On 14th January, 5pm, at the Royal College of Art’s Lecture Theatre 1, Jon Wozencroft and Paul Devereux present a Work in Progress show of their Landscape & Perception Project.

“Thinking of our senses as time machines. Two audio–visual presentations followed by Q&A and discussion. The first will introduce the idea of sensory archaeology and Archaeoacoustics, the study of sound at ancient sites, to provide the background for the second, which will overview the RCA’s ‘Landscape & Perception’ project.”

www.landscape-perception.com
www.rca.ac.uk

We are delighted to welcome two new participants in the mentorship programme:
Anna von Hausswolff (Sweden) – www.annavonhausswolff.org
Claire M Singer (Scotland) – www.clairemsinger.com

You can find out further information here

The Guardian open their Best Experimental Music of 2015 list with Philip Jeck’s “Cardinal” album. They write: “The electronic composer Philip Jeck returned with his first release in five years. His gothic and spacious Cardinal felt like a weighty career summation. Compacted tonalities bleed into each other – “a sleepy walk threading through familiar streets,” says Jeck – as vinyl sources and treated instrumental sounds drift through chimerical drones.”

Buy Philip Jeck “Cardinal” in the TouchShop
www.philipjeck.com
www.theguardian.com

Biosphere and Ánde Somby – whose album “Yoiking With The Winged Ones” will be released on vinyl and download by Ash International in January 2016 – are both featured in BBC Radio 3’s “Northern Lights: Tromso” programme.

As part of Radio 3’s Northern Lights season, Petroc Trelawny explores musical responses to the dark northern winters in Tromso, the Norwegian “capital of the Arctic”.
Petroc explores the region’s rich folk music heritage, with its traditions from northern Norway and from the Sami people, known for their yoik style of singing. He visits the folk music collection at the Tromsø Museum with curator Ola Graff, meets with Sami singers Ande Somby and Berit Alette Mienna, and sees children at one of the city’s primary schools continuing the yoiking tradition.

Tromsø is also well known for its cutting-edge electronic music scene. One of the genre’s pioneers is Geir Jenssen, aka Biosphere, who uses the Arctic landscape both as inspiration for his electronic music, and literally, with field recordings including the sound of frozen lakes. He takes Petroc on a journey of sonic discovery around the fjords, tunnels and snow-capped peaks near his home on the island of Senja.

The North Norwegian Opera and Symphony Orchestra, and amateur choir Arctic Voices are also featured in this 45 minute broadcast and downloadable podcast.

Visit bbc.co.uk to listen or download

Download – 1 track – 23:49

Recorded by Achim Mohné
Photography by Mike Harding
With thanks to Georg Dietzler
Performed by Claire M Singer & Mike Harding at Sankt-Peter, Köln 6th November 2015

Track listing:

1. Orga

You can buy “Orga” on Bandcamp here

1. CLAIRE M SINGER & THE ETERNAL CHORD LIVE IN COLOGNE, 6th November 2015
Kunststation St Peter, Jabachstr. 1, Köln 7pm
Orgel und Elektronik in der Reihe Raumklänge – Ortsbezogene Musik, eine Plattform für raumerforschende Musik, Hörstudien und erweiterte Aufführungspraxis.

Further info: www.gerngesehen.de
www.raumklaenge.de

Programme:

“The Molendinar” & “Wrangham”
Claire M Singer (Organ and Electronics)
The Eternal Chord
Claire M Singer & Mike Harding
Curator: Georg Dietzler

2. TOUCH LABEL NIGHT IN AMSTERDAM 9th November 2015
Muziekgebouw aan’t IJ 730pm

Further info: www.muziekgebouw.nl
Philip Jeck, Thomas Ankersmit, Claire M Singer
www.philipjeck.com
www.thomasankersmit.com
www.clairemsinger.com

Review in kindamuzik “Best thing since sliced bread” can be read here

Double Vinyl + Download – 13 tracks – 64mins
Photography and artwork by Jon Wozencroft
Cut by Jason at Transition

