★Touch
Willow
Latest entry in Touch's bitesize Touch Sevens series, with typically lush cover design and photography by Jon Wozencroft. This one comes from NZ native Paul Douglas aka Rosy Parlane, and was recorded in Auckland back in 2008-9. 'Willow' is a blast, its radiant widescreen drones and shimmering surfaces - which corrode and curdle over the duration - calling to mind the work of labelmate BJ Nilsen. 'Morning' is more reserved, elegiac even; rotary organ tones and delicate processing conspire …
Conversion
In collaboration with Danish ensemble Scenatet, Jacob Kirkegaard's two pieces "Labyrinthitis" and "Church" are here interpreted by classical instruments. The intention of this transformation into an instrumental score is to explore the musical dimension and potential of the sounds that were used in creating the original works. "Church" from 4 Rooms (TONE 026CD) originally consists of ambient recordings of an abandoned church inside the radioactive zone in Chernobyl. "Labyrinthitis" from Lab…
Touch. 30 Years and Counting
**Double gatefold LP w/exclusives from Fennesz, Vainio, Jeck, Eleh, Chris Watson and so much more** Part of Touch's extended 30th anniversary celebrations, this compilation, with a cover photograph depicting Colossus, the first computer - serves first and foremost as a survey of the extraordinary breadth of the imprint's roster. Touch bosses Mike Harding and Jon Wozencroft consider the release to be a "group show" and a piece "documentary realism" as opposed to a compilation, one which provides …
Quanta Of Light
Limited, hand-stamped white label edition** Highly disciplined master of visceral intensity, Daniel Menche, presents a one-off album for Touch's great white label series. Daniel's work is gladly accepted by both noise and more "musical" spheres, releasing on a wealth of labels including Important Records, Editions Mego and Sub Rosa among many others. Taken as a whole, they capture and play with a timeless sense of drama and direct emotional rawness that's hard to ignore. For Touch, 'Quant…
Fe3O4 - Magnetite
Vainio is back with his fifth album for the esteemed Touch label! Currently based in Berlin, was one half of the minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic from Finland, (with Ilpo Väisänen). Before starting Pan Sonic in the beginning of the 90's, Mika Vainio has played electronics and drums as part of the early Finnish industrial and noise scene. His solo works, under his own name and under aliases like Ø, are known for their analogue warmth and electronic harshness. Be it abstract drone works or m…
Audience of one
Gatefold double LP version. On Audience Of One, Oren Ambarchi presents a four-part suite which moves from throbbing minimalism to expansive song-craft to ecstatic free-rock. His previous solo albums for Touch exhibited a clear progression towards augmenting and embellishing his signature bass-heavy guitar tones with fragile acoustic instrumentation. Audience Of One, while also existing in clear continuity with these recordings, opens the next chapter. Remarkable in its confidence and bread…
Islands In-Between
A new series of vinyl-only releases, "from the archives." Islands In-Between was originally released on cassette in 1983. Indonesians often use the name Nusantara, meaning "the islands in-between," when referring to the archipelago that forms their Republic. This LP covers only some of the cultural activity on Java and Bali, the best-known islands out of the 13,700 counted by statisticians, so it is not intended to be in any way definitive. The selections are more like musical postcards of …
Novaya Zemlya
Novaya Zemlya (lit. "New Land"), also known in Dutch as "Nova Zembla" and in Norwegian as "Gåselandet" (lit. the "Goose Land"), is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the north of Russia and the extreme northeast of Europe, the easternmost point of Europe, lying at Cape Flissingsky on the northern island. The artwork, by Jon Wozencroft, includes an essay by Thierry Charollais, "Thomas Köner's Novaya Zemlya: towards a metaphysical geography"... Of course we find the unique Köneresque glow…
Dropsonde
2012 repress; originally released 2006. Biosphere is Norwegian composer and performer Geir Jenssen, and this is his fifth release for Touch. In the early 1990s he was a pioneer of so-called "ambient techno," but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring. Dropsonde isn't a soundtrack like the interwoven Substrata nor an episodic journey in the way that Autour de la Lune is. Here Geir Jenssen is pushing new directions towards the jazz colors of Miles Davis a…
Leyfou Ljosinu
Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadóttir presents a new album, Leyfdu Ljósinu (trans. "Allow The Light"), recorded live at the Music Research Centre, University of York, in January 2012, by Tony Myatt, using a SoundField ST450 Ambisonic microphone and two Neumann U87 microphones (NB -- it was not played in a concert environment and there was no audience). To be faithful to time and space -- elements vital to the movement of sound -- this album was recorded entirely live, with no post-tampering …
Debris
Field recordists Douglas Quin and Cheryl Leonard have gone to great lengths to capture their Arctic and Antarctic field recordings, spending countless frigid days with frozen fingers trying to hold tightly to hydrophones dangling amidst the ice floes and slushy waters. It's no wonder those two present their work in such an unadulterated fashion when the work came at such cost and at such peril. But Jana Winderen is far more creative in her approach to field recordings, only too happy to …
Repaired/Replaced
Touch presents a 7" from Mike Harding as part of the Touch Sevens series. Recorded in West Wittering in Balham using DPA 4060s onto a Nagra Ares P-ll digital recorder. Cut by Jason at Transition. Artwork & photography by Jon Wozencroft.
