Catalogue

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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TO:CDR5 – BJNilsen “Live at Konzerthaus, Vienna 06_12_03”

2nd April 2004 » Permalink: TO:CDR5 – BJNilsen “Live at Konzerthaus, Vienna 06_12_03”

CD – 1 track

Track list:

1. Live at Konzerthaus, Vienna

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Tone 20 – Spire: Organ Music Past, Present & Future

2nd April 2004 » Permalink: Tone 20 – Spire: Organ Music Past, Present & Future

DCD – 17 tracks

1st fruits of collaboration between Fennesz and Sparklehorse – recorded in Geneva by Christian Fennesz and Scott Minor * Touch regulars Biosphere, Philip Jeck, Benny Nilsen [Hazard], Chris Watson… * Newcomers include US free music composer and designer Tom Recchion, UK’s Scott Taylor, Icelandic artists Finnbogi Petursson and Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, and one of Sweden’s premier performance artists Leif Elggren [The Sons of God, Firework Edition Records etc.], and one of the Kings of Elgaland-Vargaland * UK finest organist Charles Matthews and classical composer Marcus Davidson * Highly regarded Japanese field recordist Toshiya Tsunoda

The story:

The thought of producing a compilation where the tracks were all either inspired by or more directly influenced by the organ had been frequently aired over the years. The conversations were always animated and expansive. The organ works of Arvo Pärt, those performed by Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, a pupil of Richard Rodney Bennett at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and others, have reached a wider non-classical audience. Eventually Benny Nilsen arranged to visit St. Mary’s Church, Warwick and work with one of England’s finest, Charles Matthews. Crawling around inside the instrument, positioning microphones most appropriately in the Church, or ‘capturing’ the psalms composed by Marcus Davidson, Nilsen explored the possibilities with all the familiar lust of the avant-garde. As the brief widened, so did the responses… some contributors referred to earlier versions of the organ and its often highly political usage, others explored aged instruments themselves. Some studied the effects of the sounds produced on the physique and the psyche, others conceptualised the brief and either built their own or recorded natural or man-made phenomena which utilised the same basic process, wind through pipes. The organ represents the marriage between acoustic complexity and ritualised space. It is impossible not to be drawn upward, towards the spire of the church or cathedral, or to the huge and daunting forest of pipes themselves. The organ dwarfs all comers, and unlike other instruments, it is this non-musical element which makes the organ stand apart.

Track list:

CDOne
12 tracks – 52:10.21
1. Leif Elggren – Royal Organ
2. Z’EV – if only that love lets letting happen (organ music for organs)
3. Philip Jeck – Stops
4. Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson – Details of a New Discovery
5. Zephyr
6. Marcus Davidson – Organ Psalm V
7. Scott Minor/Fennesz – dwan
8. Finnbogi Pétursson – Diabolus
9. Biosphere – Visible Invisible
10. Toshiya Tsunoda – Layered
11. Tom Recchion – Shut-Eye Train
13. Lary Seven & Jeff Petersen – Disorganised

CDTwo
5 tracks – 53:55.54
1. BJNilsen – Breathe
2. Scott Taylor – Droner
3. Jacob Kirkegaard- Epiludio Patetico: a tribute to Rued Langgaard
4. Ambarchi/Recchion – Triste Remake
5. Chris Watson – Askam Wind Cluster

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Tone 19 – Organum Z’EV “Tinnitus VU”

2nd April 2004 » Permalink: Tone 19 – Organum Z’EV “Tinnitus VU”

CD – 4 tracks

Track list:

1. I
2. II
3. III
4. IV

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TO:54 – Mika Vainio “In the Land of the Blind One-Eyed is King”

2nd April 2003 » Permalink: TO:54 – Mika Vainio “In the Land of the Blind One-Eyed is King”

Track list:

1. Revi Täällä, Merimies (Sunder Here, Sailor)
2. Se On Olemassa (It Is Existing)
3. Ahriman (Ahriman)
4. Hän Oli Ääni Joskus (He Was A Sound Sometimes)
5. Kasvien Väri (Colour Of Plants)
6. Kadut (Streets)
7. Motelli (Motel)
8. Lumisokea (Snowblind)
9. Kauemmas, Ylemmäs! (Further, Higher!)

