Artist: Richard Chartier
Title: On Leaving
Formats: CD & Digital Download
Catalogue Number: TO:124
Street date: 24th May 2024

You can order this CD album here

Track Listing:

1. variance.1
2. variance.2
3. variance.3
4. variance.4
5. variance.a

Mastered by Denis Blackham
Photography & design: Jon Wozencroft

About Richard Chartier

Richard Chartier is a Los Angeles-based artist/composer considered one of the key figures in minimalist sound art. Chartier’s works explore the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception, and the act of listening itself.

Since 1998 Chartier’s critically acclaimed sound works have been published on labels including Room40, Editions Mego, Important Records, Touch/Ash International, mAtter, Raster-Noton, 901 Editions, his own imprint LINE.

He has collaborated with William Basinski, ELEH, France Jobin, Robert Curgenven, Taylor Deupree, AGF, CoH, Yann Novak, Asmus Tietchens. As Pinkcourtesyphone he has collaborated with Cosey Fanni Tutti, Kid Congo Powers, harpist Gwyneth Wentink, AGF, and Evelina Domnitch.

Chartier’s sound works/installations have been presented in museums and galleries internationally. His performances have occurred live across Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and North America. Chartier’s compositions have accompanied dance works by noted choreographers Ohad Naharin, Cristina Caprioli, Dustin Klein, and Marco Blazquez).

Since 2000, Chartier has curated his influential label LINE, publishing over 150 editions documenting the compositional and installation work of international sound artists and composers who explore the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism.

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.

“I first became friends with Steve Roden (and later his wife, Sari) back in 1998 when my first album ‘direct.incidental.consequential’ was released. He was one of the first group of artists to whom I sent the album. Almost instantly he had been there on the other side of the phone (or email) and ever since.

His way of listening and attention to details (no matter how small) was inspirational — the clarity and complexity of his understated and only seemingly simple compositions, engaging. Underneath it all, ‘the less’ truly opened your ears to ‘the more.’ Steve saw and heard everything between the noise, no matter how faint.

Some of the last times I was able to see Steve were right before the pandemic. The effects of his advancing Alzheimers were present, still somewhat subtle, but increasing. I am still regretful that we were unable to spend more time together prior to his succumbing to his condition’s cruel effects. Another regret is not engaging in the collaboration we had both talked about for YEARS. ‘We should really start on that sometime soon’ Steve and I would say with each passing year.

I worked on the compositions included on this album as Steve gradually slipped away from communication. He was not in my life like he had been before. During this time it became apparent that these pieces were for Steve. A reflection of his ability to find beauty in the most minute details. Even when finally reviewing the final masters after his passing, I tried to think about how Steve would listen.

What would Steve hear in the details? His effect on this album is strong… the accumulation of influence and inspiration. This album feels organic and warm and was developed during a time when his absence in my life increased. That warmth is reflective of the nature of who Steve was himself, his friendship, and his visual & sound work.

on listening… on loss… on leaving…

As Steve and I mutually suggested… for quiet amplification or headphone listening.”

Artist: Fennesz
Title: Sognato di Domani
Label: Touch
Format: DL only
Catalogue Number: TO:5320S
Barcode: 5050580826403
Street date: 10th May 2024

Fennesz releases a new digital single, “Sognato di Domani”, on 10th May. It is available to pre-order now from Bandcamp. Further details below.

Track Listing:
1. Sognato di Domani (6:38)

“Sognato di Domani” is a new recording made by Christian Fennesz, completed in the context of his upcoming album due for release later this year. In parallel with making new work, we are planning to present a 20th anniversary release of “Venice”, which will be ready very soon in its remastered splendour. “Sognato di Domani” fitted the complexion of this earlier 2004 classic quite exactly, and in many ways revitalises it. The track you will hear on the “Venice 20” CD is an edited version of the digital release we present now: the full version. The photography is an out-take from the footage captured for “Liquid Music”, made in 2001 and planned for the technically impossible DVD release in 2005.

