Catalogue

Touch30USB – Various Artists “Live at Beaconsfield”

5th February 2013 » Permalink: Touch30USB – Various Artists “Live at Beaconsfield”

2 x USB cards in white outer, with 2 colour sticker, and two inner wallets
Strictly limited edition of 50

AUTODIGEST ● BIOSPHERE ● FENNESZ ● BRUCE GILBERT ● CM VON HAUSSWOLFF ● PHILIP JECK ● THOMAS KÖNER ● GARRY MOUAT ● PEOPLE LIKE US ● JON SAVAGE ● DAVID TOOP ● JON WOZENCROFT

Most of these recordings were made direct from the mixing desk onto our Nagra Ares Pll digital stereo recorder. In three cases we have used the original files provided by the artist – autodigest, People Like Us and Jon Savage. (The performance by Hildur Gudnadottir was not recorded).

USB Card One:

David Toop – 16 bit aiff audio recording of his presentation of “Yanomamo Shamanism”, released on ‘Touch Travel’ [Touch # T4, 1984]. 12′ 45″
Fennesz – 24 bit wav recording of his performance (unedited) 34′ 16″
Garry Mouat – m4v slide show of his scans of his artwork for Touch
Philip Jeck – 24 bit wav recording of his performance (unedited) 33′ 20″
People Like Us – mp4 of “4′ 33” and mp3 of “Cage Silenced” 4′ 33″

USB Card Two:

autodigest – 16 bit wav file of “30 releases in 30 years of Touch fitting into 30 seconds and 3 bonus seconds…” 0′ 39″
Biosphere – 24 bit wav recording of his performance (abridged) 15′ 32″
Bruce Gilbert – 16 bit aiff recording of “Sliding off the World”. Live performance of his piece originally released on Touch 25 [Touch # Tone 25, 2007] 3′ 07″
CM von Hausswolff – 24 bit wav recording of his performance (unedited) 26′ 48″
Jon Wozencroft – m4v slide show of his cover art
Jon Savage – 16 bit wav recording of “Ritual”, from his pirate broadcast for Network 21 in 1987 1′ 05″
Thomas Koner – 24 bit wav recording of his performance (unedited) 36′ 53″

Tone 33 – Various Artists “Thirty years and counting”

26th November 2012 » Permalink: Tone 33 – Various Artists “Thirty years and counting”

CD – 4 tracks – 70:16
Edition of 1000 oversized digifiles
Compiled, edited, mixed and produced by Mike Harding & Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye, 26th October 2012

Track list:

SIDE A 16:58
Touch 33 – Pont Saeson
Fennesz – 55 Cancri e
Bruce Gilbert – Apis
Rosy Parlane – Awhitu
Oren Ambarchi – Merely A Portmanteau

SIDE B 17:15
The Book Depository
ELEH – Over Woven
BJNilsen – The cackle of dogs and laughter of death
Nana April Jun – High And Low And Mid Plane Mass

SIDE C 18:14
Chris Watson – Brussel-Nord
Mika Vainio – Erstwhile
Carl Michael von Hausswolff – Cleansing of the Cruel Tyrants Chamber
Jana Winderen – In a Silent Place

SIDE D 17:49
Philip Jeck – Saint Pancras
Francisco López – untitled#286
Z’EV – the inreadables
Hildur Gudnadottir – Just This
Senescent
Biosphere – Gryfici

“30 years and counting is an echo of a time when the world was in a critical condition, and potentially about to blow itself into oblivion at the tail end of the Cold War. As such the title is a wry reflection on the situation we find ourselves in today, where the final curtain is less likely to close, but the stakes somehow seem to be more extreme and polarised than ever.
As far as Touch is concerned, it is an expression of our youthful relationship to the work. Mike Harding and Jon Wozencroft invited each of the Touch artists to contribute a glimpse of their current practice to what is effectively a group show rather than a compilation. The brief was not only to celebrate a situation, but to remind each other why we are doing it, and make a kind of documentary realism.

