Touch Newsletter #306
Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #306.
Jon Wozencroft’s Soundseminar returns to Iklectik on Wednesday 29 November. This edition, titled “The Answer is Gold”, will feature a live performance from Bruce Gilbert. Further details and ticket links below.
A week later, Touch presents a special concert in support of Iklectik whose future is on the edge of disappearance. The above photo shows that the centre of London is hardly short of office space, much of it unoccupied as a result of the ‘work from home’ syndrome and the economic downturn. Social housing cannot consist of a tent and a sleeping bag, should you be unable to pay the prohibitive rents of the private sector. Cultural activity struggles to survive without the safety blanket of corporate support, meaning flashing adverts, neon lights and LED-lit franchises. Enough!
Iklectik has been active for less than a decade. In that short time it has established itself as a key resource for all aspects of the arts and music. To survive in the centre of the city has been down to the consistent dedication of its directors, Eduard and Isa, and the support system they have established to make it this far.
We’ve been indebted to Iklectik’s commitment and vision since Philip Jeck first played there in 2017. The venue became central to our live activities.
“To Have and to Hold” is our heartfelt act of resistance to the idea that this gentle haven might vanish in a fit of redevelopment. The redevelopment of what? Do we need more of this high rise vertigo?
To Have and To Hold
Iklectik, London
6 December 2023
Touch presents “To Have and To Hold” for the benefit of Iklectik.
Wednesday 6 December 2023. Start: 8:00pm.
The Kiosk opens one hour before start.
In light of the challenges ahead and the potential eviction of Iklectik, Touch has put together a special fundraising event dedicated to supporting their space and team.
All proceeds from ticket sales will be wholeheartedly directed towards maintaining Iklectik operative, while they actively seek a solution.
Programme:
Mark Van Hoen
Jennifer Lucy Allan
Simon Fisher Turner
Howlround
Philip Marshall (DJ)
Mark Van Hoen has been producing electronic music since 1981, with releases on labels such as R&S/Apollo, Touch and Editions Mego. Mark Van Hoen was born in the UK and currently lives in Los Angeles USA.
Jennifer Lucy Allan is a British writer, researcher and radio presenter. Allan has written for The Guardian The Quietus, and The Wire, sings with Laura Cannell, teaches workshops on music writing, hosts talks, curates events and is also a DJ.
With a career as varied and diverse as his current projects, 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, through to Jarman’s final work Blue.
Robin the Fog is a “One-Man Radiophonic Workshop” and founder of haunted tape splicers Howlround. He creates bespoke sound design and live performance and also runs the spectacular Iklectik annual extravaganza FOGFEST.
Philip Marshall is a graphic designer, producer, publisher, promoeter, curator, broadcaster and live artist, manipulating audio from cassettes with sound effects.
Tickets: dice.fm
Soundseminar
Iklectik, London
29 November 2023
The Answer is Gold
Sound Seminar by Jon Wozencroft, 29 November 2023, Iklectik Art Lab
Live performance: Bruce Gilbert
“If speaking is silver, then listening is gold”. Turkish proverb.
In a financial context, gold is synonymous with reliability and security. Culturally, gold is the standard of fame and success. The latter is not the same as the former. Number 1 records are not iconic as they once were, and PR/TV/streaming and social media promotion is rarely matched by physical sales and attention to the music.
In the UK, Gold is one of the nation’s biggest exports; a contradictory situation considering Britain has no gold-mining industry and scant gold reserves remain – (the main holdings in South Africa were sacrificed in 1940 at the front of World War 2 in order to pay for much-needed weaponry and the Lend Lease Act with the USA [1]). Britain prevailed nonetheless. The 2008 banking crash depleted matters further. More recently, Brexit brazenly traded 1940-style rhetoric and was said to be key to maintaining Britain as a financial centre. Current analysis suggests this is not going to plan.
Gold isn’t merely about manufacturing nor having and holding, it’s about shadow trading and occluded communication between those who keep no loose change in their pockets, and the ones who move the argent. Electronic. Oblique. Offshore. Gold prices and currency transactions move faster than the blink of an eye.
Just as well, given that political Net Zero climate ambitions and international ‘commitments’ are achieving next to nothing. To be mined, gold needs cyanide, lead and mercury. For a standard gold bar (400 troy ounces), 5000 tonnes of earth need to be extracted and to create a wedding ring, between 4 and 20 tonnes of rock need to be processed. The ore is left by the roadside, simply collateral pollution [2]. Gold is essential to the jewellery business, but more significantly to telephony and electronics. No gold, no phones.
Gold is still glamour. How many cultural and musical moments celebrate the glory of gold, from antiquity to Spandau Ballet? Glamour, ‘gramerye’ in middle English, means an excellence in grammar and a talent for communication.
This is perhaps a way of understanding gold in its context of alchemy – the process of turning base metals into gold by using the ‘philosopher’s stone’: transforming blackness into shining metal and its lustrous energy. In mediaeval times, artists who would not call themselves artists and adepts who were in defiance of the church, set out a template and an intention which we can now view as more of a metaphor and beacon of hope, yet we know little of the details of their process, their ingredients and their instruments [3]. We can only imagine.
1. 1940, Clive Ponting, Hamish Hamilton 1990
2. Material World, Ed Conway, WH Allen 2023
3. The Golden Game, Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, Thames and Hudson 1988
Bruce Gilbert is best known as a founding member of Wire. Since Wire, he has made solo interventions in spoken word; as co-creator of the Dome project; production and instrumentation for AC Marias; to soundtracks for Michael Clark. His collaborations one couldn’t begin to list. He has released solo material on Mute, Editions Mego and Touch amongst many others.
Tickets: dice.fm
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 200…
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
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