11.04.17 – Jana Winderen – Daybreak; Kochi (Kerala), India – 38:03 – 320 kbps
This crepuscular recording was made from 4:45am on the 14th December 2016 in the south Indian city of Kochi. I was there to play “Drifting”, a performance at Vasco da Gama Square, for Convening #2 hosted by the TBA21 Academy on the following day.
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23.03.17 – Geneva Skeen & Sarah Rara – Live in Los Angeles – 37:03 – 320 kbps
Live at Human Resources, Los Angeles, February 18, 2017
1. Geneva Skeen – Pop Song 16:48
2. Sarah Rara – Separating the Air 20:12 – Projected Text
For the closing of Yann Novak’s exhibition Repose, Novak invited Geneva Skeen and Sarah Rara to perform inside/alongside his installation. Each artist’s performance was accompanied by the sound of Novak’s installation demonstrated here via a room-recording from the event.
Skeen’s Pop Song is a temporal response to Novak’s drone work, and a cultural response to our times. In harmonizing with Novak’s loop – divided into 3-4 minute segments (the average acceptable length of a pop song) – Skeen’s Pop Song acknowledges that populist times call for populist measures, but refuses populist comfort, acceptance, and pale standards of beauty as means of resistance.
Rara’s Separating the Air: games of listening and learning between voice and computer at the boundary between music and speech. Each part is a device to punctuate silence, divide time, move the air.
Photo: Christopher Wormald
Subscribe to the TouchPod podcast of TouchRadio via the iTunes Music Store
soundcloud.com/geneeeeves
www.sarahrara.com
www.touchradio.org.uk
Today, 11th March, is the official 35th anniversary of the founding of Touch in 1982…
First contact with New Order after their concert at the Newcastle Mayfair on 11th March 1982…
March 4, 2017, 7-9pm
Performances begins at 7:30pm
The Fellows of Contemporary Art
970 N. Broadway, Suite 208
Los Angeles, CA 90012
FREE
The Future Eve, curated by VOLUME member Jared Baxter, explores the relationship between technology and the body and features video, sculpture, drawing, installation and sound by 5 California-based artists:
Robert Crouch – forthcoming album ‘Sublunar’ will be featured
Nicole Phungrasamee Fein
Karen Lofgren
Yann Novak
Dean Smith
The Future Eve is the title of a science fiction novel from 1886 by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. Credited with popularizing the term “android,” its protagonist is a fictionalized Thomas Alva Edison, hailed in a short foreword as the discoverer of “among others, the Telephone, the Phonograph, the Microphone, and those admirable electric light bulbs which have now spread across the earth’s surface.”
The exhibition engages this dual legacy of Villiers’ novel, at once ahead of its time and deeply regressive. On the one hand, The Future Eve’s idealistic, if ideologically tainted, portrayal of the integration of man and machine is contrasted to the present climate, in which authors like economist Robert Gordon have argued that we have entered an era of permanently reduced technological advancement compared to the hundred-year period beginning in 1870. On the other, the sexism latent in the android narrative, highlighted by the example of Villiers’ Edison, is examined in terms of what it can reveal about broader cultural narratives surrounding technology and its relationship to nature, in particular through the latter’s omnipresent synecdoche, the body.
Vinyl LP and download – 2 tracks
Release date: 27th January 2017
Written, recorded and produced by David Knight & Stephen Thrower
Additional production assistance: Ivan Pavlov
Cut by Jason @ Transition
Artwork & Photography: Jon Wozencroft
The International Times Review can be read here
Track listing:
1. Breathe the Snake
2. Pale Salt Seam
UnicaZürn (David Knight and Stephen Thrower).
UnicaZürn build their long, ceaselessly evolving musical compositions through a process of improvisation followed by careful editing and processing. Their music, drawn from subconscious associations while recording, is frequently aquatic or oceanic in overall mood and texture. Knight has spent most of his life living on the banks of the Thames while Thrower resides on the East Sussex coast, and their musical flights of imagination tend toward rolling river dynamics and the open seas of synthesised sound.
