★Touch
Transpandorem
UnicaZürn, David Knight and Stephen Thrower, 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 ri…
Ornamentation
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 labor, and attempts to decouple contemporary minimalist sound work from this historical precedent. The title refers to Adolf Loos's notoriou…
FloodLines
FloodLines was recorded live at Cafe Oto as part of "Touch presents" on January 31st, 2016. Simon Scott is a sound ecologist and multi-instrumentalist from Cambridge, England. His past albums include Insomni(Ash International) and Below Sea Level (Kesh/TouchLine). 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 inSlowdive and has r…
Drumming for creation
A new series of vinyl and download only releases, from the archives.... Originally released on cassette in 1985, Touch # T33.3 is now available on vinyl. Walo Shatan Gwari: The ensemble, led by Malam Walo, belongs to the Gwari people of Niger State. The performances, at London's Commonwealth Institute, also encompassed drumming sessions and instrument-making workshops. Edition of 300 vinyl.
Mahler Remix
Mahler Remix was recorded live at RadioKulturhaus, Vienna, in May 2011. This recording is mostly based on samples taken from Gustav Mahler's symphonies. The performance also includes an early version of "Liminality' from the bécs album, released in 2014 on Editions Mego (EMEGO 165CD/LP). Mahler Remixed was a commissioned work performed together with the visual artist Lillevan. The piece was only performed live three times, at RadioKulturhaus in Vienna, Carnegie Hall in New York City, and Borusan…
Cardinal
Philip Jeck writes: "To make this record I used Fidelity record players, Casio keyboards, Ibanez bass guitar, Sony MiniDisc players, Ibanez and Zoom effects pedals, assorted percussion, a Behringer mixer and it was edited it at home with MiniDisc players and on a laptop computer." "...and they sparkled like burnished brass" "Out of the depths of our complaints, it could be all so simple. To be never fooled by the finesse of a long-yearned for solidity, but in the momentary aplomb of a sle…
Halfway to White
With Folio, Touch introduces a new series of bespoke hardback book and CD publications, produced to the highest specifications. This first release, Halfway to White, is a collaboration between singular photographer Joséphine Michel and acclaimed musician and sound artist Mika Vainio. Joséphine Michel's images reframe our perception of the visual by exploring the notion of "sonic photography," as she exposes her subjects according to the resonance of the noise-fields felt at her chosen loca…
Stator
UK experimental institution Touch is now out with a split album from Biosphere and Deathprod, titled Stator.The two Norwegian artists have been producing ambient and other abstract musical forms on their own for well over two decades. Biosphere, real name Geir Jenssen, is likely known best for his classic 1997 album Substrata, though he's put out more than a dozen LPs since then, including many for Touch and his own label Biophon. Meanwhile, Deathprod, AKA Helge Sten (once part of the band Motor…
Venice
Special 10th anniversary edition & first time available on vinyl. Gatefold double LP release -- 14 tracks. Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft. Featuring David Sylvian (vocals) and Burkhard Stangl (guitar). Venice, the fourth studio album by Christian Fennesz, finds electronic music at a crossroads between its early status as digital subculture, and the feeling that there has to be something more, an emotional quality that rises above noise and moves towards melody and rapture. It was…
Saman
This album is about resonance: on 'Saman', which means 'Together', Hildur melts her voice with her cello, connecting the two instruments together. The result is a highly involving and moving album, recorded, mixed and mastered in Berlin. Hildur's sylph-like vocals contrast beautifully with rich cello tones, resolving the tension between light and dark to produce a unique listening experience. Renowned bassist Skúli Sverrisson guests on 'Heima'. This is Hildur's 4th album for Touch, after 'Withou…
Accelerated standstill
Accelerated Standstill is an assembling of locked grooves found on customary vinyl records. The records have been collected and performed live between 1997 and 2013. Locked grooves normally functioning as a 'barrier', avoiding the needle coming into contact with the label at the centre of the record. All grooves sound different, depending on how dust has effected and transformed the soft surface of the vinyl.
