JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON

Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson is widely known for his film soundtracks, including the acclaimed ‘The Theory of Everything’, for which he won a Golden Globe and was nominated for Oscar, BAFTA and Grammy awards.

His tried and tested combination of classical compositions with electronic music was to be heard on highly-praised albums; his debut ‘Englabörn’ (Touch, 2002), ‘Virðulegu Forsetar’ (Touch, 2004), ‘IBM 1401, A User’s Manual’ (4AD, 2006), ‘Fordlândia’ (4AD, 2008) and more recently ‘Orphée’ (DM, 2016).

Jóhannsson passed away unexpectedly earlier this year, in his apartment in Berlin, at the age of 48.

www.abconcerts.be/en/agenda/events/in-remembrance-of-johann-johannsson-virulegu-forsetar/20870/

TRIBUTE: IN REMEMBRANCE OF JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON

Together with Adam Wiltzie (A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Stars of the Lid), a close friend, and under the approving eye of Jóhannsson’s management, great care has been taken in selecting a programme, line-up, location and date. Touch is honoured to have been invited to provide the soundtrack (live) either side of the main event.

THE PROGRAMME: ‘VIRÐULEGU FORSETAR’

On the programme: a complete performance of ‘Virðulegu Forsetar’, Jóhann Jóhannsson’s second album, which was released in 2004 as the successor to his debut ‘Englabörn’. ‘Virðulegu Forsetar’ means as much as ‘eminent presidents’ and also served at the time as soundtrack for an expo about … euh … presidents. ‘Virðulegu Forsetar’ is a stately, minimalistic composition in four parts with a duration of about 60 minutes. The instrumentation consists of 11 brass players, percussion, organ and piano. Until now, the album has only been performed live twice (The first was at Ultima, Oslo and then in the famous Hallgrímskirkja, Reykjavik, the place where Jóhann’s funeral was held.)

THE LOCATION: THE CHURCH OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST AT THE BÉGUINAGE

For the location of the concert, it was a deliberate choice to opt for a church, and then specifically the Church of Saint John The Baptist at the Béguinage. No coincidence, as Adam Wiltzie fell for the acoustics there after a previous successful concert with his band Stars of the Lid.

LINE-UP

Adam Wiltzie (electro/organ) – who is also to be heard on diverse soundtracks by Jóhannsson – put together the line-up with the greatest of care. Although it is still a work in progress, aside from Wiltzie, Skúli Sverrisson (bass/electro) and conductor Guðni Franzson will join the band. Both were to be heard on ‘Virðulegu Forsetar’. Belgian Brass was selected for the wind instruments, they had already been invited by Jóhannsson for the live performance of his album ‘The Miners’ Hymns’ (130701, 2011).

DATE: 19.09.2018

There’s no such thing as coincidence, as even the date has been chosen with care. On September 19 Jóhannsson would have turned 49

CD + full album download – 11 tracks – 47:06

Release date: 7th September 2018

Ecce Homo explores the lighter and darker shades of the human psyche, behaviour and existence, and humanity’s ability to create beauty and destruction. What lies in the essence of such complexity has become a core idea for the album, while Gorgun seeks to figure out if there is a true meaning to being human, and human being.

Starting with “Neroli” as a human fascination with nature and finalising with “To Cross Great Rivers”; the album reflects the contemplations of a spectator being exposed to the human civilization, and witnessing human activity, including his/her own.

Trying to acquire a glimpse of the various layers of human flesh and bones, the sound of the album aims to present a diversity of the sonic spectrum, with tracks varying between ambient and noisy landscapes.

Track Titles:

1. Neroli – you can listen to this track here
2. Afterburner
3. Tserin Dopchut
4. Le Sacre l
5. Le Sacre ll
6. Bohemian Grove
7. Seneca
8. Knightscope K5
9. Reverance
10. Mileva
11. To Cross Great Rivers

All tracks recorded and mixed by Ipek Gorgun, Istanbul 2016 – 2018
Mastered by Denis Blackham @ Skye
Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft

Pitchfork: “The Turkish sound artist balances technical precision, emotional potency, and trenchant cultural critique on an album whose individual sounds are as compelling as their widescreen narratives.”

