Touch Newsletter #271
Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #271. The 11th contribution to the Touch: Displacing subscription service is a 19 minute piece, “The Underlying”, from Bethan Kellough.
On Thursday 16 September 2021, Jon Wozencroft presents “Pause Button”, a sound seminar, at IKLECTIK in London’s Waterloo. Tickets are now available from iklectikartlab.com. Further details below…
Issued for the first time digitally on Bandcamp are two albums featuring Robert Hampson (perhaps best known for his work with Loop); in 1995 he collaborated with Jim O’Rourke as Indicate and released “Whelm”. 15 years later he released his only solo album for Touch to date, “Vectors”, on CD.
Next month sees Byron Westbrook’s first album for Ash International – more information in the next newsletter. October follows with the first vinyl edition of “Cendre” by Fennesz Sakamoto. Pre-orders are now available through our distributor, Kudos.
“Touch: Displacing”
V33:50
Following Touch: Isolation which covered the first lockdown period in the UK, Touch: Displacing is the second subscription project where the focus falls on longer-form compositions, released on a monthly basis over the coming year and featuring artists for whom duration is a key feature of their work. Contributors thus far: Sohrab, Olivia Block, Bana Haffar, Chris Watson, Richard Chartier, Robert Crouch, Geneva Skeen, Carl Stone, John Eckhardt, Philip Jeck…
Bethan Kellough
“The Underlying”
Bethan writes: “Salton Sea, California, August 2020.
The air of the refuge bulges with low drones that consume the quiet of the place while overtones drift unevenly in the breeze, mingling with the rushing of the reeds and the chorus of insects. Birds rustle in the undergrowth, calling out with thin, complex voices that permeate the dense air. It is 108 degrees. The atmosphere is thick with heat and sound. The overtones waver like a sonic mirage and the low frequencies intensify. On approach, the mechanics of the power station stake their claim with a rhythm that ignores the pulse of the travelling bass - a pattern of white noise that slowly melts into a wash of water violently ejected into the still, strangely reflective surface of the Salton Sea. There are rocks stacked on this shoreline, hiding places for the small birds, chambers where the low rumbles multiply.
“The Underlying” features field recordings made in August 2020 at the edge of the Salton Sea, California – the site of a bird refuge and several geothermal power stations. It was composed in July 2021, reflecting on this impression of the soundscape.”
Photography and design by Jon Wozencroft.
Mastered by Denis Blackham.
Subscribe to Touch: Displacing
Jon Wozencroft Sound Seminar: “Pause Button”
IKLECTIK, London, 16 September 2021
On Thursday 16 September 2021, Jon Wozencroft presents “Pause Button”, a sound seminar, at IKLECTIK in London’s Waterloo. Tickets are now available from iklectikartlab.com
The pause button first appeared on reel-to-reel tape recorders in the early 1960s, on Ampex machines. Thanks to financial help from Bing Crosby, Ampex had developed reel-to-reel magnetic tape and tape recorders in the late 1940s, so Bing could play golf and not have to do live radio broadcasts on a Saturday. Reel-to-reel tape technology had been invented by BASF in Germany during WW2, eventually discovered by U.S. Army Signal Corps in a studio at Radio Frankfurt at the end of the war.
Compact cassette recorders were developed by the Dutch company Philips not in the Netherlands but in Hasselt, Belgium, by Lou Ottens and his team in 1963, but the format took a few years to hit the home recording market. Seven-inch singles, jukeboxes and portable radios ruled at the time.
VCRs had developed in parallel but VHS did not become a big thing until the 1970s. One could argue that pause buttons had been there years earlier, in the form of stop frame film cameras like the Bolex (1935) or even the on/off switch of a wireless.
No-one thought to pause a vinyl record until turntables and slip-mats let DJ’s reinvent their functionality. In digital/electronic contexts, the pause button is an essential feature, from soundcloud sites to washing machines. Pause for thought, or a vital tool to offset frequent interruptions?
The button itself – “In musical notation, caesura is the term used for a pause of decent size. The same word is used for the part of a poem when you take a breath.” A caesura is indicated in poetry by the symbol || and in music by the symbol //.”
The root meaning of the word is specific, it comes from the Greek ‘pausis’, to halt, or to stop. Could a pause be an opportunity to take stock, to think twice and maybe change your mind – or simply a delaying tactic, a respite from the endless now?
