900-year-old city of Chernobyl survives, although barely. As of 2004, government workers still police the zone, trying to clean up radioactive material. Some – mostly elderly – have decided to live with the dangers and have returned to their homes in the zone’s towns and villages. Their population was highest in 1987, when there were more than 1200 people. In 2003, there were about 400 and now 350 are registered. The effects on the environment were catastrophic: huge areas of northern europe were dosed with radioactivity.

CHERNOBYL; 20 years on
This work is a sonic presentation of four deserted rooms inside the ‘Zone of Alienation’ in Chernobyl, Ukraine. Jacob Kirkegaard deliberately picked rooms that once were active meeting points for people: A church in village Krasno, an auditorium, a gymnasium and a swimming pool in Pripyat.

The rooms he found and recorded were abandoned abruptly, urgently, and for good: Their inhabitants were evacuated by Soviet military and had to leave all their belongings behind. On April 26th, 1986, the explosion of Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had extinguished all possibilities of human survival in the vicinity.

Two decades after the event, Kirkegaard explores the phenomenon of radiation with the medium of sound. By listening to the silence of four radiating spaces he aims to unlock a fragment of the time existing inside the zone.

SILENCE; unfolding in space
The sound of each room was evoked by sonic time layering: In each room, he recorded 10 minutes of it and then played the recording back into the room, while at the same time recording it again. This process was repeated up to ten times. As the layers got denser, each room slowly began to unfold a drone with various overtones.

The sound of each room was evoked by an elaborate method: Kirkegaard made a recording of 10 minutes and then played the recording back into the room, recording it again. This process was repeated up to ten times. As the layers got denser, each room slowly began to unfold a drone with various overtones.

From a technical point of view, Kirkegaard’s “sonic time layering” refers back to Alvin Lucier’s work “I am sitting in a room” [1970]. Lucier recorded his voice in a space and repeatedly played this recording back into that same space. In this work, however, no voice is being projected into the rooms: during the recordings Kirkegaard left the four spaces to wait for whatever might evolve from the silence.

Track listing:

1. Church
2. Auditorium
3. Swimming Pool
4. Gymnasium

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TO:68 – Rosy Parlane “Jessamine”

2nd April 2006 » Permalink: TO:68 – Rosy Parlane “Jessamine”

Track list:

1. Part One
2. Part Two
3. Part Three

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Tone 25 – Touch 25

2nd April 2006 » Permalink: Tone 25 – Touch 25

CD – 25 tracks

3rd EDITION OF THE CD [SAME AUDIO] IN A SLIP CASE [SAME FRONT COVER ART] WITH NO BOOKLET
Photography & Design by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

TOUCH 25th Anniversary edition CD with exclusive tracks from:
Oren Ambarchi | Biosphere | Fennesz | Bruce Gilbert | Ryoji Ikeda | Philip Jeck | Jóhann Jóhannsson | Jacob Kirkegaard | Mother Tongue | BJNilsen | Pan Sonic | Rosy Parlane | Peter Rehberg | Rafael Toral | Mark Van Hoen | Chris Watson |

There are also several insert recordings and a live edit from Hild Sofie Tafjord & Tanja Orning

Touch was conceived by Jon Wozencroft in 1981, and released its first cassette magazine ‘Feature Mist’ in 1982 [more information on the early cassette releases can be found at www.touch33.net/catalogue/first.html].

This compilation was produced initially for the magazine, His Voice, to promote new music in the Czech and Slovak Republics. These questions [below] were originally in response to Hynek Dedecius and Pavel Klusak at His Voice. This edition was made for Qwartz 4, Paris.

Track list:

1 BJ Nilsen Gotland
2 minutiae
3 Oren Ambarchi Moving Violation
4 Fennesz Tree
5 quick and cold
6 actual time of arrival
7 Chris Watson Conversations
8 safety short
9 Chris Watson Oujela Mine
10 Mother Tongue Rewording
11 Peter Rehberg TT 1205
12 Tanja Orning & Hild Sofie Tafjord Live at Blå, Oslo
13 Pan Sonic Slovakian Rauta
14 Jóhann Jóhannsson Tu non mi perderai mai
15 Jacob Kirkegaard Heavy Water [Bärseback]
16 solent rd
17 Ryoji Ikeda Untitled #25
18 Rafael Toral Glove Touch
19 Philip Jeck Hindquarters
20 ATC graph
21 Bruce Gilbert Sliding off the World
22 Mark Van Hoen Put My Trust in You
23 chorale
24 Biosphere Spring Fever
25 Rosy Parlane Atlantis

