Touch Newsletter #282
Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #281. Three new tapes from The Tapeworm are now on sale, by 3Ddancer’s Alex the Fairy, The Howling (Howlround + Ken Hollings) and Blood Music. Full details on all three below…
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.
Alex the Fairy
“Can I Hear The Sound Of A Falling Branch”
TTW#151
Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “Can I Hear The Sound Of A Falling Branch” on Bandcamp. Illustration – Milla Johannsen
A1: Can I Hear The Sound Of A Falling Branch
A2: Pneumatix
A3: Waking Up In Your Bed
A4: Didjdrums
A5: There’s A Cashier On The Beach They’re Scanning Pebbles Very Quickly
B1: Green White
B2: Kinda Lame DIY Hell
B3: User Sale
Composed, produced and mixed by Alex the Fairy.
Alex the Fairy is an artist based in Berlin producing music with an emphasis on electronic and concrete methods. Alex the Fairy is also part of the 3Ddancer trio, a live act focusing on improvisation and expression using electronics.
Buy “Can I Hear The Sound Of A Falling Branch” on Bandcamp
The Howling
“All Hail Mega Force”
TTW#152
Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “All Hail Mega Force” on Bandcamp. Mastered by Steven McInerney. Illustration – Deborah Wale.
A: All Hail Mega Force
B: Are You Man Enough For Mega Force?
The Howling is a collaborative project started by writer Ken Hollings and sound artist Howlround devoted exclusively to their shared love of text, audiotape and trash aesthetics. An intense collision of spoken word and analogue tape effects, the Howling’s first performance took place at the Iklectik in September 2019 as part of a special programme to celebrate Tapeworm’s 10th anniversary.
Despite the pandemic, they have managed to continue working and conferring together since then, sharing sound files, texts and mixes online, which has resulted in All Hail Mega Force, their first full-length release for Tapeworm. The two extended tracks contained on this audiocassette reflect their shared interest in Fluxus and how informal rules and permutations can be set up to work themselves out through loops and repetitions. A straight line connects Terry Riley’s tape experiments in Paris from the early 60s with their experimental recordings in the Wimpy Bar on Streatham High Road, one of their favourite meeting places. ‘The idea of instant, disposable one-off creations appealed to us a lot at the time,’ The Howling explain, ‘particularly as both pieces were conceived and developed during different phases of Covid lockdown in the UK.’
The title and source material are derived from the kid’s adventure movie MegaForce, starring Barry Bostwik and Michael Beck. Designed to sell a range of Mattel hi-tech action toys, MegaForce tanked at the box office but lives on in the collective consciousness of those who share with The Howling a special love for Trash and Trash Aesthetics.
Buy “All Hail Mega Force” on Bandcamp
Blood Music
“For The Vagus Nerve”
TTW#153
Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “All Hail Mega Force” on Bandcamp. Mastered by Russell Haswell. Illustration – Stefan Fähler.
A: Rest And Digest
B: Feed And Breed
Strings, sines, voice and poem by Simon Pomery. Essential travel music recorded by Simon Pomery downstairs at The Park Studios, December 2020. Mixed to Tascam 38 8-track tape by Tobin Jones at The Park Studios, December 2021.
“In the face of whatever it is that is breaking our names apart” – Sean Bonney
Score for as many players as you like – the recording is for nine.
Play any frequency between 264.94 Hz and 277.18 Hz, held, bent or gliding, between B3 and C#4 – hold this note for as long as your breath and/or heart permits. If you feel you are in the same heart or breath rhythm of another player, cluster with them, or squirm out from under or over them.
Imagine a pink nerve inside your gut going up into your lungs, into your heart, into your reptilian brain, back into your gut. Imagine the colour pink on the inside of this nerve.
Stop when you feel your pink nerve is sufficiently soothed into rest and digest.
Buy “For The Vagus Nerve” on Bandcamp
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
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 buy 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.
Buy “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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