CD – 7 tracks – 53:32
Track list:
1. Above
2. Lambing
3. Vienna Faults
4. Pax
5. Below
6. Open
7. Close
Catalogue
TO:56 – Philip Jeck “Stoke”
TO:55 – Biosphere “Shenzhou”
CD – 56:38
12 tracks
Shenzhou draws more on Eastern and Asian influences. The album is loosely based on excerpts of various Debussy pieces [tracks 1-10]. Many long passages are minimalist and understated, still Jenssen manages to display a rich palette of sonic colours. It might be a cliché notion but perhaps Shenzhou’s understatement is a testament to a maturing performer who’s able to express more with less.
Track list:
1. Shenzhou
2. Spindrift
3. Ancient Campfire
4. Heat Leak
5. Houses on the Hill
6. Two Ocean Plateau
7. Thermal Motion
8. Path Leading to the High Grass
9. Fast Atoms Escape
10. Green Reflections
11. Bose-Einstein Condensation
12. Gravity Assist
Tone 14 – Touch: Ringtones
CD – 177 ringtones – 99 tracks – 44:58.17
The process of transferring made-to-measure ringtones to your mobile phone is, at present, a fixed casino… Chart hits, cod celebrity voices, action heroes, lame keyboard melodies… so the likelihood of hearing one of these on the 07.34 from the suburbs is, at present, remote, although new ranges of mobiles are on hand to promise better things. Anticipating this, each of the included has been composed with exactly this eventuality in mind. They are in one way or another intended to be experienced as isolated, personal interventions: low-res loops, creature calls, in low-res environments… In whichever form you find them here, do sample remodel and employ these humble suggestions… we assume you already agree that the cheap ‘cheep cheep’ tones of Nokia, Ericsson and the others leave a lot to be desired.
Track list:
1 John Hudak cellular research
2 Oren Ambarchi Skadooor
3 John Dexter Zetterquist Uggue
4 Johannes Bergmark Psst… shsh!
5 the birth of newsprint
6 security clearance code
7 Chris Watson Tawny Owl/African Fish Eagles/Atlantic Puffin/Corncrake/Curlew/Golden Plover/Spotted Crake/Spotted Hyenas/Wolves