Beach Sloth: “A truly unusual and downright beautiful intersection of the experimental and emotional, Ipek Gorgun’s “Ecce Homo” is a true triumph.”

You can read all reviews here

Artist Biography

Ipek Gorgun is an electronic music composer currently enrolled in the doctoral program of Sonic Arts at Istanbul Technical University’s Center for Advanced Studies in Music. After graduating from Bilkent University with a degree in Political Science, she completed her Master’s studies in Philosophy at Galatasaray University.

As one of the participants of the Red Bull Music Academy in 2014, she performed in Tokyo as an opening artist for Ryoji Ikeda’s “Test Pattern No: 6” and joined Otomo Yoshidide for a collective improvisation project.

​As a bass player and vocalist for projects and bands such as Bedroomdrunk and Vector Hugo between 2001-2013, she also performed in an opening gig for Jennifer Finch from L7 and Simon Scott from Slowdive, as well as performing live with David Brown from Brazzaville. She has released two EPs with Bedroomdrunk, entitled “This is What Happened (2003)” and “Raw (2007)”.

​Besides group projects and solo performances, she also composed the soundtrack for the documentary ‘Yok Anasinin Soyadi (Mrs. His Name) directed by Hande Cayir in 2012, portraying Turkish women’s struggle for keeping their original surnames after marriage.

​Her debut album Aphelion was self-released in February, 2016 and is reissued by Touch in December, under the TOUCHLINE catalogue. In 2017 she released a collaborative album from Halocline Trance, with Canadian producer Ceramic TL (aka Egyptrixx) entitled “Perfect Lung”, and a mini-album with the Italian electroacoustic duo, Alberi.

Aside from many performances following these albums, she also performed in Sonar Istanbul (2017), BBC Radio 3’s “Open Ear” at LSO St. Luke’s (2018) and opened for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Oggimusica Acousmonium with an electronic rework of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” (2018).

Ipek Gorgun also practices performance, street and abstract photography. She won the IPA honorable mention award in 2013-14 with her work entitled “Bubblegun Daydreamer” and in 2013, she worked as the advertisement photographer for Contemporary Istanbul Art fair.

Available to preorder from Bandcamp now
www.ipekgorgun.com

Philip Jeck transforms the space

Simon Scott, in the element

Friday 24th August
1900 Touch Movements
2300 Philip Jeck

Saturday 25th August
1900 Touch Movements
2300 Simon Scott

Location: PLARTWO

todaysfestival.com

Mark Van Hoen
Geneva Skeen
Zachary Paul
rough music

Doors at 8pm

Coaxial

DL – 1 track – 18:29

Release date: 27th July 2018

Grace begins with a 12 string acoustic guitar fed into a modular synthesiser that spits out beautiful grains of sound that rise and fall like the sun. Textures build up and then slip away leaving a pipe organ playing and the church room recordings sonically revealing passing cyclists, rainfall and Cambridge bus station. It shimmers like an oscillating river until the strings fade and the final third section slips in and a deep organ tone leads the tapestry of sound into field recordings, strings and processed instruments. The contact mics on the organ pipes are heard, floorboards and unidentified human sounds appear and the alarm call of a blackbird seeps into the piece.

Written recorded, mixed and mastered by Simon Scott at SPS in Cambridge. Strings performed and recorded in Glendale, California by Charlie Campagna (‘cello) and Zachary Paul (viola and violin).
Pipe organ recorded at The Unitarian Church, Cambridge, UK.

Thanks to Charlie Campagna, Zachary Paul, Andrew Brown and Jeannie Witty.

