Touch Newsletter #281
Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #281. We have received many wonderful responses to the passing of Philip Jeck, and we have collected some of them on his website. On May 7th in New York City, Hyphen Hub held an evening of testimony to Philip’s work, featuring Ted Riederer, Zachary Paul, Marina Rosenfeld and Phill Niblock’s “Bag”, with David Watson on bagpipes. This event, which was live streamed, will be archived, so look out for a link open social media in due course.
Announcing Touch.40 live at Iklectik, London – 24 and 25 June 2022. In performance: Gavin Bryars – a tribute to Philip Jeck, katt newlon & Franz Kirmann, Anthony Moore, Jay Glass Dubs, Fennesz, Simon Fisher Turner, Fennesz, Clara Kern, Bethan Kellough, Bruce Gilbert, Claire M Singer, CM von Hausswolff. Tickets on sale now.
21 May 2022: Touch.40 live at IMSS, Chicago. In performance: Cleared with Olivia Block, Jonathan Thomas Miller and Touch.
Two new digital releases are up on Bandcamp: “Bis Dat” by The Eternal Chord and “Flash 須臾” by Yenting Hsu. Full details on both below…
Touch.40
Iklectik, London, UK
24-25 June 2022
Friday 24 June: Gavin Bryars – a tribute to Philip Jeck, katt newlon & Franz Kirmann, Anthony Moore, Jay Glass Dubs, Fennesz.
Saturday 25 June: Simon Fisher Turner, Fennesz, Clara Kern, Bethan Kellough, Bruce Gilbert, Claire M Singer, CM von Hausswolff.
To survive for 40 years as an independent music project is the ability to bear witness to the massive changes in cultural production – and to hold a candle for artistic freedom and sonic invention. Touch.40 Iklectik is a home-based lighthouse in the centre of London and we invite you to this celebration of past, present and future. As everything gets more atomised in terms of inner and outer worlds, we intend this as a beacon of our collective commitment to joy, pleasure, life, the challenge of being human in these uncertain times.
Further info, full schedule and tickets: iklectikartlab.com
Touch.40
IMSS, Chicago, USA
21 May 2022
Artists: Cleared with Olivia Block, Jonathan Thomas Miller, Touch.
Produced by The Empty Bottle
Further info and tickets: eventbrite.com
Jon Wozencroft
Iklectik, London, UK
19 May 2022
Further info and tickets: tickettailor.com
“You can’t reinvent the wheel” – So goes the saying to describe a futile attempt to improve upon what has gone before. Nevertheless, the last ten years has seen a relentless abstraction of this – in the UK, a deceitful attempt to return to “past glories” alongside a series of fiscal measures that punish the poor for the crime of being poor.
From its genesis during the times of the horse and cart to today’s driverless cars, the wheel keeps on turning, creating massive fortunes for the fortunate few, but the energy needed to drive it is another matter entirely.
Nikola Tesla proposed the principal of free energy a hundred years ago. It could come from wireless networks for nothing, but that was not allowed to happen. Tesla died in his New York hotel in 1943 in relative poverty and apparently with a mere $100 to his name. This may be exaggerated, but clearly Tesla never achieved great wealth despite his numerous inventions, most of all the feat in having developed the means of electrical current distribution.
Elon Musk, meanwhile, is currently the richest man in the world. Notably, his key company appropriated the name Tesla – whose electric cars provide a platform to numerous means of wealth accumulation. Musk made $171bn during the first year of the Covid pandemic and increased Tesla’s market capitalisation 13-fold since the end of 2019*. Next up – Twitter. Musk has bid $44bn to acquire the company. The sum is roughly equivalent to the total budget President Biden’s administration has dedicated to combatting climate change.
Musk has plans for brain implants that connect to the internet, AI initiatives in addition, and if it all goes haywire, there’s always Life on Mars.
Might he be aware of one of Nikola Tesla’s unresolved inventions, “The Thought Machine”, that intended to be able to project an individual’s retinal images onto a screen? Does he take Twitter to be an improvement on this?
