Touch Newsletter #268
Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #268. “At A Moment’s Notice” by Stefan Goldmann and .es is now available to pre-order on CD and digital. Releasing on 6 August 2021, this album compiles three tracks of instantaneously formed music by Goldmann, an artist whose work typically involves carefully sequenced and layered integration rather than real-time spontaneity.
Files from Aaron Turner, Zachary James Watkins, Phil Julian and Paul H Williams have been uploaded to The Digital Archive of Tapeworm, a repository for audio from out-of-print cassettes on The Tapeworm.
Stefan Goldmann & .es
“At A Moment’s Notice”
WHO#20
CD in an edition of 250 copies plus digital. Shipping 6 August 2021. Buy “At A Moment’s Notice” on Bandcamp. Mastered by Phil Julian. Photography by Stephen Wrench, with thanks to Jane Plüer.
1. 29-09-2019
2. Echoes Of An Era
3. 12-07-2012 (featuring .es)
Produced by Stefan Goldmann. Track 1 recorded live at Cafe OTO, London, by Adam Matschulat. Written and mixed by Stefan Goldmann. Track 2 written, recorded and mixed by Stefan Goldmann. Track 3 recorded live at Nomart Gallery, Osaka. Written by Takayuki Hashimoto, Sara Dotes and Stefan Goldmann.
“At A Moment’s Notice” compiles three tracks of instantaneously formed music from an artist whose work typically involves carefully sequenced and layered integration rather than real-time spontaneity.
After two individual sets performed by improv duo .es and electronic composer Stefan Goldmann at Nomart Gallery of Osaka, Japan, the event’s curator invited the three musicians to play together – an announcement made in front of the audience, without prior notice and with seconds to go… Goldmann met this challenge by loading a set of samples from an earlier release on The Tapeworm, “Haven’t I Seen You Before”, and firing them off through a delay unit while shifting time and pitch settings, creating a three-way conversation with Sara Dotes on piano and percussion and Takayuki Hashimoto on alto saxophone, shakuhachi, guitar and harmonica.
“Echoes Of An Era“ is a previously unreleased piece based on guitar improvisation channeled by a long-form looping device, originally recorded during the sessions for “Haven’t I Seen You Before”.
By contrast, the recording from the Tapeworm label’s 10th anniversary at Cafe Oto employs a rich base of prepared layers, whose temporal structure is constructed on the spot and performed without the aid of a premeditated temporal grid.
Buy “At A Moment’s Notice” on Bandcamp
The Digital Archive of Tapeworm
A repository for audio from out-of-print cassettes on The Tapeworm, available from datworm.bandcamp.com
DAT#13 – Aaron Turner – “Interminable Conniption”. Originally released 4 October 2019 by The Tapeworm as TTW#118 in a cassette-only edition of 200 copies. Herein Turner focuses on psychoemotional atmospherics built from the sonic detritus of a full-stack and a few effects pedals. The resultant tracks are minimally-layered spontaneous performances interweaving quivering drones, distended melodies, and saturated dissonance into an immersive architecture of burbling turbulence and uneasy quietude.
DAT#14 – Zachary James Watkins – “Black Spirituals”. Originally released on 23 July 2010 by The Tapeworm as TTW#22 in a cassette-only edition of 250 copies. “Black Spirituals was recorded during fall 2009 in Northern California. These four works grew out of intense dialogue with sound artist Morgan Craft that dealt with our mutual interests in questioning the stakes and pushing our art amidst a landscape of sameness… It’s these spaces where ideas on race, gender, sex, politics etc. inform the imaginations of artists in communities and influence new works. Also around this time, I found a dusty tape recording of a lecture from the late 70s on the topic of Black Spirituals given by scholar and musician Bernice Reagon an original member of the vocal group Sweet Honey on the Rock. This tape has helped me incorporate into my performance, stories and voices of New America. These improvised tapestries are tuned by ear and offered as meditations. What does Black Spirituals mean to you?” - Zachary James Watkins, Santa Cruz, CA, 24 March 2010.