Track listing:

Side 1.
Fleeing
Saint Pancras
Barrow in Furness (open thy hand wide)
Reverse Jersey
Side 2.
… bend the knee 1
Called In
Brief
Side 3.
Broke Up
… bend the knee 5
Called Again
Side 4.
And Over Again
The Station View
Saint Pancras (the one that holds everything)

This album comes with a free download of Philip Jeck “Live in Caen”, recorded by Franck Dubois on 28th February 2015 at Impressions Multiples #4 (ésam Caen/Cherbourg) with thanks to Thierry Weyd.

“… and they sparkled like burnished brass”*

Out of the depths of our complaints, it could be all so simple. To be never fooled by the finesse of a long-yearned for solidity, but in the momentary aplomb of a sleepy walk threading through familiar streets we’d hum our way, alto, baritone and tenor toward some harmonious end. An effect like some wonderful recollection of one or other of those technicolour movies. Not real for sure, but if you are in the mood….

I would like to acknowledge the influence the writer Marilynne Robinson has had on this work. I would recommend reading any/all of her four novels and also “When I was a Child I Read Books” [Virago, 2012]. This collection of essays include “Austerity as Ideology”, which dissects prevailing economic thinking, and “Open Thy Hand Wide…” which continues with a celebration of liberal thinking as Generosity (and also turned over my received knowledge of Calvinism). Her ability to convey a love of humanity and sense of wonder about the great mystery of existence in her writing has, since I first read a book of hers, found a way into the way I think about my work – not illustrating but meditating upon.
“After all, it’s [humankind] debts are only to itself.” (Marilynne Robinson)

To make this record I used Fidelity record players, Casio Keyboards, Ibanez bass guitar, Sony minidisc players, Ibanez and Zoom effects pedals, assorted percussion, a Behringer mixer and it was edited at home with minidisc players and on a laptop computer.
I would like to thank Octopus Collective’s Full Of Noise Festival where “The Station View” and “Barrow in Furness” were first recorded. Guy Madden and InMute’14, Athens who commissioned me to play a live soundtrack to Guy’s film “Cowards Bend the Knee” [2003]. “… bend the knee 1” and “… bend the knee 5” are reworked sections from that performance.

The two Saint Pancras Tracks are remixes of part a performance at St Pancras Church, London; an earlier version was made for “Touch. 30 years and counting” [Touch, 2012]. Saint Pancras (Latin: Sanctus Pancratius; Greek: Ἅγιος Παγκράτιος) was a Roman citizen who converted to Christianity, and was beheaded for his faith at the age of just 14 around the year 304 AD. His name in Greek literally means “the one that holds everything”.
“Called in” is an edit of a live performance at Spire in Krems, Austria [Kontraste Festival, 2013]. “Reverse Jersey” is an edit of a live performance for WFMU in New Jersey as part of Touch.30 [2012].

“Fleeting”, “Brief”, “Broke Up”, “Called Again” and “Over Again” were made at home in Liverpool between 2012 and 2015.

Thanks to everyone who has invited me to play, to Daniel Blumin at WFMU, to Mike Harding for the original recordings of “Called in” and “Saint Pancras” and a belated thank you to Jacob Kirkegaard for playing the chimes on “Ark” from “An Ark for the Listener” [Touch, 2010].

“… weeping for the wrongs we cannot undo.”

Philip Jeck, April 2015

*from The Book of Ezekiel

Buy Philip Jeck “Cardinal” [DLP] in the TouchShop
www.philipjeck.com

Artists: Jana Winderen, Maia Urstad, Christine Ödlund, Brandon Labelle, JG Thirlwell, Petteri Nisunen, Tommi Grönlund, The Sons of God, Franz Pomassl, Anna Ceeh, Mike Harding, Finnbogi Petursson, BJ Nilsen, Jacob Kirkegaard, PerMagnus LIndborg and Carl Michael von Hausswolff.