Artwork & photography: Jon Wozencroft

Track listing:

1. Grace – you can listen to an extract here

Available to order from Bandcamp now
www.simonscott.org

1130pm – 230am

In partnership with Fulcrum Arts, this special Sleepless: The Music Center After Hours celebrates the relationship of science and art, reimagining the role of artist as the scientist and transforming The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in powerful new ways.

Explore the intersection of science and art, as this distinct Sleepless connects the two disciplines in a dynamic evening featuring exhibitions, performance art, live music performances, DJ sets, installations and more. Stay up and discover the art of science.

1. Field Recording Exhibition
Dial in to hear field recordings from Chris Watson and Jana Winderen at the Sleepless Phone Booths.

2. Slow Sound
Plug into this headphone experience with live sets from Zachary Paul and Jasmin Blasco.

Curated by Fulcrum Arts

https://www.musiccenter.org/tickets/events-by-the-music-center/sleepless/

CD – 7 tracks – 41:44

Release date: 6th July 2018

OZMOTIC is a multidisciplinary artistic project, deeply fascinated by the dynamics of contemporary society, by architecture, cities and vast uncontaminated spaces.

OZMOTIC creates world sounds characterized by an intense tonal variety and a refined rhythmic research. The interaction between electronic music and digital visual art in

real time is an essential trait of OZMOTIC’s aesthetic.

Having previously collaborated with Fennesz, Murcof, Bretschnider and Senking, “Elusive Balance” is their third album, following “AirEffect” in 2015, and “Liquid Times” in 2016 (both for FolkWisdom). OZMOTIC now release their debut album for Touch.

Mastered by Denis Blackham
Artwork & photography: Jon Wozencroft

Watch their video for “Being” on Vimeo

Track listing:

1. Elusive Balance
2. Hum
3. Pulsing
4. Lymph
5. Being
6. Whisper
7. Insecting

CONCEPT

“Elusive Balance” explores the relationship between humans and nature, as well as the search for balance between these two great entities.

The theme of equilibrium and its precariousness, and its natural tendency to achieve relative stability connects all living things. Equilibrium is also a junction point and evolutionary engine – unstable and elusive, ready to deteriorate and to start a new reaction mechanism bringing organisms to a new harmony.

“Beauty is a rare and fleeting thing; it oftencorresponds to those phases where we can grasp that unstable equilibrium which exists between us and the world at large.”

THE ALBUM

Musically the album seeks resolution of sound contrasts, in a continuous search for an emotional component that gives simultaneously a feeling of tension and stillness.

There is a duality between the ‘organic’components (represented by soprano sax and percussion) and their interaction with machinesand computers.

In “Elusive Balance”, OZMOTIC investigate the essence of their sound to expand its emotional and compositional potential. Each track contains a search for a synthesis between sound elements apparently distant from each other, but in reality create a new balance – as poetic as it is musical.

The album’s seven tracks draw a sonic flow in which the melodic aspects are countered by glitchesand angular sounds, and the ambient passages are subjected to heavy rains of rhythm, leaving space for dreamlike moments.

Available to order from Bandcamp now
www.ozmotic.it

Mark Aitken examines the relationship between photography and sound. This week in
the last edition of the series, Jon Wozencroft from Touch offers a synthesis between his photography and music from the label he founded. We delve into sounds and images from the recently published Touch Movements, including Chris Watson, Philip Jeck and Eleh.

https://resonancefm.com/schedule/2018-06-11

Touch Presents….
Doors: 21:00 Start: 21:00

Mark Van Hoen
Mark Van Hoen is a British electronic music artist. He has just released his new solo album, “Invisible Threads” on Touch. Pitchfork said, “Musically, Van Hoen belongs to a distinguished family tree. Originally influenced by the likes of Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream, and later presaging both Autechre’s glitch and Boards of Canada’s pastoral IDM.”
markvanhoen.bandcamp.com/
www.markvanhoen.com/