Some artists responded quickly with significant twists and returns to their signature sound and others left it to the last minute. The net result was that Mike and Jon mastered the LP/CD more or less as live performance in the cutting room, Transition, as an expression of the vitality of the project rather than some pre-ordained historical item.

The history is built into the cover with two images of the first computer, the ‘Colossus’, built in Bletchley Park during the early 1940s as a means of cracking the Enigma codes… Here the pressure of time is at its most compressed. Two contra-punctal images were shot only recently, backstage moments of Touch 30 situations which as historical events, pale in comparison – they are just personal, memories in a flash.

30 years and counting is a filmic/time-based response from a collective of artists who have made a distinct impression on contemporary music and the way things go. Fennesz, Eleh, Hildur Gudnadottir, Chris Watson, Philip Jeck, Biosphere… We should really list everyone. That’s what they try and do on hip-hop albums.

We started with cassettes; this project commenced as a dedication to vinyl rather than digital, a question concerning the art of recording. 30 years and counting is a manifesto after all these transformations. It is available on CD and download. The vinyl flares with the crackle of the present.” Jon Wozencroft, November 2012 Continue reading →

TO:86 – Mika Vainio “Fe3O4 – Magnetite”

22nd August 2012 » Permalink: TO:86 – Mika Vainio “Fe3O4 – Magnetite”

CD (digipak) – 7 tracks – 55:51
Cover photography: Joséphine Michel
Art Direction: Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

Track listing:

1. Magnetia
2. Magnetotactic
3. Magnetosphere
4. Magnetosense
5. Magnetism
6. Magnetosome
7. Elvis’s TV Room

Mika Vainio, currently based in Berlin, was one half of the minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic from Finland, (with Ilpo Väisänen). Before starting Pan Sonic in the beginning of the 90’s, Mika Vainio has played electronics and drums as part of the early Finnish industrial and noise scene. His solo works, under his own name and under aliases like Ø, are known for their analogue warmth and electronic harshness. Be it abstract drone works or minimal avant techno, Vainio is always creating unique, physical sounds. He has released on other labels such as Editions Mego, Wavetrap and Sähkö and he has produced work with, amongst others, Alan Vega of Suicide, Keiji Haino, and Bruce Gilbert. Since 2009 Mika Vainio has contributed to the music for Cindy van Acker’s dance pieces…

This is his 5th album for Touch, after Onko [Touch # TO:34, 1998], Kajo TO:43, 2000], Sokeiden Maassa Yksisilmäinen on Kuningas (In the Land of the Blind One-Eyed Is King) [TO:54, 2004] and Black Telephone of Matter [Touch # TO:72, 2009].

“Fe3O4 – Magnetite” was recorded in Berlin between 2011 and 2012. In contrast to the dark vistas of his most recent releases, “Fe3O4 – Magnetite” oscillates between the two poles of silence and noise. Using his signature sources which range from radio signals to sine wave generators, Mika Vainio creates a unique emotional journey that moves from the serene to the unsettling, always challenging the listener’s comfort zone.

Buy Mika Vainio “FE3O4 Magnetite” [CD] in the TouchShop

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T33.2V – Various Artists “Islands in-between”

24th June 2012 » Permalink: T33.2V – Various Artists “Islands in-between”

Touch # T33.2V
Edition of 500 vinyl and download only
A new series of vinyl and download only releases, “from the archives…”. Islands Inbetween was originally released on cassette in 1983 [Touch # T33.2]. Three tracks, by John Keliehor & Orlando Kimber, have been removed from this edition for copyright reasons. The second in this series, “Drumming for Creation” [Touch # T33.3V] will be released in the spring of 2013.