DAT#15 – Phil Julian – “Live Flux”. Originally released on 14 January 2013 by The Tapeworm as TTW#51 in a cassette-only edition of 150 copies. Recorded live in London at Hope and Anchor, 19 April 2012 and ICA, 14 July 2012 – analogue modular synthesiser, computer, radio.
DAT#16 – Paul H Williams – “Aeroforms”. Originally released on 25 November 2014 by The Tapeworm as TTW#76 in a cassette-only edition of 150 copies. Made around 1984/85 using a BBC Microcomputer with a Music 500 outboard synthesiser and Ample music software. This release has been mastered from that original cassette recording…
Explore The Digital Archive of Tapeworm on Bandcamp
Rotary ECT
“Cutting Them All Off”
TTW#143
Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “Cutting Them All Off” on Bandcamp. Mastering and cover art by Christopher Reid Martin.
A1: An OK High for Profit
A2: Aerated Cargo
A3: Reaching Necks Cutting Us All Off
B1: Amnesty Dial
B2: In Eden I Spent My Time in Hard Labour Drafting Shameful Inventories
B3: Catataxis
Documented during peak isolation times in Los Angeles, between December 2020 and January 2021. These pieces were performed as Live AV pieces from 2017-2019, at Coaxial Arts, Zebulon and Desert Daze 2019, but not documented in a release until later. Signal processing and sequencing frameworks built in Max 8 with signals generated from Prophet ’08, a broken AW16G, 0-coast, Max, and a MC-909. With the context of the electromagnetic medium, the absence of live performance and moving visuals and the new "spirit" of the pestilent times, “Cutting Them All Off” should barely be represented as reworks of the originally performed pieces. What was once pulsing and blasting out of PA speakers live is now referenced as a distant past document. These pieces (for better or for worse) have been removed and cut-off from their contextual source and can only be presented in their displaced/liberated state. Like a fish out of water gasping for air, or the only drunk survivor of a car crash that was his fault.
Christopher Reid Martin currently works for Cycling ’74, is a curatorial / programmer at Coaxial Arts Foundation and ⅓ of curators (alongside J.Prey and J. Rivera) behind the ephemeral stream Cathode TV/Cathode Cinema. Christopher continues to show gallery works, both virtual and physical, digital and video works and performs in other numerous events and projects such as Bailouts, CGRSM (with Gabie Strong), Shelter Death, Gate (with Michael Morley) and Via Injection. He has performed and collaborated with artists Joseph Hammer, Bryce Loy (RIP), Tetuzi Akiyama, Christopher Thompson, James Roemer, Andrew Scott, Gabie Strong, Michael Morley, Lev Abramov and many others.
Buy “Cutting Them All Off” on Bandcamp
Cut A Lonely Figure
“Requiem for Haunted Starship”
TTW#144
Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “Requiem for Haunted Starship” on Bandcamp. Artwork: Evan Lindorff-Ellery.
A: First Orbit
B: Second Orbit
Cut A Lonely Figure is the (mostly) solo project of Blue Tapes founder David McNamee. Previous releases include Sugimoto Seascapes (Fractal Meat Cuts), Rothko Horizons (Bloxham Tapes), and In Sea, In Circles, In Concrete (Pan y Rosas Discos).
For this release, Cut A Lonely Figure was: Sarah Angliss (theremin), Maria Marzaioli (violin), Rosie Reynolds (clarinet), Andrew Smith (saxophone), and David McNamee (everything else). Recorded at home during Lockdown I, 2020. Mixed and mastered by Angel Marcloid at Angel Hair Audio.
Buy “Requiem for Haunted Starship” on Bandcamp
Push For Night
“Push For Night”
TTW#145
Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “Push For Night” on Bandcamp. It's a HARD master. Illustration: SavX.
