Biosphere
Chris Watson ｬ BJNilsen – Storm

Live @ The Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol

Touch is Beatport’s [USA] Label of the Week. Beatport write: “Amassing an impressive body of work over the last 25 years, Touch is host to several of today’s pioneers in electronic listening music. Biosphere, Mark Van Hoen/Locust, Chris Watson, Philip Jeck, Fennesz are among their current catalog artists…”

A full programme for this festival can be found here

‘THE SOUND OF SANCTUARY’, an installation will appear at Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, throughout the festival.

Tropical rain forests hold a special place in our imaginations. They sustain myriad life forms yet retain a mysterious sense of presence. A place of marvels where we sometimes fear to tread. Chris Watson, one of the world’s greatest sound artists and sound recordists has produced, in real time, ‘The Sound of Sanctuary’, re-creating the sounds and atmosphere to be experienced at sunrise in the Amber Mountain rain forest of Northern Madagascar within the beautiful acoustics of Holy Trinity church at Goodramgate. This will be a contemplative installation which combines some of the common elements of these two very different sites to produce an inspiring and reflective soundscape. The internal architecture and sound of Holy Trinity has similarities to the deep forest acoustic of dense tropical rain forest. Specially recorded location surround sound will fill the space and immerse the listener in the slow drip of time. The sounds of one ancient place played in another. Come inside and take a walk in one of the most remarkable habitats on earth.

‘MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS’ – LIVE, at the Marquee in Parliament Street on 13th September 2007

The Kalahari desert is a vast open space where over 85% of the wildlife is nocturnal. After sunset the dunes, grasses and thorn bushes are patrolled by an alien empire – the insects. ‘Midnight at the Oasis’ presents an un-seen soundscape from a beautiful and hostile environment. In a live mixing Chris Watson, one of the world’s greatest sound artists and sound recordists, will create a 20 minute time compression from sunset to sunrise in South Africa’s Kalahari desert. Within the neutral acoustic space of a canvass marquee in the centre of York the listener will be transported and then surrounded by the unique and delicate nocturnal sonic detail recorded in this remote habitat.

A rare viewing of Jon Wozencroft’s film ‘Liquid Music’, produced for Christian Fennesz’s live performances, can be seen at Faster Than Sound on 9th June 2006. This installation will be shown with a selected edited audio track from a Fennesz concert.

The DVD remains unreleased…

Philip Jeck also performed – here is a review of his set:
from k-punk:

Philip Jeck – a godfather of sonic hauntology, of whose work I was shamefully ignorant until last weekend. Using two turntables and a magic-box of effects which defamiliarise the vinyl source material to the point of near-abstraction, Philip reconceives DJing as the art of producing sonic phantasmagoria. The occasional recognizable fragment (the Byrds, Mantovani-like lite classical kitsch, sonic objet as made all the more alluring by their partial submersion) thrillingly bobs up out of the whooshing delirium-stream. As he performs, Philip leans over his machines with a look of tender melancholy (perfectly captured in Jon Wozencroft’s picture, above), almost as if he is tending a dying puppy.
Earlier in the evening, there was a duet from Hildur Guadtir & BJNilsen.

Here is what kpunk says about their set:

“Hildur Gudnadottir first to perform in the ‘Multi-National Circle’, an outdoor concrete circle adjacent to a runway, Hildur overcame the unceremonious conditions in which she was asked to play (she wasn’t introduced, and the late afternoon sunlight threatened to dissipate any atmosphere) with a performance of sombre rapture, her cello multiple tracked (with live playing augmented by laptop loops) into a slow sonic ocean sound whose ebbs and flows were shifted expertly around the six speakers of the ultravivid PA by BJNilsen. Hildur achieved something akin to the dark tranquility about which Dominic writes so eloquently, the suspension of all urgencies in a viscously tactile sound that gives the illusion of being poised on the edge of stasis (perhaps it’s no accident that Xasthur use cello).”