Track list:

Side One 20’31”
Day and Night
Gending Gending
Suling
Degung Instrumental
Genggong
Cremation Gamelan
Dag combination dance
Ramayana ll

Side Two 17’05”
Watermark
Temple Gamelan
Frog Sound
Degung instrumental no. 2
Ducks
Tenun
Anjung

NOTES:

Indonesians often use the name ‘Nusantara’, meaning ‘the islands in-between’, when referring to the archipelago that forms their Republic. This cassette covers only some of the cultural activity on Java and Bali, the best known islands out of the 13,700 counted by statisticians, so it is not intended to be in any way definitive. The selections are more like musical postcards of two cultures balanced between tradition and tourism.
legend: meridian 105º – 115º east

Side one:

There is no specific translation for ‘Gending Gending’. The term generally means ‘orchestra’ or ‘gamelan composition’. The Javanese word for hammer is ‘gamel’, and the music is said to encourage the growth of plants. ‘Suling’ – the end blown flute. ‘Degung instrumental’ – from the Sudabese region of West Java to the speakers of tourists cafes. ‘Genggong’ – the first Balinese instrument, a mouth harp made from the palm and played by Igusti Ngurah Togog at his homestay in Peliatan, Bali. ‘Cremation Gamelan’ – a portable ensemble plays while the cremation tower is raised from the death pavilion. Before travelling a mile along the Peliatan road to the Temple of the Dead, the tower is spun around on its bearer’s shoulders to confuse the soul, preventing its return home to trouble the living. The overture played as the tower is set alight (with a magnifying glass – matches are thought to be unclean), is recorded on ‘Touch Travel’. Dag combination dance – in Bali, individual dances are sometimes merged into modern adaptations, not only as a result of tourism – the gamelan elders think popularisation is the best way to attract young people to dance, though dividing lines are difficult to draw. ‘Dag’ is a combination of ‘Kecak’ and ‘Kebyar’, performed from the squatting position in a pantomime style very popular with children. Attention is focused on the facial expressions of the dancers which interpret man’s ever-changing moods. ‘King Rama’ – the story of the ‘Kecak’ (monkey) dance is taken from the Hindu Ramayana epic and portrays Rama’a search for his wife, Sita, who has been abducted to the monkey forest. Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu, The Creator, and serves as an ideal for the Hindu man. ‘Ramayana ll’ – the opening sequence of the gamelan acvcompaniment to the 4 part ballet held on the full moon-lit nights of June, July and August at Prambanan temple complex. The largest central temple is dedictade to Shiva, the destroyer. The voices that follow were recorded on a train at Bandung station at 3am, en route to Yogjakarta. Local sellers board trains whatever the hour, and every carriage becomes an indoor market.

Side two:

‘Watermark’ – nightfall by a bridge near the Monkey Forest, Ubud. ‘One Language’ – there are c. 300 different languages and dialects in Indonesia. After independence in 1945, Bahasa Indonesian became the universally accepted language, though its use had already been encouraged by Nationalists as a political tool against the Dutch colonisers, and sanctioned by Japanese invaders who wished to spread propaganda to the villagers. ‘Temple Gamelan’ – musicians play while women bring ornately prepared offerings to the temple shrines on auspicious days of the Hindu calendar. Spirits and demons cannot live without food and drink, so the women fan the essence towards the divine recipient before offerings are placed on the ground to waiting dogs. Smaller offerings made daily, are left at strategic points around the house and alongside the ricefields. ‘Frog Sound’ – the sound comes from the reed mouthpiece of the genggong harp. Played by Togog and his son. ‘Ducks’ – every morning young boys and old men direct the family ducks out of their pens and along narrow paths into ricefields that are wet enough to paddle in. ‘Tenun’ – the Balinese weaving dance depicting women working at this traditional craft. ‘Anjung’ – the name given to the hordes of semi-wild dogs that roam Bali’s villages, barking instinctively at any approaching white man. ‘Garuda’ – Indonesia’s national symbol is the Garuda bird. Vishnu’s chosen vehicle and thus the king of flight associated with creative energy. Garuda is a dominant motif in Indonesian art, the name of the national airline and the seal of the official state coat of arms, beneath which appears the words ‘Bhinneka Tunggal Ika’ – literally ‘many are there but there is only one’.