The Power of Limits

Sound Seminar by Jon Wozencroft, 9 May 2024
Theme, Arlington House, 220 Arlington Road, London NW1 7HE

“Freedom of speech is freedom of music”. Sun Ra

“You can teach the craft; the poetry, you can’t teach. You can live in a virtual world if you want to, and perhaps that’s where most people are going to finish up – in a world of pictures”. David Hockney

Theme Studio is an intimate space with a great sound system, Tannoy speakers, and an upstairs area which doubles as a bar and a social space. It looks out onto a block of Victorian-era railway flats. Whilst resident in one of them in 1943, fatigued by the war, George Orwell started writing “1984” before moving to Jura and completing the work. 40 years later in 2024, “1984” seems less of a fictional warning and more like a documentary, concerning the abandonment of any limits to the relationship between war and peace, truth and lies. Psychological and linguistic abuse is the new normal.

Much less is known about György Doczi, a Hungarian architect who practiced in his home country before moving to Sweden, Iran and the United States. He settled in Seattle, and in 1981 published a major study “The Power of Limits – Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art and Architecture” which uses sacred geometry and the measurement of the golden section to map out the relationships between the natural world and human form; presenting a holistic vision made by “a dynamic union of opposites, as demonstrated by spiral forms” which might extend to psychological and social realms. He noted that these could form a model for the need for ‘sharing’ as a way of life. Opposites, in the natural world, achieve balance and proportion; processed by technological/political dogmas, the new oppositional matrices create a maelstrom where sharing is seen as a sign of weakness.

The current climate of binary divisions between rich/poor, young/old, overheated/frozen, North/South etc., destroys harmony and creates chaos. What happened? The 60s/social vision that everything is possible lost its light and is being replaced by a dark shadow – AI promises a frictionless future, biomedicine will bring us increased longevity, and as Warhol promised, “we can stay younger longer”. Digital media and the internet drowns the everyday in material choices – what to click, what to follow, have a makeover. Clothing is crucial. On a political level our choices are compressed between ‘more of the same’ neoliberalism and aging leaders – the other options, Social Democracy, Labour, the Green Parties, fail to conjoin anything truly oppositional for fear of precipitating an economic collapse.

Last week Forbes published their latest rich list recording that there are now 2781 billionaires in the world, up 141 on the previous year, sharing a combined fortune of $14.2 trillion – (bravo that Taylor Swift is now amongst them?) – a sum greater than the GDP of any country in the world except the U.S.A. and China. The world’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, purveyor of luxury goods, was worth a mere $86 billion in 2020 – by 2024, his nest egg had risen to $223 billion. Fashion accessories are today just as profitable as computers.

“Eins zwei drei vier fünf sechs sieben acht. One two”. Kraftwerk, ‘Numbers’

In his book Doczi didn’t refer to the relationship between honey bees and humans. If they die out, we die out. There’s a fantastic sculpture talking about this at Kew Gardens, “The Hive” by Wolfgang Buttress and his collaborators.

David Hockney/Martin Gayford, ‘Spring Cannot be Cancelled’, Thames & Hudson 2021
György Doczi, ‘The Power of Limits’, Shambhala Publications 1981
Kraftwerk, Computer World, EMI Records 1981

‘The Hive’ – kew.org

Tickets can be purchased here

Liquid Music ll features a full-length video by Jon Wozencroft, an extract of which you can view above. The download bundle also includes audio of the soundtrack, by Fennesz. This is a Bandcamp exclusive release.

This release is now available here

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 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]

A rare live performance by Travelogue [Carl Michael von Hausswolff & Chandra Shukla] in Italy this May.

Tickets & info

530PM on resonancefm [Repeats Wednesday 1am]

A showcase for records of contemporary experimental and underground music, hosted by Ed Pinsent. Tonight, some recent music from the Touch label. Anthony Moore, Cleared, Carl Michael Von Hausswolff & Chandra Shukla, Philip Jeck & Chris Watson, Bana Haffar, drøne, Eleh, Itchy Spots, and Phill Niblock. For more about the label, please visit the Touch Bandcamp page. Visit thesoundprojector.com/radio-show/ for more information.

The show has been archived here

Today, 11th March 2024, is our official 42nd anniversary…

Since its founding in 1982, Touch (based in London) has created audio-visual productions and live events that combine innovation with a level of care and attention that has made it the most enduring of any independent company of its time.

First contact with New Order after their concert at the Newcastle Mayfair on 11th March 1982… ‘Video 5-8-6’ appeared on our very first release, Feature Mist, released in December of that year.

