Cover mounted CD, GO MAG Mayo 90
Artwork & track listing

www.go-mag.com. To obtain a copy, email Nina at GO MAG

7.05.12 - Cambridge Unitarian, April 2012 - 29:59 - 192 kbps

Live performance on pipe organ and synthesiser. Recorded at Cambridge Unitarian Church, Saturday 28 April 2012 by Norman Ipsmael using a Tascam DR-07. Thanks to Jo Brook/Bad Timing, Simon Scott, Norman Ipsmael and Benny Nilsen.

Subscribe to the TouchPod podcast of TouchRadio via the iTunes Music Store
Play John Chantler "Cambridge Unitarian, April 2012"
www.inventingzero.net

7.05.12 - Live YU - 77:12 - 192 kbps

Photo: Daniel Menche

Live Performance on April 21st, 2012 at the YU Contemporary Art Center located in Portland, Oregon USA. This concert was a two hour non-stop performance and this recording only captured an hour and fifteen minutes due to a recording failing. The amplifiers also blew out at the end. The room in which this concert was performed was the size of a city block (68,000 ft/20726 m) and had enormous room acoustics with considerable natural reverberations. Maximum volume was used, for 120 bodies were present to absorb this 120 minute sonic mass.

"Boredom is tuneless matter. Tears are music in material form." (E.M. Cioran)

Subscribe to the TouchPod podcast of TouchRadio via the iTunes Music Store
Play Daniel Menche "Live YU"
danielmenche.blogspot.com

Café Oto, 17.07.12
Presentations, talks & performances.

Maia Urstad (Bergen) - 'Radio Field'

"As a sound installation artist I have always been intrigued by how we communicate. My fascination with the sending and receiving of messages, and how they may be converted on their way, has led to a series of artworks containing portable radio transmitters and receivers..."

Maia Urstad is an artist working at the intersection of audio and visual art. She was educated at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts and has also a background in rock music.

www.maia.no

Jiyeon Kim (Seoul)

Jiyeon Kim started her career as media art project producer, then she moved to the soundmaker/musician field. She mainly uses field recordings with sounds made with handmade analogue sound devices and acoustic objects as her source. Currently she experiments on resonating different materials in various methods with diy microphones, amplifiers, analogue oscillators, which leads her to develop unconventional ways of field recording. Jiyeon is also working as a sound educator, actively programming and running various sound workshops for young people. She aims to inspire participants to engage with their sonic environments in an artistic and social way. This summer, Jiyeon is invited to 3 weeks of a field recording residency near Verona and Naples in Italy, where she will explore sound environments of abandoned places in rural areas.

teum11.wordpress.com

Sandra Jasper (London/Berlin)

Sandra Jasper is a geographer currently completing her doctorate at the UCL Urban Laboratory. Her thesis "Cyborg Imaginations: Nature, Technology and Urban Space in West Berlin (1961-1989) draws from diverse fields, such as sound art, engineering and architecture. Sandra teaches on the UCL MSc Urban Studies and convenes "Stadtkolloquium" a postgraduate research network. Her recent publication "Phantom limbs: Encountering the hidden spaces of West Berlin" came out in "Urban Constellations" (Jovis, ed. by Matthew Gandy).

"The UCL Urban Laboratory, established in 2005, is a university-wide initiative to bring together the best urban teaching and research at UCL. Our activities build on the full spectrum of work at UCL across the arts and sciences ranging from civil engineering to film studies, from urban history to the latest developments in architectural design."

www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfasaj
www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanlab

Dawn Scarfe (London)

Dawn Scarfe’s work ranges across a variety of media from site-specific installation and performance to field recording. It explores how listening might be directed to heighten our perceptions of particular environments. Multi-speaker installations (such as Tree Music) and resonating acoustic glass sculptures (Listening Glasses) ask us to re-think and re-negotiate our impressions of our surroundings. Individual parts of her works are encouraged to respond to each other or to enter into a dialogue with their environment.