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TO:CDR4 – Rafael Toral “Engine. Live in Paris”

2nd April 2003 » Permalink: TO:CDR4 – Rafael Toral “Engine. Live in Paris”

CD – 1 track

Track list:

1. Engine

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TO:60 – Ryoji Ikeda “op.”

2nd April 2003 » Permalink: TO:60 – Ryoji Ikeda “op.”

CD – 10 tracks – 51:04

op.1 was originally commissioned by “experience de vol #3”. One notable aspect fans of his previous work will highlight upon, is his declaration that “no electronic sounds have been used on this recording”. This is not to say that Ikeda has in any way renounced the world of electronic music that he has done so much to shape over the past seven years. op. 1 is a brave and deliberate step that also lends a new dimension to his previous output, with the acoustic space created by his string arrangements being subject to the same forensic attention to detail as before.

Track list:

op. 1 [for 9 strings] (2000-01)
01. I
02. II
03. III
04. IV

05. op. 2 [for string quartet] (2001-02)
06. op. 3 [for string quartet] (2002)

op. 1 [prototype] (2000-01)
07. I
08. II
09. III
10. IV

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TO:59 – Phill Niblock “Touch Food”

2nd April 2003 » Permalink: TO:59 – Phill Niblock “Touch Food”

DCD – 8 tracks

Track list:

CDOne
1. Sea Jelly Yellow
2. Sweet Potato
3. Yam Almost May

CDTwo
1. Pan Fried 70, Part 1
2. Pan Fried 70, Part 2
3. Pan Fried 70, Part 3
4. Pan Fried 70, Part 4
5. Pan Fried 70, Part 5

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TO:47 – Chris Watson “Weather Report”

2nd April 2003 » Permalink: TO:47 – Chris Watson “Weather Report”

CD – 3 Tracks – 54:02

The weather has created and shaped all our habitats. Clearly it also has a profound and dynamic effect upon our lives and that of other animals. The three locations featured here all have moods and characters which are made tangible by the elements, and these periodic events are represented within by a form of time compression.

This is Chris’s first foray into composition using his location recordings of wildlife and habitats – previously he has been concerned with describing and revealing the special atmosphere of a place by site specific, untreated location recordings. For the first time here he constructs collages of sounds, which evolve from a series of recordings made at the specific locations over varying periods of time.

Ol-Olool-O -18′ 00″

A fourteen hour drama in Kenya’s Masai Mara from 0500h – 1900h on Thursday 17th Oct. 2002

The Lapaich -18′ 00″
The music of a Scottish highland glen through autumn and into winter during the four months of September to December

Vatnajökull -18′ 00″
The 10,000 year climatic journey of ice formed deep within this Icelandic glacier and it’s lingering flow into the Norwegian Sea.

Chris has released two previous solo albums for Touch, Outside the Circle of Fire [1998] and Stepping into the Dark [1996], as well as contributions for samplers and compilations for Ash International. His work was also used as source material for the compilation Star Switch On [2002], with contributions from AER, Biosphere, Fennesz, Hazard, Philip Jeck & Mika Vainio, as well as two tracks from Chris himself.

Chris is possibly best known for his sound recordings for BBC TV, particularly the “Life of…” series written and hosted by Sir David Attenborough. But his preferred media are cds and the radio. He has presented several programmes; “A Small Slice of Tranquillity”, “NightTime is the Right Time”, “Sound Advice” and “Tyneside Dawn”, all broadcast on BBC Radio 4. His work has been described as “the freakiest all natural techno disc ever” by City Newspaper [USA].