You can follow our progress year by year here…

Tickets & info

As Yet Untitled, 7 March 2024

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:

What Is (Not) to Be Done

Phill Niblock RIP
“Master of Minimalism”

Phill was one of those it is hard to imagine the world without. Always working, moving, chatting, asking, (“Hey! – What’s happening!”… a declaration not a question), his extraordinary energy belied his slowly evolving work. He lived a long life doing what he loved, releasing records for over 7 decades (who else can claim that? Not many…), Phill holds a unique place in the history of recorded music, and it was an honour to work with him for a good chunk of that time. He was a superb film-maker and photographer. Ask for a photo for his new album, he would submit a full folio (here are some unused ones below). Ask for 20 minutes of sound and he’d send 3 hours. Deeply rooted in an analogue sensibility and its acoustic, digital formats were a godsend to Phill. Our last collaboration “Working Touch” came on a USB stick with 22GB of material – Phill considered this to be his valediction. Of his generation, perhaps only Morton Subotnik (90), LaMonte Young (88), & Alvin Curran (at a sprightly 85) are around to hold the candle and show that the way things used to be done are increasingly, not less valid. Rest in peace, Phill – and thank you. We’ll be listening for the sounds as they come through the clouds. [Mike & Jon, 9th January 2024]

You can read an obituary by Lawrence English in The Quietus here

Phill Niblock was interviewed by Mike Harding for his very first edition of Long Wave, 8th October 2013. You can listen to the full broadcast here.

Ruptured Records, Montreal, have released a vinyl edition of Youmna Saba’s “Wishah وِشاح”, which we released on CD recently.

You can order the record, with artwork by Jon Wozencroft, here

OPENING PARTY TONIGHT! Free with live performances from Yves de Mey and others

Our address is: Athens, Kipselis 49 and we are stocking Touch, Ash International & The Tapeworm

Opening hours:
Tuesday: 12:00——20:00
Wednesday: 12:00——16:00
Thursday—Saturday: 12:00——20:00
Sunday—Monday: Closed

Tickets & info here – all proceeds go towards the Iklectik fighting fund

“IKLECTIK will be facing eviction from its current location by the end of this year, and we’re calling upon you to stand with us during this challenging moment.

This decision came quickly after the Save Waterloo Paradise campaign mobilised nearly 50,000 supporters and persuaded Michael Gove to halt the development project, something we have been campaigning for over this last year. Our public stance against the controversial plans has resulted in this punitive action against both IKLECTIK and the other 20 small businesses here at Old Paradise Yard. Currently, despite not yet having permission for the full redevelopment, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation are refusing to extend Eat Work Art’s [site leaseholder] lease.

You can boost our campaign on social media, always using the following tags: #saveiklectik #savewaterlooparadise #shameonGSTTfoundation @iklectikartlab @save_waterloo_paradise @gsttfoundation

Further information about the development can be found here

We remain hopeful that with the right amount of voices from venues, institutions, press, universities, business associates and our collaborators and community, we can safeguard the space.

Over the last 9 years we have cultivated a unique and cherished space for our community here in Waterloo, we are unwavering in our commitment to preserving it. We hope to see you at one of our upcoming events and thank you for being a part of our journey at IKLECTIK.

Your support is invaluable and highly appreciated.

Warm regards,
IKLECTIK Team”

Released 30th November 2023
You can buy from Bandcamp here

Following a suspended project with Iklectik in 2021, ELEH presents a 22 minute recording “KICKTILE” in support of the venue’s current struggle for survival. Touch releases the track as a digital download on bandcamp to coincide with the benefit concert on 6th December 2023, “To Have and to Hold”, with all proceeds going to Iklectik. “KICKTILE” was previewed at the Jon Wozencroft/Bruce Gilbert sound seminar on 29th November.

IKLECTIK (the venue in London, England) will be facing eviction from its current location by the end of this year, and we’re calling upon you to stand with us during this challenging moment.

This decision came quickly after the Save Waterloo Paradise campaign mobilised nearly 50,000 supporters and persuaded Michael Gove to halt the development project, something we have been campaigning for over this last year. Our public stance against the controversial plans has resulted in this punitive action against both IKLECTIK and the other 20 small businesses here at Old Paradise Yard. Currently, despite not yet having permission for the full redevelopment, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation are refusing to extend Eat Work Art’s [site leaseholder] lease.