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TO:85 – Thomas Köner “Novaya Zemlya”

30th May 2012 » Permalink: TO:85 – Thomas Köner “Novaya Zemlya”

CD – jewel case + booklet – 3 tracks – 37:05
Artwork & Photography by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

Track listing:

1. Novaya Zemlya 1
2. Novaya Zemlya 2
3. Novaya Zemlya 3

The artwork, by Jon Wozencroft, includes an essay by Thierry Charollais, “Thomas Köner’s Novaya Zemlya: towards a metaphysical geography”… “Of course we find the unique Koneresque glowing drones that we know from his previous works. But we will also be touched by an unrevealed, barely perceptible sense of melody and harmony that Köner gradually developed since Kaamos (1998) and Nuuk (2004).”

Novaya Zemlya (Russian: Но́вая Земля́; IPA: [ˈnovəjə zʲɪmˈlʲæ], lit. New Land), also known in Dutch as Nova Zembla and in Norwegian as Gåselandet (lit. the Goose Land), is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the north of Russia and the extreme northeast of Europe, the easternmost point of Europe, lying at Cape Flissingsky on the northern island.

About Thomas Köner:

Thomas Köner (b. 1965) is a pioneering multimedia artist whose main interest lies in combining visual and auditory experiences. Over his long, much celebrated career, he has worked between installation works, sound art, minimal soundscapes, and as one half of Porter Ricks. He attended music college in Dortmund and studied electronic music at the CEM-Studio in Arnhem. Until 1994 he worked in the film industry as editor and sound engineer. Thomas has extended his concept of time and sound colour to images, resulting in video installations, photography and net art.

His point of departure was composition of sound in which aspects of a performance and visual language were gradually integrated. At first in the collaboration with film artist Jürgen Reble and the live performance Alchemie (1992). Following this, he started to compose film soundtracks and music to accompany historic silent films for the Louvre Museum and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, who called him a major innovator in the contemporary music scene, as well as noted his collaborative practice which has led to his working with musicians, filmmakers and visual artists on installations and sound performances, and to his creation of six video works produced in two cycles, starting in 2003.

His extensive discography, including his four classic albums (“Drone/Isolationist Ambient”) released on Barooni between 1990 and 1995, Nunatak Gongamur, Teimo, Permafrost and Aubrite, can be found here: www.koener.de/cd.htm

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TO:90 – Hildur Gudnadottir “Leyfdu Ljosinu”

1st May 2012 » Permalink: TO:90 – Hildur Gudnadottir “Leyfdu Ljosinu”

CD – extended digipak – 2 tracks – 39:25
Voice, cello & electronics: Hildur Gudnadottir
Recorded & mixed by Tony Myatt
Mastered by Denis Blackham
Artwork & Photography by Jon Wozencroft

Track listing:

1. Prelude 4:11
2. Leyfdu ljosinu 35:14

Hildur Gudnadottir’s new album ‘Leyfdu ljosinu’ (Icelandic for ‘Allow the light’), was recorded live at the Music Research Centre, University of York, in January 2012 by Tony Myatt, using a SoundField ST450 Ambisonic microphone and two Neumann U87 microphones. (NB – It was not played in a concert environment and there was no audience.)

To be faithful to time and space – elements vital to the movement of sound – this album was recorded entirely live, with no post-tampering of the recordings’ own sense of occasion.

A multichannel version (Touch # TO:90USB) is also available – a 2GB USB stick in hand-made (by the artist) paper cover.You can read more about this here.

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Orval 1 – Touch “Beermat”

30th April 2012 » Permalink: Orval 1 – Touch “Beermat”

Beermat. White on black.
Free with orders.

Tone 42DR3 – Sohrab “You Are Not Alone lll”

10th April 2012 » Permalink: Tone 42DR3 – Sohrab “You Are Not Alone lll”

320 kpbs – 1 track – 44:22

The third and last in a series of reworkings of Sohrab material by artists showing solidarity to his cause for legal status in Germany.

