★Touch
Grapes from the estate
Oren Ambarchi acts as a good antithesis to that other great Touch luminary - Fennesz.Both artists use the guitar as a starting point for minimalist discovery and post-abstract innovation, though where Fennesz relies heavily on distortion and catharsis, Ambarchi's focus is on a much more refined, clean building of layers and delicate augmentations. For his third outing on Touch, Ambarchi's immense achievement is through his sense of timing, pace and definition - slowly building pieces up to warm,…
Suspension
Oren Ambarchi acts as a good antithesis to that other great Touch luminary - Fennesz.Both artists use the guitar as a starting point for minimalist discovery and post-abstract innovation, though where Fennesz relies heavily on distortion and catharsis, Ambarchi's focus is on a much more refined, clean building of layers and delicate augmentations. For his third outing on Touch, Ambarchi's immense achievement is through his sense of timing, pace and definition - slowly building pieces up to warm,…
In the land of the blind, one-eyed is king
Generally speaking, contemporary musicians produce too much stuff. It is easy to do. But if you feel like sighing, "Oh, it's another Mika Vainio CD", then Mr Vainio himself has anticipated such sentiments with the opening track, a 2 minute blast which sounds like an angry animal breaking free of its cage. What follows is probably Vainio’s most accomplished work to date, a series of rich soundscapes whose beauty is always on the edge of darkness. "In the Land of the Blind One-Eyed is King" is Mik…
Onko
Mika, famous for his Panasonic excursions and solo work as Ø, has finally brought out some stuff under his own name. Listen along as he primes, then fine tunes his pneumatic devices, limbers up with a burst of groundhum before reclining against a sonic wall of hissing grit. Sounds of information reduced to their smallest common denominators. Frosty machine language. The reveries of circuitry. Bit-reduction. Wings of bass. And then, after three tracks which intensely and deftly tweak the spaces b…
Grand Mutation
Lasse Marhaug (electronics) and Nils Henrik Asheim (organ). Lasse Marhaug and Nils Henrik Asheim started their collaboration in 2004 at the All Ears festival in Oslo, Norway. This turned out as a fruitful meeting between two musicians of very different backgrounds. Marhaug's feedback to Asheim's organ sounds in the Oslo concert started to reflect how the work was to develop. Asheim is working with half-stops and subtle playing techniques that create multiple layers of sound with a vibrating or f…
Number one
American performance/noise/percussion artist Z'ev, Japanese composer/performer K.K. Null, and field-recording artist Chris Watson (formerly of Cabaret Voltaire and the Hafler Trio) conjoin in a first collaboration for Touch. The idea for this recording, generated by Z'ev, has three elements: 1) to use the structure of the Noh Theatre cycle as the basis for the composition; 2) to consider the initial sound development in terms of developing "characters" which would then interact with one another …
Fertile
Fertile is KK NULL's first album for touch, following his collaboration with Chris Watson and Z'ev [Number One - Tone 24, 2005], which boomkat called 'moving and atmospheric', and The Wire wrote 'a complex dramatic work from a strict economy of means'. KK NULL (real name Kazuyuki Kishino) was born in Tokyo, Japan. Composer, guitarist, singer, mastermind of Zeni Geva and electronic wizard. One of the top names in Japanese noise music and in a wider context, one of the great cult artists in experi…
Tap internal
Have you ever asked yourself 'What is the sound of energy?' John duncan has been trying for years to explain the composition of matter through sound, and not everyone can understand this -- but once the door is opened everything suddenly becomes easy. tap Internal is beautiful and, in classic duncan style, cruel -- in that it puts you in contact with our deepest psyche and lays it bare, turning the auricular membrane inside out, leaving an indelible mark of new frequencies that are beautiful to …
Viroulegu forsetar
'Virthulegu forsetar' contains one hour-long piece for 11 brass players, percussion, electronics, organs and piano. It's presented as an ordinary stereo CD and as a DVD-Audio with a high resolution 5.1 surround mix. The piece had its live debut in Hallgrimskirkja, a large church in Reykjavik and the city's towering edifice, and was named "the most memorable musical event of 2003" in Iceland's leading newspaper. The piece has Englabörn's quiet, elegiac beauty, but abandons the brevity of the firs…
4 rooms