Live performance: Bruce Gilbert

Tickets & info: Dice | Facebook | Resident Advisor

“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 USA¹). 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 pollution². 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 instruments³. 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.

Artist: Claire M Singer
Title: Saor
Formats: CD & Digital Download
Catalogue Number: TO:121
Street date: 3rd November, 2023

You can order this CD album from 6th October 2023, here

Track Listing:

1. Cairn Toul
2. Pressure
3. Càrn
4. Outside
5. Forrig
6. Stops
7. Braeriach
8. Above and Below
9. Saor

Written and performed by Claire M Singer

Mastered by Denis Blackham
Artwork by Jon Wozencroft
Photography by Ash Todd (front and inside) and Seàn Antleys (back)
Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music (UK) Ltd.

Claire M Singer has announced details of the first release in a triptych of albums. Saor [pronounced Sieur: meaning “free” in Scottish Gaelic] perfectly encapsulates Claire’s experimental approach to the pipe organ, exploring rich harmonic textures and complex overtones which create ever-shifting melodic and rhythmic patterns, conjuring visions of the Scottish dramatic landscapes which inspire her. It’s her 3rd album for Touch, after ‘Fairge’ [2019] and ‘Solas’ [2016].

“Saor follows two narratives: my trekking across the Cairngorm mountains in Aberdeenshire through the granite plateaux, corries, glens and straths, and my exploration of the 1872 organ built by Peter Conacher & Coy, Huddersfield in Forgue Kirk, Aberdeenshire where many of my ancestors lie.”

Tracks that are directly influenced by the Munros of Scotland, such as ‘Cairn Toul’ and ‘Braeriach’, are both majestic and sublime in their scope, sitting alongside interludes that more generally allude to the instrument: ‘Stops’, ‘Pressure’, ‘Above and Below’.

When writing her first organ commission in 2006 Claire approached the instrument as a sound source rather than how it is conventionally played. She has never had a lesson in her life and developed her own way of playing, including using straws or chopsticks to hold down the keys so she can manipulate the wind through the stops. About 90% of her sound, she says, involves her having one hand or two on the stops – having a full physical relationship with the instrument, continuously tweaking and exploring the mechanical stop action as she progresses her melodies.

Much of the album was written or recorded in Claire’s home county, at Forgue Kirk in Aberdeenshire. A church she hadn’t discovered before, in a remote spot, up a slight hill near a small cluster of houses. A friend recommended the organ to her and she later found out from her mother that many of her ancestors were buried there. “I had this weird stars aligning moment – during my residency at Forgue I spotted a gravestone propped up in the pews which was being restored, and it was Peter Forsyth, one of my relatives.”

Across the album, tracks flutter, pulse and build into and imposing mass. Some suggest texture and weather, using electronic processing and distortion. Others rely on the organ itself for heady atmospheres, while Saor’s title track goes even further; recorded at Orgelpark, Amsterdam, an international concert hall for organists, it uses five instruments in layers that span four centuries. Claire also plays cello, mellotron and harmonium on the album, and there are contributions from strings (Patsy Reid), trumpet (Brian Shook), clarinets (Yann Ghiro) and French horn (Andy Saunders).

Saor is an adventure bringing the same sense of elation as the journeys Claire made on foot to the summit. “When I’m alone at the top of a Munro, I feel completely free. It’s the most exhilarating feeling to be up there with nature looking at this vast landscape. I hope Saor conveys how that feels, and carries people with those feelings.”

Saor is generously supported by Arts Council England, PRS Foundation’s Composers’ Fund in partnership with Jerwood Arts, the Friends of Forgue Kirk, the Richard Thomas Foundation and Orgelpark, Amsterdam.

Saturday 16 September 2023 | Doors: 7pm
THIS EVENT HAS SOLD OUT

7PM Doors

730PM Speakers: Mary Prestidge & Mike Harding

Chris Watson presents ‘Oxmardyke’, his recent collaboration with Jeck

830PM Liverpool Improvisation Collective
[Andrea Buckley, Paula Hampson, Mary Prestidge and Kate Brown]
‘Echoes of Philip’ an ensemble performance with dancers from Liverpool and London.

John Beaumont [Tenor] – Gregorian chant

Storyteller: Bryan O’Connell

9PM Jonathan Raisin
Piano solo. ‘in the absence…’ an improvisation, a memory… half a duet. Jonathan is a composer and improvising musician, based in Liverpool, who played with Philip several times over the last few years.