Recent exhibitions include Klinkende Stad Kortrijk, ZKM Karlsruhe, Q-O2 Brussels, La Casa Encendida Madrid, TONSPUR Museumsquartier Vienna, Bios Athens, Space Studios and 176 Zabludowicz Collection, London. She completed a PhD in Sonic Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London in December 2011.

Dawn will present an introduction to her work with glass including Tuning to Spheres: an installation/performance which uses assorted wine glasses as acoustic resonators. A number of wine glasses sit on a turntable. A small loudspeaker plays sine tones tuned to the pitch of a particular glass, causing it to resonate as it passes underneath the speaker.

www.dawnscarfe.co.uk

Tickets: www.cafeoto.co.uk

CD - extended digipak - 2 tracks - 39:25

Voice, cello & electronics: Hildur Gudnadottir

Recorded & mixed by Tony Myatt
Mastered by Denis Blackham

Artwork & Photography by Jon Wozencroft

Track Listing:
1. Prelude 4:11
2. Leyfdu ljosinu 35:14

Hildur Gudnadottir's new album 'Leyfdu ljosinu' (Icelandic for 'Allow the light'), was recorded live at the Music Research Centre, University of York, in January 2012 by Tony Myatt, using a SoundField ST450 Ambisonic microphone and two Neumann U87 microphones. (NB - It was not played in a concert environment and there was no audience.)

To be faithful to time and space - elements vital to the movement of sound - this album was recorded entirely live, with no post-tampering of the recordings' own sense of occasion.

A multichannel version (Touch # TO:90USB) is also available - a 2GB USB stick in hand-made (by the artist) paper cover.You can read more about this here.

Pre-order Hildur Gudnadottir "Leyfdu Ljosinu" [CD] in the TouchShop
Pre-order Hildur Gudnadottir "Leyfdu Ljosinu" [USB Stick] in the TouchShop
www.hildurness.com

Sounding City: Public Sound, Kortrijk, Belgium, 28.04.12 - 13.05.12
Opening on the 28th with a presentation of the work of Chris Watson by Mike Harding and a live performance by Jana Winderen.

Chris Watson - installation inspired by "After the Deluge (Na de Zondvloed)" by Roelant Savery @ Broel Museum. Unfortunately Chris Watson cannot be present for family reasons, so his work will be presented by Mike Harding from Touch.

Jana Winderen - installation - "The Moat" & live performance.

www.festivalkortrijk.be

22.04.12 - VINYL+, Live at ZKM, Karlsruhe 21st April 2012 - 63:16 - 192 kbps

Photo: Mike Harding and Philip Marshall

Achim Mohné [00:00 to 29:11] uses three Omnitronic decks, Philip Jeck [26:51 to 63:16] uses two Dancettes and sampler. Recorded by Philip Marshall from desk to hard drive.

The resurgence of vinyl in recent years is a phenomenon which has not gone unnoticed; as CD declines sharply, its audio limitations exposed not only by advances in other technologies, but also by the myths propagated at the inception of digital exposed, so artists explore and demand other formats to express their work. Although a business model is still some way off the traditional artist » label » distribution » shop paradigm, it is clear this is being radically overhauled and replaced by online sales platforms set up by the artists themselves. But vinyl seems to have escaped this process, and continues to grow. Why is that?

Subscribe to the TouchPod podcast of TouchRadio via the iTunes Music Store
Play "VINYL+, Live at ZKM, Karlsruhe 21st April 2012"
www.achimmohne.de
www.philipjeck.com

320 kpbs - 1 track - 44:22

The third and last in a series of reworkings of Sohrab material by artists showing solidarity to his cause for legal status in Germany.