There is also a review in the Financial Times

Tate Etc.

“With every year that passes, Joy Division seem less like the transmitter of their own era’s geist than the medium through which the ghosts of a dead future – our present – first made their sepulchural voices heard.” k-punk

Touch is appearing at Faster than Sound…

A performance by Philip Jeck and an audio-visual installation by Jon Wozencroft will take place on 9th June 2007 at Bentwaters Airbase, Suffolk, as part of the Aldeburgh Festival.
A festival on the airbase in the most secretive airbase in the UK. For a one day only the Airbase where Spacecadets were filmed and the Rendlesham UFO sighting took place will be open to the public. Faster Than sound is a sound experiment joining the dots between musical genres and digital art forms. The Festival will provide public access to the previous inaccessible Bentwaters Airbase. Come and join us in a celebration of light and sound across the cold war buildings of the space.

Faster Than sound is a sound experiment joining the dots between musical genres and digital art forms. Artists from various backgrounds will collaborate and explore the worlds of electronic music genres, contemporary classical practice and interactive visual arts. A range of immersive installations, musical collaborations, a wireless walk in the woods, illuminated cold war buildings and a large dome filled with inspiring sounds will make this a day you won’t forget for a long time. Allow yourself to be taken somewhere you’ve never been before to experience the unexpected.

There is an article on the death of the audio cassette here and recycling suggestions for your old cassettes…

Last night Oren Ambarchi played in front of 40,000 in Melbourne with Red Hot Chilli Peppers… watch this space for photos…

A feature on him can be read here

The Atmospheres Festival takes place in London, from Monday October 22nd to Friday October 26th 2007. Tickets can be purchased for individual days or as a festival pass for the 3 days hosted by Touch from the TouchShop

Days 1 and 5 are hosted by The Museum of Garden History
Days 2, 3 and 4 are hosted by Touch for Touch 25 – the 25th anniversary of Touch [1981/2 – 2006/7]
There are various events over days 2, 3 & 4 of the festival in two different locations:

Tuesday October 23rd – Day 2: Touch 25 @ The Bedford Arms, Balham, London SW12
2000 – 0000
Chris Watson presents…
BJNilsen
Special guest to be confirmed…
Biosphere
People Like Us plays…

Wednesday October 24th – Day 3: The Museum of Garden History, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1
2000 – 2300
Storm: Chris Watson ｬ BJNilsen
Biosphere

Thursday October 25th – Day 4: The Museum of Garden History, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1
1230 – 1400
Free lunchtime event:
Jon Wozencroft & Mike Harding interview and present the work of the Touch artists performing at Atmospheres
1930 – 2300
Concert by Biosphere, Chris Watson & BJNilsen [Chris Watson’s performance incorporates work submitted by those who attended the workshop on day one]
More details will be announced in the Touch NewsLetters…

Songs of the Earth

From marching insects to the fury of a North Sea storm, Chris Watson conjures up worlds in your ear, says Mike Barnes

“When I was in the Kalahari Desert a few weeks ago, I said that I was looking forward to being cold again, as it was 45 degrees out there,” says Chris Watson, peering through the chilly darkness, his face dimly lit by the level-meters of his sound recording equipment. “But now that seems quite an attractive proposition.” We are standing on a wooded slope in the Simonside Hills in Northumbria, a half-hour drive from his Newcastle home; the time is 5am and it’s raining. It’s also the first time Watson — best known for his Bafta-nominated documentary sound recordings for David Attenborough’s The Life of Birds — has used his new surround-sound recording system in the UK, and he’s come here to record the songs of resident birds before migrants arrive in the spring.