For UnicaZürn, tidal imagery, oceanic forms and the slow rhythms of coastal water are a recurring structural presence, with strong associations of rootlessness, of being far away from home, a stranger in a strange land. The inability of human lungs to breathe water endows rivers and seas with a special poetics: a boundary between two different but inter-related states. On the one hand, solidity, clarity, definition; on the other, fluidity, uncertainty, dissolution. The sense of a threshold between opposites gives rise to an elusive otherness, suggesting a portal through which the everyday world can be escaped. Death under the water, the survivors of a lost kingdom clinging to the rocks of an unfamiliar island, a coastal boat ride into deepest abstraction, a deserted beach expressing a world outside reality.
A sexual frisson too: a hovering at the brink, poised at the turbulent edge of pleasure, swept away into oblivion. Do we head toward the sea when we want to escape? And at the coastline, do we walk to the edge because we want to jump, or be swept away by an unexpected wave? There’s a darkness in the sea, even if illuminated by the most dazzling sunshine. Open horizons shows the clutter of our lives to be transient, and as we look to the sea we feel a dizzying sense of the eternal. Aquatic sensibility, oceanic timescales: the action of the salt sea beating on the shore. Each grain of sand a rock smashed to dust. Beaches are cosmic, elemental. They are images of time.
UnicaZürn’s core instrumentation blends analogue synthesiser, mellotron and electric piano with electric guitar and clarinet. Both Thrower and Knight draw upon their love and wide experience of of electronic music, from the outer shores of Stockhausen to the outer spaceways of Tangerine Dream. In addition, Knight is reknowned for his pioneering multi-textured fretwork with Danielle Dax and his ambient guitar settings for Lydia Lunch, while Thrower’s reed playing provided a distinctive melancholy in Coil and emerged as electro-acoustic texture in Cyclobe.
The title “Pale Salt Seam” is drawn from the poem “Night-Song of the Andalusian Sailors” by Federico García Lorca. Parts of “Pale Salt Seam” were recorded live at the Ironmongers Row Baths on 2nd March 2013.
Order Unica Zürn – “Transpandorem” [Vinyl LP] in Bandcamp
www.unicazurn.com
Stephen Thrower and David Knight performed at Café Oto as UnicaZürn on Wednesday 25th January 2017. Their debut album for Touch, Transpandorem (Touch # Tone 57), was released the same week…
You can read a review here in The International Times
Touch presents…
Live at Café Oto
UnicaZürn’s performance at Café OTO saw the core duo of DAVID KNIGHT & STEPHEN THROWER joined by DANIELLE DAX (vocals) and DAVID J. SMITH (percussion).
DANIELLE DAX – singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and mixed-media artist – sang ‘Jack Sorrow’ on the first UnicaZürn LP, ‘Temporal Bends’. Her artworks are featured on the covers of the first UnicaZürn CD, ‘Temporal Bends’ and their recent cassette-only release for the Tapeworm label, ‘Omegapavilion’. This performance will mark her return to live vocals after a decade’s absence.
DAVID J. SMITH is a founder member of the progressive art-rock groups GUAPO and STARGARZER’S ASSISTANT (the latter also featuring David Knight), and percussionist with Stephen Thrower’s group CYCLOBE.
UnicaZürn
with Charles Bullen
“…like Jacques Cousteau meets HP Lovecraft twenty thousand leagues under the sea.” – FREQ Magazine
UnicaZürn emerged in 2009 from the belly of a live-improv’ beast called The Amal Gamal Ensemble. David Knight and Stephen Thrower have worked with the Ensemble since its inception in 2001. UnicaZürn music also has its roots in free improvisation, but the results are then burnished and restructured with intensive studio sculpting.
“Knight and Thrower bring a deep intuition to the performances, allowing treated guitar, saxophone and clarinet to blend with analogue synthesizers, mellotron and organ… Only occasionally does a locked snippet of sound repeat itself enough to suggest anything like an insistent beat” – Ken Hollings, The Wire
Charles Bullen was a member of timeless pre/post-everything trio This Heat. He grew up in Liverpool and after moving to London in the early 70’s he formed the improvising duo Dolphin Logic with Charles Hayward, which later, with the addition of “non-musician” Gareth Williams, became This Heat. After releasing two seminal albums the band split in 1982 and Bullen made an album the following year under the name Lifetones focusing on repetition and a more syncopated dub influenced sound. Earlier this year, after a series of re-issues on Light In The Attic Records, Bullen and Hayward formed This Is Not This Heat, a group assembled to realise and re-imagine the music of This Heat with several musical luminaries from the London experimental music world including Daniel O’Sullivan, Alex Ward, James Sedwards, Alexis Taylor, Frank Byng, John Edwards and Oren Marshall.
