Touch Newsletter #300
Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #300. Jon and Mike hold a Sound Seminar at Iklectik on 20 July, a new vinyl release from Jana Winderen and “A Tribute to Philip Jeck” live at Iklectik on September 16…
Philip’s collaboration with Chris Watson, “Oxmardyke” was Album of the Week in The Quietus recently. “Oxmardyke”, and also Bana Haffar’s wonderful new vinyl “intimaa'” (with double locked groove!), are now available in North America through Forced Exposure.
Touch and The Tapeworm are now on Threads – follow us @touchactivities and
@the.tapeworm
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.
Tickets: iklectikartlab.com
Jana Winderen
“The Blue Beyond”
Tone 78
Vinyl LP with Fine Art Print – 2 tracks. Release date: 4 August 2023. Buy “The Blue Beyond” on Bandcamp. Mastered and cut by Jason at Transition. Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft. Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary.
A: The Art of Listening: Under Water
B: Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux
“The Blue Beyond” is produced by Touch and Audemars Piguet following Audemars Piguet Contemporary’s commission of two new compositions by Jana Winderen in 2019.
Edition of 1000 copies, the first 100 copies numbered and signed by the artist.
The record offers edits of two sound compositions for installations, “Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux” (2019) and “The Art of Listening: Under Water” (2019). “Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux” was first presented at Art Basel in Basel from 13 to 16 June 2019. A live performance of the piece was given at HEK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) on 11 June 2019. “The Art of Listening: Under Water” (2019) was first presented in the Rotunda, Collins Park, Miami Beach, in the context of Art Basel in Miami Beach, from 4 to 8 December 2019. “The Art of Listening: Under Water” installation was made in collaboration with Tony Myatt. It travelled to the Lenfest Center for the Arts, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, from 3 to 13 February 2022.
Winderen’s practice focuses on sound and knowledge production. The artist seeks to raise awareness of the environmental issues we face as a society.
Audemars Piguet Contemporary collaborated with Winderen on two new sound installations compositions. The first, “Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux”, was developed during two field trips to Le Brassus in the Vallée de Joux, at the heart of the Swiss Jura, where Audemars Piguet has been based since 1875. On these trips, Winderen captured sounds in the waters of the Lac de Joux and in the Risoud forest.
When Audemars Piguet Contemporary invited the artist to present a second composition for exhibition in Miami Beach, Winderen proposed a site-specific sound environment. For “The Art of Listening: Under Water”, Winderen used sounds recorded in the Atlantic Ocean in the Miami area, as well as sounds from the Barents Sea around the North Pole and the Tropical Oceans to expose the constant underwater presence of human-created sound today.
In both pieces, the artist offers a unique opportunity to listen closely to the underwater inhabitants of a specific region and to reflect on how human activity interacts and interferes with aquatic and also terrestrial life in a seemingly beautiful and visually calm environment.
Jana Winderen often draws the fish, amphibians and plankton she meets. This release also consists of a drawing of two fish that probably would never meet; the pike from the freshwater Lac de Joux in the Jura Mountains and the snapper from the saltwater environment by Miami.
janawinderen.bandcamp.com
A Tribute to Philip Jeck
Iklectik, London
16 September 2023
With a presentation of “Oxmardyke” by Chris Watson, a performance by Claire M Singer and others who have collaborated with Philip through film, dance and music over the decades.
More information to follow…
Tickets: iklectikartlab.com
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 191…
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.
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
That’s the Price of Love
When I first started going seriously to gigs in the early 70s, the price of a ticket was roughly half of what it would cost to buy an LP. Here’s Traffic at The Rainbow in London, supported by John Martyn, who had just released “Solid Air”. Traffic were at their peak following the release of “Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory” – their core line up of Winwood/Wood/Capaldi was backed by the Muscle Shoals house band and they were on fire. I’ll never forget it.
Cut to the present day. Last week my daughter was super keen to get a copy of Taylor Swift’s new version of “Speak Now”, one of her favourites, not cheap at £18.99 but it is a double, and it is major label stuff. More acutely, she’s desperate to go to one of Taylor’s “Era tour” live concerts, recently announced. Going by the previous ratio, a decent ticket for this would start at £10, but not in the slightest. If you’re lucky enough to get connected to the Ticketmaster website (a scandal in itself), a standing ticket in view of the stage is £171.25.
You could say there’s no comparison. Well there is. When David Bowie played Wembley on the 1976 “Station to Station” tour, tickets were £3.
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