Chris was previously a member of the popular beat trio Cabaret Voltaire.
As Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in Time Out, New York, in 1999: “Listen to your world. It may be more interesting than all the things you buy to escape from it.”

Track list:

1. Ol-Oolo-lo
2. The Lapaich
3. Vatnajökull

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T33.19 – Ken Ikeda “Merge”

2nd April 2003 » Permalink: T33.19 – Ken Ikeda “Merge”

CD – 11 tracks

Track list:

1. Merge
2. Lightdark
3. Cityscape
4. No Beginning Nor End
5. Gate
6. Usual Path
7. Yume (Dream)
8. Old Moon In The Arm Of The New Moon
9. Ambiguity
10. Equinoctial Week
11. Merged Into A Circle

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TO:57 – Philip Jeck “7”

2nd April 2003 » Permalink: TO:57 – Philip Jeck “7”

CD – 7 tracks

Track list:

1. Wholesome
2. Museum
3. Wipe
4. Bush Hum
5. Now You Can Let Go
6. Some Pennies
7. Veil

“Johnny Mathis advances the art of remembering” (Mort Goode 1972)

… points of origin slip into areas of acceptance then long listening eliminates any worries about that acceptance and parts the normally tightly bound, throwing seldom acknowledged emotions through newly opened doors…

British musician Philip Jeck’s life work is with sounds, and how they may be transformed in random and unexpected ways. For instance, a needle stuck in a record’s groove is a source of consternation for most people. Jeck, on the other hand, is eager to let the diamond ride a while because the repeated passage becomes an object for study and transmutation. His artform is an otherworldly sound world of pops, clicks, and crackles, mostly built up from dusty vinyl dug up from junk shops and outdated phonographic equipment no one would cast a second glance at in this day and age. Transcendent and mysterious, 7 is a set of pieces created with a sample keyboard, and a trove of his beloved old vinyl. “Bush Hum” extends the enquiry further by looping the harmonic buzz of an old Bush record player into a polychromatic, shifting swarm. The music is enveloped in a patina of dread and beauty, something that’s remarkable considering how immiscible these two qualities normally are. But Jeck plumbs it with masterful verve. “Now You Can Let Go” references the echo of dub, “Museum” blends a brass fanfare with a mordant groan; “Wholesome” is anything but, considering its skeletal, arpeggio-tinted construct.

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Tone 18 – Star Switch On

2nd April 2002 » Permalink: Tone 18 – Star Switch On

CD – 8 tracks – 33:34

Every two years or so, Touch has produced a sampler giving an overview of our current activities and affiliations. Following Touch 00 (2000), and even prefiguring its release, we wanted to make something that reflected the increasing reliance on the already recorded, whilst suggesting a more lateral approach to the use of source material. This first tendency is manifest everywhere, from tribute bands, to remixes, to updates or clones of earlier sound successes (Oasis and Blur vs. The Beatles and The Kinks, and so on). Another syndrome has developed whereby sounds are transformed by various software programmes, and what seems to be an innovation soon reveals itself to be generic.

“Star Switch On” is not an answer to such questions, but it is a reflection of the current obsession with ‘mapping’, ‘storing’ and ‘modulating’. We were interested in what would happen when artists were given a ‘carte-blanche’ to work with recordings that had a definite and undeniable subject, location and atmosphere – the wildlife sound recordings of Chris Watson published on “Stepping Into the Dark” (TO:27) and “Outside the Circle of Fire” (TO:37) – imagining a perverse take on library music, sampling, remix, all inadequate in denoting the soundscapes we hoped such a brief would encourage.
“Star Switch On” features two new recordings by Chris Watson, alongside Biosphere, Fennesz, Hazard, Mika Vainio, Philip Jeck and AER. Chris Watson, former member of Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio, has many credits to his name, not least the series of wildlife programmes made by David Attenborough to which he contributed. In 2000, “Outside the Circle of Fire” won a distinction for ‘Digital Music’ at Ars Electronica. Currently, he is on location in Kenya working on a new series of the BBC’s “Big Cat Diary”.