Format: Gatefold LP. Design: Philip Marshall. Artwork: Achim Mohné.

Side A is composed, arranged and mixed by Carl Michael von Hausswolff in November 2014 at the Castle, Stockholm and at the Carlton Opera Hotel, Vienna, using the thirteen original sound files composed by the artists during the period May – October 2014.
Side B is a location recording made on 6th November 2014 between 16:00 and 16:30 by Carl Michael von Hausswolff

freq_out has been a musical project since 2003 when Carl Michael von Hausswolff was invited to Copenhagen to invent a new concept for and install a sound-art installation. He divided up the audible sonic register into twelve parts and asked twelve artists, musicians, composers and architects to each accept one of the twelve parts and compose a sonic piece from it. The result became twelve compositions/art works that were simultaneously played on twelve different sound systems in the art space of Charlottenborg and by this becoming one piece.

During the following years freq_out has also been installed in the cities of Oslo, Berlin, Paris, Budapest, Chiang Mai, Kortrijk, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Marrakech.
This LP contains the studio mix and a live recording of the first permanent installation of a freq_out piece called freq_out 1.2 ∞ Skandion.

The work is up and running in the entrance garden at the Skandion Clinique – a new hospital for cancer treatment inaugurated in May this year (2015) – in Uppsala, Sweden. It’s accessible 24/7 and anyone that comes by the place can enjoy the work.

Buy “freq_out 1.2 ∞ Skandion” [Gatefold LP] in the TouchShop
www.freq-out.org
www.ashinternational.com

Re:Sound
Saturday, September 19 at 3:00pm
Magazine A-168 on Mare Island
Railroad Ave and Mercado Ct.,
Vallejo, CA 94592

Re:Sound + 23five present an afternoon of Touch

Simon Scott
Steve Roden
Mark Van Hoen
Touch “Live Mix”

+ Screening of the Fennesz Wozencroft film “Liquid Music”.
Doors at 3pm, Screening of Liquid Music at 3:30.

Tickets – ticketriver.com
ReSound on Facebook
Event on Facebook

CD + Download – available 4th September – on pre-sale now.
24-bit Download – available to download now

When you buy the CD version you receive two bonus tracks not available elsewhere:

1. ‘Into Birch’ (Pipe organ and electric guitar)
2. ‘Mere’ (Acoustic 6 string)
(both 24 bit, mastered by Denis Blackham)

Photography: Simon Scott. Design: Philip Marshall.
Mastered by Denis Blackham

Track listing & timings (plays as one track):

0.00 An Angel From The Sea Kissed Me
6.59 Holme Posts
9.00 Confusion In Her Eyes
15.12 Relapse
16.42 Oaks Grow Strong
21.47 Ternal
22.36 Nettle Bed
25.40 Fen Drove
28.06 Nember
31.46 Far From The Tree
37.30 Swanbark

You can hear extracts here and here.

Couldn’t sleep… arose to forage for sound. The hum of the fridge encouraged further investigation of hidden, domestic sounds; the fish tank, dvd player, a broken laptop…
Dawn and morning light allowed more sound and the guitar, in its case, beckoned…
From darkness to light…

Guitars: Guild 12 string D-125 & Vintage Guild 6 string GF-25
Mics: Induction coil pick up & Hydrophones
Buddha Machine pre-recorded and mixed, then re-recorded at Holme Fen Posts using mobile speakers
Recording device: Edirol r-09
Radio: static between stations
Software: Max MSP (self-programmed), Supercollider & Logic Pro
Simon Scott (b. 1971) is a British multi-instrumentalist who is currently based in Cambridge, UK. Insomni is his fourth album and his debut for Ash International and is published by Touch. His music is a fusion of digital signal manipulation combined with an aesthetic of compositional collaboration with environmental sounds and organic acoustic textures. He is inspired by his interests in sound ecology, music technology, the natural world, illustration, photography, composition and sonic art.