John Beaumont [Tenor] – Gregorian chant

Storyteller: Doug Gill 

945PM Claire M Singer

Timings are approximate

Artist: Youmna Saba
Title: Wishah وِشاح
Formats: CD & Digital Download
Catalogue Number: T33.22
Street date: 6th October, 2023

You can order this CD album here
and the vinyl version here

Track Listing:

1. Akaleel أكاليل – you can listen to this track here
2. Ba’oud بعوض
3. Al khayal الخيال
4. Ahad أحد
5. Tareeq طريق

Written and performed by Youmna Saba
Recorded and mixed by Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork Studios, Beirut
Produced by Youmna Saba and Fadi Tabbal

Mastered by Stephan Mathieu
Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music (UK) Ltd.

Wishah (‘Veil’ in Arabic) is a composition in five stages, written by Youmna Saba between 2021 and 2022, for voice, oud and electronics.

Following her previous solo works Njoum (2014) and Arb’een (40) (2017), this album marks a significant turning point in Saba’s journey. Created after leaving Beirut and settling in Paris, Wishah reveals a profound shift in her musical expression, informed by rigorous research in the sonic properties of sung Arabic phonemes and their role in shaping synthesised electronic sounds.

The album employs a digital extension for the oud, a concept developed by Saba in her research project Taïma’. This device enhances the oud’s sonic range, seamlessly integrating synthesised electronics. It also amplifies subtle, often overlooked sounds generated during playing, such as resonances and fingerboard friction.

The composition is organised into five distinct stages, each contributing to a process of gradual revelation. As the tracks unfold, they strip away layers of constructed emotions and perceptions that have been intricately woven over time, to expose a space that no longer exists. Wishah is a farewell to home.

The oud digital extension used on this record was developed by Nicolas Canot, and produced by Césaré – Centre National de Création Musicale, as part of the research project Taïma’, by Youmna Saba

Youmna Saba (Beirut 1984) is a musician, composer and musicologist. Her current research focuses on instrument and space resonances in different sonic and musical contexts. With four albums to this date, she has collaborated with musicians of different musical expressions such as Kamilya Jubran, Floy Krouchi, Mike Cooper and the Neue Vocalsolisten ensemble, and has taken part in numerous artist residencies. She is the laureate of the first sound residency at Quai Branly Museum, Paris (2022-2023) with her research project and installation “La Réserve des Non-Dits”, now on view at the museum; and a laureate of the music residency program at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2020-2021).

Vinyl LP with Fine Art Print – 2 tracks.
Release date: 4 August 2023.
Pre-order “The Blue Beyond” on Bandcamp.
Mastered and cut by Jason at Transition.
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft.
Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary.

Track listing:

A: The Art of Listening: Under Water
B: Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux

Edition of 1000 copies, the first 100 copies numbered and signed by the artist.

The record offers edits of two sound compositions for installations, “Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux” (2019) and “The Art of Listening: Under Water” (2019). “Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux” was first presented at Art Basel in Basel from 13 to 16 June 2019. A live performance of the piece was given at HEK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) on 11 June 2019. “The Art of Listening: Under Water” (2019) was first presented in the Rotunda, Collins Park, Miami Beach, in the context of Art Basel in Miami Beach, from 4 to 8 December 2019. “The Art of Listening: Under Water” installation was made in collaboration with Tony Myatt. It travelled to the Lenfest Center for the Arts, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, from 3 to 13 February 2022.

Winderen’s practice focuses on sound and knowledge production. The artist seeks to raise awareness of the environmental issues we face as a society.

Audemars Piguet Contemporary collaborated with Winderen on two new sound installations compositions. The first, “Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux”, was developed during two field trips to Le Brassus in the Vallée de Joux, at the heart of the Swiss Jura, where Audemars Piguet has been based since 1875. On these trips, Winderen captured sounds in the waters of the Lac de Joux and in the Risoud forest.

When Audemars Piguet Contemporary invited the artist to present a second composition for exhibition in Miami Beach, Winderen proposed a site-specific sound environment. For “The Art of Listening: Under Water”, Winderen used sounds recorded in the Atlantic Ocean in the Miami area, as well as sounds from the Barents Sea around the North Pole and the Tropical Oceans to expose the constant underwater presence of human-created sound today.