Transpandorem
Vinyl LP and download – 2 tracks
Release date: 27th January 2017
Written, recorded and produced by David Knight & Stephen Thrower
Additional production assistance: Ivan Pavlov
Cut by Jason @ Transition
Artwork & Photography: Jon Wozencroft
Track listing:
1. Breathe the Snake
2. Pale Salt Seam
Desert X and VOLUME present an evening of collaborative soundscapes at Ace Hotel
& Swim Club.
STARTS AT 6:00pm
The event will present a quadrophonic sound installation of work by Jana Windren, Chris Watson, Philip Jeck, BJNilsen, Mark Van Hoen, Yann Novak, Achim Mohné and Claire M Singer. The event will will also feature performances by Geneva Skeen and Bethan Kellough that will begin at 7:30pm.
FREE
Ace Hotel & Swim Club
701 E. Palm Canyon Dr.
Palm Springs, CA 92264
This year’s list has been unusually challenging since a number of key labels were in overdrive. Grand projects have multiplied too. So our self-constraining methodology became even more masochistic.
How, to take an especially painful example, to choose between Bethan Kellough’s Aven & Claire M. Singer’s Solas? Two exceptional releases that each expanded notions of sound palettes & what could be done with them, but both on Touch (about whom more shortly…).
& that’s to exclude Yann Novak’s Ornamentation, Simon Scott’s Floodlines, Anna von Hauswolff’s Kallan (Prototype) & Fennesz’s Mahler Remix, despite all four clearly demanding recognitition as part of the year’s ‘best’.
Digital Download – 8 audio tracks – 48′ 23″ + mpg + pdf (1.2Gb)
The link to the .zip can be found in your email receipt [also in your account history]
1. Kairos 5:28
2. Fata Morgana 4:42
3. Bloodbenchers 8:54
4. Lethe 2:54
5. Martyrs 8:22
6. Dendrite 4:20
7. Nightingale 9:20
8. Troubling Speech 3:50 [bonus track]
Kairos video: Noetic Works
PDF photo book: Ipek Gorgun
Recording and Mixing: Ipek Gorgun
Mastering: Barkin Engin
“The dictionary describes aphelion as “the point in the path of a celestial body (as a planet) that is farthest from the sun”, which i reckon is a suitable title since it reminded me of the night time, when I recorded and edited the majority of this work.
The night makes me think about openness and gathering. To me, it is a state of togetherness in which things are allowed to keep their own identity, yet they are covered under the veil of darkness. From time to time we may recognise such things as they are, but the night also evokes the so- called luxury of intuition, helping us become aware of their existence without using our sense of sight.
One might feel that the night has a disturbing, chaotic and uncontrollable character. I can relate to that since it becomes harder to see; our ocularcentric modern ways of living are being challenged. Contrary to the sunlight that helps us divide, analyze and govern, the night tends to reveal our most primitive selves, as well as uncovering our deepest thoughts, untold dreams and memories. In addition, in such state of openness, the lack of light provides more space for the activation of other senses.
This is when hearing becomes so acute – as well as touching and smelling. I still think about smell, but hearing can also be associated with touch, since we are literally touched by sound in the form of waves through space, and they become audible in the range between 20Hz. and 20kHz. The night makes this contact even more obvious.
Such communication is the most intimate that two complete strangers (who will probably not meet again) can be. And I’m once again grateful for my own personal aphelion (2:44 AM, GMT+2) at the moment for helping me write this to you, beloved listener.”