Track list:

1. Mika Vainio: Outside the Circle of Fire
2. Philip Jeck: Capriole
3. Hazard: Debugged
4. Chris Watson: Cassarina
5. Fennesz: Pannonique
6. AER: Goat Behaviour no.3
7. Biosphere: Night & Dawn
8. Chris Watson: Wolves

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Tone 17 – Hazard “Land”

2nd April 2002 » Permalink: Tone 17 – Hazard “Land”

CD – 7 tracks

Track list:

1. Substation (11:18)
2. Church (5:33)
3. Old Lead Mine (4:37)
4. Lock (1:26)
5. Windmill (8:04)
6. Stile (0:59)
7. Kissing Gate (7:34)

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Tone 16 – Fennesz “Field Recordings 1995:2002”

2nd April 2002 » Permalink: Tone 16 – Fennesz “Field Recordings 1995:2002”

CD – 13 tracks

Track list:

1. Good Man
2. Instrument 1
3. Instrument 2
4. Instrument 3
5. Instrument 4
6. Betrieb (Remix)
7. Menthol
8. Surf
9. Stairs
10. Ivend00
11. Namewithnohorse
12. Odessa
13. Codeine

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TO:52 – Jóhann Jóhannsson “Englaborn”

2nd April 2002 » Permalink: TO:52 – Jóhann Jóhannsson “Englaborn”

CD – 16 tracks

Track list:

1. Odi Et Amo (3:10)
2. Englabörn (1:34)
3. Jói & Karen (3:24)
4. Þetta Gerist Á Bestu Bæjum (1:02)
5. Sálfræðingur (3:49)
6. “Ég Sleppi Þér Aldrei” (2:57)
7. Sálfræðingur Deyr (3:40)
8. Bað (3:07)
9. “Ég Heyrði Allt Án Þess Að Hlusta” (2:05)
10. Karen Býr Til Engil (3:45)
11. Englabörn – Tilbrigði (1:24)
12. “Ég Átti Erfiða Æsku” (3:41)
13. Krókódíll (2:45)
14. “Ef Ég Hefði Aldrei…” (3:42)
15. …eins og venjulegt fólk (3:51)
16. Odi Et Amo – Bis (4:00)

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Tone 15 – Philip Jeck & Jacob Kirkegaard “Soaked”

2nd April 2002 » Permalink: Tone 15 – Philip Jeck & Jacob Kirkegaard “Soaked”

CD – 7 tracks – 35:24

This recording is taken from their live performance at the Moers Jazz Festival, Germany, in May 2002

“There are grains of truth in the suggestion that, in moving, you may find yourself in or out of some one’s favour. But, listen to the slow, delicate, even introspective background: some breeze, some chimes, some distant thunder as each focal point remains a lament.”

This blistering work was recorded live at the Moers Jazz Festival, Germany, in May 2002 and follows hot on the heels of Philip Jeck’s highly acclaimed “Stoke” [Touch # TO:56, 2002], about which The Wire said “Philip Jeck has always been good, but Stoke makes him great” and Side-Line wrote: “an essential record for the lovers of meaningful experimental and ambient stuff!”.

Jacob Kirkegaard is a member of Danish combo Aeter who work in a mixed media context. He was born in Denmark, 1975 and is currently studying at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne. Germany. He has taken part in numerous festivals throughout Europe, playing live, improvising with samplers and other electronics, as he does on this recording.

Philip Jeck, meanwhile, sticks to his turntables. He started experimenting with record players back at school in the 1960s, later won the Time Out Performance Award for “Vinyl Requiem” [1993] and has released 3 solo albums for Touch – “Loopholes” [TO:26], “Surf” [TO:36] and the abovementioned “Stoke”. He lives and works in Liverpool.

Track list:

1 – 7. Soaked

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