Below Sea Level, originally presented live in quadraphonic sound, was released on TOUCHLINE in March 2015, after 12k originally released the album in 2012 as an 80-page journal and seven track CD. It explores the aesthetics of active listening, sound ecology and the subjective distinction of compositional materials and sound timbres. Critically applauded for creating juxtapositions of analogue and digital timbres, the man-made and natural world sounds, captured in his local sunken landscape of The Fens in East Anglia, create a fusion of digital signal manipulation combined with organic acoustic textures.

Since the late 1990’s Scott’s solo work has been featured in a variety of international films, sonic art exhibitions, dance productions, television productions and digital multi-media projects.

He has toured worldwide since 1988 and he is the drummer for UK band Slowdive, who worked with Brian Eno on 1993 ‘Souvlaki ‘ album. His track “Für Betty” was included on the German label Kompakt’s ‘Pop Ambient’ (2014) compilation series and his solo music has also been previously released on recording labels 12k, Morr Music, Miasmah, Sonic Pieces and Ghostly International.

Scott is also a freelance composer and sound recordist for film and television and recently appeared on the BBC program ‘Springwatch Unsprung’ recording aquatic wildlife and discussing his work with presenter Chris Packham. He has taught Music Technology and sound recording in Cambridgeshire and lectured at Cambridge University.
In 2008 he established the KESH recording label, releasing global artists audio and visual projects and he has also collaborated on various projects with Taylor Deupree, Nils Frahm, Machinefabriek, The Sight Below, Isan and James Blackshaw.

Order Simon Scott “Insomnia” [CD + download] in the TouchShop
…also available as 24-bit WAV Download files
www.simonscott.org
www.ashinternational.com

RESONANT FORMS
8:00PM – 11:00PM Nightly, Workshop 12:00PM – 4:00PM, $20 – $70

VOLUME and LACE present the second Resonant Forms festival
for three days from September 11 – 13, 2015
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions [LACE]
6522 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Simon Scott
Bethan Parkes
Jen Boyd
Touch [live mix]
Tickets
Volume

180 gram vinyl LP – 6 tracks – + download code
We are now taking orders for this new release – shipping will commence the week beginning 13th July 2015.
Released in Poland by Gusstaff Records
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft

Track listing:
Side One
1. Sigh (Les peupliers)
2. A book of lake (Roselière)
3. Garden (Les sureaux)
Side Two
4. From a seashell
5. Circling (Le pré)
6. Kingdom (Les chênes, les bouleaux)
For the past decade or so, Polish musician Michał Jacaszek has been exploring a new, resolutely modern chapter in Eastern Europe’s long, storied love affair with classical music. His creations are painstakingly crafted collages of electronic textures and baroque instrumentation, harpsichords being swarmed by woolly static one minute and pulled apart by billowing wind the next. A push-and-pull tension runs deep and constant throughout. Ambient music is rarely so sonically challenging. Jacaszek has recorded for Ghostly International, Miasmah, Gusstaff Records and Experimedia and other labels. This is his first release for Touch.
Michał Jacaszek writes:
“When poets and writers declare their enchantment for the forms of nature, they often use musical terms as methaphors. Visual artists’ creations often resemble graphic partitas, when recapturing the rhythms of landscapes.Confirming, in a way, these musical intuitions, composers write great music deeply inspired by birdsongs, wind rustlings, waves repetitions etc.
Buy Jacaszek & Kwartludium “Catalogue des Arbres” [LP] in the TouchShop
www.jacaszek.com

CD – 12 tracks – 40:20

Released 1st June 2015
Photography: Jon Wozencroft & Heitor Alvelos
Mastered by Denis Blackham

Track listing:

1. Errant
2. Exodus
3. Edict
4. Alluvion
5. Pseudoself
6. Vicarious Solace
7. The Way of Malamat
8. Peirasmos
9. The Other
10. Home, Elicited
11. The Hopeful Night
12. Dedication

Faith is the first full-length sound release by media researcher and curator Heitor Alvelos under his own name. Heitor Alvelos has been a long-time on/off collaborator of Touch, having on occasion provided photography and stage visuals for Biosphere, Fennesz, BJNilsen, Rafael Toral and Philip Jeck, as well as releasing sound pieces under the aliases Autodigest, Antifluffy and Before Surgery, on Ash International, TouchRadio and The Tapeworm.