Buy & download Ipek Gorgun – “Aphelion” [.wav + pdf] in the TouchShop – The link to the .zip can be found in your email receipt [also in your account history]
You can read more about TOUCHLINE here
Download only – 1 track – 27′ 34″
Photography by Heitor Alvelos, design by Jon Wozencroft
Release date: 21st October 2016
Track listing and notes:
1. a frequency crescendo in 11 movements 27′ 34″
Heitor Alvelos, digital frequencies
Anselmo Canha, bass, field recordings
Anabela Duarte, treated voice
José Maria Lopes, guitar
Jaime Munárriz, guitar, trumpet, electronics
Jono Podmore, theremin
André Rocha, arduino-activated lemon tree (concert)
“Gravitas” is a studio re-construction and re-consideration of a sound performance that took place at the futureplaces medialab on October 24, 2015, in Porto, Portugal.
Woven and edited by Heitor Alvelos, Oporto, August – September 2016
Mastered by Jono Podmore, Köln, September 2016
The words that bookend the piece belong to Bernadette Martou (1962-2015)
The original plan was to release the gig itself, but a series of technical and aesthetic drawbacks, affecting both the performance and the recording, rendered this undesirable. The state of exhaustion of some of the participants, after a four-day marathon running multiple fronts of the medialab, certainly did not help: yet all reasons boil down to a simple evidence – every performer has at some point found him/herself in a situation where all the ideal ingredients seem to be there, and yet the momentum just does not follow. This was one such evening. It happens.
However, the ingredients remained very much present, and so did the commitment of all involved. A decision was thus made to pay justice to what had not been.
The process towards “Gravitas” rebuilt, the present piece, began with each contributor revisiting their own sounds through their own means, while being allowed to change them further, if desired. One rule applied onstage, and that one rule remained: each individual contribution should be a crescendo from infra-sound to ultra-sound (voice mercifully exempted from this rule). During this second process, individual tracks were not shared with others until finished by each contributor.
The source material was abundant and opened up a wealth of possibilities, as it would; so in good paradoxical fashion, the choice was made to be sparse and surgical in its use, and open up as much of a reflective and introspective mood as possible. The concert recording is also in there, minimally, whenever it made sense for it to be. Other variations of “Gravitas” may surface, as there is substance in much of what was left out; for the time being, however, this is the gig that could have been.
Why “Gravitas”?
Every year since 2008, futureplaces gathers media creatives, thinkers and researchers in an attempt to see and act further beyond the immediate digital allure: firstly by acknowledging that so much of today’s technology has yet to deliver on its promise of personal, social and cultural emancipation, and then by picking up from this evidence in various hands-on fronts. Futureplaces has been a purposefully chaotic meeting point where media research meets citizenship, in contextual, tangible projects that rehearse unorthodox uses for new media. Viral epiphanies, one could say.
This mission, at the core of futureplaces since its inception, observes and interprets current trends and developments. Every year a motto is proposed, an answer to the zeitgeist. Gravitas is, we believe, an antidote to the hallucinatory abandonment and volatility of the present times; a call for wisdom, for grounding and sobriety. And as with a wider set of choice words that seem to have vanished from our vocabulary, it is a largely absent term whose meaning – whose role in our consciousness – has paradoxically never seemed so decisive.
Through gravitas we emerge and soar: thus the journey from infra-sound to ultra-sound. From rootedness to elevation.
Buy & download Gravitas – “a frequency crescendo in 11 movements” [.wav + pdf] in the TouchShop – The link to the .zip can be found in your email receipt [also in your account history]
You can read more about TOUCHLINE here
Compact disc in wallet – 1 track – 49:00
Artwork & photography by Jon Wozencroft
Release date: 11th November 2016
Track listing and notes:
1. Ornamentation
Presented live in Los Angeles. Source material includes field recordings captured throughout the United States and Canada from 2006–2016 and modular synthesizer recordings, all digitally altered.