By using a triple vinyl deck set-up this (analytic auditory observations of) ending gro…
Catalogue des arbres
For the past decade or so, Polish musician Michal Jacaszek has been exploring a new, resolutely modern chapter in Eastern Europe's long, storied love affair with classical music. His creations are painstakingly crafted collages of electronic textures and baroque instrumentation, harpsichords being swarmed by woolly static one minute and pulled apart by billowing wind the next. A push-and-pull tension runs deep and constant throughout. Ambient music is rarely so sonically challenging. Jacaszek ha…
Figueroa Terrace
**Singular 35 minute piece of analog modular composition** "Thomas Ankersmit is a musician and installation artist based in Berlin. Since 2006 his main instrument, both live and in the studio, has been the Serge analogue modular synthesizer. Acoustic phenomena such as sound reflections, infrasonic vibration, otoacoustic emissions, and highly directional projections of sound have been an important part of his work since the early 2000's. In the winter of 2011-2012 Ankersmit was invited by …
Eye of the microphone
A somewhat surreal audio rendition of the sounds of The City of London. BJ Nilsen (b,1975 Sweden) is a sound and recording artist. His work is based on the sound of nature and its effect on humans. Heprimarily uses fieldrecordings and electronic composition as a working method. He has worked for film, television, theatre, dance and as sound designer. Track notes: In 2012 I received a scholarship from the Leverhulme Trust for a one-year Artist in Residency at the UCL Urban Laboratory in London, …
Monstrance
Now also on vinyl.Mika Vainio, Electric Guitar, Processing, Metallic Percussion. Joachim Nordwall, Electronics, Electric Bass Guitar, Metal Objects, Hammond Organ, Vibraphone.Recorded in Berlin at Studio Schwedenstrasse one day in June 2010. Recording Engineer: Marco Paschke. Mixed and Mastered by Daniel Karlsson in Stockholm at Elektronmusikstudion. Mika Vainio was a member of the legendary minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic. Emerging from the Finnish industrial and rave music scene in the early …
Unfinished. For William Turner, painter
"Which side of the picture should be hung uppermost? 2003, London: the first time I visited Tate Britain, Tate Gallery, and the first time I saw and really experienced the paintings of JMW Turner (1775-1851). Overwhelmed, especially by his late and unfinished works I was stunned by the power of the stillness of his work. 25 years before that something similar; me, as a young man in Madrid; Prado, Goya paintings and etchings - for me an initiation which opened up the door to earlier art an…
Diluvial
Local preoccupations with rising sea levels fuel Diluvial - a work that dwells on the dynamics of flood geology and global warming; creation stories and climate change. Diluvial is an evolving soundscape and environment by Bruce Gilbert and Beaconsfield ArtWorks (David Crawforth & Naomi Siderfin). This work was initiated on the Suffolk coast for Faster Than Sound, Aldeburgh 2011 and then developed for a show at Beaconsfield, London later that year. Taking rising sea levels as its theme, Diluvial…
In St Cuthbert's Time
The Sounds of Lindisfarne and the Gospels. To celebrate the exhibition of the Lindisfarne Gospels at Durham Cathedral from July to September 2013, awardÐwinning wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson has researched the sonic environment of the Holy Island as it might have been experienced by St Cuthbert in 700 A.D. 'A 7th Century Soundscape of Lindisfarne. Throughout human history artists have been influenced by their surroundings and the sounds of the landscape they inhabit. When Eadfrith, the B…
Stromboli
Field recordings of a volcano by Geir Jenssen, better known as Biosphere. Stromboli is an active volcano off the north coast of Sicily in the Mediterranean. The volcano has erupted many times, and is constantly active with minor eruptions, often visible from many points on the island and from the surrounding sea, giving rise to the island's nickname Lighthouse of the Mediterranean. The last major eruption was on April 13, 2009. Recorded at Stromboli's crater edge (924 m) on July 19th 2012…
Between Strangers
'Between Strangers' is Sohrab's first physical follow-up to his widely received debut LP, 'A Hidden Place' (2010), and burrows further into that same lonely, displaced headspace. There is a dramatic melancholy and underlying rage to both pieces which can't be ignored, making for deeply compelling listening. The A-side in particular uses lo-fi recording of "Voice of a burnt generation" attributed enigmatically to "Hani", recorded in the Eissenhutenstadt refugee camp, Germany to great effect, plac…