Mysterier
7" vinyl was the quintessential format for popular music. Today, it is an undervalued and mostly promotional medium, used as a fetishistic signpost for a time of musical authenticity and a "healthy" popular culture. Two tracks from Biosphere originally recorded for Hågogaland Teater, Tromsø, Norway in 2006 and remastered in 2011. Part of the Touch Sevens series, cut by Jason at Transition. Artwork & photography by Jon Wozencroft.
Flumina
Flumina is the third collaboration between legendary composers Ryuichi Sakamoto and Christian Fennesz. Guitar, computer [laptop] by Christian Fennesz; piano, computer [laptop] by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Artwork & photography by Jon Wozencroft. Mastered by Denis Blackham. Recorded at Amann Studios, Vienna and at KA+B Studios, NY and Japan. Mixed at BA+B Studios, NY. Quiet, restful ambient piano and effected guitar drone. Minimal and masterful." -Touch
El Tren Fantasma - The Signal Man's Mix
A 12' Vinyl with two remixed tracks from the CD "We know Chris Watson mostly from his works dealing with sounds from nature, animal wild life and stormy weather. A decade ago he worked as a sound recordist for the BBC who were doing a documentary on the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico, a train company with a trail from Los Mochis to Veracruz, coast to coast, through cities and wild life. All of that sound material is now used in 'El tren Fantasma', the ghost train (since it no longer ex…
El tren fantasma
"Take the ghost train from Los Mochis to Veracruz and travel cross country, coast to coast, Pacific to Atlantic. Ride the rhythm of the rails on board the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FNM) and the music of a journey that has now passed into history." El Tren Fantasma, (The Ghost Train), is Chris Watson's 4th solo album for Touch, and his first since Weather Report in 2003, which was named as one of the albums you should hear before you die in The Guardian. A Radio programme was br…
Seven stars
Fennesz's first solo release since Black Sea (2008) is a 4 track 10 vinyl, with a CD version soon available. Using acoustic and electric guitars, bass, synths, computers, Fennesz continues to engage and entrance us in equal measure. 'Liminal', 'July', 'Shift', 'Seven Stars' (with Steven Hess on drums). Fennesz writes: Seven Stars was recorded in Vienna in January 2011. I recorded and mixed the album within 3 weeks. Liminal and July were existing pieces which I have reworked. (I wrote an early ve…
Without Sinking
**Now available on vinyl for the 1st time in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, with 3 bonus tracks not on the CD** Hildur Gudnadottir is a gifted cellist with an impressive history of collaborations that includes work with Pan Sonic, Throbbing Gristle, Johann Johannsson, Skúli Sverrisson and Ben Frost among many others, as well as being a member of Iceland's notable Kitchen Motors collective. She first came to our attention on Pan Sonic's epic 'Katodivaihe' album from a couple of years back, he…
Monad
Wire's Bruce Gilbert restarts Touch's 7" series, which has previously seen highly collectable shortform releases from Mika Vainio, Fennesz, and Phillip Jeck. Following an Editions Mego reissue of his seminal mid '80s works and recent live outings, these two tracks comprise his first new material since 2009s 'Oblivio Obligatum' and find him working to typically stoic, yet subtly dynamic scheme of electronic sound art. Both tracks deliver cold, metallic drones with a "coruscating" resonance, all p…
Vinyl
*First in a series of limited edition whitelabel releases from Touch* Touch start their new vinyl-only White Label series with an elemental ambient session by BJ Nilsen. 'Vinyl' was recorded on location in Sweden, Iceland, Austria and England using various microphones, media and formats and features the sounds of wind, waves, tone generators, piano, guitar and "other stuff". The tracks are two longer expanses of inimitable ambient drift clocking in at 14:44 and 15.14 respectively. Side A …