8 Thor McBurnie digi bird
9 Neophyte/hi-speed insect of the night
10 Doug Quin Arrowfrog/Baboon/Emperor Penguins/Hippopotamus/Hyrax/Oropendola
11 Touch 33 Cool in the North
12 Bigert & Bergstrom Four Seasons [composed by Antonio Vivaldi] Performed by the Tom Kling Orchestra
13 Radio Bulgaria
14 Cecilia Heisser Molar
15 Brandon LaBelle Eavesdrop
16 La Illaha… [There Is No God…]
17 AER Washing Machine
18 The World of Gilbert & George 1
19 Evan Parker mono
20 Ken Ikeda Yume
21 Raymond Cass Hello Everybody
22 Leif Elggren Help!/MansLaughter
23 Lily Otic Cowlick
24 Black Sabbath Riot Milwaukee 1980/The Japanese Imperial Army
25 Richard Bell Hell’s Bells
26 Regina Lund Come, Take Me
27 AER Arctic
28 Rosalind Waters Queen of the Night [composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart]
29 The Conet Project V2 “Attençion”
30 Åke Hodell 1234/Law and Order
31 Forty Thirty
32 Atau Tanaka Therering
33 Tobias Frère–Jones Trip/Tenthprime/Lighthouse/Octave/Demand/Asymptote
34 Crosby Binge Whirleygig
35 Brendon Walls Ipcress
36 People Like Us I Know…
37 Gen Ken Montgomery enotgnir
38 Grime Shifty Slippy
39 The World of Gilbert & George 2
40 Marcus Davidson Grand Organ/Ringer’s Revenge/Samba
41 Paul Williams SQK_0003
42 Lary 7 Waveforms 1–8
43 Carl Michael von Hausswolff (ap. 7500 Hz)
44 New Order Video 5—8—6
45 VENOZ TKS “Carry On Sergeant. Right Oh, Sir!”
46 Homage to Rhythm & Sound
47 Serrata Horn ‡
48 Simon Fisher Turner Be Calm
49 Radio Bulgaria [continued]
50 Agniesz-+++ ++++-+ka Lewalski Sniff
51 alku 2000 el ringtones es el challenge
52 Andreas Karperyd Accelerate
53 Hazard Magnet
54 FEAR jimi burns the phone down
55 AER.7 Conduct endangering the safety of information
56 farmersannual jar: fnn/snull 2000: snull_cell
57 Disinformation Live
58 Carsten Nicolai sound mobile
59 DJ Guacamole A Concise History of Californian Rock Music in under 5 seconds
60 Bruce Gilbert Robbery/Air Raid
61 KREVmorse
62 D stereocellular
63 Edvard G Lewis FIAT/KANUANSER/KER–RING! [For use with the Nokia vibrating phone only]/DOOB
64 Edwin van der Heide touch.3
65 fennesz blau 1.7
66 Homage to Pan Sonic
67 Joel Stern it’s for me
68 The World of Gilbert & George 3
69 ikue mori trickling ô
70 Hecker HekRiTo
71 On the Beach
72 i.d :cdÅmltpl.dvsn
73 Heitor Alvelos Red Lights 74 kaffe matthews still striped
75 Main Where the Fuck Are You?/I’m a Few Minutes Late/I’m On the Train/Hold On, I’m Losing You!/The Battery’s Going!/I’m in the Pub/Ciao!
76 Rosy Parlane touchtone
77 Gilbert & George Twisted and Aggressive
78 Scala Naked
79 A Ringtone from Under the Floorboards
80 Mika Vainio Polar
Tele/Whale/Sounder
81 Mark Van Hoen Note/Oatmeal/Pencil/Stalker Bell/Bees
82 Monika Nyström Nos 1–4
83 S.E.T.I. Crab Nebula 3
84 Gilbert & George Twisted and Aggressive 2
85 AER Organ Loft
86 Phill Niblock & Guy de Bièvre tones for guy
87 Thomas Lehn Cellphone Sonata
88 Ryoji Ikeda ringtone_1/ringtone_2
89 The Portuguese Cleaner
90 Preacher talking backwards/Embassy voice
91 PITA ichiban
92 snd ..-.-..
93 ¡IT! ¡IT!
94 Zbigniew Karkowski úK·
95 MSCHarding The Becquerel
96 Francisco López untitled # 124
97 Joel Stern & Anthony Guerra Engaged Tone
98 Ryoji Ikeda Unobtainable
99 11.09 — 09.11
TO:51 – Locust “Wrong”
DCD – 39:47/39:54
The album, Mark Van Hoen’s second for Touch after “The Last Flowers from the Darkness” [TO:31, 1997], features Holli Ashton on lead vocals, and various backing vocalists including Lisa Millet, Tara Patterson (Autocreation), Sarah Peacock (Scala, Seefeel, January) and 4AD artist Vinny Miller. The instrumentation is purely electronic analog synthesizers, edited and manipulated in Digidesigns’ Protools. Mark Van Hoen, who programmed and produced the LP, wanted to invoke some of the spirit of late 70’s British electronic music, combining that sound with his now familiar brand of electronics for which he became known during the 90’s.
The fragility and unpredictability of vocalist Holli Ashton’s personality and vocals, combined with the decayed and warped quality of the sound offer a warmth rarely found in such pure electronic music. Imperfections are the source of that warmth and there are several connections here between the late 70’s (the period which first inspired Mark to make music) and the last few years. Electronic music in the late 70’s was forced to become more inventive because the limitations of the instruments of the time needed the musician to craft each sound by hand, and the instruments often went wrong; out of time and out of tune. These same instruments were used on this album; there are no samplers, guitars or anything else but analog synthesizers and vocals on this recording. More recently, artists such as Ryoji Ikeda, Pan Sonic, and Hazard have sought to bring out imperfections in digital music, and those influences are here, too. Even the second CD, to be played simultaneously with the first is a ‘misuse’ of technology, yet it makes a beautiful sound.
Sometimes things just don’t work out right…
In the Spring of 1998 Mark Van Hoen AKA Locust had just finished exhaustively promoting the critically acclaimed ‘Morning Light’ album. This hitherto much lauded, yet underground electronica artist was about to break into the mainstream. But then things went wrong. The usual story of falling out with an independent label which was eventually resolved with Mark’s liberation.