Sohrab 
Sohrab was born in Tehran in 1984. He was seven when the Iran-Iraq war ended. His name, from an old poem called ‘Shahname’, means ‘rouge water’, which can also mean ‘blood’. He started a punk band with his brother and a friend, which lasted about two years before splitting… He was totally isolated in Iran, so he left (if only it was that easy) and now resides in Germany.
touch33.net/artists/sohrab

Jasmin Blasco 
Jasmin Blasco (b.1981) is a multi-disciplinary artist who approaches time-based media as the site where sound, image, and language conspire to generate fictions. Through a process of research and abstraction, his practice stages the individual in problematic narratives. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
jasminblasco.com/

Marta De Pascalis
Marta De Pascalis (Rome, 1987) is an Italian composer living and working in Berlin. Her solo works employ analog synthesis and tape loops, incorporating free playing into steady, repetitive patterns. She has produced two albums of Berlin School minimal synth excursions: the self-released Quitratue (2014) and Anzar (The Tapeworm, 2016). Her new piece ‘Her Core’ will be published on spring 2018 by The Wormhole.
www.martadepascalis.com/

++DJ v93r
++++Secret special guest

Tickets

Monarch

CD – 14 tracks – 63 minutes

Release date: 25th May 2018

Track listing:

CD – 7 tracks – 39:51

Release date: 25th May 2018

Track listing:

1 Weathered
2 Dark Night Sky Paradox
3 Opposite Day
4 The Yes_No Game
5 Aethēr
6 Flight Of Fancy
7 Instable

All titles composed and recorded by Mark Van Hoen in Los Angeles 2016
Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

In mid 2016 I did a brief tour of the west coast with Philip Jeck, Simon Scott, Daniel Mensche, Lee Bannon, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Pye Corner Audio and Marcus Fischer. The music of all these great artists and the experience of playing these shows with them all informed what would become ‘Invisible Threads’ which was primarily composed and recorded in the latter half of 2016. I had not played live at dates in such a dense cluster for many years, and the exposure to so much great music and the artists was inspiring. Other Touch artists were also an influence here – Claire M Singer, Jana Winderen and as ever Chris Watson (who has been an enduring influence from the moment I first heard Cabaret Voltaire in 1979)… along with my project ‘drøne’ with Mike Harding… the collaborative aspect of drøne brought up a few new paths in itself.

During the time I was recording the album I was editing audio and sound design for films – this too went some way to defining the structure and sound of ‘Invisible Threads’. At the time of recording several of the titles on the album, I had re-read ‘The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion’, a short story by Edgar Allen Poe… and in some ways this record is a soundtrack to that.

The title ‘Invisible Threads’ refers to the intangible connection between all of the musical and personal influences that brought this record into being.

Instrumentation/sound sources

Modular synthesizer notably using modules manufactured by Make Noise, The Harvestman & Mutable Audio
Software – Ableton Live, Pro Tools and many plugins – heavily used were Max, Soundhack and Native Instruments’ Reaktor & Kontakt
Sound libraries from Spitfire Audio.
Fender Rhodes piano, Fender Jaguar guitar. Farfisa Organ, Vox continental.
Notably no analogue synthesizers were used on this album – probably the first time I’ve made a record without them since ‘Aurobindo: Involution’ in 1994
A few field recordings made on my very modest Zoom H4n recorder (mainly domestic sounds) made it onto the record
Some ‘found’ sources also are present, mainly from vinyl records and YouTube.

Available to order in Bandcamp now
www.markvanhoen.com

“The Work and the Living”
Thursday 10th May 7.50–9.00PM
Gasworks, London

For the RCA, Curating Contemporary Art event “Who Cares? A radio tale”.
Presented by Jon Wozencroft, Visual Communication/Experimental Communication

resonancefm.com

Fennesz – Station One
2 track digital only release
Order now on Bandcamp

Artwork & photography: Jon Wozencroft

Tracklisting:

1. Tom
2. Silk Road

“Tom” was previously released on the modeselektor vol.3 compilation in 2014. Please see here:
www.monkeytownrecords.com/releases/modeselektion-vol-03/

“Silk Road” (formerly “Silk Lane”) was part of an installation for The Red Bull Music Academy, New York City in 2016. it was only played once in a loop for a whole day and has never been released.