Yann Novak is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Ornamentation is Novak’s first physical release on Touch and continues his investigations of presence, stillness and mindfulness through the construction of immersive spaces, both literal and figurative. On Ornamentation Novak resists modernism’s problematic relationship to race, class and labour, and attempts to decouple contemporary minimalist sound work from this historical precedent. The title refers to Adolf Loos’s notorious 1913 manifesto, ‘Ornament and Crime,’ in which the author argues that the desire to adorn architecture, the body, objects, etc., is a primitive impulse, and the proper and moral evolution of Western culture depends in part upon the removal of ornamentation from daily life. Loos devalued the labor traditionally associated with aesthetics and beauty, and equated ornamentation with the degenerate. In this context, one could consider ornamentation as a way of viewing decay. His examples as such (tattoos, fashion, style, painting, et al.) predictably fell along divisions of race and class, coding modernity as the next outward manifestation of white, capitalist patriarchy. Throughout the process of creating Ornamentation, Novak attempts to sidestep some of Loos’s modernist intolerances by focusing on the labor of composition itself, rather than particular processes or structures. Novak began by incorporating specific field recordings from his archive, deliberately selected for their poor quality; awkward interruptions, low fidelity smartphone recordings, problematic frequencies. The selection of these difficult sounds, processed alongside recordings of his modular synthesizer, created a unique set of challenges for Novak where the familiar, reductive approaches would fail to be useful and ultimately abandoned in favor of more dynamic, additive, and laborious process. Unlike minimalism with its roots in modernism, or “sound art” with its conceptual biases, Novak creates a work that acknowledges these conventions, yet stands apart as a meditation on beauty, labour, and aesthetics; Ornamentation as an adornment of time itself.
Order Yann Novak’s “Ornamentation” [CD + 24bit DL] in Bandcamp
www.yannnovak.com
Compact disc in digifile – 3 tracks – 70:38
Artwork & photography by Jon Wozencroft
Release date: 30th September 2016
Track listing and notes:
1. Subspace
2. Astronomicom
3. Black Static
Conceived and Produced by B.Lustmord
Recorded in Los Angeles October-December 2015
Artwork & Photography by Jon Wozencroft
Derived from an audio library of cosmological activity collected between 1993 and 2003. It was gathered from various sources including NASA (Cape Canaveral, Ames, The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Arecibo), The Very Large Array, The National Radio Astronomy Observatory and various educational institutions and private contributors throughout the USA
Lustmord writes: “The Universe we inhabit is a vast expanse far larger than we are able to comprehend. As we attempt to understand its underlying structure and as we gain new insight into the nature of matter, new questions arise and further gaps in our understanding are revealed.
Behind the world that we experience lies a veil of darkness and much is hidden between, beyond and unseen.
We are limited by our inability to truly grasp the infinite breadth of the Universe, the time scales involved in its measure and our insignificant position within.
Some things will always be unknowable, and existence does not begin or end with man’s conception.
Everything that has ever been observed by man, even with our most sophisticated instruments, amounts to less than five percent of the Universe.
Approximately sixty-eight percent of the Universe is unseen dark energy and approximately twenty-seven percent is unseen dark matter. We have yet to discover what dark matter is, and only know the things it is not. Although it has not been directly observed, its existence and properties are inferred from its effects on visible matter, its influence on the Universe’s large-scale structure, and its effects in the cosmic microwave background.
The universe began of darkness, not of light.
While space is a virtual vacuum, it does not mean there is no sound in space. It exists in space as naturally occurring electromagnetic vibrations, many well within the range of human hearing while others exist at different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum and these can be adjusted with software to bring them within our audio range.
The recordings of these interactions in space come from several different environments including radio, ultra violet, microwave and X-ray data and within these spectra a wide range of sources including interstellar plasma and molecules, radio galaxies, pulsars masers and quasars, charged particle interactions and emissions, radiation, exotic astrophysical objects, cosmic jets and flares from magnetars.”
About Lustmord:
Widely credited as the originator of the “Dark Ambient” genre. Credits on over forty motion pictures including The Crow and Underworld. One of the two composers for the Turtle Rock/2K game Evolve. Worked with John Balance, Chris & Cosey, Clock DVA, Current 93, Paul Haslinger, Maynard James Keenan, Melvins, Nurse With Wound, Tool and Wes Borland amongst others.