“The essence of the present piece is autobiographical: therefore the use of my own name”, the author clarifies. “And yet it aims at being resonant to others”: in this context, resonance may be regarded as both semantic and visceral, as the sound frequencies on Faith are often of the kind that “rearrange one’s organs”, to quote the recently departed Bernadette Martou. A necessity in order to carry the gravitas inherent to the subject, a confessional confrontation with the zeitgeist.

All sources have been gathered, recorded and produced throughout five decades, all the way back to a recording by Francisco Alvelos in 1972 that closes the release. Elsewhere, sounds have been processed to various degrees, the bookends retaining their original contexts, others mutating into deep abstraction. Overall, they flow as one single composition, evocative and foreboding in equal measures.

Buy Heitor Alvelos “Faith” [CD] in the TouchShop
…also available as 24-bit WAV Download files
www.benevolentanger.org/faith

Doors at 5:30PM, Show at 6:00PM, $5
Elephant
3325 Division St.
Los Angeles, CA 90065
OFFING
Yann Novak
Touch [live mix]
Playlist:
in a constant state of rebellion
AER – mach .853
venoz tks – The Longest Day
Fennesz – “Tom”
Chris Watson – “El Divisadero – The Telegraph”
daredevil
Philip Jeck – soundcheck
Claire M Singer -Solas
Buy Tickets
Yann Novak is a sound and visual artist living and working in Los Angeles. Through the use of sound, light and space, he explores how these intangible materials can act as catalysts to focus our awareness on the present moment and alter our perception of time. Novak’s work, whether conceptual or rooted in phenomenon, are informed by his investigations of presence, stillness and mindfulness. His works can be experienced as architectural interventions, sound diffusions, audiovisual installations and performances, durational performances, concerts and recorded sound-works.
OFFING is the moniker for sound explorations by Oakland California based artist Chris Duncan. After a decade of functioning primarily as a visual artist, recent years have found Duncan applying learned behaviors in image making to sound works. The open ended, often improvised, compositions are a sonic equivalent to his paintings- slowly built atmospheres that are the accumulation of simple gestures, looped and layered to the point of transcendence, responding to light, shadow and the ocean.
Mike Harding has been running the audio-visual label Touch for 30+ years and in this period has acquired much experience and information on disseminating cultural sounds to a wider audience. Since its first release in 1982, Touch has created sonic and visual productions that combine innovation with a level of care and attention that has made it the most enduring of any independent company of its time.

Saturday May 2nd at Krems, Austria
Touch presents…

Jana Winderen
Thomas Ankersmit
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
and Edwin Pouncey (Savage Pencil) in conversation with Mike Harding

www.donaufestival.at/festival/programm#selector_date=alldays&selector_genre=allgenres

With a new imprint, TOUCHFOLIO, Touch introduces a new series of bespoke hardback book and CD publications, produced to the highest specifications and continuing 33 years’ experience of audiovisual publishing.
www.touch33.net/touchfolio

Released on 4th may 2015 and now available for pre-order.