A1: No Longer Human
A2: Push For Night
A3: Sleeping On The Skin Of A Nightmare
B1: Ruined Portal
B2: Upwelling
B3: In A Wolf Suit
B4: Psychotic Foreclosure
Push For Night is the New York City based duo of Oliver Chapoy and James Elliott. Trafficking in dark, liminal electronics, the duo's sound is an ever shifting morass of psychoacoustic textures and spectral utterances. Evoking eerie, unnatural, and hidden spaces, this is music that exists in the threshold – locked in a constant push and pull of thwarted expectations and sublime release, hovering in a trance state of the always in-between. These seven tracks reference dark ambient, post-industrial, electroacoustic, 90s IDM, even fourth world explorations, but the music never truly slides into any definable style. The uncertain and illusory rule this sonic soil. Recorded by PFN in NYC and CDMX, 2017-2020 using various synthesizers, drum machines, heavily processed field recordings and guitars.
Buy “Push For Night” on Bandcamp
Tom Schneider • Stefan Goldmann
“Strictures, Livres I & II”
TTW#146
Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “Strictures, Livres I & II” on Bandcamp.
Livre I, by Tom Schneider: A1: Improvisation I (For Two Pianos), A2: 0.433, A3: Pitch I, A4: Prepared Piano, A5: Pitch II, A6: Improvisation II, A7: Boulero, A8: Jazz, A9: Quarter Tone Translation, A10: Structures In My Room, A11: Pitch III, A12: Improvisation III, A13: Drums, A14: Pitch IV, A15: Three Midi Harps, Three Midi Pianos And Three Midi Drums, A16: Improvisation IV, A17: Loops.
Livre II, by Stefan Goldmann: B1: Loop To MIDI (Phased), B2: Extraction Level A: Tom Schneider (L), MIDI Piano (R), B3: Extraction Level B: MIDI Piano (R), Fm Piano (L), B4: Extraction Level C: MIDI Fm Quartet, B5: Str_ct_r_s, For Multilevel MIDI Extraction And Eraser, B6: Boulero, For MIDI Extraction, Fm, Noise And Vocoder, B7: Improvisation I, For MIDI Extraction And Presets, B8: 0.433 To 4.33, For Time Stretching, MIDI Extraction And Presets.
The works on this cassette are based on a historic recording of “Structures I” by Pierre Boulez. Tom Schneider cut it into shreds – samples which he then mapped onto a MIDI keyboard, ready to be played freely while pulverising any overarching structure.
In addition to improvisational reshuffles, acts of sock-puppetry join the resulting collection: The thinking behind other seminal works for piano such as John Cage’s “4’33” and Helmut Lachenmann’s “Guero” are linked to the audio or parametric content of “Structures”. “0.433” takes the original recording’s pauses and sequences them into a bumpy stretch of silence. For “Boulero”, temporal and tonal properties of one of the underlying works drive the shape of the other.
Further pathways open up through MIDI data-extraction, generating new layers, organised into musical units which then can be played on a keyboard: Authentically serialist extensions of the limited parameters available to the pen and paper of the original composer.
Stefan Goldmann’s remixes of Schneider’s work are based on different types of MIDI data-extraction, with the results being routed to FM synthesiser presets. Further historic concepts and techniques are filled with the shreds of “Structures” – one of Schneider’s selective loops is ‘phased’ with two different durations rubbing against each other. The focus however is on spontaneous order and emergent phenomena. Different MIDI-fication methods escalate from solo piano to robotic fusion trio in three steps. “Str_ct_r_s” is driven by multiple layers of the same material, slightly trimmed back into half-coherent shape by broad-brush deletion of MIDI notes. Most extremely, Schneider’s “0.433” is restored to Cage’s original duration by plain time stretching. The detected MIDI information is thus entirely accidental, with automation conjuring content out of the void.
Buy “Strictures, Livres I & II” 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 Sohrab, Olivia Block, Bana Haffar, Chris Watson, Richard Chartier, Robert Crouch, Geneva Skeen 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
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 144…
Guerrilla Audio
www.simonfisherturner.com
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