Touch Newsletter #259

Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #259. The first four tapes of 2021 from The Tapeworm are now on sale, shipping 5 March.

Nigel Wrench’s “ZA87” is a raw audio document of one extraordinary day under apartheid, Soweto, 27 July 1987.

“Of The Shapes Of Hearts And Humans” captures a meeting between Patrick Shiroishi and Zachary Paul a few days before Zachary left Los Angeles and embarked across the country. The sounds of Garfield Park echoed while the San Gabriel mountains burned, and Patrick and Zachary intoned a prayer for our shared futures.

Howlround’s “Worm Food Delivery” features a recording of a wine glass backed with a recording created entirely from closed input sounds of the tape machines themselves. One take, no edits, no overdubs, no artificial FX.

The Sons of God contribute “Electric Fauna” – Leif Elggren and Kent Tankred recorded on 3 September 1999 at Fylkingen, Stockholm.

Nigel Wrench
“ZA87”
TTW#138

Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “ZA87” on Bandcamp. Artwork: Melissa Wrench.

A: Seen - “This is the devil’s government"
B: Unseen - “You want him to disappear”

The dusty streets of apartheid-era Soweto, 27 July 1987. The politically charged funeral of a young activist who fled South Africa to became a commander in the military wing of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. Police await in armoured cars. The funeral is restricted by specific government decree.

The man being buried is Peter Motau, assassinated in neighbouring Swaziland on the orders of South Africa’s most notorious government-sanctioned killer, Eugene de Kock, orders carried out by his secret police unit in a bloody ambush.

For De Kock and the apartheid government, Peter Motau was a terrorist. For the singing, chanting mourners at his funeral, he was a freedom fighter, a hero from the streets of Soweto itself.

ZA87 is a raw audio document of one extraordinary day under apartheid. A father mourns, himself breaking the regulations declaring any political statements at the funeral illegal. Young activists, the “Comrades”, sing in praise of the banned ANC’s military wing, sirens blare, helicopters hover overhead, a police officer orders all television and photojournalists to leave. Nigel Wrench’s microphone remains. Also there is Winnie Mandela, on behalf of the ANC’s exiled leadership. Banned from speaking at the funeral, she speaks instead into Wrench’s microphone and stages a remarkable intervention as the police seek to detain activists.

The authorities sought to keep the events of that day away from the eyes and ears of anyone who wasn’t there. ZA87 breaks that silence.

Nigel Wrench is an award-winning journalist whose career began in South Africa under apartheid. He is the winner of a Sony Award for “Out This Week”, BBC Radio’s first national lesbian and gay news programme, and a New York Radio Award for BBC Radio 4’s “Aids and Me”, chronicling his experience of living with HIV. “Few journalists have quite so intimately captured the essence of their era’s great moral panics as Nigel Wrench” (The Quietus).

ZA87 is the follow-up to Wrench’s acclaimed first cassette on The Tapeworm, ZA86, “a remarkable documentation of South Africa under apartheid in 1986” (Boomkat), “chilling and at times stunningly beautiful” (The Quietus), “stylistically not dissimilar to Adam Curtis’s 2015 documentary ‘Bitter Lake’, its hypnagogic float through the rushes feels curiously vivid, free of the dating or distancing effect further media packaging might bring” (The Wire).

Buy “ZA87” on Bandcamp
Read the full story at za87.org

Patrick Shiroishi and Zachary Paul
“Of The Shapes Of Hearts And Humans”
TTW#140

Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “Of The Shapes Of Hearts And Humans” on Bandcamp. Mastered by Sean McCann. Illustration: Eustace.

A: At The Moment Of Being Heard
B1: Ghosts
B2: Journey From The Fall

Patrick Shiroishi is a Japanese-American multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Los Angeles who is perhaps best known for his extensive and incredibly intense work with the saxophone. Over the last decade, he has established himself as one of the premier improvising musicians in Los Angeles, playing solo and in numerous collaborative projects including Upsilon Acrox, Corima, Oort Smog as well as improvising ensembles Danketsu 10 and Borasisi. Shiroishi may well be considered a foundational player in the city’s vast musical expanse.

Zachary Paul is a violinist and composer currently located in New York. His work explores the boundaries of perception, the invocation of trance states, and the juxtaposition of stasis and movement. Zachary has released solo work on Touch and Preserved Sound, and has performed with the Sonic Open Orchestra and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn. He is also a regular member of the band Nadoyel and a frequent improviser in a variety of musical idioms.

These recordings capture a meeting between Patrick and Zachary, a few days before Zachary left Los Angeles and embarked across the country. The sounds of Garfield Park echoed while the San Gabriel mountains burned, and Patrick and Zachary intoned a prayer for our shared futures.

Buy “Of The Shapes Of Hearts And Humans” on Bandcamp

Howlround
“Worm Food Delivery”
TTW#141

Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “Worm Food Delivery” on Bandcamp. Mastered by Steven McInerney. Illustration: Ken Hollings.