During this difficult time Mark recorded ‘Wrong’ – an album of songs with Holli Ashton, the dominant vocalist featured on Morning Light. Like so many artists before him, through his plight, Mark became all the more driven to produce a work that would meet his objective of being both commercial and also innovative. Summing up this frustrating period of enforced silence, the aptly titled Wrong, finally sees the light of day on Touch.
Track list:
CDOne
1. Heal
2. Make A Difference
3. Believe In The One
4. Sweet Sky
5. What Do You Care?
6. Separate
7. Wrong
8. Impossible Adventure
9. Haze
CDTwo
1. Presence And Gifts
2. Create, Dissolve And Recreate
3. Faith Grows From Trees
4. Distopian
5. Strings That Bind Or Drop
6. Playing With Time
7. Night Navigation
8. Candle Wishes
9. Conversations Beyond The End Of The Sky
TO:50 – Biosphere “Substrata 2”
DCD – 55:20/53:32
Biosphere’s 2nd CD for Touch after Cirque [Touch # TO:46, 2000] is a double CD
in digipac designed by Jon Wozencroft.
CDOne – Substrata
Originally released in 1997 on All Saints Records, this remastered version of Substrata contains 11 tracks with a total length of 55:20. “…by many (the undersigned included) considered to be the finest ambient album of the 1990s” [Motion/State 51], and “Three years after its release, BIOSPHERE’s ‘Substrata’ is already being recognised as one of the all time greats of deep electronica.” [Top Magazine]
CDTwo – Man with a Movie Camera
contains 9 tracks, total length 53:32. The first 7 tracks consist of the soundtrack
to “Man with a Movie Camera” [Vertov, 1926, USSR], originally commissioned for the Tromsø International Film Festival in 1996, released here for the first time. The last 2 tracks, Endurium and The End of the Cyclone, were originally released on the limited edition Japanese version of Substrata in 1997 – they have never before been released outside Japan.
Track list:
CDOne – Substrata
1. As The Sun Kissed The Horizon
2. Poa Alpina
3. Chukhung
4. The Things I Tell You
5. Times When I Know You’ll Be Sad
6. Hyperborea
7. Kobresia
8. Antennaria
9. Uva-Ursi
10. Sphere of No-Form
11. Silene
CDTwo – A Man with a Movie Camera
1. Prologue
2. The Silent Orchestra
3. City Wakes Up
4. Freeze-Frames
5. Manicure
6. The Club
7. Ballerina
Bonus tracks:
8. The Eye of the Cyclone
9. Endurium
TO:49 – Phill Niblock “Touch Works, for Hurdy Gurdy and Voice”
CD – 3 tracks
Track list:
1. Hurdy Hurry
2. A Y U, AKA “As Yet Untitled”
3. A Y U, Live
TO:48 – Rafael Toral “Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance”
CD – 10 tracks
Track list:
1. Desirée
2. Measurement Of Noise
3. Quiet Mind
4. Maersk Line
5. Liberté
6. Optical Flow
7. Energy Nourish
8. Hay Que Trabajo Me Cuesta Quererte Como Te Quiero
9. We Are Getting Closer
10. Mixed States Uncoded
Considered by the Chicago Reader to be “one of the most gifted and innovative guitarists of the decade”, Rafael Toral has been developing in the last 15 years a unique sound world, having been as influenced by Alvin Lucier and Brian Eno as by Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine. Using the guitar as part of a complex electronic instrument, Toral has collaborated with Jim O’Rourke, John Zorn, Sonic Youth, Rhys Chatham and Phill Niblock and played in many European countries and in several states in the US. He’s also a member of MIMEO, the electronic orchestra featuring Keith Rowe, Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg, Kaffe Matthews and many others.VDCA is a collection of ten small pieces crafted by Toral with extreme precision and care through the last seven years. Using guitars and analogue technology, it can be described as Toral’s best work, embodying all the directions he explored in his previous critically acclaimed records, “Sound Mind Sound Body” [Moikai, USA], “Wave Field” [dexter’s cigar/drag city, USA] and “Aeriola Frequency” [Perdition Plastics, USA] but taking them into new dimensions.