The tracks have been reworked, slightly remixed and remastered at kaiserstudios in Vienna in April 2018.

Fennesz is recording a new album for Touch to be released later in 2018.

Philip Jeck – Arcade
digital only release
Order now on Bandcamp

Recorded live at Iklectik, London on March 23rd 2018. Also playing that night were Yann Novak and Simon Scott
Artwork & photography: Jon Wozencroft

Track listing:

1. Arcade 32.:56 – you can hear an extract here

This show is now sold out

Philip Jeck
Yann Novak
Simon Scott
Touch

iklectikartlab.com

CD – 4 tracks – 78:40 minutes

Release date: 4th May 2018 (North America) | 18th May 2018 (Rest of World)

Track listing:

1. Aeternus
2. Perpetuum
3. Immortalis
4. Semper Liber

‘Semper Liber’ consists of a series of duets featuring Marcus Davidson, Hildur Gudnadottir, Mike Harding, Charles Matthews, Clare M Singer, Maia Urstad and Anna von Hausswolff and are drawn from recordings made at Spire events since 2009. Mixed by its curator, Mike Harding, at the Völlhaus, and mastered by Mark Van Hoen, this powerful 4 track collection – to be played as one piece – explores the sonics of the mighty organ in all its thundering glory. 

***WARNING! EXTREMELY LOW FREQUENCIES (BASS) MAY CAUSE DISTORTION ON HEADPHONES/COMPUTER SPEAKERS!***

Performed on the 1893 Schlag & Söhne organ at Johanneskirken, Bergen; the 1967 Karl Ludwig Schuke organ at Passionskirche, Berlin; the Peter Bares organ, inaugurated in 2004, at Kunststation St Peter, Cologne; the 1885 ‘Father’ Henry Willis organ at Lincoln Cathedral; the 1877 ‘Father’ Henry Willis organ at Union Chapel, London; the Rieger organ at St. Stephan’s Church, Mautern & the 1897 Johnson & Son organ at St. Saviour’s Anglican Church, Riga between 2009 and 2016

The 4 colour plates by the art historian and author Sydney Russell show cave art from 4 to 6 thousand years ago. Taken in Brazil on one of several expeditions she made around the world, these highly emotional works reveal the sophistication and ageless quality of the imagination of the peoples who were expressing themselves at this time; they have been slow to reveal their beauty to us, having survived all weathers; their acoustic soundtrack unfolds slowly, submersive and involving.

Sydney Russell writes: “These photographs were taken in 1976 in Brazil. We eventually obtained minimum radio carbon datings for levels covering the paintings from approximately 3750-2500 BCE. They originate from the rock shelter sites of Sucupira, (Lagoa Santa) and Lapa do Cipo (Santana do Riacho), near Minas Gerais and Quadrillas (Montalvania), Bahia. Please refer to the website for more information.”

Mixed at the Völlhaus
Mastered by Mark Van Hoen
Photography by Sydney Russell
Artwork by Philip Marshall

Editor’s additional note: It really DOES matter what equipment you play this audio work on… I have tried several and there is a huge difference; best results are obtained with a high quality CD + speaker system with separate subwoofer.

Order The Eternal Chord – “Semper Liber” [CD + Download] in Bandcamp
www.spire.org.uk

Today, 11th March, is the official 36th 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…

Download only – 9 tracks – Available from the Touch Bandcamp page

Release date: 1st March 2018

Available from the Touch Bandcamp page

Jon Wozencroft is a Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art responsible for sound, moving image and photography on the Visual Communication programme, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary structures. He holds monthly, cross-college, sound seminars that explore the invisible aspects of art and design practice.

mailchi.mp/42b0eda17d1c/jon-wozencroft-is-in-wild-air