Year

A collaboration between Organum and Z’EV, Tinnitus, Philip Jeck’s 7 and Venice by Fennesz are released. First CD by Rosy Parlane, Iris. Spire performed Live in Geneva Cathedral at La Batie festival, with Marcus Davidson, Fennesz, Philip Jeck, Charles Matthews and BJNilsen. Jóhann Jóhannsson releases his 2nd album, Virthulegu forestar, on CD and DVD-A.

Mika Vainio’s and Chris Watson’s 3rd solo albums are released, along with new cds by Phill Niblock and Ken Ikeda, and a first acoustic cd from Ryoji Ikeda, op. Watson’s Weather Report at the Lovebytes festival, Cut and Splice and elsewhere. Double CD compilation Spire, Organ Music, Past, Present & Future comes out at the end of the year.

Touch: Ringtones CD is released in February as a protest against the banality of the technology. Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Englabörn, 3rd albums by Biosphere, Philip Jeck and Mika Vainio. The live tour continues around Europe, including the opening of the STUK centre in Leuven. Easter Friday at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, and the New Forms Festival in Den Haag. In October Touch toured Switzerland, visiting Zurich, Fribourg and Geneva, and in November played a central part in the Fricties Festival, Vooruit in Gent, Belgium.

Touch celebrates its 20th year with a UK tour with Biosphere, Fennesz & Hazard, including May 21st at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. Release of ‘Touch Works…’ by Phill Niblock. The 3rd in the Rehberg & Bauer trilogy and Locust’s double CD, Wrong, are released. Matrix by Ryoji Ikeda wins the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica festival. The first in a series of live releases, TO:CDR…, begins with Philip Jeck’s Live in Japan.

Touch releases Biosphere’s Cirque on CD and LP. Chris Watson wins a distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria) for his CD Outside the Circle of Fire (1998). Mika Vainio’s Kajo is released. Ryoji Ikeda tours with Zoviet France.

Touch & Fuse book, Fennesz’s 47 degrees… CD and the the first release by Oren Ambarchi.

Heading into glitch territory _ the arrival of Apple’s Powerbook computers encourage musicians to develop their own mobile/performing studios. Philip Jeck’s Surf takes the art of vinyl/turntable manipulation a step further. Chris Watson’s Outside the Circle of Fire uses close-up sound recordings of animal activity to cast additional light on their relationships to digital sound.

Release of the first solo CD by Mika Vainio from Pan Sonic (formerly Panasonic), and beginning of collaboration with Mark Van Hoen (Locust) and Scala which results in Last Flowers from the Darkness, a collection of works by Mark Van Hoen covering the period 1992-1996, and Scala’s Beauty Nowhere and Compass Heart. The first Rehberg & Bauer CD based on digital processing errors comes out. The same year sees New Order’s Video 5-8-6 recording finally emerge as a CD single and enter the charts in the UK, no thanks to the major retailers’ absurd policies.

Touch releases the first solo CD by Chris Watson, formerly sound recordist with the Royal Society for Protection of Birds, and later sound recordist for many BBC wildlife programmes, including David Attenborough’s award-winning Life of Birds. Closely followed by the highly acclaimed +/- by Ryoji Ikeda, the minimalist Japanese composer who also composes and arranges the sound for the performing troupe Dumb Type. The Wire described it as “an absolutely indispensible bridge between sinetone minimalism and Panasonic-style modernist techno”. It is difficult to describe. Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson’s elegiac soundtrack to the film “Children of Nature” acts as the perfect counterpoint.

Touch releases Loopholes, the first solo cd by Philip Jeck, winner of the Time Out Performance Award in 1993 for Vinyl Requiem. The first time digitally-generated film becomes acceptable in the production process, so the beginning of our association with Orange and their hi-res scanning facility. 1995 also saw the release of the first Touch Sampler CD.

Continuing to work with The Hafler Trio and Richard Kirk, whose Sandoz and Sweet Exorcist CDs and vinyl are released.

Sandoz’s (aka Richard H. Kirk) Digital Lifeforms CD is described in The Observer as ‘dance music for the twenty first century’. In the next 7 years, Kirk records and releases 7 further CDs, Intensely Radioactive (1994), Every Man Got Dreaming (1995), Step, Write, Run (1996), Dark Continent (1996), Chant to Jah (1998), Darkness at Noon (1999) and LoopStatic (2000).

Production and publication of Vagabond, edited with Jon Savage. The independent book distributor goes bankrupt. Rough Trade distribution having ceased to be, also.

Étant Donnés’ Aurore, and Contact by John Duncan and A.M. McKenzie. Digital bromides are output for the typographic artwork, thanks to QuarkXPress, rather than marked up and sent to the typesetter. The beginning of the digital typeface explosion and desktop publishing.

Production of Spiral series with A.M. McKenzie. Vögel by Strafe Für Rebellion gathers together the Düsseldorf group’s finest recordings

‘Interaction’ exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre, London, featuring Peter Blake, Brian Eno, Russell Mills, Jamie Reid and Touch. Feature on Channel 4’s ‘The Tube’. Screening of Alternation Perception and Resistance by The Hafler Trio on C4’s ‘After Image’. 1986 Also sees the first Touch record by The Hafler Trio – The Sea Org. This is followed by Brain Song (1986), Protection (1987), A Thirsty Fish (1988), before Ignotum per Ignotius becomes the first fully-fledged CD release, in non-jewel case format (1989), followed by Masturbatorium (1991), FUCK (1992), Mastery of Money (1992), Resurrection, with The Sons of God, (1993) and How to Reform Mankind (1994). The 1980s vinyl releases eventually came out on 6 CDs in a collaboration with The Grey Area of Mute Records, The Golden Hammer (1994). Currently being re-issued by Korm Plastics, The Netherlands.

Meridians One and Two, Touch Travel, Ritual: Lands End and Ritual: Magnetic North, featuring artists such as Test Department, A Certain Ratio, Derek Jarman, Russell Mills, Peter Saville, General Strike, Jah Wobble, Gilbert and George, Joseph Beuys, Jamie Reid, Greil Marcus, Jon Savage, The Residents and Cabaret Voltaire… Slow improvements in the quality of cassette production/reproduction – a medium designed entirely for domestic purposes rather than mass distribution. 1984 sees Touch’s first LP release, The Egyptian Music by Soliman Gamil, the composer for the National State Theatre in Cairo who trained his own troupe to perform and record traditional Egyptian music annotated from documents found in the Pyramids. The Revox tapes quickly deteriorated; they were treated at the Exchange prior to release on CD in 1987, later the original cassettes were remastered for A Map of Egypt Before the Sands.