This is Jacob Kirkegaard's second release for the Touch label, after Eldfjall. Born in Denmark, now living and working in Germany, here he explores one of the worst man-made disasters in history. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded on April 26, 1986; clouds of radioactive particles were released, and the severely damaged containment vessel started leaking radioactive matter. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from the city and other affected areas. Despite the fact that radiati…
Land
B.J. Nilsen lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Born in 1975, he began working with experimental music and sound at an early stage. He was influenced by the early tape movements with the pioneers of sonic assault and released his first recordings at the age of 15. Benny founded hazard in 1996 after a couple of years as a guitarist/bass player in several local bands. He has since then focused on the sound of nature and its effect on humans, field recordings and the perception of time and space …
Cendre
This is the highly anticipated full-length collaborative release by Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto, following the 19-minute CD EP overture, Sala Santa Cecilia (a completely separate release which is not included here). This release features a massive duet between worldwide laptop guru Fennesz (guitar/laptop) and Japanese electronic music legend Sakamoto (piano/laptop) -- a continuing collaboration between two much-lauded composers. Every once in a great while, a collaboration comes along…
Sala Santa Cecilia
Every once in a great while, a collaboration comes along which hints at a brighter future, a collision of giants that indicates a convergence of method and music. This is one such event. Sala Santa Cecilia documents the meeting of worldwide laptop guru Fennesz and Japanese electronic music legend Ryuichi Sakamoto at the Auditorium Parco della Musica for the Romaeuropa Festival in Rome, November 2004. This is a unique and complete 19-minute piece which marks the recording debut of this new collab…
Field recordings 1995:2002
Field Recordings brings together a range of material Christian Fennesz has contributed to compilations, special projects and film soundtracks between the years 1995 and 2002. It also includes his debut 12" for Mego, the awesome Instrument remastered. Contains his remix of Stephan Mathieu & Ekkehard Ehlers, tracks from the Clicks&Cuts 2 comp, the Ash Int'l compilations KREV X and Decay, excerpts of his soundtrack to the movie Blue Moon, and one exclusive new track
Storm
1. Chris Watson - No Man's Land. Late October on the strands of Budle Bay where dense layers of transient alien voices are swamped by a full moon tide creeping across the island's silver causeway. Now lapping out of the gathering gloom an immersive sea wash is filling then draining away carrying slow currents from here to another place. There are no reference points in this darkness. Glimmer dawn in the gaping mouth of a sea cave below Tarbet Gulley where the siren songs of Cromarty, Forth & Tyn…
Weather report
After working with Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio, Watson became a sound recordist for the UK's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He has since joined a film and video production company, working for BBC wildlife documentaries and occasional feature films. It is with this naturalist spirit and background that Watson applies his work, capturing sound footage that illustrates a deep understanding of silence, space, and ecological wonderment. Weather Report understands that the weathe…
Outside the circle of fire
The purr of a leopard close up against a baobab tree, waiting. Whales surfacing, breathing in cold air. Coll starling imitate the noise of farm machinery from the hollow ring of a ruined bothy. The rattle of wood over a black stream... Chris Watson's second CD is a dramatic contrast to the spacious atmospheres of "Stepping into the Dark" (touch TO:27, 1996). Featuring 22 close-up recordings of animals, birds and insect life, "Outside the Circle of Fire" enlarges our awareness of the sound univer…
Fade to white
Benny Nilsen writes: 'Fade To White contains material from the making of 3 pieces which were created within a different season and then edited, re-arranged and re-mixed in the summer of 2004. 6 pieces contain outdoor field recordings from travels in mainly central Europe in 2003 [Gdansk-Poland, Narva-Estonia, Sarajevo-Serbia Herzegovina, Arad-Romania, Trieste-Italy], and static indoor recordings from 2004 Stockholm-Sweden, Brussels-Belgium, Amsterdam-Netherlands, Vienna-Austria, Geneva-Switzerla…