Further Information and Tickets: iklectikartlab.com
Indicate
“Whelm”
TO:25D
DL - 3 tracks. Buy “Whelm” on Bandcamp.
1. Untitled (10:17)
2. Untitled (22:51)
3. Untitled (15:30)
Indicate are Jim O’Rourke and Robert Hampson. Originally released on CD in 1995. I/e wrote: “Back to ambience, but with a twist: the surrogate musics devised by Main-man Robert Hampson and journeyman instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke, joint at the psyche as Indicate. The subversively titled “Whelm” begins subtly enough but quickly moves into darker, more indefinable regions that exact a pound of mental flesh or two from the unsuspecting few. Through clandestine radio-waves and bent frequencies, O’Rourke’s battery of effects units bend his quitars and devices into awry, unrecognizable shapes, while Hampson knots the resultant drones through eerie, twilight-lit canals of distraught sound. Heady music whose intrigue lies within the very shadows the listener needs to breach.”
Buy “Whelm” on Bandcamp
Robert Hampson
“Vectors”
TO:71D
DL - 3 tracks. Some CDs of this edition are still available. Buy “Vectors” on Bandcamp. Originally released in 2009. Mixed and mastered at GRM Studio 116A, Maison De Radio France.
1. Umbra
2. Ahead – Only The Stars
3. Dans Le Lointain
“Umbra” (2006) – is the second commission for GRM. This 16 channel piece had it's debut performance on the Acousmonium - GRM’s speaker orchestra - at Salle Olivier Messiaen, Maison de Radio France, Paris “The umbra (Latin: shadow) is the darkest part of a shadow. From within the umbra, the source of light is completely concealed by the occulting body. In astronomy, an observer in the umbra is said to be in the shadows experiencing total eclipse.” This phenomenon is a direct influence on the work in the sense of the way that sounds are cast in the shadow of others, slowly becoming more distinct and featured as the piece progresses, materialising and then casting a shadow of their own.
“Ahead – Only The Stars” (2007) – commissioned by Vibrö for a performance at the Planetarium de Poitiers in 7.1 Surround ratio. Inspired and dedicated to the Astronauts of the NASA Mercury Missions space program and possibly the greatest pilot ever, Chuck Yeager. After the introduction of jets blasting across the soundstage, the piece is then interspersed with radio transmissions (Com. bleeps and static, with dialogue removed) that form the framework.
“Dans Le Lointain” (2008) – the third commission for GRM. A 2 channel Stereo piece, its debut performance on the Acousmonium - GRM’s speaker orchestra - at Salle Olivier Messiaen, Maison de Radio France, Paris. Sounds of Shortwave radios, recorded by Hampson in the very early 80s and recently rediscovered on a cassette, are manipulated through very traditional techniques utilised by early tape experimental works of the GRM and collected with more modern forms of digital manipulation. The title (In The Distance) refers to the distance radio signals can travel, but also the distance of time that elapsed since the shortwave recordings were made on a four track recorder and dubbed onto cassette by Hampson around 1981/82.
Buy “Vectors” on Bandcamp
CM von Hausswolff & Chandra Shukla’s Travelogue
“Nepal”
TO:118
CD in DVD case + DL - 4 tracks - 54:51. Buy “Nepal” on Bandcamp. Photography by CMvH. Design by Jon Wozencroft. Mastered by Denis Blackham.
1. PharLoKora 19:00
2. Anadu 10:43
3. Annapurna 10:33
4. Sagarmatha (Chomolungma) 14:35
Travelogue [Nepal] is the first in a series of collected international audio diaries. The premise is quite simple: the two galavant the globe with field-, EVP- and phone recorders and other devices where they record the essence of everything from the tiniest microcosms of nature on up to the polluted, diesel–fuelled roars of postmodern globalization. What surfaced are soundtracks that act as sonic documentaries of their travels.
Buy “Nepal” on Bandcamp
Stefan Goldmann & .es
“At A Moment’s Notice”
WHO#20
CD in an edition of 250 copies plus digital. 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)
“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.
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.
Buy “At A Moment’s Notice” 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 146…
Guerrilla Audio
www.simonfisherturner.com
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