Ash International mix content providers:

Maia Urstad – Himmel über Bergen 5:00 | Zerocrop – Susanna (Zerocrop remix) 10:54 | Sarah Nicolls – Orshab 17: 15 | Achim Mohné – Syntactical audio observation of the apparatus 26:18 | BJNilsen – Marg Bar (DUB) 35:15 | Jim O’Rourke – Somebody 44:22

Tone 45.5 – Daniel Menche “Quanta of Light”

29th March 2012 » Permalink: Tone 45.5 – Daniel Menche “Quanta of Light”

12″ White Label vinyl + 320 kbps MP3 download of the tracks
Cut by Jason @ Transition

Track listing:

Side A: Quanta of Light l 19:24
Side B: Quanta of Light ll 21:35

The fifth in the series of limited edition vinyl in the Tone 45 series. 100 copies only are available in the TouchShop…

Artist’s note: the distortion on the run in groove on side a is intentional…

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RGB01 – fennesz wozencroft “Liquid Music”

11th March 2012 » Permalink: RGB01 – fennesz wozencroft “Liquid Music”

Touch.30 USB flash drive + title card in velvet string bag
Flash drive contents: .mov + text & images (2GB) – 32:30

Track list:

1. Liquid Music

Jon Wozencroft writes:

“Liquid Music was made in 2001, in conjunction with the music Christian Fennesz was developing during that fertile period when the future was still a good idea. The first version – this is it – was premiered during the Touch tour of 2001, the time of Fennesz’s Endless Summer and the steady movement towards Venice.

The footage for Liquid Music originates from Prague, Paxos, Crete, Cephalonia, Messinia, London and one short clip from Monterey Bay. It was filmed on Hi–8 and mini–DV between 1995 and 2001. The main idea was to film everything through the lens, with no post production other than the compilation of many years work into a coherent whole. Fennesz’s music, and its ascendent quality, made that a pleasure. The optical quality is on the cusp between analogue and digital resolution. In many respects it’s an exchange of values as much as working methods.

I feel it’s one of the best works we did in the last 10 years. The Brighton concert, where the audio comes from, was a key moment on the Touch 2001 tour. The PA was Loud. Everything worked. The film, as on all nights, was played in parallel, it is not sync’d in the conventional sense. Every time is was shown it was different. On this night, the second night of the tour, the audience was shocked in a way that shock rarely happens these days.

This very same year, industry experts got together in California to set the MPEG compression codes for DVD mastering. MPEG4 algorithms basically sample 3 frames out of the PAL 25 frames-per-second standard, and interpolate, which is OK if you’re trying to get a drama onto a DVD, but hopeless if the film involves very fast movement and transitions. Liquid Music is in some respects a laptop response to the celluloid flicker film from the 1960s – Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad, Stan Brakage – Peter Kubelka’s Arnulf Rainer. We tried everything Soho facilities houses had to offer but there was no way the film was going to master accurately onto the DVD format.

The movement of water is a difficult thing to film, and to sonify. For years the only way Liquid Music could be shown was either as a live projection or a dedicated screening – these have taken place at Tate Modern, the BFI, Austria, Hungary, Germany… Ten years later, the satisfactory outcome is to see what it looks like on an iPad or an iPhone, and then to imagine it on the big screen.”

Thanks are due to: David Metcalfe, Kamal Ackarie, Steve Connolly, Andrew Lagowski, Philip Marshall and Denis Blackham.

See also: Callum Coats, Living Energies – An Exposition of Concepts Related to the Theories of Viktor Schauberger, Gateway, Dublin 1996.

