The Sinking of the Titanic by Gavin Bryars | Philip Jeck | Alter Ego [Touch Tone 34] has made Mojo’s Top 50 albums of 2008 list.

Mojo write: “Bryars’ 1969 modern classic refurbished by UK turntable artist Philip Jeck and Italian ensemble Alter Ego. They lent eerie atmosphere to Bryars’ ethereal orchestrations. based on the hymn Autumn, as rendered by the ship’s string ensemble as the liner sank.”
The Sinking of the Titanic, recorded at the 49th International Festival of Contemporary Music at The Venice Biennale on 1st October 2005 at the Teatro Maliban, is available in the TouchShop.

Tokafi’s Tobias Fischer has interviewed Christian Fennesz about his new album, “Black Sea”.

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Touch and Elgaland-Vargaland are working at Les Borealis Festival in Caen from Monday 24th November until Thursday 27th November inclusive.

[During this period you can still place orders at the TouchShop but please note your order will not be processed until Friday 28th November.]

Touch presents, as part of The Short Circuit Festival:

Philip Jeck and the Gavin Bryars Ensemble – The Sinking of the Titanic
Biosphere
Hildur Gudnadóttir & BJNilsen

The Roundhouse
Chalk Farm Road
London NW1 8EH

LP – 6 tracks – 40:28

[also available on CD and as a CD/LP bundle.]

Track Listing:

Side One:
1. Black Sea
2. Perfume for Winter
3. Grey Scale

Side Two:
4. Glide
5. Glass Ceiling
6. Saffron Revolution

Christian Fennesz used acoustic and electric guitars, synths, electronics, lloopp and computers

All tracks composed, performed, recorded and mixed by Christian Fennesz at Amann Studios, Vienna and C-street, Paris except “The Colour of Three” by Christian Fennesz & Anthony Pateras and “Glide” which was composed and performed by Rosy Parlane & Christian Fennesz (recorded live in Paris and then edited and mixed at Amman Studios).
Black Sea is Fennesz’s 4th solo album for touch and his first since Venice in 2004.

“Black Sea is the much-anticipated new album from Christian Fennesz, his first since “Venice” [Touch # TO:53, 2004], about which US magazine Stylus wrote:

“Fennesz does with sound what Stan Brakhage did with film, altering its very fabric and texture, employing disorder and error as forms of communication and expression. He forces you to learn a different method of perception and interpretation, to look beneath the chaos that seems to govern the movements of life and find the patterns beneath.” [Nick Southall]

Fennesz’s career has come a long way since “Instrument”, his debut for Mego in 1995, and his first solo album “Hotel Paral.lel which followed in 1998. “Endless Summer” [Mego, 2001] brought him to a much wider audience and “Venice” underlined his mastery of melody and dissonance. His songs usually embody the skilful application and manipulation of dense sonic textures with a genuine feel for the live, and real-time.

Black Sea features guitars that rarely sound like guitars; the instrument is transformed into an orchestra. Fennesz lists the elements used to make the compositions: “Acoustic and electric guitars, synthesizers, electronics, computers and live-improvising software lloopp.”
On ‘Glide’, Fennesz duets with Rosy Parlane (NZ) [www.rosyparlane.com], whose work is also released on Touch. Fennesz also teams up with eMego artist Anthony Pateras’s (AUS) [http://www.anthonypateras.com], whose prepared piano features on “The Colour of Three”. Fennesz pushes his work into a more classical domain, preferring the slow reveal to Venice’s and Endless Summer’s more song-based structures.

Jon Wozencroft’s artwork makes visible this carefully hidden world resting beneath the surface of “the first impression”. A series of shots, taken in quick succession as the tide recedes, reveals a world of specific activity only visible at a particular time and place, histories appearing and disappearing.

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BBC 2 9pm 15th November 2008

The Fallen is BBC Two’s most ambitious single documentary ever… contains music by Oren Ambarchi, Biosphere, Fennesz, Ryoji Ikeda, Jacob Kirkegaard, BJNilsen, Rosy Parlane and others

This autumn BBC Two remembers every single serviceman and woman who has died while serving with the British Armed Forces in the current conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, in an epic three-hour documentary.