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TO:69 – Phill Niblock “Touch Three”

2nd April 2006 » Permalink: TO:69 – Phill Niblock “Touch Three”

Track list:

CDOne
1. Harm
2. Sethwork
3. Lucid Sea

CDTwo
1. Parker’s Altered Mood, AKA, Owed To Bird
2. Zrost
3. Not Yet Titled

CDThree
1. Valence
2. Alto Tune
3. Sax Mix

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TO:66 – Biosphere “Dropsonde”

2nd April 2006 » Permalink: TO:66 – Biosphere “Dropsonde”

11 tracks – 69:53

Artwork & Photography by Jon Wozencroft

so you might like to note that “In the shape of a flute” is exclusive to the vinyl format of the release, and tracks 1. 3. 4. 5. 6. 11. are exclusive to the CD version

Widely regarded as one of Norwegian electronic music’s most important artists, Biosphere’s [Geir Jenssen] career spans nearly two decades, several albums, lots of remixes, various sound installations, commissions, soundtracks and even the odd Himalayan summit.

You may recognise his work without knowing it, so frequently does it crop up on TV trailers and idents. In the early 1990s he was a pioneer of so-called ‘Ambient Techno’, but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring.

Dropsonde’ isn’t a soundtrack like the interwoven ‘Substrata’ nor an episodic journey in the way that ‘Autour de la Lune’ is. Here Geir Jenssen is pushing new directions towards the jazz colours of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, whilst re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread.

The spatial aspects some have dubbed “Arctic sound” but it summons strong feelings, or as Exclaim from Canada put it, “in order to climb higher, you must first go deeper”. Jon Savage adds: “As with all of the Biosphere albums, the music draws you in and makes you want to listen and feel. Jenssen’s work acts on a very emotional level, one that encourages you to drift away into a haze of images and scenes brought to you by the music, where spectacular beauty hides unseen danger. Intense and moving, but comforting and soothing at the same time.”

[A ‘dropsonde’ is a weather reconnaissance device designed to be dropped from an airplane or similar craft at altitude to take telemetry as it falls to the ground. It typically relays information to a computer in the dropping airplane by radio. The fall may be slowed by a parachute. Information collected by a typical dropsonde may include wind speed, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure.]

This is Biosphere’s 5th release for Touch, after “Cirque” [Touch # TO:46, 2000], “Substrata 2” [Touch # TO:50, 2002], “Shenzhou” [Touch # TO:55], and “Autour de la Lune” [Touch # TO:62, 2004]. He has also contributed to various Touch compilations, including “Spire – Organ Music, Past, Present & Future” [Touch # Tone 20, 2004), and more recently to the Storr walk on Skye, Scotland, a guided tour through stunning landscape accompanied by illuminations and sound recordings.

Track list:

1. Dissolving Clouds
2. Birds Fly By Flapping their Wings
3. Warmed By the Drift
4. In Triple Time
5. From a Solid To a Liquid
6. Arafura
7. Fall In, Fall Out
8. Daphnis 26
9. Altostratus
10. Sherbrooke
11. People Are Friends

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TO:79 – Phill Niblock “Touch Strings”

9th October 2005 » Permalink: TO:79 – Phill Niblock “Touch Strings”

Track listing:

CDOne – 59:03 (6 tracks)
1-6: Stosspeng (59 minutes)
Susan Stenger and Robert Poss, guitars and bass guitars

CDTwo – 69:28 (6 tracks)
1: Poure (23:30)
Arne Deforce, cello
2-6: One Large Rose (45:55 minutes)

The Nelly Boyd Ensemble, Hamburg – Robert Engelbrecht, cello;
Jan Feddersen, piano strummed with nylon strings; Peter Imig, violin; Jens Roehm, acoustic bass guitar strummed with nylon strings or e-bow

This is Phill Niblock’s 4th release on Touch, after Touch Works… [TO:49, 2000], Touch Food [TO:59, 2003] and Touch Three [TO:69, 2006].

“Stosspeng was completed in April 2007; Poure in September 2008 and One Large Rose in May 2008. The Stosspeng recording session to obtain the materials for the piece was on December 20 2006 at Robert Poss’s Trace Elements studio on E 4th Street and Ave A, in New York. Robert was the engineer. The piece was completed using Protools in April 2007, in Vienna, Austria. It was premiered at the Donau Festival in Krems Austria on April 30 2007.