A: Boiling Dark
B: Black Frost (Screaming Skull)

Both tracks produced by Robin The Fog at The Sticky Shed, Penge during lockdown 2020. Side A features a recording of a wine glass. Side B is created entirely from closed input sounds of the tape machines themselves. One take, no edits, no overdubs, no artificial FX.

Robin The Fog is a sound designer, radio producer, audio archivist, educator and occasional DJ based in London. His work falls under the broad term “radiophonics” and includes composition, sound installation, field recording and documentary. Best known as founder and chief strategist of “tape loop quintet“ Howlround, he also produces work alongside DJ Food and Chris Weaver as The New Obsolescents and with Ken Hollings as The Howling.

Originally described as a “second wave hauntologist”, his current obsession is attempting to use closed-input feedback loops to create primitive techno, which is quite a long way from where he started. His biggest fear is being swallowed by a python, but living in South London he appreciates the contingency is a remote one.

Buy “Worm Food Delivery” on Bandcamp

The Sons of God
“Electric Fauna”
TTW#142

Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “Electric Fauna” on Bandcamp.

Leif Elggren and Kent Tankred, 3 September 1999, Fylkingen, Stockholm – a small chamber play where The Sons put the small animals on pasture and let them live their own lives, but under strict supervision and with a fixed eye so that no accidents may happen, so that no one is injured, so that no one is ill-informed, or how it might be if not everything is organized and supervised in a well-structured society. You can't just let things be without direction, then there would be nothing at all (or death !!!). No, The Sons give a taste of a well-balanced diet in this presentation, which is expected to take four hours, which will be beautiful and moist and will be able to give a much-needed sense of well-being in these difficult times. Maybe we need another clarification: The animals, here at the service of The Sons, give away their little sounds, The Sons, however, direct them with firm hands (and sometimes a little with force) to follow their wishes. The Sons simply get the cute little fellows to produce sound and together form a musical structure that is not of this world. We'll see how it goes.

Buy “Electric Fauna” on Bandcamp

“Touch: Displacing”
V33:50

Touch: Displacing is a new subscription project where the focus falls on longer-form compositions, to be released on a monthly basis over the coming year and featuring artists for whom duration is a key feature of their work. It follows on from Touch: Isolation which covered the first lockdown period in the UK.

Twelve new and exclusive tracks recorded by Touch or Touch-affiliated artists for one year’s subscription, with contributions from Oren Ambarchi, Olivia Block, Richard Chartier, Ipek Gorgun, Bana Haffar, Philip Jeck, Sohrab, Chris Watson and others – all mastered by Denis Blackham, to whom once again grateful thanks are due. Receipts will, as with Touch: Isolation [the collection is still available], be shared amongst the artists. A time to support independent music while it still exists!

Each of the releases will be mirrored by a cover/counterpoint by Jon Wozencroft – not fixed to one location, as they were with Touch: Isolation.

The subscription costs £33 for twelve tracks – please support the artists by investing in the Touch: Displacing project, and expect surprises – good ones for a change.

Subscribe at touchdisplacing.bandcamp.com

The Digital Archive of Tapeworm

A repository for audio from out-of-print cassettes on The Tapeworm, available from datworm.bandcamp.com

DAT#01 – Philip Jeck – “Spool”. Originally released on 1 August 2009 by The Tapeworm as TTW#01 in a cassette-only edition of 250 copies. A subsequent edition of 100 copies, to celebrate our first label night at Cafe OTO, was released on 19 September 2009.

DAT#02 – Oren Ambarchi – “Amulet”. Originally released on 6 January 2014 by The Tapeworm as TTW#65 in a cassette-only edition of 150 copies. Overwhelming public demand necessitated a second edition of 100 copies, which were presented in a clear shell and released on 20 January 2014.

DAT#03 – UnicaZürn – “Omegapavillion”. Originally released on 22 April 2016 by The Tapeworm as TTW#84 in a cassette-only edition of 150 copies. An additional 50 artists copies, with a black shell, were manufactured.

DAT#04 – Jim Haynes – “Shortwave Radio Recordings On MiniDisc (2001-2012)”. Originally released on 11 December 2020 by The Tapeworm as TTW#137 in a cassette-only edition of 100 copies.

Explore The Digital Archive of Tapeworm on Bandcamp

Guerrilla Audio

Guerrilla Audio is a series of audio raids by Simon Fisher Turner.

guer·ril·la
ɡəˈrilə/
noun
noun: guerilla
a member of a small independent group taking part in irregular fighting, typically against larger regular forces.

Each audio edit will be posted for 14 days and then removed from the site, although the information about each guerrilla activity will be archived, but without the audio. There will be two postings per month with the first (also featuring Klara Lewis & Rainier Lericolais) on 1st August 2015, so please check in regularly to listen to the latest offering. We are well into the fifth year and have just posted episode 135…

Guerrilla Audio
www.simonfisherturner.com