Toucher gathers seven works for percussion by Vinko Globokar, composer, interpreter and improviser, played by Matthias Kaul. The pieces range from a solo for a percussionist playing on his own body to works for three and four players, and several of them ask the performer to speak or sing while playing.

Globokar was born in 1934 in Anderny, France, to Slovenian parents, and began as a jazz trombonist in Ljubljana. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire and took composition with René Leibowitz and later Luciano Berio. In 1969 he co-founded the improvising group New Phonic Art, and until 1979 he led the instrumental and vocal research department at IRCAM. Kaul, born in Hamburg in 1949, taught himself the drum set at seventeen and played pop, rock and jazz before studying with Robert Hinze at the Hamburg Hochschule. He founded the ensemble l'art pour l'art with the flautist Astrid Schmeling and the guitarist Michael Schröder, and his vita names Globokar among the composers he worked with. Here he is the only performer credited, on percussion, voice and hurdy-gurdy. The recording is a coproduction with Deutschlandfunk.

The works span almost a quarter of a century. Toucher (1973), in which the player speaks while playing, is the earliest. ?Corporel (1984), for a percussionist on his own body, is dedicated to Gaston Sylvestre. Tribadabum extensif sur rythme fantôme (1981), a commission from the French state first played by the trio Le Cercle, is for three percussionists, with any number of extra players allowed. Kvadrat for four percussionists and Ombre both date from 1989. Ombre, the longest here at twelve minutes, combines a percussionist-singer with tape and a rhythm machine. Dialog über Erde (1994) and Pensée écartelée (1997) are solos.

Globokar polemicises against a virtuosity that merely "develops muscles and produces perspiration." He expects musicians to think about the score before they play and to derive from that mental process the gestures that produce the sound. These gestures are often complex and demand speed, dexterity and sensitivity, but the virtuosity that results is filtered by the intellect. The production received the quarterly German Record Critics' Award. It is one of two Wergo albums of the period built around Kaul, together with Christian Wolff's Bread and Roses with Malcolm Goldstein.

CD, Wergo WER 6662 2, released in 2004, 72 minutes.