60pp hardback book + 60 min CD
Bound in a grey linen cover, printed on heavy hi-white paper
There are no digital versions or copies of this release in any format
Release date: 4th May 2015

Track listing:

1. Fade from Black
2. Missing a Border
3. Notes on the Exposures
4. Line of a Curve
5. White Out – you can listen to an extract here

Here you can read the full interview with Joséphine Michel with The Photographers Gallery and also an essay in Photomonitor and for readers in french, in fisheye
Order Joséphine Michel & Mika Vainio “Halfway to White” [Book and CD] in the TouchShop

www.touch33.net/touchfolio

MIKA VAINIO, HILDUR GUDNADOTTIR & THOMAS ANKERSMIT – presented in collaboration with CPH:PIX

You can find out more here

Sammen med The Lake og CPH PIX præsenterer Jazzhouse label night for det engelske label Touch, der siden 80’erne har været et af de vigtigste for eksperimenterende musik og lydkunst. Oplev Mika Vainio (Pan Sonic m.fl.), Hildur Guðnadóttir og Thomas Ankersmit.

CD – 7 tracks

Release date: 30th March 2015
Artwork and photography is by Jon Wozencroft. The CD was mastered by Helge Sten [Deathprod].

stator (ˈsteɪtə) n
1. (Electrical Engineering) The stationary part of a rotary machine or device, esp of a motor or generator
2. (Aeronautics) A system of nonrotating radially arranged parts within a rotating assembly, esp the fixed blades of an axial flow compressor in a gas turbine
[C20: from Latin: one who stands (by), from stāre to stand]

Track listing:

1. Muses-C (Biosphere)
2. Shimmer/Flicker (Deathprod)
3. Baud (Biosphere)
4. Polychromatic (Deathprod)
5. Disc (Deathprod)
6. Space is Fizzy (Biosphere)
7. Optical (Deathprod)

Biosphere is the main recording name of Geir Jenssen, a Norwegian musician who has released a notable catalogue of ambient electronic music.
He is well known for his “ambient techno” and “arctic ambient” styles, his use of music loops, and peculiar samples from sci-fi sources.

His track “Novelty Waves” was used for the 1995 campaign of Levi’s. His 1997 album Substrata is generally seen as one of the all time classic ambient albums [1].
Biosphere regularly performs live during electronic music festivals and in clubs throughout Europe and various other locales around the world. Live performances usually consist of Jenssen performing improvisations or variations on newer tracks on a laptop while video art is projected behind him; for example, full-screen video art was projected in his Picturehouse cinema tour in April 2006. Although these performances are rarely tied specifically to a recent album release, the uptempo material from the Bleep and Microgravity/Patashnik era is rarely featured in Biosphere performances.
He has been working with Touch since 1999…

Deathprod is a musical pseudonym used by Norwegian artist Helge Sten. Sten began creating music under this name starting in 1991, culminating with a box set of most of his recorded work being released in 2004. Simply titled Deathprod, the collection contains three albums along with a bonus disc of previously unreleased, rare, and deleted tracks.
On recordings, Sten is usually credited with “Audio Virus”, a catchall term for “homemade electronics, old tape echo machines, ring modulators, filters, theremins, samplers and lots of electronic stuff.”[1]

Sten also did the mixing of the album “PB” by the Norwegian artist Per Bergersen.
Sten is a member of Supersilent and works as a producer on many releases on the Norwegian label Rune Grammofon. He has also produced Motorpsycho and has worked with Biosphere on an Arne Nordheim tribute album called Nordheim Transformed.
Mastered by Helge Sten at Audio Virus LAB. This work was commissioned by Tape To Zero. Thanks to Kjetil Husebø.

Buy Biosphere Deathprod “Stator” [CD and mp3 download] in the TouchShop
www.biosphere.no

Today, 11th March, is the official 33rd anniversary of the founding of Touch in 1982…

First contact with New Order after their concert at the Newcastle Mayfair on 11th March 1982…

You can follow our progress year by year here…

Written by Jon Savage and directed by Grant Gee, the 2007 Joy Division documentary is now available to watch on the BBC iPlayer (UK only).

The 2007 documentary features commentary by Touch’s Jon Wozencroft alongside band members Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris, Anthony H. Wilson, Paul Morley, Annik Honoré, Peter Saville, and more.

Watch “Joy Division” on the BBC iPlayer
Further reading…