LEE RANALDO: I think the most interesting thing about Raphael is that he lives out on the end of the world, which is about how isolated Portugal is, even for the rest of Europe, and that he has managed to forge some sort of interest and trajectory for himself in the esoteric realm of “new” music. He’s a young man forging ideas out of what he has heard and read about, and has a good set of ears and knows what he’s listening to. (He’s) rather scientific in his approach…
JIM O’ROURKE: Rafael is a really good guy with a good ear, I think, and a sense of timing and density that is a luxury to find. He is a swell, honest person too.
This is his first album for Touch. The highly evocative intricate and subtle guitar drones are captured in the beautiful photography of Heitor Alvelos, a Portuguese artist, and in the artwork of Jon Wozencroft.
The background noise on track 10 is a recording of silence during a Space Shuttle mission real time webcast. All other sounds were released by electric guitars. The album was recorded between 1993 and 2000 and mastered at Noise Precision, Lisbon.
TO:45 – Rehberg & Bauer “passt”
CD – 13 tracks
Track list:
1. Finga (0:33)
2. Finga (2:43)
3. Finga (3:25)
4. Sunday (1:01)
5. Sunday (4:40)
6. Nixnull (3:04)
7. Revolver (4:33)
8. Revolver (1:32)
9. Revolver (3:14)
10. Revolver (2:21)
11. Revolver (3:17)
12. Revolver (2:02)
13. Revolver (0:45)
Tone 13 – Hazard | Fennesz | Biosphere “Light “
Light is a 4 track tour CD to accompany the forthcoming Touch tour of the UK during May 2001. Celebrating their 20th anniversary this year the label presents a series of dates combining some of their leading audio/visual artists. The six dates take in Bristol (17th), Brighton (18th), London (21st), Glasgow (24th), Newcastle (26th) and Salisbury (28th) – bringing together Biosphere with John Easterby, Fennesz with Jon Wozencroft and Hazard with Heitor Alvelos.
Track list:
1. Hazard Meteosat (5:52)
2. Fennesz C-Street (5:00)
3. Biosphere When I Leave (Finely Tuned Version) (6:48)
4. Biosphere Algae & Fungi (Candelaria Version) (5:44)
TO:40 – Fennesz “plus forty seven degrees 56′ 37″ minus sixteen degrees 51′ 08″”
CD – 8 tracks
2nd edition in jewel case.
Track list:
1. 010
2. 011
3. 012
4. 013
5. 014
6. 015
7. 016
8. 017
TO:44 – Ryoji Ikeda “Matrix”
Double CD in gatefold wallet
2001 edition with postcards
Track list:
Matrix [For Rooms] (1999-2000)
1-01 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 (12:00)
1-02 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 (5:30)
1-03 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 (4:30)
1-04 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 (5:30)
1-05 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 (4:30)
1-06 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 (5:30)
1-07 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 (4:30)
1-08 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (5:30)
1-09 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (4:30)
1-10 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (7:57)
.Matrix (1999-2000)
2-01 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 (3:02)
2-02 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 (2:24)
2-03 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 (1:00)
2-04 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 (1:27)
2-05 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 (3:34)
2-06 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 (2:42)
2-07 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 (4:55)
2-08 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 (5:22)
2-09 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 (0:59)
2-10 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 (5:32)
Matrix is the final element in a trilogy of CDs that began with +/- in 1996. When it was first released, +/- came like a bolt out of the white. Nobody had used digital recording processes to produce sound as pure, as intense and as exhilarating. Since releasing 0°C in 1998, Ryoji Ikeda has progressively refined and enhanced the distinctive sonic fields and microsounds that have strongly influenced post-digital composition, resisting the transitory cycle suggested by the term ‘Glitches’, creating compositions that probe deeply: our relationships to time and space, sound and light. Much of the time since 1998 has been spent touring with the Japanese performance group, Dumb Type, whose landmark show [OR] is shortly to be followed by a new presentation for which Ikeda has composed the sound, Memorandum. In January 2000, Ryoji Ikeda toured the UK with Zoviet*France. A closer connection to the 20 new recordings that make up Matrix can be found on the recent Touch 00 sampler, Matrix for an Anechoic Room, which came out in Spring 2000. That’s the only forewarning of what awaits you on putting the first CD into your player. The layers of sound that make up Matrix [for rooms] transform both the listener and the listening environment into another dimension. The dimensions change as you move about the space, or simply turn your head around the sound like surveying the angles of a building. Matrix has much in common with the work of La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, Alvin Lucier…, but poised closer to the imminent and auto-interactive virtual world we are promised, Ryoji Ikeda’s new work pushes the parameters of the drone to ask timely questions concerning our relationship to own perception, and to our existing living spaces.
