FENNESZ + SAKAMOTO
Flumina
TONE46
Touch 2011
24 Tracks. 124mins06secs

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

Flumina is the third collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and Christian Fennesz, following Sala Santa Cecilia (2005) and Cendre (2007), and, with twenty-four tracks spread over two discs, it is also by far their most extensive. The project began when Sakamoto was touring in Japan some time ago; opening each one of the twenty-four shows of the tour with a different improvisation, each played in a different key to cover the complete steps of the western tonal system, and documenting them all, he then sent his recordings to Christian Fennesz in Vienna for him to add textures and ambiences before the pair reconvened in New York to mix the record. Continue Reading »

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 »

BIOSPHERE
N-Plant
TO84
Touch 2011
09 Tracks. 49mins49secs

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

What would happen if a nuclear power plant, located close to the sea, was hit by an earthquake or a tsunami? The story behind this album is nothing short of puzzling. In late 20101, whilst researching Japan in the optic of recording an album about the country’s post-Second World War economic miracle, Geir Jenssen stumbled upon a picture of the Mihama nuclear power plant, situated on a tiny peninsula on the west coast of Japan, just over three hundred kilometers west of Tokyo. The plant was still then the site of the worst nuclear disaster to have taken place in Japan, when, in 2004, hot water leaked from a broken pipe near one of the reactors, killing four people and injuring seven.The plant, situated in an otherwise beautiful spot prompted Jenssen to question exactly how safe such facility would be if it was hit by a quake or a tsunami. Further investigations revealed a number of other nuclear power stations located in earthquake-prone areas. This provided him with the focus for the record, his first in over five years. Continue Reading »

BJ NILSEN
The Invisible City
TO77
Touch 2010
08 Tracks. 62mins38secs

Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD

The sleeve notes of BJ Nilsen’s latest record read like the disparate inventory of a surreal junk shop. Chairs, window shutters, trains, dead trees, birds, various acoustic and electronic instruments, bumblebees, coffeepots all find their way into The Invisible City, yet, so drastic is the processing of this vast sonic palette that it is impossible to identify for sure which sounds have been used where or to what effect, leaving instead the listeners to feel the gaps and work out a path for themselves.

Benny Jonas Nilsen first appeared in 1991 with a series of dark ambient records released as Morthond, then Morthound, published for the most part on Swedish experimental imprint Cold Meat Industries. Continue Reading »

BIOSPHERE
Wireless – Live At The Arnolfini, Bristol
TONE38
Touch 2009
11 Tracks. 62mins08secs

Buy: CD | iTunes

In 2007, the excellent Touch imprint celebrated twenty five years at the forefront of experimental music with a series of events across the UK and beyond involving some of the label’s most prominent artists. Recorded at the Arnolfini art centre in Bristol, as part of Touch25 Live, Biosphere’s Wireless, his first live album, documents Geir Jenssen’s work since he joined the Touch stable at the turn of the millennium. The set was arranged into an hour long track made up of compositions lifted from Jenssen’s albums for the label together with a handful of additional pieces.

Using material spanning eight years, from the seminal Substrata, originally released in 1997 on Origo Sound and All Saints and later re-issued on Touch, to Jenssen’s most recent output, Dropsonde (2005), all woven into one long piece Continue Reading »

Max Richter gave a rare live performance at the Union Chapel in London’s Islington, ahead of the release of his latest project, 24 Postcards In Full Colour, on Fat-Cat in July, and, opening the evening for him was Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.

Jóhannsson took the stage accompanied with a string quartet and one additional personnel on electronics. With the string quartet positioned centre stage, Jóhannsson found himself stuck in the background between a baby grand piano and his keyboards. Jóhannsson has, since the release of his debut album, Englabörn, in 2002 on Touch and reissued last year on 4AD, established himself as one of the best contemporary classical composers around and has, beside his own records, composed music for films and plays and has also been involved with a handful of side projects. For this London performance, Jóhannsson focused exclusively on his solo work, presenting tracks taken essentially from Englabörn and IBM 1401, A User’s Manual, with a couple of more rhythmic pieces sourced from Dis. Continue Reading »

GAVIN BRYARS / PHILIP JECK & ALTER EGO
The Sinking Of The Titanic (1969-)
TOUCHTONE34
Touch 2007
01 Track. 72mins35secs

Crackle inhabits the first four minutes of this new version of Gavin Bryars’s The Sinking of the Titanic. It’s an ominous sound. Heard on old blues records it’s the sound of time passed. And cultural distance. Here it also suggests, perhaps rather inevitably, the cracking of ice.

Strings ebb and swell in mournful, elegiac fashion and are occasionally pierced by reverberating percussion that could be the dripping of water into pools. An elderly, well-spoken woman recalls going up on deck at the twenty minute mark. Her confident chatter and sudden eruption into song make for a simultaneously familiar and completely otherworldly experience. 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 »

ROSY PARLANE
Jessamine
TO68
Touch 2007
03 Tracks. 48mins50secs

After a spell in experimental rock outfits Thela and Parmentier, New Zealand-born Rosy Parlane established himself as a sound artist with a series of releases for Sigma Editions and Synaesthesia. He has also collaborated with artists such as Fennesz, AMM founder Eddie Prevost and avant-garde musician Mattin. In 2004, Parlane joined the ranks of influential UK label Touch and released the magnificent Iris. Continue Reading »

GEIR JENSSEN
Cho Oyu 8201m: Field Recordings From Tibet
ASH7.1
Ash International 2006
12 Tracks. 48mins15secs

Best known for his ambient work as Biosphere, Norwegian musician Geir Jenssen is also an accomplished mountaineer. In 2001, he took part, with five other climbers and a Sherpa, in an expedition to climb Mount Cho Oyo, the sixth highest summit in the world. Culminating at 8201m, the mount is situated on the border between Tibet and Nepal, a stone throw away from Mount Everest. This album and its accompanying booklet document the month-long expedition and give an insight into Jenssen’s state of mind during the trip. It also gives an idea of what mountaineers attempting such a journey are faced with, from freezing cold temperatures to altitude sickness and physical and mental pain. 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 »