Order Lustmord’s “Lustmord” [CD] in Bandcamp
www.lustmord.com
The 17th Spire will take place at Union Chapel, London on 8th October 2016 as part of the ORGAN reframed Festival (7-9 October 2016)
Union Chapel and Touch are proud to present…
Spire
Union Chapel, London
700pm – 1030pm Saturday October 8th 2016
Spire: organ works past present & future performed by
Charles Matthews (organ)
Philip Jeck (turntables)
Fennesz (organ & electronics)
Simon Scott (Electronics)
John Beaumont (Tenor)
Claire M Singer (Organ & electronics)
The Eternal Chord (Organ)
Continue reading
Compact disc in slip case – 5 tracks – 27:54
Limited edition of 500 copies
Artwork & photography by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham
Release date: 26th August 2016
Live at Volume, Los Angeles, 30th April 2016 as part of Touch Conference
Track listing:
1. Descent
2. Vision
3. An Opening
4. Canopy
5. Low
The word ‘Aven’ refers to an underground shaft that leads upward from the roof of a cave passage.
Recorded with SoundField SPS200 & JrF C-Series contact microphones, Sennheiser ME64, Sound Devices 788T, Elektron Monomachine, RME Fireface UCX, and Cockos Reaper. Field recordings from Iceland, June 2015 and South Africa, November 2015.
Strings performed by Bethan Kellough.
Bethan Kellough creates sound worlds that weave together instrumental materials, sound design and ambisonic field recordings. Her composition ‘Aven’ is based on a recording made in Iceland in 2015, which features the booming sound of underground geothermal activity escaping to the surface through a small shaft. “Looking down into the darkness, there was a sense that a whole world existed in an unknown space beneath. The sound world of Aven is a journey through such an imagined environment.” The composition is driven by this sonic encounter, but enters the imagined worlds beneath through the instrumental material developed throughout the work. These melodic passages predominantly feature violin, which Bethan has played since childhood exploring traditional Scottish music, rock violin, free improvisation and classical studies. The field recordings used in Aven were made in Iceland during the Wildeye sound recording workshop with Chris Watson and Jez riley French, and in South Africa during the Sonic Mmabolela residency with Francisco Lopez and James Webb. Each of the recordings explore a world of sound beneath a surface, reflecting upon the initial recording environment at the geothermal site. In South Africa, an approaching storm was heralded by wind blowing through bushes in the savanna, underneath which was hidden a Soundfield microphone. A contact microphone on a fence in South Iceland revealed the tones of the wind contained inside the wires, and in an Icelandic nature reserve the wind was also captured by microphones buried underneath a layer of grass – a miniature world sheltered by the strands of dry straw.
Bethan Kellough (formerly Bethan Parkes) is a sound artist and composer. Her work spans across ambisonic composition, field recording, sound design and multichannel sound installation practices, drawing a focus on sonic spatial experience. Her works are designed to open out spaces with sound, exploring spatial aesthetics and the interactions between sonically and visually articulated spaces. The immersive sound-worlds she creates inhabit the boundaries between music and sound design, weaving together instrumental materials, sound design and ambisonic field recordings.
She holds a PhD in Sonic Arts from the University of Glasgow. In 2015 she joined the Touch Mentorship Programme.
Her works have been exhibited and performed internationally, including at Touch Conference, Los Angeles, USA; Gallery of Russian Art and Design, London, UK; Resonant Forms Festival, Los Angeles, USA; Borealis Festival, Bergen, Norway; Jardins Efemeros Festival, Viseu, Portugal; Spazio Bocciofila, Venice, Italy; The Global Composition International Conference, Dieburg, Germany; Symposium on Acoustic Ecology, University of Kent, UK; Sound Thought Festival, Glasgow, UK.
