Touch Newsletter #311
Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #311. This coming Thursday, 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. Tickets are now on sale. Further information below.
Ian Wellman’s Ash International debut, “The Night the Stars Fell”, is now shipping. Read an interview with Ian Wellman on Foxy Digitalis: “Connections and Stories Within Textures”. The album was just featured on The Best Field Recordings on Bandcamp: February 2024.
Last weekend The Tapeworm commenced its 15th year with two concerts in Athens, in collaboration with Stellage. A Tapeworm mixtape was broadcast on stegi.radio, featuring premieres of tracks by The Fast Set, Dj Salinger and MICROCORPS alongside a tribute to the late great Philip Jeck composed by Jay Glass Dubs. You can now listen to the mix at stegi.radio
Limited copies of its latest tape by Dj Salinger remain. A “rose-tinted” edition of the Jeck Glass Dubs tape and a special SavX T-shirt are now available exclusively from Stellage – please email info@stellage.store for info.
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
Tickets now on sale
Ian Wellman
“The Night the Stars Fell”
Ash 15.0
CD and digital – 11 tracks. 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
The fourth album by Ian Wellman, and his Ash International debut, “The Night the Stars Fell” is built from field recordings from the forests and deserts of Southern California, shortwave radio static, and cassette tape loops layered in distortion. The eleven tracks across the album are carried by the physicality of wind which drove the fires that burned the forests where the sounds were recorded. “The Night the Stars Fell” explores a time of rebuilding, of searching for a new path.
Read an interview with Ian Wellman on Foxy Digitalis: “Connections and Stories Within Textures”
Buy on Bandcamp
Dj Salinger
“Voyage Voyage Voyage”
TTW#166
Cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Buy “Voyage Voyage Voyage” on Bandcamp. Illustration: Noah Gamaury.
A1: Azur
A2: Regarde L’Océan
A3: Au Bout De La Nuit
A4: Encre Vide
A5: Chateaux D’Equateur
B1: De L’Eau Dans Ton Regard
B2: Plus Loin Que La Nuit Et Le Jour
B3: Elsa 1986
B4: Si Loin De Tout
B5: La Belle Vie
Franz Kirmann appears under his Dj Salinger alias to deliver “Voyage Voyage Voyage”, a “subjective mixtape” celebrating 80s French pop, where the tracks are not played as-is but presented as they are felt by the artist.
The result is a nostalgic trip – hazy ambient music fashioned from 80s synthpop hits. Imagine Fennesz or My Bloody Valentine playing Laurent Voulzy covers and you’re almost there…
“Loveless non, Desireless oui!”
Buy on Bandcamp
Jeck Glass Dubs
“Respooled”
TTW#165
Special “rose-tinted” cassette edition available exclusively via Stellage – please email info@stellage.store for more info. Artwork: SavX.
A: Part I
B: Part II
The Tapeworm celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2024. Its first tape was 2009’s “Spool” by the much-missed Philip Jeck. To honour his memory, Jay Glass Dubs unwinds “Spool” in a new hour-long composition using Jeck’s tape as his primary sound source. This tape was commissioned for “The Worm Rose Of Athens”, two evenings of performances curated by Stellage, 1-2 March 2024, Athens. Written, recorded, produced and mixed by Dimitris Papadatos, Athens, 2024. With special thanks to Mary Prestidge.
Also available only from Stellage, a T-shirt featuring SavX’s artwork for the tape. Stellage are hosting a special exhibition of SavX’s artworks for The Tapeworm in their basement gallery space in Athens.
Special “rose-tinted” tape and T-shirt available exclusively via Stellage
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 207…
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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