Touch Newsletter #299
Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #299. “Oxmardyke” is Album of the Week in The Quietus and we have some choice live events coming this summer.
First up is “Sonic Habitats” with Bethan Kellough live in London, using the unique IKO sound system in the Crossrail Place Roof Garden at Canary Wharf on 21 June. It’s the longest day and it’s free – tickets and info: space.org.uk
On Friday 23 June, Simon Fisher Turner, Alexander Tucker and Stonecirclesampler play at London’s The Horse Hospital at an evening presented by The Tapeworm and Through the Looking Glasses titled “Midsummer Memorex”. Details below.
Some dates for your diary: Jon Wozencroft’s next Sound Seminar “Touchpoints”, together with Mike Harding, is at Iklectik on 20 July and tickets are now on sale. “A Tribute to Philip Jeck”, also at Iklectik, is on 16 September with Chris Watson, Claire M Singer and others… Soon after, The Howling and drøne also perform there with the English Touring Opera’s soprano, Julia Moriko.
So it’s all go!
Soundseminar
Iklectik, London
20 July 2023
Touchpoints
Sound Seminar by Jon Wozencroft, 3 May 2023, Iklectik Art Lab
A Touch special with Mike Harding
Jon Wozencroft developed his sound seminars in the late 1980s as a means of highlighting the potential of sound-related research and practice in art and design education. Primarily, the seminars promote the art of listening and seek to rebalance the dominant bias of visual culture which favours the eye over the ear. Listening both enhances one’s perceptual awareness and creates an oasis away from 24/7 non-stop media. The seminars underline the power of sound and music as catalysts for change in a context in which recorded music has been progressively devalued in the digital environment. Drawing upon forty years of working in music publishing and performance, Wozencroft moves the audience between and beyond genre classifications and makes connections where past present and future come alive in the moment.
Further info to follow… Tickets: iklectikartlab.com
Midsummer Memorex
The Horse Hospital, London
23 June 2023
A Midsummer Memorex. An evening of misremembering… In conversation and in performance: Simon Fisher Turner. Their live debut: Stonecirclesampler. In sound and vision: Alexander Tucker. On the big screen: Stanley Schtinter’s “Journey to Avebury”. All hosted by Travis Elborough. Illustration by SavX, of course. Further info and tickets: thehorsehospital.com
Simon Fisher Turner is renowned for his film soundtrack work which began in collaboration with Derek Jarman, for whom he scored many feature films, from “Caravaggio” (1986) through to Jarman’s final work “Blue” (1993). “Caravaggio” began a long relationship with the BFI, with Fisher Turner composing the score for restorations of three silent films, “Un chant d’amour” (dir. Jean Genet, 1950), “The Great White Silence” (dir. Herbert Ponting, 1924), and “The Epic of Everest” (dir. Captain John Noel, 1924), for which he won a prestigious Ivor Novello Award. Simon will also be in conversation with Travis Elborough.
Alexander Tucker is a multidisciplinary artist working across music, assemblage, painting, comics, collage, sculpture, film and live performance. Formally trained as a painter at the Slade School of Fine Art, Tucker went onto produce a series of critically acclaimed solo albums for renowned Chicago based record label Thrill Jockey and All Tomorrow’s Parties before recording as MICROCORPS for Alter Records. 2023 saw the release of “Fifth Continent”, a posthumous collaboration with the late Keith Collins who was Derek Jarman’s partner and collaborator for the last seven years of his life. Recorded in Jarman’s Prospect Cottage on Dungeness, Kent and using Collins recorded archive of spoken word pieces and environmental recordings. Accompanying the LP is the publication “Fifth Quarter: Derek Jarman, Keith Collins and Dungeness”, an anthology of new writing, artworks and photography edited by Tucker.
Stonecirclesampler is the solo project of London based electronic musician Luke J Murray, fusing a sound of post ice age ambient electronics that conjure images of sub-zero noir wastelands full of rain soaked stone circles and megalithic despair. Recent projects include the albums “The Drift” (Industrial Coast) and “Deep Blue Aquatic Creatures” (The Tapeworm). Luke is also one third of the drone trio NONEXISTENT with Alexander Tucker and previous Memorex performer Opal X. The show at The Horse Hospital will be the first ever live performance of the Stonecirclesampler project.