In both pieces, the artist offers a unique opportunity to listen closely to the underwater inhabitants of a specific region and to reflect on how human activity interacts and interferes with aquatic and also terrestrial life in a seemingly beautiful and visually calm environment.

Jana Winderen often draws the fish, amphibians and plankton she meets. This release also consists of a drawing of two fish that probably would never meet; the pike from the freshwater Lac de Joux in the Jura Mountains and the snapper from the saltwater environment by Miami.

IKLECTIK presents,

Jon Wozencroft Sound Seminar: Touchpoints
A Touch special with Mike Harding

Thursday 20 July 2023 | Start: 7:30pm

Tickets: £10 adv / £12 otd https://link.dice.fm/o0fcbe4d7ca6

Last June Iklectik hosted two sold-out nights of the first Touch40 London events, featuring 12 performances in a sunshine blessed, lockdown-lifted sensation of being back in the world again. It seems a long time ago, though it’s only a year. The weekend was a wonder.

One of the challenges of non-mainstream live music is whether or not the artists/ musicians talk, and speak to their audience, how much it is necessary to say anything – not “hello London or hello Chicago”, simply a few words to bring the human voice into the mix. A lot of ground-breaking music is instrumental. On this night we were able to be social as well as musical. You could hear a pin drop while the performances took place.

Is it true that music doesn’t know what to say at the moment?

I like listening to the radio. The amount of times DJs play a track without clearly saying what it is they are playing is commonplace, especially on the BBC. I guess you’re expected to look it up online. And few DJs get the chance to play anything that isn’t what you already know. Familiarity is the key.

It wasn’t always this way. Listeners seem less willing to buy what they don’t already know. Music buyers seem a-feared of the new and that’s possibly because there is scant encouragement nor the dynamic for things that are new, given the global circumstances, press conservatism and fear for the future.

The BFI report that 75% of record company releases are dedicated to music at least 10 years old, but more like 50. Reissues, box sets, Record Store Day, pink vinyl releases. Please buy a single LP in Rough Trade for £35.

Record sales are obviously competing with a pizza meal for two. It went bad because of lockdown, but it’s not just the fault of the virus. The virus was already there. Why should you have life-transforming music for free? A pizza isn’t going to change anything except your temporary hunger.

Touch still has lots to say; we rarely get the chance to do so. In the slipstream of the year after Touch40, we may talk about “How to Survive” as it was signalled on our first cassette ‘Feature Mist’ from 1982, years before streaming diminished the value of music. What might be the counterpoint to digital that isn’t analogue nostalgia? We will play one or two Touch gems amongst other highlights that got us to where we are now.

Are there alternatives to highly polluting physical releases? How can we explore green technology in relation to our soundworld. With vinyl, cassettes and CDs the spectre of physical pollution and sustainability is always on your mind, with digital systems the problems centre on mental health. What is the third way?

Jon Wozencroft developed his sound seminars in the late 1980s as a means of highlighting the potential of sound-related research and practice in art and design education. Primarily, the seminars promote the art of listening and seek to rebalance the dominant bias of visual culture which favours the eye over the ear. Listening both enhances one’s perceptual awareness and creates an oasis away from 24/7 non-stop media. The seminars underline the power of sound and music as catalysts for change in a context in which recorded music has been progressively devalued in the digital environment. Drawing upon forty years of working in music publishing and performance, Wozencroft moves the audience between and beyond genre classifications and makes connections where past present and future come alive in the moment.

An evening with Touch, listening to the IKO loudspeaker amongst exotics plants in the Roof Garden’s amphitheatre. Join sound artist Bethan Kellough as we follow motions and contours of winds, waves and other atmospheric and geological processes, responding to their vibrancy, the spaces they reveal, and the moments we can spend immersed in timescales that expand beyond our lived experience.  

Sound artist Bethan Kellough weaves together musical and environmental sound-worlds to create immersive installations, performances and compositions. Her album Aven (Touch, 2016) has been described as “a film you watch with your ears” (Tiny Mix Tapes), “earthy and fantastical” (Norman Records) and “sometimes magical and sometimes terrifying” (Rolling Stone). 

Info and tickets (free): space.org.uk/event/sonic-habitats/

This performance takes place at the Crossrail Place Roof Garden.
Performance times: 7:00pm
Running time: 90mins