Touch Newsletter #309
Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #309. Last week we paid farewell to Iklectik, the venue in London which has supported our experimental arts community for many years. Eduard and Isa have no intention of stopping, in fact, their vision extends beyond a venue, expanding their activities into new realms. You can show your support by contributing to their “Beyond a Venue” Crowdfunder here. You can become a patron for £500, as Touch has done; they ask anyone to donate whatever you can afford. At the closing party on Saturday 20th January 2024, Jon and Mike talked about their experiences at Iklectik, and read out endorsements from their colleagues who had played there. You can see it here.
On 7 March, after nearly five years of nights at Iklectik Art Lab, Jon Wozencroft’s Soundseminar moves to a new venue, Theme Studio in Camden Town. Further information on this seminar, “As Yet Untitled”, can be read below.
“As Yet Untitled” is also a homage to Phill Niblock, whose track titles were a law unto themselves. You can read tributes to Phill in this month’s edition of The Wire.
Ian Wellman’s album “The Night the Stars Fell” is released on 2 February 2024 (Bandcamp Day, meaning the artist and label receive a higher share of the funds.) Further details below. For those of you in Los Angeles, there is a launch event for the album at 2220 Arts + Archives, with Yann Novak (and G. Brenner visuals), Gabie Strong, Laura Shumate also appearing.
Also on Friday, Patrick Shiroishi is featured on Late Junction, BBC Radio 3 – Jennifer Lucy Allan shares the results of our latest remote collaboration session between saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi and composer Piotr Kurek.
Soundseminar
Theme, London
7 March 2024
As Yet Untitled
Sound Seminar by Jon Wozencroft, 7 March 2024
Theme, Arlington House, 220 Arlington Road, London NW1 7HE
JW writes: Usually, I don’t decide on the title of a seminar until as near as possible before the event, having gathered a long list of the recordings I’d like to play. And in this instance, after nearly 5 years of doing the nights at Iklectik Art Lab, the invitation to present one at a new venue, Theme Studios in Camden Town, is of course a special challenge and a leap into the unknown.
Experimental artists and musicians often use the get-out title, “Untitled”, to keep the meaning of a work open to interpretation. Understood, but I have always viewed this tactic as something of a missed opportunity, like a plain white sleeve or a room without a window.
However, the present need for new directions and the desire for some respite from the same-old/same-old needs a breathing space from our urge to name a phenomenon before it has had a chance to find its direction of travel. In other words, it is clear that “The next big thing” cannot and should not follow a formula that may have worked in the past. Discovery is often about difficulty.
Here the title comes with the prefix “As Yet…”.
Please read this for more:
kunstkritikk.com/what-is-not-to-be-done
The venue, Theme, is a studio space in Camden Town, London…
The full address is Arlington House, 220 Arlington Road, London NW1 7HE
Ticket information TBA on themeltd.co.uk
Ian Wellman
“The Night the Stars Fell”
Ash 15.0
CD and digital – 11 tracks. Releases 2 February 2024. Buy “The Night the Stars Fell” on Bandcamp. Mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space. Photography by Ian Wellman and Benny Nilsen. Design: Philip Marshall.
1. Forest of Tragedy
2. The Night the Stars Fell
3. Relief
4. Chorus of a Derailed Railcar
5. Blinding Light
6. Hill of Swords
7. Decaying House
8. Slow Rage
9. Requiem of the Wind
10. Demise of a Dream
11. The Road Home
“Following a pair of excellent full-lengths for Room40, Los Angeles-based sound artist Ian Wellman lands on Ash International with a blustery ode to the forests and deserts of Southern California, built from environmental recordings, shortwave radio static and saturated tape loops. There’s a suitable air of bleakness to “The Night the Stars Fell”, that plays as a memorial of sorts to the forests that burned over the last few years in and around Los Angeles. Wellman visited this razed landscape with his recording gear, and captures the eerie stillness, letting crickets chirp over soupy, cinematic drones, and encoded shortwave radio messages fuzz through disarming waves of choral ambience. It’s like a funeral lament for the landscape lost to fire, and heaves uncomfortably, using harsh distortion to represent a world at odds with itself. On the majestic title track, a chorus of insects heralds slow, brassy drones that rumble like a distant orchestra, increasing in intensity and power until they’re drowned out by dissonant swells of saturated tape noise. “Chorus of a Derailed Railcar” is even more terrifying, a disorienting, resonant hum that buzzes and oscillates incessantly with the intensity of a nervous breakdown. And the story is opened up when we reach “Decaying House”, a field recording piece that captures the chaos and damage of fire surprisingly subtly, recording the broken remnants of a building that sounds as if it's collapsing as Wellman traipses through the wreckage. It’s painful, poignant material that can’t help but leave you with a lump in your throat.” (Boomkat)
Ian Wellman is a sound artist currently residing in Los Angeles. His recordings have been published by Room40, Dragon’s Eye Recordings, Luminous Drift, and Industrial Coast. Ian is an IATSE Y-1 journeyman, and a member of the LA-based sound collective VOLUME.
Buy 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 204…
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 (14 series so far for dublab and resonancefm) visit mscharding.net
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