★Touch
Cloitre
Issued on compact disc for the first time. Originally released digitally in 2014. Thomas Köner and Jana Winderen, recorded live from the cloisters at Evreux Cathedral, Normandy, France by Franck Dubois on June 14th, 2014, as part of L'Ateliers. With thanks to Denis Boyer. Limited edition CD in card sleeve; Remastered by Thomas Köner; Photography by Jon Wozencroft."Cloître, [Winderen's] live collaboration with Thomas Köner from earlier this year effortlessly forges a fiction by bringing together …
The Future is a Forward Escape into the Past
The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past is the latest album by Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist and composer Yann Novak, and his second for Touch. It considers the relationships between memory, time, and context through four vibrantly constructed tracks that push Novak's work in a new direction while simultaneously exploring his sonic past. The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past is composed as a sonata -- a single gesture broken into four parts -- that meditates on the…
Touch Movements
In a 24/7 world, there is no greater challenge than "to be in command of one's own time". Is it true that the ability to download anything, at any moment, constitutes freedom? Has the '"value" of music, art and design been stripped bare? "I Google, therefore I am"... Touch Movements has been compiled over the course of three years. It is a response to many requests for Touch to publish a fuller account of Jon Wozencroft's photography for the cover art of the project. The book follows the music, …
Still Life - Requiem
Conceptualized (2010-2013), composed and produced (2014-2017) by Carl Michael von Hausswolff in Palma (Majorca) and Stockholm. Still Life - Requiem is a musical piece consists only of sounds emitted and extracted from physical matter using emission spectroscopy as the sole basic technology. Acknowledgements to Linköping University (IFM), Sweden. Still Life - Requiem consists of one piece with the same title and is divided up into two to fit the LP format. The piece is, as the title suggests,…
Iklectik
Typically enchanting electro-acoustic enigma from Philip Jeck, forming a richly abstract narrative from the reactive fizz and and timbral thizz of smeared shellac textures and their keening, dissonant harmonics Philip Jeck studied visual arts at Dartington College of Arts in the 1970's and has been creating sound with record-players since the early 80's. He has worked with many dance and theatre companies and played with muscians/composers such as Jah Wobble, Steve Lacy, Gavin Bryars, Jak…
Dark Matter
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 str…
Sublunar
Presented live in Los Angeles. Source material originally developed as part of mas gestos y mas caras, a collaborative performance with Rafa Esparza and Yann Novak, presented at the Hammer Museum on July 8, 2016. Robert Crouch is an artist and curator whose work encompasses sound, performance, and technology. As an artist, he locates his work with the intersection of post-phenomenological listening practices, conceptual sound art, and contemporary electronic music. At its core, his wor…
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…
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, …