The Fallen, from acclaimed filmmaker Morgan Matthews, spans the last seven years of conflict and will chronicle all those who have died, focusing in detail on the stories of a significant number of these.

With intimate testimonies from families and loved ones, combined with compelling archive, the film acknowledges these individuals’ sacrifices and the effects of grief on those who loved them.

Says Roly Keating, Controller BBC Two: “The Fallen remembers all of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country in the current Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts and we hope will go some way towards creating a televisual memorial.

“It’s a hugely moving and dignified account of what it means to lose someone you love to conflict and wholly worthy of the three hours of primetime television we will be dedicating to it.

“The Fallen reflects the scale and ambition of factual programmes on the channel this season: from a landmark series exploring the hidden world of the planet’s oceans to the painstaking piecing together of what really happened behind closed doors in WWII; from Simon Schama’s historical journey on the American election trail to Bruce Parry’s treacherous and fascinating journey down the Amazon; from Griff Rhys Jones’s startlingly honest look at anger to John Prescott’s personal exploration of Britain’s class system.
The Radio Times (Pick of the Day) writes:

“Harrowing doesn’t begin to describe Morgan Matthews’s extraordinary film. It sets itself a huge task: to commemorate every British serviceman who has died in the Afghanistan and Irag conflicts. It achieves this mostly by talking to surviving family members… The film is mostly about remembering, and the way grief can shred lives and families…”

Yesterday Mike [Touch], and Colin [3BC], visited Delga Press near Rochester in Kent [UK] to check the printing of the CD digipak and LP inner and outer sleeves.

The Heidelberg SM CD printer, valued at over £1 million, is computer controlled and subtle changes can be made to alter and improve the colour grading etc. It was a good experience and certain improvements were made on the spot. Flats were run off for checking and then signed off.

Jon Wozencroft’s images look amazing, particularly on the vinyl edition. Click here to view the Black Sea cover art for both CD and vinyl.

With thanks to Bob, Arthur & James at Delga Press.

Festival Les Borealis

25th November
Touch @ Beaux-Arts Ecole de Caen
26th November

BJNilsen
Hildur I. Gudnadottir
Duet

Installation: Chris Watson – Beyond Ol’ Tokai.
Panel discussion chaired by Mike Harding with Peter Cusack, Tony Myatt & Jana Winderen – Tipping Point.
Presentation & Performance: Jana Winderen.

For further information, visit South Hill Park’s website.

Interzone festival

Touch 25
BJNilsen | Philip Jeck
[duet]

Pitchfork are premiering an exclusive stream of “Saffron Revolution”, from Fennesz’s forthcoming “Black Sea” album, scheduled for release at the end of November [Touch # TO:76, CD and vinyl].

Pitchfork’s Mark Richardson writes: “… this lead track certainly keeps expectations very high. Beginning with some of Fennesz’ trademark neo-industrial gurgles, it folds in bits of guitar and strings rather beautifully, creating a cluster of sound that trembles, seeming to wait for something. And that something moves in gradually in the form of a massive cloud of distortion, a fine white mist of harmonics mixed with a dark undercurrent of rumbling bass. The tension between these elements is so well balanced, each individual element remaining in the mix even as the sound field becomes impossibly dense, that it’s no surprise that it takes a while to get it just right. And as it begins to draw down about five minutes in, you can’t help but wish that another full Fennesz album was following behind it. Soon.”

Preview “Saffron Revolution” on www.pitchforkmedia.com by clicking here.

FACT Magazine’s Kiran Sande conducted an extensive interview with Touch founder Jon Wozencroft for their August/September 2008 issue.

Sande writes, “Touch is an example to us all of what can be achieved with collaboration, commitment and an intelligent sense of restraint, or, more accurately, control. Twenty-seven after its inception, the singularity of Touch’s vision, and the multitude of ideas contained therein, is as remarkable as ever. Its history of responding to change, and seriously evolving, without ever giving in to the petty comings and goings of fashion, is infinitely admirable; in contemporary audio-visual art, its successful synthesis of style and substance is without parallel.”