“This site is sheltered and has an ambience which is different, or better than other places along the track,” he explains. “It’s difficult to characterise, but it’s got something special about it.” Monitoring through his head-phones, he notes that the incredibly sensitive microphones — separated from us by 30 yards of cable — are picking up the sound of a group of tawny owls. A minute into the recording there’s a loud bang from a farmer’s bird scarer. But Watson is philosophical. “You come out and there’s always an element of the unexpected,” he says. “That’s what I like about it, so there’s no point moaning.” As the rain slowly clears, he finally gets his recording: a chorus of robin, songthrush, mistle thrush, chaffinch and dunnock.

Watson’s work for TV, film and radio has taken him all over the world and some of his recordings have been released on CD — some have even been remixed by other artists. He has lowered a microphone deep into a crevasse on the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland to capture the crackings and groanings of the moving ice; he has miked up the ribs of a zebra carcass in Kenya, then waited for vultures to fly down and tear it to pieces. He also works on a micro scale, and one of the most extraordinary moments of Attenborough’s Life in the Undergrowth TV series was hearing the sound of tiny insect feet walking across a leaf. “I’ve got this strange military device that you can fix on to the underside of the leaf. It’s like a needle and it picks up sound vibration through the substrate.”

This fascination with “putting microphones where you wouldn’t normally put your ears” dates back to his parents buying him a portable tape recorder when he was 11.
“I could see the birds on the bird table through my parents’ kitchen window,” Watson recalls. “It was like a silent film: you could see all the action but you couldn’t hear it. So I put the microphone on the table, ran inside and waited for the birds. When I played it back, I’d never heard anything like it. It was a different sonic world. It was completely absorbing.”
Back in the late 1970s, Watson was a member of the Sheffield group Cabaret Voltaire, leading lights of the postpunk experimental scene. Inspired by Brian Eno, he experimented with electronics and tapes, including recordings from TV and radio.
Watson left in 1981 and formed the more avant-garde Hafler Trio, in which he further explored tape manipulation. He also worked for Tyne Tees Television, then as a sound recordist for the RSPB.

These days he is fascinated by the possibilities in editing, sequencing and layering recordings he makes in the field. “In film you compress any time-scale down into 90 minutes or so, and I began to think about sound in that cinematic way. I felt that I could create something that was successful in conveying that sense of place, while condensing it into something that was interesting to listen to and had a narrative.”

Wind and rain, he says, are two of the most difficult things to record well. Both feature on his recent CD, Storm — a collaboration with the Swedish soundscaper BJNilsen — along with the calls of wading birds, crashing waves and the eerie songs of seals. The piece, immensely powerful at times, follows the passage of weather systems from the North East coast over to the coast of Sweden.

Storm lasts 56 minutes but covers something like 36 hours in the movement of these low-pressure fronts”, Watson explains. “The main thing I like is that it’s effectively a story or a journey, rather than something that’s completely abstract. I like its international flavour: sounds that start here and end up in another country.”

Watson and Nilsen have also devised a way of performing Storm as a live event in surround-sound. “I want to include a bit more randomness, so I’ve got a lot of elements of different sound sources, which I’ll mix in at different times,” he says. “It will follow the same pattern, like a band getting up and playing the same numbers, but even though the events are prerecorded, it will sound different every time. I like that idea — for me it’s a really good way forward.”

Instinct – ITV1 [UK]
Monday & Tuesday, 9pm on February 26th and 27th 2007
Written by Lizzie Mickery
Directed by Terry McDonough
Produced by Tightrope Pictures

A 2-part thriller starring Anthony Flanagan [Cracker], Tom Ward [Silent Witness], Jaye Griffiths [Doctors] & Christine Bottomley [The Innocence Project]

This character-driven crime thriller introduces a new, contemporary detective to ITV…
The credit “Music Design: Touch” – work from Touch artists, [including Biosphere, Rafael Toral and BJNilsen] features in Instinct. The composition work is by Tim Philips [Shameless]. A trailer can be viewed here

There is a feature on Chris Watson in today’s edition of The Guardian by Pascal Wyse. The full text can be read here

A not-to-be-missed event takes place on 20th January 2007 in York, England.