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TO:83 – Oren Ambarchi “Audience of One”

20th January 2012 » Permalink: TO:83 – Oren Ambarchi “Audience of One”

CD – 4 tracks – 53:51
Artwork & photography: Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Francois Tetaz at Moose, Melbourne

Track listing:

1. Salt – 5:30
2. Knots – 33:23
3. Passage – 6:41
4. Fractured Mirror – 8:20

On “Audience of One”, Oren Ambarchi presents a four-part suite which moves from throbbing minimalism to expansive song-craft to ecstatic free-rock. His previous solo albums for Touch exhibited a clear progression towards augmenting and embellishing his signature bass-heavy guitar tones with fragile acoustic instrumentation. Audience of One, while also existing in clear continuity with these recordings, opens the next chapter.
Remarkable in its confidence and breadth, but also in the sensuous immediacy of its details, this is the first time a single record has come close to encapsulating Ambarchi’s musical personality in its full range and singularity. The techniques and strategies developed in his refined improvisational work with Keith Rowe and his explorations of the outer limits of rock with Sunn O))) and Keiji Haino are both in evidence, alongside the meticulous attention to detail and composition of his solo works. And on the cover of Ace Frehley’s ‘Fractured Mirror’ which closes the record, Ambarchi even points to his roots as a classic rock fanatic, in an epic yet faithful version which extends the shimmering guitar patters of the original into a rich field of phase patters reminiscent of the classic American minimalism of Reich and Riley.

The album features a multitude of collaborators, who, far from appearing in incidental roles, are integral to the pieces on which they perform: on ‘Salt’, Ambarchi paints a hypnotic, chiming backdrop for Paul Duncan’s (Warm Ghost) vocals, and Joe Talia’s virtuoso drumming and driving cymbals are at the core of the epic ‘Knots’, in which Ambarchi, alongside a chamber arrangement by Eyvind Kang, weaves a net of frequencies and textures with the organic push and pull of a 70s psych jam, the bass response of a doom metal ritual and the psycho-acoustic precision of an Alvin Lucier composition.

On his previous records, Ambarchi’s signature guitar tone was the ever-present bedrock over which other elements sounded. At moments on Audience of One, this disappears entirely, as on the beautiful ‘Passage’, which, recalling the 70’s Italian non-academic minimalism of Roberto Cacciapaglia and Giusto Pio, is composed of overlapping tones from Hammond organ and wine glasses, Jessika Kenney’s voice, various acoustic instruments, and the delicate amplified textures of Canadian sound-artist Crys Cole. Rather than being provided by any particular sound, the unified feel of Audience to One stems simply from the unique, patient sensibility Ambarchi has developed over the last twenty years; abstracting musical forms into their barest forms, while somehow always managing to leave their emotive power intact. [Francis Plagne]

(A hi-res version can be downloaded here)

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Tone 45.4 – Jana Winderen “Debris”

1st January 2012 » Permalink: Tone 45.4 – Jana Winderen “Debris”

12″ White Label vinyl + 320 kbps MP3 download of the tracks
Cut by Jason @ Transition

Track listing:

Side A: Scuttling Around in the Shallows 11:25
Side B: Drying Out in the Sun 16:01

The fourth in the series of limited edition vinyl in the Tone 45 series. 100 copies only are available in the TouchShop…

Scuttling Around in the Shallows is from the quadrophonic installation of the same name showed at Galerie B-312, Montreal, Canada 8th January – 5th February 2011.

Drying Out in the Sun is from a four-speaker outdoor public installation at “Starfield Simulation #36”, Scaniaparken in Malmö, Sweden, 4th September – 2nd October 2011.

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TS30 – Jon Wozencroft “Touch.30”

28th December 2011 » Permalink: TS30 – Jon Wozencroft “Touch.30”

“Touch.30” T-Shirt, designed by Jon Wozencroft.

Printed on a black Fruit of the Loom Super Premium T-Shirt.
Position of logo and type: Center Chest, 10cm wide.

Sizes available: S / M / L / XL / XXL

TS11 – Biosphere “Mysterier”

13th December 2011 » Permalink: TS11 – Biosphere “Mysterier”

7″ vinyl only – 2 tracks – 10:04
Cut by Jason @ Transition
Cover by Jon Wozencroft

Track listing:
A: Fluvialmorfologi 4:24
B: Feber 5:50

TS11 – the next in the series of vinyl-only Touch Sevens – is Mysterier by Biosphere, featuring two tracks originally recorded for Hågogaland Teater, Tromsø, Norway in 2006 and remastered in 2011.