After the wheel, the spiked wheel of fortune. After the car, 20th Century symbol of forward freedom , the automated vehicle – 21st Century symbol of living in reverse, bonded behind a screen of algorithmic passivity.
If we can’t reinvent the wheel, we had better reinvent the superhighway, and drive in a different direction.
*Source: “Elon Musk, Twitter and the internet economy”, Will Dunn, The New Statesman, 29 April 2022
Further info and tickets: tickettailor.com
The Eternal Chord
“Bis Dat”
Spire 7.2
Now available to purchase on Bandcamp.
After “Mutatis mutandis” [Spire 7.1, 2020], “Bis dat”, meaning “give more”, features 7 exclusive new compositions (over 100 minutes!), using source material from “Semper Liber”, the album from The Eternal Chord collective of musicians (or not…)… Immersive and compelling, challenging and seductive, “Bis dat” expands the organ repertoire into new territory, earthly and unearthly, past and present.
Zachary Paul’s violin and electronics plunge into the deep and he reimagines a drowned world, the spire still resplendent as creatures take up their new home; Faith Coloccia (mammifer, SIGE) continues her voice explorations and takes us to the skies, seeking the thermals - beyond the planets, even - while BJNilsen rams home the power of the beast (the organ was above all an instrument of clerical authority), a blistering piece using organ samples from Henry Willis’s Union Chapel organ in London. Alcibiades (Jay Glass Dubs & venoztks) combine Balkanology with organ samples to create a haunting, swirling miasmic oracle, and Yen-Ting Hsu guides us to gentler pastures with ’Summer whisper’. But danger lurks therein - we know what’s coming and there are always storms close by - and Rhodri Davies reminds us you can’t tame the beast, merely accompany and marvel. His unaccompanied harp fought the sounds of building reconstruction at his location - we don’t control these things, merely adapt and struggle on. strom|morts (swiss post-metal veterans) present a rich, massive alpine and wise gloom of sonics. And to finish the journey, or more likely start it, The Eternal Chord’s 'Omnia transeunt' is impossible to pin down and grasp firmly where it is - and where it might go! Plucked from the ether and moulded into a tuneful (at times) trip into another atmosphere. Let’s Go!
Mat Smith writes a healthy study of this release at Further.
1. Zachary Paul - Sunken Cathedral 13:52
2. Faith Coloccia - Voice lV Sarcode 15:47
3. BJNilsen - Pressurised 15:40
4. Alcibiades - Omicronology 10:40
5. Yenting Hsu - Summer whisper 4:38
6. Rhodri Davies - HAARP 31:53
7. strom|morts - Absolute Magnitude Hermeticism 9:37
8. The Eternal Chord - Omnia transeunt 5:51
Photo taken on July 11, 1989 by Daniel Blau at Cave No.15 along Kaaha-Halapepe trail, Kau, Hawaii, elevation 109m above sea level, 325 degree N to Hilina Pali outlook © Daniel Blau, Salzburg.
Dedicated to Didier Séverin of strom|morts, who left us too early.
Buy “Bis Dat” on Bandcamp
Yenting Hsu
“Flash 須臾”
Ash 14.4
Now available to pre-order on Bandcamp.
A studio album will be released this month (download only) by this Taiwanese-based artist. She uses sound as her primary creation medium, working on field recording, audio documentary, electroacoustic music, sound installation and performance. Her work contemplates between narrative, fictional and imaginary aspects of sounds. Yenting Hsu is part of the Touch Mentorship programme.
Pre-order “Flash 須臾” 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 163…
Guerrilla Audio
Long Wave
“Suspending time and immersing the listener in a widescreen of sound.”
Each month on the second Friday, Mike Harding and Bana Haffar present two hours of audio for dublab, Los Angeles.
You can catch up with the dublab archive on dublab.com, and for the entire Long Wave history (11 series so far for dublab and resonancefm) visit mscharding.net
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