Featuring Fennesz, Philip Jeck & BJNilsen, organists Charles Matthews & Marcus Davidson, and soloists John Beaumont, Robert Millner & Amy Moore. Prior to the main concert, there will also be an installation by Leif Inge, featuring a 4 hour version of his installation using Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor [He stretched the piece, with no pitch distortions, by using either the Snd or the Common Lisp Music software.]

www.spire.org.uk

From the “Moments of 2006” section in The Guardian, Pascal Wyse reports on Carl Michael von Hausswolff‘s performance at Touch 25 Live at The Bedford Arms, London, on 17th October 2006

TRACKS is a project that explores contemporary sound culture and its connections with the past, via a series of meetings, talks, workshops and performances. The project, curated by Daniela Cascella, is part of the Contemporary Arts Programme of the British School at Rome directed by Cristiana Perrella.

On Tuesday 7 November at 9pm, TRACKS will present an evening dedicated to Touch, the London-based audiovisual project which celebrates in 2006 its 25th year of activity. In the first part of the evening, Daniela Cascella and Nicola Catalano will go through the history of Touch by means of a choice of music excerpts from the label’s back catalogue, beginning with the early cassettes published in the 1980’s. A live performance by Swedish musician BJNilsen will follow.

Sainsbury Lecture Theatre, the British School at Rome, via Gramsci 61, Rome

Sunday, 8 pm – SHARE
Share @ Reboot

For the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Touch, Phill Niblock & Jacob Kirkegaard will present their first concert together ever. It’s Halloween eve.

For this concert Niblock & Kirkegaard will be playing some of their solo works simultaneously; Jacob Kirkegaard: excerpts from “4 Rooms” & “Der Hollentrichter”, Phill Niblock: ‘Bells & Timps”, “Aomori Water”, “Trains”

An extraordinary, magical night. Thanks to all who attended who helped make it so.
Photos by Sheikh Ahmed can be seen here and by Scott McMillan here

SightSonic Festival, York, presents Touch 25

Since 2000 SightSonic has presented an annual programme of digital art works by leading international artists. For 2006 SightSonic joins forces with Touch, one of the UK’s leading experimental labels, to celebrate the label’s 25th anniversary. The Touch 25 programme features Touch artists from around the world including Biosphere, Rosy Parlane and BJNilsen, and a welcome return to the festival by Christian Fennesz. We are also presenting a unique opportunity to hear about Touch, its artistic vision, curation, its technical realisation, its use of web technologies and design in a Touch 25 Conference. The conference will include talks and presentations by label curators Jon Wozencroft and Mike Harding, presentations by artists Christian Fennesz, Phil Jeck, audio mastering engineer Denis Blackham and web designer Philip Marshall.

We are also delighted to feature a unique UK performance by Ryoji Ikeda, presented in multi-channel sound at the National Centre for Early Music. Ryoij Ikeda is Japan’s leading electronic composer/artist. He focuses on the minutiae of ultrasonics, frequencies and the essential characteristics of sound itself. For SightSonic he will perform an exclusive audio-only performance of pieces from his last four releases on Touch. [Tony Myatt]

Touch celebrates its 25th anniversary with an evening of live performances in London on Tuesday 17th October 2006. The evening commences at 2000 Hrs.

Appearing live will be:
Fennesz
Philip Jeck
Rosy Parlane
CM von Hausswolff
Touch 25 inc. DJ: Jacob Kirkegaard

The Bedford Arms
77 Bedford Hill, London SW12 9HD
020 8682 8940 www.thebedford.co.uk
[Northern Line Tube/Main line from Victoria or London Bridge]

The Bedford Arms has won many awards and has excellent food and beer.
Numbers are restricted, so we advise you to purchase now to avoid disappointment.

The Art of Pop, presented by Jarvis Cocker, includes an interview with Jon Wozencroft. The 30 minute radio show can be heard here