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TS13 – Mike Harding “Repaired/Replaced”

13th December 2011 » Permalink: TS13 – Mike Harding “Repaired/Replaced”

7″ vinyl only – 2 tracks – 3:55
Cut by Jason @ Transition
Cover by Jon Wozencroft

Track listing:

A: Broken Window 3:25
B: Broken Rain 0:30

Recorded in West Wittering and Balham using DPA 4060s onto a Nagra Ares P-ll digital recorder.

“Broken Window” first appeared in a slightly different form on the CD compilation “Saiwala – enquete sur l’esthetique musicale du vent” [60 page booklet + CD FEAR DROP 15]

 

T-Phone 5 – Edgar Honetschlager & Yukika Kudo “Negative Space”

7th December 2011 » Permalink: T-Phone 5 – Edgar Honetschlager & Yukika Kudo “Negative Space”

12:04 – .m4v file

Live at Charim Galerie, Vienna, November 19th 2011

“The situation in Japan is dramatic. The day before yesterday a doctors’ congress came to an end in Tokyo. Since Fukushima blew up, the cancer rate has dramatically increased in the contaminated areas – which covers 8% of the Japanese land mass. it is unacceptable that babies and children end up with cancer because the public response is not be heard. Please have a look at the video. if you like it please pass it on. We must shout – the louder the better – because it is of concern to all of us.”

All visuals © Edoko Institute, Vienna | Ribo Ltd., Tokyo. Music: “Aun” (Christian Fennesz) published by Touch Music [MCPS] | “Mit anderen Augen” (Simone Santi Gubini)/La Camera Verde | “Miro Marcus” (Peter Ablinger)

Tone 46 – Fennesz + Sakamoto “Flumina”

29th November 2011 » Permalink: Tone 46 – Fennesz + Sakamoto “Flumina”

DCD – 24 tracks
Photography + cover design: Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Fernando Aponte

Track listing:

CDOne
12 tracks
01: 0318
02: 0319
03: 0320
04: 0322
05: 0324
06: 0325
07: 0327
08: 0328
09: 0330
10: 0401
11: 0402
12: 0404

CDTwo
12 tracks
01: 0405
02: 0407
03: 0409
04: 0411
05: 0415
06: 0417
07: 0419
08: 0423
09: 0424
10: 0425
11: 0428
12: 0429

The 24 pieces of ‘flumina’ are based on piano compositions/improvisations which Ryuichi Sakamoto had recorded whilst touring in Japan. On that tour Ryuichi played a piano piece in a different key at the beginning of every show, always having a ‘fennesz sakomoto’ project in mind. After 24 shows he had 24 tracks in 24 different keys, covering all 24 tonal steps of the western tonal system. Sakamoto sent the tracks over to Christian Fennesz and he worked on them using electronics, guitars and synths. They met in New York then and mixed the album together with Fernando Aponte at KAB Studios.

This is their 3rd collaboration released on Touch, after the live recording of ‘Sala Santa Cecilia’ [Touch # Tone 22, 2005] and ‘Cendre [Touch # Tone 32, 2007].

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TO:42 – Chris Watson “El Tren Fantasma”

4th November 2011 » Permalink: TO:42 – Chris Watson “El Tren Fantasma”

CD – 10 tracks – 65 minutes
Artwork: Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

Track listing:

01: La Anunciante
02: Los Mochis
03: Sierra Tarahumara
04: El Divisadero
05: Crucero La Joya
06: Chihuahua
07: Aguascalientes
08: Mexico D.F.
09: El Tajin; El dia y La noche
10: Veracruz

“Take the ghost train from Los Mochis to Veracruz and travel cross country, coast to coast, Pacific to Atlantic. Ride the rhythm of the rails on board the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FNM) and the music of a journey that has now passed into history.”