The material for Poure was recorded in Johan Vandermaelen’s Amplus studio in Aaigem Belgium, with technical assistance by Guy De Bievre. Much of the construction of the piece, in Protools, was done in a residency at Atelier Azur in Hoenefoss, Norway at the Hval Station, in mid August 2008. It was finished in Ellen Fullman’s studio in Berkeley California on September 7. It was premiered at Kasteel Schuurlo, Sint-Maria-Aalter, Belgium on September 12 2008 and it was commissioned by the Centre de Recherches et de Formation Musicales de Wallonie, CRFMW, Liege, Belgium.

One Large Rose was made with the musicians playing from a score, and recorded acoustically and in real time. There are four recordings of 46 minutes each, superimposed. Recorded by Jens Roehm at Christianskirche, Hamburg, Germany, recording assistance by Julia Berg, on May 15 and 16 2008. Mixing was done by Jens Roehm and the ensemble in Hamburg, and the final mix was done in New York at Experimental Intermedia on October 13 2008.

The mastering for CD, of all pieces, was done by Tom Hamilton, in New York.”
Phill Niblock, August 2009

Tone 24 – KK.NULL/Watson/z’ev “Number One”

2nd April 2005 » Permalink: Tone 24 – KK.NULL/Watson/z’ev “Number One”

CD – 5 tracks – 48:15

Z’EV writes: “In March of 2003 seeing my friends Stephen & Josephine in Los Angeles they suggested that i get in touch with japanese composer/performer KK.NULL. There followed a string of weird email occurrences which delayed our communicating until, as it turned out, we eventually met in Paris on 18 November.After his performance we were talking about a possible collaboration and during his set a possibility had occurred to me. I ran the idea by him and we agreed to proceed with it. The idea had 3 elements: 1 – to use the structure of the NOH THEATRE cycle as the basis for the composition. 2 – to consider the initial sound development in terms of developing ‘characters’ which would then interact with one another through the specific “scene” [which is a fairly non-traditional way to work with sound elements] and 3 – to place the ‘character interactions’ as the ‘figure’ inside of particular sound-scapes as the ‘ground’.

So in January 2004 I returned to London and began to work on my initial character developments. Coincidentally at this time I received a copy of a CD compilation i had a piece on which was released by TOUCH, which also had a piece by Chris Watson. So i got on the phone to TOUCH who put me in touch with Chris who has joined in on the project.

Sometime after I had completed mixing the 5 pieces, I sent a copy to my friend Boyd Rice. He emailed me back: “This is the first avant-garde piece I have heard in years that is truly avant-garde.”

In the production process, Z’EV framed his and KK.NULL’s electro-acoustic musics inside Chris Watson’s field recordings from East Africa. A dynamic dialogue and inside-outside mirroring of natural and synthetic sound is the result: where the click and rhythm of an insect merges with KK.NULL’s drumming; where the calls of the elephants combine with the electronic bass frequencies; where bird and frog song and Z’EV’s harmonic structures produces surprising counterpoints.

Track list:

1. Invocation
2. Introduction
3. Development
4. Climax
5. Conclusion

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Tone 22 – Fennesz Sakamoto “Sala Santa Cecilia”

2nd April 2005 » Permalink: Tone 22 – Fennesz Sakamoto “Sala Santa Cecilia”

Track list:

1. Sala Santa Cecilia

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Tone 21 – Spire Live at Geneva Cathedral

2nd April 2005 » Permalink: Tone 21 – Spire Live at Geneva Cathedral

St. Pierre Cathedral, Geneva, was the crucible of the Reformation in 1534…

The second release in the Spire series [cf Spire, organ works past, present & future, Touch # Tone 20, 2004] 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 3 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 [4 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.

Track list:

CDOne 76:04
On the main organ in the cathedral: Charles Matthews plays tracks 1-4:
1. Marcus Davidson – Opposites Attract [10:05]
2. Marcus Davidson – Psalm for Organ 3 [1:24]
3. André Jolivet – Hymne à l’Universe [11:58]
4. Liana Alexandra – Consonances lll [6:52]
Marcus Davidson plays track 5:
5. Henryk Gorécki – Kantata for organ op. 26 [15:42]
In the side chapel: 6. BJNilsen – Live in La Petite Chapelle [29:59]

CDTwo 69:06
In the crypt: Philip Jeck – Live in the Crypt [44:14]
In the side chapel: Fennesz – Live in La Petite Chapelle [24:49]

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T33.20 – Jacob Kirkegaard “Eldfjall”

2nd April 2005 » Permalink: T33.20 – Jacob Kirkegaard “Eldfjall”

This CD consists of geothermal recordings of vibrations in the ground around the area of Krisuvik, Geysir and Myvatn in Iceland. The recordings have been carried out using accelerometers inserted into the earth at various places around the geysers, mapping the sonic aspects of volcanic activity at the surface of the earth.

