CHRIS WATSON
El Tren Fantasma
TO42
Touch 2011
10 Tracks. 59mins38secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM

Railways have often provided electronic-based musicians with a wealth of rhythmic and mechanical sounds, from Pierre Schaeffer’s early tape experiments to Krafwerk’s hypnotic journeys across Europe. A former member of Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio, Chris Watson may have at one time been keen to explore similar concepts, but his work as a sound recordist in the last thirty years has taken him on a very different path. Watson works primarily with wildlife, and his work has been featured on many natural history programmes for the BBC, most notably David Attenborough’s series, from The Life Of Birds to Life In Cold Blood, and Bill Oddie’s Springwatch and Autumnwatch series. Beside these, Watson has released three albums of field recordings on Touch and has collaborated with a number of experimental musicians on further recordings and installations. This album is his fourth solo record for Touch.

El Tren Fantasma is a slightly different project, as it documents a cross country train journey on board the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FNM), from Los Mochis on the Pacific coast to the west to Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico to the east. Continue Reading »

CHRIS WATSON
Oceanus Pacificus
TS02
Touch 2008
02 Tracks. 05mins35secs
Format: 7″

Chris Watson returns to Touch with this limited run, the second in the label’s new Touch Sevens series. One of the best known and most highly regarded wild life recording artists, Watson delivers two recordings made in the Galapagos Islands in April 2006. Documenting the Humboldt current, and recorded at depths of 3 and 10 metres, the two short tracks capture underwater movements as rarely heard by the human ear. As the current pushes ahead continuously, it appears to affect the water in a slightly different way as the pressure increases. While the sound palette is clear and open at 3 metres, it becomes slightly more muffled and sombre deeper. The recordings on Oceanus Pacificus have been left totally untouched. Each represents a snippet of life, extracted from its original setting and brought to the surface. Continue Reading »

CHRIS WATSON / BJ NILSEN
Storm
TONE27
Touch 2007
03 Tracks. 50mins09secs

Back in 2000, Swedish musician recorded a series of storms over the Baltic sea, and consequently suggested that him and fellow Touch sound artist Chris Watson coolaborate on a project focusing on weather conditions.

Watson, once of pioneering electronic outfit Cabaret Voltaire and, later, of The Hafler Trio, is an established wildlife recordist, who has, beside his three albums for Touch, worked for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and recorded nature for a variety of wildlife programs for the BBC. After a few years away from the music scene, he returned in 1996 with his first solo album for Touch, Stepping Into The Dark, which was built from recordings he had made all around the world during previous years. Continue Reading »

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Touch 25
TONE25
Touch 2006
25 Tracks. 79mins43secs

With a solid twenty-five years at the forefront of contemporary music, releasing music by artists as diverse as The Hafler Trio, Sweet Exorcist, Sandoz, Oren Ambarchi, Chris Watson, Scala, Philip Jeck, Mika Vainio, Biosphere, Christian Fennesz, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ryoji Ikeda or BJ Nilsen to name but a fraction, Touch have collected one of the most impressive and inspired catalogues around, encompassing a wide array of genres, from noise to post-modern classical, ambient and electronic.

To celebrate this massive slab of work, the label, founded in 1982 by Jon Wozencroft Mike Harding, Nevelle Brody and Andrew McKenzie, of Hafler Trio fame, have put together a collection of twenty-five exclusive tracks from the likes of Biosphere, Fennesz, Pan Sonic, Chris Watson, Mark Van Hoen, Rafael Toral, Mother Tongue, BJ Nilsen, Philip Jeck and many more. Touch 25 doesn’t intend to document the label’s history, and only seems to give a vague and short insight into the various musical grounds covered by these artists, yet it is true to the label’s ethic in every way, from the instantly recognisable cover artwork, by Wozencroft to the depth and reach of each one of the tracks featured. Continue Reading »