The interview is now available to read online in the Touch Archive and also at www.factmagazine.co.uk, where it is illustrated with images from the Wozencroft archive and augmented by streaming audio samples from key Touch artists.

Published quarterly, and available for free from independent record stores and selected clothing outlets in the UK and Europe, FACT is a music and street culture magazine, comprising of features that fully dispense with spin – a platform for talented young musicians, artists, designers and more…

An unexpected pleasure is to be found within the pages of the October 08 issue of Mojo magazine. Two Touch artists feature at positions two and three of the Mojo Top 10 playlist: Lawrence English’s “Organs Lost At Sea” and “Cima Verde” by Chris Watson.
Lawrence English’s album, “Kiri No Oto” can be found in the TouchShop. Chris Watson’s “Cima Verde” is available via Touch’s distributors, Kudos, and can be purchased via www.kudosrecords.co.uk. To purchase his Touch editions click here.

The 13th Happy New Ears “festival de musique nouvelle” in Courtrai, Belgium runs from 13 September – 28 September 2008. Touch artists in performance include Philip Jeck, appearing on 20 September. The weekend before, on 13 September, there is a performance of Labyrinthitis by Jacob Kirkegaard. Jacob is also a member of the freq_out collective who present their freq_out 7 installation during the festival and also perform on the 13 September as THE FREQ_OUT ORCHESTRA.

In their wisdom, Post Office Ltd. have seen fit to close our local Post Office. For many years now, Touch has despatched goods using the Balham Sub Post Office in Balham High Road, London. They are throwing a party to say goodbye on 29th August 2008 at 1300 HRS.

Do come and help see them off and wish them all the best for the future. They have been fantastically supportive over the past 21 years+ and will be sorely missed.

Post Office Ltd. have behaved shockingly badly in their treatment of this Post Office, and the staff have our every sympathy. It has been a horrid time for them.

Bring a bottle to: Balham High Rd Sub P.O, 258, Balham High Rd, London, SW17 7AW

[You can read more about Post Office closures here and at Herry’s blog here]

“Recovery” is a collector’s limited edition vinyl box set of 20 cover versions by 20 seminal electronic musicians and composers, issued by Fractured Recordings. Published as a numbered limited edition of 500, the box contains 10 double A-side 7″s, alongside unique cover designs by artist Graham Dolphin.

It is the result of an invitation, extended to a group of leading electronic artists, to create a cover version of a song from the past that holds a particular significance to them. The outcome is an extraordinary and unexpected series of tributes and appropriations of classic hits from the 70s, 80s and 90s, recorded by artists renowned for their inimitable style and seminal contribution to contemporary musical innovation.

Several Touch-related artists are included in this project: Fennesz, BJNilsen, Mika Vainio, Snd, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ryoji Ikeda, People Like Us, and more…

“Recovery” is available to buy online at www.fracturedrecordings.com

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In today’s Guardian, Pascal Wyse and Alexis Petridis pick their favourite internet radio stations. Wyse writes: “Touch, an independent arts organisation that turned 25 last year, is home to artists such as Christian Fennesz, Biosphere and Chris Watson. Touch Radio features challenging and entertaining material, including field recordings, interviews and live performances. There are audio diaries from Chris Watson, where he illuminates his work as a wildlife sound recordist in the Galapagos Islands, taking in the Alcedo volcano. If you are truly tired of words by this stage, you will find an antidote in Touch Radio 10: The Bits Inbetween by Vicki Bennett, whose own show on WFMU, a glorious mashup, will leave you in a spin.

“… Shaughnessy’s book is not an act of mourning for a lost era of great cover art, but a celebration of those labels whose designs have thrived in the digital era. Foremost amongst these are Touch and Ghost Box. The identity of these labels has been defined by their cover designers, Jon Wozencroft and Julian House. Touch began in the early ‘80s, but its tactile aesthetic – it conceived of itself as an ‘audio-visual’ label – meant that it was never going to succumb to the digital tendency towards decoupling sound from images. Wozencroft’s cover photographs – austerely, impersonally beautiful shots – do not so much illustrate the music of Touch artists such as Fennesz, Oren Ambarchi and Philip Jeck as they set a tone for how it can be heard. …”

Click here to read the full review online at frieze.com