Recorded during January and August and mixed in winter 2004.
Thanks to Thor Magnusson & family, Kristin Gunnarsdottir, Alberto de Campo and Anthony Moore.

Track list:

1. Ala
2. Gaea
3. Nerthus
4. Coatlicue
5. Al-Lat
6. Aramaiti
7. Izanami
8. Kali
9. Gerd

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TO:65 – BJ Nilsen “Fade to White”

2nd April 2005 » Permalink: TO:65 – BJ Nilsen “Fade to White”

CD – 6 tracks – 45:29

Track list:

1. Purple Phase
2. Dead Reckoning
3. Let Me Know When It’s Over
4. Impossibilidad
5. Grappa Polar
6. Nine Ways Till Sunday

Benny Nilsen writes: “‘Fade To White’ contains material from the making of 3 pieces which were created within a different season and then edited, re-arranged and re-mixed in the summer of 2004. 6 pieces contain outdoor field recordings from travels in mainly central europe in 2003 [Gdansk/Poland, Narva/Estonia, Sarajevo/Serbia Herzegovina, Arad/Romania, Trieste/Italy], and static indoor recordings from 2004 Stockholm/Sweden, Brussels/Belgium, Amsterdam/Netherlands, Vienna/Austria, Geneva/Switzerland. I used acoustic and electrical instruments recorded in open spaces picking up the natural ambience, blending those with environmental sounds of nature and then arranged it in the computer, creating dynamic layers of sound that feed from one another.” This is BJNilsen’s 3rd album for Touch, after “Land” and “Live at the Konzerthaus, Vienna” . He also recorded 3 Hazard albums for Ash International.

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TO:64 – Jóhann Jóhannsson “Virthulegu forsetar”

3rd October 2004 » Permalink: TO:64 – Jóhann Jóhannsson “Virthulegu forsetar”

CD & DVD-A
(2 disc set. Disc 1 is a regular audio CD, disc 2 features the same tracks on DVD as a 24 bit 5.1 surround sound mix)

Track list:

CD:

1. Part 1 (14:51)
2. Part 2 (14:14)
3. Part 3 (14:45)
4. Part 4 (21:45)

DVD-A:
1. Part 1 (14:51)
2. Part 2 (14:14)
3. Part 3 (14:45)
4. Part 4 (21:45)

Bass, Electronics – Skúli Sverrisson
Conductor – Guðni Franzson
Glockenspiel, Bells, Electronics – Mathias M.D. Hemstock
Horns – Anna Sigurbjörnsdóttir, Einar St. Jónsson, Emil Friðfinnsson, Stefán Jón Bernharðsson, Þorkell Jóelsson
Organ – Guðmundur Sigurðsson, Hörður Bragason
Performer – The Caput Ensemble
Photography – J. Wozencroft
Photography [On-screen Bird Photo] – Kari Ósk Ege
Recorded By, Mastered by Sveinn Kjartansson*
Trumpet – Eiríkur Örn Pálsson , Ásgeir Steingrímsson*
Tuba – Sigurður Már Valsson

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TO:63 – Z’EV “Headphone Musics # 1-6 b/w As Is As”

2nd April 2004 » Permalink: TO:63 – Z’EV “Headphone Musics # 1-6 b/w As Is As”

CD – 7 tracks
56:28

Jewel case with artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft and Tereza Stehlikova
In 1967 Z’EV took a tape music class at the UCLA night school. The leader of the course was Joseph Byrd who was the founder and theoretician of the first electronic rock band; the united states of america. So while it’s almost 40 years now that he has been involved in the production of electro-acoustic music, “Headphone Musics” marks the first release of a product exclusively featuring this form of music. All of the source material is drawn from the collection of cassette tapes Z’EV has amassed over the last 30 years – sounds and soundscapes he has either recorded himself or witnessed, or tapes that have been given to him by various peoples on his travels or been received by him through the mail from fans etc. Technically he remains a bit orthodox in that basically he still plies the old tools of the tape manipulation trade in the current digital sphere. What this means is that he concentrates on editing, phase relationships, time dilation, and inherent and 3rd harmonic distortion as his only means of processing the information he is transforming. There is no looping involved, although #2 features a recording he made in 1984 using his controlled-skipping Lenco turntable.

AS IS AS is a live recording of a sound poem Z’EV produced and performed under the name “S. Weisser” at a Sound Poetry Festival in 1976 at the La Mamelle art space in San Francisco. It was produced using 2 reel to reel tape decks, 3 cassette decks, and 2 microphones.