El Tren Fantasma, (The Ghost Train), is Chris Watson’s 4th solo album for Touch, and his first since Weather Report in 2003, which was named as one of the albums you should hear before you die in The Guardian. A Radio programme was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 30 Oct, 2010, produced by Sarah Blunt, and described as “a thrilling acoustic journey across the heart of Mexico from Pacific to Atlantic coast using archive recordings to recreate a rail passenger service which no longer exists. It’s now more than a decade since FNM operated its last continuous passenger service across country. Chris Watson spent a month on board the train with some of the last passengers to travel this route. As sound recordist he was part of the film crew working on a programme in the BBC TV series Great Railways Journeys. Now, in this album, the journey of the ‘ghost train’ is recreated, evoking memories of a recent past, capturing the atmosphere, rhythms and sounds of human life, wildlife and the journey itself along the tracks of one of Mexico’s greatest engineering projects.

The radio broadcast received national press coverage in the UK:

The Observer:

It is over a decade since FNM operated its last continuous passenger service across the country but here sound recordist Chris Watson recreates its atmospheric journey with the help of the train recordings he made while working on the BBC television series Great Railway Journeys… through desert and city, but it is the rocking rhythms of the train itself that prove most memorable. [Stephanie Billen]

The Financial Times:

El Tren Fantasma (8pm) is Archive on 4’s recollection of a trans-Mexico rail journey by sound recordist Chris Watson. From desert to rainforest, hummingbirds’ wings to the boom of heat rising from the Copper Canyon, it recalls a beloved passenger train system abandoned by privatisation. **** [Martin Hoyle]

The Daily Telegraph:

Sometimes, radio can awaken the mind and sharpen the senses like no other medium. This “sound portrait” of a now-abandoned railway line that used to run between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of Mexico is a good case in point. Captured by sound recordist Chris Watson more than a decade ago, it jostles with human, animal and mechanical life, filling the room with an atmosphere that is more richly evocative of Central America than any TV travel show I’ve seen. Diesel engines thrum, cicadas chirrup and passengers chatter, sing and argue. [Pete Naughton]

About the author…

Chris Watson is one of the world’s leading recorders of wildlife and natural phenomena, and for Touch he edits his field recordings into a filmic narrative. For example. the unearthly groaning of ice in an Icelandic glacier is a classic example of, in Watson’s words, putting a microphone where you can’t put your ears. He was born in Sheffield where he attended Rowlinson School and Stannington College (now part of Sheffield College). In 1971 he was a founding member of the influential Sheffield-based experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire. His sound recording career began in 1981 when he joined Tyne Tees Television. Since then he has developed a particular and passionate interest in recording the wildlife sounds of animals, habitats and atmospheres from around the world. As a freelance recordist for film, tv & radio, Chris Watson specialises in natural history and documentary location sound together with track assembly and sound design in post production.

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TO:42V – Chris Watson “El Tren Fantasma – The Signal Man’s Mix”

4th November 2011 » Permalink: TO:42V – Chris Watson “El Tren Fantasma – The Signal Man’s Mix”

12″ Vinyl + 320 kbps MP3 files of the two vinyl tracks
Cut by Jason @ Transition
Artwork & Design by Jon Wozencroft

Track listing:

Side A
1. El Divisadero – The Telegraph 7:56

Side B
2. Veracruz – The Tunnel 7:54

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TAPP 01 – Touch app for iPhone and iPad

12th October 2011 » Permalink: TAPP 01 – Touch app for iPhone and iPad

Touch is a new free app for the iPhone and iPad (iOS 4 and 5) that keeps you up-to-date with Touch news; read about and listen to tracks from the Touch catalogue; stream each and every Touch Radio episode; save Jon Wozencroft’s Touch cover art as wallpaper and cook meals from the Touch Recipe Book.

Programmers: Dave Knapik and Tim Medcalf
Art Direction & Design: Rebels in Control
Images: Jon Wozencroft

Download the free Touch app at the iTunes App Store

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