Order Bethan Kellough’s “Aven” [CD] in Bandcamp
www.bethankellough.com
Double CD – 7 tracks – 68:11
Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering
Artwork & Photography by Jon Wozencroft
Track listing:
CDOne
1. A Different Place 06:35
2. Ceò 05:39
3. Solas 10:50
4. Dìobaig 04:47
5. Eilean 11:36
6. Wrangham 06:47
CDTwo
1. The Molendinar 25:57
and Aisir (Bonus track) (download only)
All tracks written & performed by Claire M Singer
Solas, Wrangham & The Molendinar were recorded by Iain Berryman at Union Chapel, London 26-27th February 2016 on the organ built by Henry Willis in 1877
Mixed at Bennachie Studios, Aberdeen and EMS Goldsmiths, London
Violin extract on Eilean from “Land of the Standing Stones” composed and performed by Paul Anderson
Eilean was commissioned by Aberdeenshire Council and The Molendinar by Civic Room, Glasgow and Union Chapel
Solas (‘Light’ in Gaelic) is Claire M Singer’s debut album spanning 14 years of her work in acoustic and electronic composition. In recent years she has focused on writing and performing a mix of organ, cello and electronics with regular performances at Union Chapel where she is Music Director, running a diverse programme of concerts and educational workshops around the Chapel’s Henry Willis 1877 organ.
Other performances include the Roundhouse London by The LCO Soloists; a’ fàs soilleir, an audio-visual work, exhibited at Tate Modern London, XMV New York City and Ceremony Hall Austin TX and she has performed as part of Spire at Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, Kunst-Station Sankt Peter Cologne and many more.
The Molendinar, which was co-commissioned in 2015 by Civic Room, Glasgow and Union Chapel, London to celebrate Glasgow’s Molendinar Burn Project was performed on the 14th June 2016 at Glasgow Cathedral to conclude the weekend festival.
Order Claire M Singer “Solas” [2xCD] in Bandcamp
www.clairemsinger.com
CD – 1 track – 30′ 51″
Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering
Artwork & Photography by Jon Wozencroft
Track listing and notes:
1. FloodLines
Recorded live at Cafe Oto as part of “Touch presents…” on 31st January 2016
Simon Scott is a sound ecologist and multi-instrumentalist from Cambridge, England. His albums ‘Insomni’ (Ash International) and ‘Below Sea Level’ (12k/TouchLine) are out now (see above). His work explores the creative process of actively listening, the implications of recording the natural world using technology and the manipulation of natural sounds used for musical composition. He plays the drums in Slowdive and has recently collaborated with artists James Blackshaw, Spire, Taylor Deupree (Between), Isan + many more.
This is his first physical release for Touch.
Source material recorded in The Fens, East Anglia.
Simon Scott’s blistering live set from London follows his 2015 album ‘insomni’ but features his field recordings of areas of The Fens in East Anglia that cartographically are below mean sea level. They’re complimented by underwater hydrophone recordings taken on field research trips, making the unheard audible and brings the unseen to the surface. It’s a flat landscape that was devastated by the draining of The Fens in the 17th century. The ecosystem was damaged but these areas have been left to reflood and re-establish it’s vernacular wildlife, replete with its own instrumentation and orchestras. Tapping into these, Scott’s vision encourages us to explore the fertility of the flatlands of England.
Order Simon Scott’s “FloodLines” [CD] in the TouchShop
www.simonscott.org
Three of the recordings from the Touch Conference series of events have now been posted on TouchRadio
TouchRadio 125 Philip Jeck – Live at The Battery, San Francisco
TouchRadio 124 Mark Van Hoen – Live at The Battery, San Francisco
TouchRadio 123 Daniel Menche – Live at Chapel Space, Seattle
Landscape and Perception is a research project set up by Jon Wozencroft and Paul Devereux to explore the role of sound and acoustics in prehistory, and in particular, to propose that the sonic properties of the bluestones taken from Preseli to Stonehenge might have been a key factor in their transportation from Pembrokeshire to the Salisbury Plain.
Following the discovery of abundant acoustic activity in the project’s main point of focus in the Preseli Hills in Wales, landscape-perception.com has been updated to include documentation of the site investigations carried out at Stonehenge in July 2013.
Following Touch: Isolation which covered the first lockdown period in the UK, Touch: Displacing as a full album is now available; the focus falls on longer-form compositions, originally released on a monthly basis over 2020-2021 and featuring artists for whom duration is a key feature of their work.
Full album now available - 28 exclusive tracks recorded by Touch artists,
with the final track delivered on 25th May 2020. A photographic counterpoint by Jon Wozencroft, the view from Hampstead Heath during the London lockdown.