TO:43 – Mika Vainio “Kajo”
CD – 9 tracks
Track list:
1. Kytkentä / Connection
2. Osittain / Partly
3. Kolmas Píírí / Third Area
4. Leslie
5. Lähetys / Transmission
6. Aleksandrovsk
7. Aaltomuoto / Waveform
8. Unessa / In Sleep
9. Takaísin / Returning
TO:41 – Richard H. Kirk “Darkness at Noon”
CD – 1 track – 38:00
Track list:
1. Darkness At Noon (38:00)
TO:3.3 – Panni Bharti “Silent Tongues”
Track list:
To be added…
Tone 12 – Richard H. Kirk “Loopstatic”
CD – 8 tracks
Track list:
1 Devil In Your Name (8:22)
2 All In Vain (7:54)
3 With False Identity (9:43)
4 Chemicals And Easter Bunnies (6:40)
5 Do You Transmit? (6:19)
6 One Zero (8:18)
7 Get Our Heads Straight (6:35)
8 Monday Morning (6:55)
Tone 11 – John Duncan “Tap Internal”
CD – 1 track – 46:47
Track listing:
1. Tap Internal
Painter/experimental musician John Duncan is renowned for his use of shortwave radio. Getting his start hosting radio programs (including one such show titled Close Radio), Duncan began his musical journey in 1980, as he likened the sounds of a shortwave radio to what one may hear while dreaming, and began to merge this uncharted sound with music (another popular technique of Duncan’s is recording his voice on tape reading text backwards, then inverting the tape to achieve peculiar effects on his voice).One of his earliest recordings, the 1984 cassette Pleasure Escape, includes a piece titled “Blind Date,” which features Duncan talking about a dead body and a vasectomy operation. Further releases followed, such as music for a series of Japanese porno films, titled The John See Soundtracks, plus Riot, Incoming, The Crackling, Tap Internal, Palace of Mind, and NAV, among others. [Greg Prato, All Music Guide]
T33.17 – Ken Ikeda “Tzuki [Moon]”
CD – 12 tracks
Track list:
1. Manifest Destiny
2. Evolution
3. Yawarakai Hada
4. Tzuki [Moon]
5. In Between Frames
6. Infinitely Gray
7. Borderland
8. 444
9. Looking For the Moon
10. Hydantol
11. Flicker
12. Motion Pictures
T_ZERO_0 – Touch Sampler 00
CD – 21 tracks
Track list:
1. Ryoji Ikeda Matrix (For An Anechoic Room) (6:02)
2. Daniel Menche Down (5:42)
3. Chris Watson Friday The 13th (2:25)
4. AER As You Wander Round (2:28)
5. Thomas Brinkmann Olga A1 (6:26)
6. Unknown Artist Relationship Volume (0:31)
7. Locust Wrong (4:42)
Vocals – Holli Ashton
8. Unknown Artist Naming A Flower (0:12)
9. Chris Watson A Celebration (2:17)
10. Scala Breaking Point (6:54)
11. Philip Jeck As My Shadow Passes … (9:37)
12. People Like Us / Jet Black Hair People, The / Wobbly KZSU 14 Sept 99 (3:35)
13. Unknown Artist In Brief (0:28)
14. Hazard Flood Gate (5:39)
15. Unknown Artist Mach .853 (Moscow Air Traffic Control Over Turukhansk, Siberia, October 1990) (1:04)
16. Richard H. Kirk Entering Valhalla Without A Laptop (But With An Umbrella, A Sewing Machine And An Operating Table – Dig It) (5:22)
17. Chris Watson A Blessing (1:00)
18. AER Bread Upon The Water (3:38)
19. Biosphere Sun-Baked (3:43)
20. Tobias Frere-Jones F-Hz (#190736, 1996) (1:15)
21. Mika Vainio Ilmaantuva (Airing/Appearancing) (6:38)