Tracklist:

Tracks 1-6. Headphone Musics 1-6
Track 7. As Is As

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TO:62 – Biosphere “Autour de la Lune”

2nd April 2004 » Permalink: TO:62 – Biosphere “Autour de la Lune”

CD
9 tracks – 74:32

Widely regarded as one of Norwegian electronic music’s most important artists, Biosphere’s [Geir Jenssen] career spans nearly two decades, several albums, lots of remixes, various sound installations, commissions, soundtracks and even the odd Himalayan summit.

Says Jenssen on his latest commission: “Radio France Culture contacted me some time ago and proposed a commission that was to be premiered at the Le Festival de Radio France et Montpellier. I was granted access to Radio France’s archives and given permission to use this vast source of audio material. I settled on this early 60s dramatisation of Jules Verne’s “De la Terre à la Lune” that totally captivated me. The story is quite amazing – Verne wrote it in the nineteenth century; still he managed to describe a manned space flight in such detail one is stunned. In “De la Terre à la Lune” Verne describes a space mission that sees the astronauts launched from Florida and returning from space to land in the Pacific Ocean – exactly the same procedure that the US space program would follow many, many years later. I have sampled bits and pieces of the dramatisation’s dialogue, coupled it with sounds recorded at the MIR space station and then incorporated it with my own compositions.”

Following the original broadcast, Jenssen continued to work on the recording which now sees the light of day as “Autour de la Lune”, a 74 minute symphony made up of nine ‘movements’. The propulsive opening sequence “translation” gives way to the crosstalk and scrambled communications of “rotation” and “modifié”, before the listener is enveloped in a dense and seemingly endless space (the sound of zero gravity?).
The circular flight of “Autour de la Lune” is Biosphere at his most expansive. Featuring a specially-commissioned painting by Tor-Magnus Lundeby, one of Norway’s most prominent visual artists, this new release is set to compete with Brian Eno’s “Apollo” recordings as the definitive homage to the space age.

Track list:

1. translation
2. rotation
3. modifié
4. vibratoire
5. déviation
6. circulaire
7. disparu
8. inverse
9. tombant

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TO:61 – Oren Ambarchi “Grapes from the Estate”

2nd April 2004 » Permalink: TO:61 – Oren Ambarchi “Grapes from the Estate”

CD – 4 tracks – 55:44

Oren Ambarchi’s third solo project for Touch [after Suspension and Insulation] sees him reaching beyond the work for electric guitar that he’s become recognised for, expanding his palette and taking his investigations into another sphere entirely. Grapes from the Estate features new instrumentation (strings, tuned bells, percussion and others that can only be guessed at), but the singular and unmistakable influence that Ambarchi exerts on these new materials is what makes it such an indelible work.

There is a reconciliation of his love of song-based music and his determination to deal in pure sound. The result is a work that truly eludes such arbitrary definitions. Grapes From The Estate is an all consuming experience that draws the listener out of an ordinary sense of time, into a world beyond it.

On more than any other release, his entire body of work to date can be experienced in a single statement. There are the seemingly random tonal structures that are such a large part of his vocabulary, the playfulness and humour of his formative noise schooling, his love of free jazz, of pop music, and rhythmic elements, perhaps subconsciously derived from his Sephardic heritage. Another outpouring of personal, intimate and enduring music from Oren Ambarchi.

Track list:

1. Corkscrew
2. Girl with the Silver Eyes
3. Remedios the Beauty
4. Stars Aligned, Web Spun

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TO:58 – Rosy Parlane “Iris”

2nd April 2004 » Permalink: TO:58 – Rosy Parlane “Iris”

CD – 3 tracks – 49:32

Track list:

1. Part One
2. Part Two
3. Part Three

Mastered By – Denis Blackham
Photography – Jon Wozencroft
Written and recorded in Auckland, NZ, Feb-Dec 2003

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TO:53 – Fennesz “Venice”

2nd April 2004 » Permalink: TO:53 – Fennesz “Venice”

CD – 49:13
12 tracks

“Venice” was recorded on location in the summer of 2003 and subsequently assembled and mixed at Amann Studios, Vienna in January/February 2004.

“Venice”, the fourth studio album by Christain Fennesz, finds electronic music at a crossroads between its early status as digital subculture, and the feeling that there has to be something more, an emotional quality that rises above noise and moves towards melody and rapture.

Track list:

1. rivers of sand
2. château rouge
3. city of light
4. onsra
5. circassian
6. onsay
7. the other face
8. transit
9. the point of it all
10. laguna
11. asusu
12. the stone of impermanence

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