Stanley Schtinter’s 2021 film “Journey to Avebury” is a shot-for-shot iPhone recreation of Derek Jarman’s 1971 incidental 8mm film, “A Journey to Avebury”, made with James Norton. In 1971, Jarman took an 8mm camera to the ancient landscape of Avebury, filming henges and standing stones as he walked. In 2021, fifty years after Jarman’s trip and during a global pandemic, Schtinter attempted to replicate the journey, re-shooting the film as closely as possible with an iPhone.
Further info and tickets: thehorsehospital.com
“Sonic Habitats” with Bethan Kellough
Crossrail Place Roof Garden, London
21 June 2023
An evening with Touch, listening to the IKO loudspeaker amongst exotic plants in the Roof Garden’s amphitheatre. Join sound artist Bethan Kellough as we follow motions and contours of winds, waves and other atmospheric and geological processes, responding to their vibrancy, the spaces they reveal, and the moments we can spend immersed in timescales that expand beyond our lived experience.
Sound artist Bethan Kellough weaves together musical and environmental sound-worlds to create immersive installations, performances and compositions. Her album “Aven” (Touch, 2016) has been described as “a film you watch with your ears” (Tiny Mix Tapes), “earthy and fantastical” (Norman Records) and “sometimes magical and sometimes terrifying” (Rolling Stone).
Info and tickets (free): space.org.uk
Philip Jeck & Chris Watson
“Oxmardyke”
Tone 83
CD / Digital – 9 tracks. Buy “Oxmardyke” on Bandcamp. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering. Photography by Chris Watson. Cover design by Jon Wozencroft. With thanks to Mary Prestidge.
1: Oxmardyke
2: Burn
3: Beetroot Train
4: Coop
5: Drum
6: AH
7: Bridge
8: Salt End
9: Spurn
The Quietus:
“Jeck’s penchant for vivid sound bolsters Watson’s keen eye for the most affecting sounds of nature, unearthing the emotions hidden inside of them.
…playing with the push and pull between past and present and electronics and nature, but much of the album’s sounds are razor-sharp, made of pointed strokes that carve out the edges of each image they create.
It evokes both fear and appreciation, like how beauty and destruction go hand-in-hand when outside.
…perhaps the most moving moments are those in which the music leaves space for quiet reflection.”
Boomkat:
“…collected from Yorkshire’s Oxmardyke rail crossing, bringing out the region’s ancient rhythms and blurring them into the contemporary landscape.
…the music is a fitting coda to Jeck’s estimable canon, swaying between realism and abstraction as dazzlingly vivid field recordings transform into glassy drones and chugging engines become thudding, ancient rhythms.
…this is gonna hit a sweet spot. But there are few other artists able to capture such a peculiar (and particularly British) mood. It's like hearing an audio treatment of M. R. James's most unsettling short stories – tales that leave you in a cold sweat.”
philipjeck.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 189…
Guerrilla Audio
Long Wave
“Suspending time and immersing the listener in a widescreen of sound.”
Long Wave has now moved to the second Tuesday of the month from 8am-10pm PST. The next show is on Tuesday 9th May 2023.
You can catch up with the dublab archive on dublab.com, and for the entire Long Wave history (12 series so far for dublab and resonancefm) visit mscharding.net
Touchpoint
Days of Tumblr
Given the heated coverage afforded to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the now generally-accepted damage wrought by social media platforms, I have to admit that I do miss the photographic jamboree bag that was once Tumblr.
Its demise is a cautionary tale in itself – briefly outlined in this article – businessinsider.com. This is a longer read – mashable.com
So much for the internet as a free space of exchange. I used to screen grab the best ones, especially those which had a certain cartoon-like quality, something approaching a post-digital take on the drawings and critiques you’d come across in Private Eye.
A big shout-out to Tony Husband while we’re at it… tonyhusband.co.uk
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