Touch Newsletter #312
Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #312. Maintaining the chemistry between CD, vinyl and bandcamp/digital releases, as we enter our 43rd year of activity we have a mouth-watering 2024 schedule. It’s not definitive, but it shows what’s currently on the horizon. There will be more (not least a limited edition enamel pin badge!).
First, a date for your diary: the next Sound Seminar by Jon Wozencroft will be held on Thursday 9 May @ Theme Studio, Camden Town. Nervous as a needle after five years of holding the sessions at Iklectik, the first one at Theme in March went superbly. It’s an intimate space with a great sound system, Tannoy speakers and an upstairs area which doubles as a bar and social space. It looks out onto a block of Victorian-era railway flats – whilst resident in one of these, George Orwell started writing “1984” before moving to Jura and completing the book. Click here for further details and ticket information.
Travelogue (Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Chandra Shukla] make a rare live appearance in May in Bologna, Italy – click here for details.
News of upcoming 2024 releases on Touch:
29 March - Fennesz + Wozencroft “Liquid Music II” - out now, more details below.
3 May – Fennesz “Sognato di Domani” – digital single release.
24 May – Richard Chartier “On Leaving”, his “collaboration” with and tribute to Steve Roden. Pre-orders coming in April - see below for more detail.
28 June - Fennesz “Venice 20” - pre-orders coming in May, the 20th anniversary CD + booklet. Remastered by Denis Blackham.
19 July - KMRU “Natur” - pre-orders coming in June.
Looking further ahead… August (approx): Jacaszek “Gardenia” (vinyl) - see below for more detail. September: Cleared “Hexa” and Fennesz “Mosaic”. October: Claire M Singer – part two of the trilogy which began with “Saor”. November: Philip Jeck tribute album with original tracks from Hildur Guðnadóttir & David Sylvian, Philip Jeck, Fennesz, Jana Winderen, Chris Watson, Rosy Parlane, Claire M Singer, Faith Coloccia and others, and a contribution from Jah Wobble & Deep Space…
Fennesz + Wozencroft
“Liquid Music II”
RGB02
Digital video and audio bundle. Buy “Liquid Music II” on Bandcamp. Features a full-length video by Jon Wozencroft, an extract of which you can view on Bandcamp. The download bundle also includes audio of the soundtrack, by Fennesz. Audio mastered by Denis Blackham. This is a Bandcamp exclusive release.
“The film was made for Fennesz’s live performances on the Touch 2001 tour (with Hazard/Heitor Alvelos and Biosphere/Jony Easterby) and the first version eventually released on a Touch.30 USB stick in 2012, from an incendiary performance at Brighton Gardner Arts Centre which centred on material from the “Endless Summer” release, amplified to the max. A DVD release was scheduled in 2005 but this proved impossible to master due to the fast–moving nature of the footage… Once compressed for the demands of the format at that time, it looked like a pixelated jigsaw.
The DVD was to be partnered with this quite different set by Fennesz at the 2004 Norberg Festival in Sweden, shortly after the release of “Venice”, but totally improvised, including few traces of that release. “Liquid Music II” is now available for the first time and is “the extended version” to take account of the longer set times and the continued synergy that it gave to Fennesz’s live performances. Christian’s performance was trance-like in comparison to the Brighton gig three years earlier and is in itself an essential document of his developing sound.
The footage was filmed on Hi-8 and mini-DV between 1995 and 2001 and is intended as an analogue to the fast moving developments of digital media and its distribution at that time. With this in mind, none of the footage benefits from any post-production nor processing, it is as seen through the lens of the camera which often involved dangerous positioning, close to the edge of rivers and rocks to get a forensic capture of the movement. A tripod was impossible; at times the camera is almost touching the water.
I call it a film and not a video because the inspiration was from classic avant-garde interventions by such luminaries as Stan Brakage, Peter Kubelka, Guy Sherwin and others, who always shot on celluloid. I did it on camcorders because there was no budget to use a Bolex and it was simply a question of what was practical, portable and a kind of guerrilla action when the weather was favourable. In addition, it was becoming a big thing at the time for ‘electronic’ musicians to use digital video projections to frame their naked-laptop performance situations, but I felt Fennesz did not fall into this perceptual grid, his music having a romanticism and a harmonic force that was more timeless and would be neutered by the latest software aesthetic.
The film that challenges the notion of sync between sound and image, so that every time it was projected, and every time Fennesz played, the connection would be different and the chemistry personal to each member of the audience. In that way it becomes a live conversation and not simply a ‘show’ nor wallpaper for the music.” – Jon Wozencroft, March 2024.
Locations:
Prague, Paxos, Crete, Kefalonia, Messinia, London, Monterey Bay, Southern Bohemia.
With thanks to:
Steve Connolly, Kamal Ackarie, Andrew Lagowski, Philip Marshall.
Buy on Bandcamp
Richard Chartier
“On Leaving”
TO:124
CD and DL – Releasing 24 May 2024, pre-orders coming in April. Mastered by Denis Blackham. Photography and design: Jon Wozencroft.
1. variance.1 (10:08) – you can listen to this track here
2. variance.2 (16:38)
3. variance.3 (14:58)
4. variance.4 (10:08)
5. variance.a (15:20)
the tree in a breeze
too much movement to focus
on a single leaf
Dedicated to Steve Roden (1964-2023).
For over a quarter of a century, sound artist and composer Richard Chartier has interrogated an ever deepening thread of minimalist sound that meshes questions of stasis, pulse and timbre. The results of this work is some of the most quietly intense compositions of this century. His is a music of subtle variation, unwavering concentration, and also patience. This five part work created between 2020 and 2022 is dedicated to his friend and fellow sound artist Steve Roden.
Jacaszek
“Gardenia”
TO:117V
Vinyl and DL – release date to be announced shortly. Mastered by Denis Blackham. Photography and design: Jon Wozencroft.
Jacaszek's 2020 CD “Gardenia” sold out quickly and was one of the first to use the larger DVD digipak format we now favour for most of our releases. Based on a field recording project Sonic Mmabolela on the South African/Botswana border, it was organised by Francisco López, who mastered the CD. “Gardenia” is a fearsome collection that highlights Jacaszek’s adeptness in combining classical composition, electronics and natural sound and we have long-planned to make it available as a vinyl release.
However, one sound that vinyl mastering rebels against is the high frequency tone of cicadas, so this vinyl version has been delayed while we come to terms with the balance needed in getting the best result whilst modifying the “crosstalk” created by these wild tones. It is being handled by the old EMI cutting studio in Köln, Germany, and we hope to have this available soon.
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 208…
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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