Ash International mix content providers:

Maia Urstad - Himmel über Bergen 5:00 | Zerocrop - Susanna (Zerocrop remix) 10:54 | Sarah Nicolls - Orshab 17: 15 | Achim Mohné - Syntactical audio observation of the apparatus 26:18 | BJNilsen - Marg Bar (DUB) 35:15 | Jim O'Rourke - Somebody 44:22

Buy Sohrab "You Are Not Alone lll" in the TouchShop
www.touchmusic.org.uk/sohrab

The resurgence of vinyl in recent years is a phenomenon which has not gone unnoticed; as CD declines sharply, its audio limitations exposed not only by advances in other technologies, but also by the myths propagated at the inception of digital exposed, so artists explore and demand other formats to express their work. Although a business model is still some way off the traditional artist » label » distribution » shop paradigm, it is clear this is being radically overhauled and replaced by online sales platforms set up by the artists themselves. But vinyl seems to have escaped this process, and continues to grow. Why is that?

VINYL+

ZKM – Karlsruhe, Germany, 21.04.12

Touch presents...
Philip Jeck
Achim Mohné
The Ash International Sound System

Alongside this event will be the T-B A21 Sound Space:

The T-B A21 Sound Space is a project commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary to bring to a larger audience the unique series of compositions that were produced for The Morning Line. The Morning Line was conceived as an interdisciplinary platform structure by artist Matthew Ritchie with architects Aranda\Lasch and Arup AGU, where artists, architects, engineers, physicists and musicians would each contribute their own specialised information to create a new form.

Studio 672 – Köln, Germany 23.04.12

Touch presents...
BJNilsen
Achim Mohné
The Ash International Sound System

12" White Label vinyl + 320 kbps MP3 download of the tracks
Cut by Jason @ Transition

Track listing:

Side A: Quanta of Light l 19:24
Side B: Quanta of Light ll 21:35

The fifth in the series of limited edition vinyl in the Tone 45 series. 100 copies only are available in the TouchShop. Artist's note: the distortion on the run in groove on side a is intentional...

Buy Daniel Menche "Quanta of Light" [White Label vinyl] in the TouchShop
danielmenche.blogspot.com

Café Oto, London, England 02.04.2012

An evening celebrating Touch's 30th anniversary and the release of Oren Ambarchi's striking new album Audience of One - a four-part suite which moves from throbbing minimalism to expansive song-craft to ecstatic free-rock. Ambarchi will perform alongside the unparalleled aural intensity of Daniel Menche and BJ Nilsen's layered sound environments.

www.orenambarchi.com
danielmenche.blogspot.com
www.bjnilsen.com
www.cafeoto.co.uk

Radio Boredcast is a 744-hour continuous online radio project – running from 1st March to 31st March 2012 – curated by artist Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) with AV Festival. In response to our ambiguous relationship with time - do we have too much or not enough? - Radio Boredcast celebrates the detail, complexity and depth of experience lost through our obsession with speed.

On 16th March 2012 at 5:57am, Touch takes over Radio Boredcast for 30 hours of programmes curated by Mike Harding and Jon Wozencroft, as a celebration of Touch.30. Many rare recordings are to be aired, including a number of Touch's earliest cassette releases in full. Jon Wozencroft presents "TouchRadio 1987" - a compilation prepared in 1987 for private distribution on cassette… In those days, mix tapes were a very common way of sharing one's own musical tastes on an informal basis. Half of this episode is presented here. Mike Harding also contributes three hour long "TouchAVRadio" transmissions, "Language", "Sound" and "Time", especially created for AVFestival.

In addition, many Touch artists are featured on other days of the month-long transmission, alongside shows submitted by Ash International and The Tapeworm. Special broadcasts from the likes of Chris Watson, Phill Niblock, Fennesz and BJNilsen are scheduled.

You can listen continuously for a month, or for hours, minutes or seconds. Online 24 hours each day, at www.avfestival.co.uk or www.thepixelpalace.org. The schedule for the whole month is listed here, with details of each show and information about the artists. You can also subscribe to the Radio Boredcast podcasts.

Radio Boredcast schedule at www.avfestival.co.uk
www.peoplelikeus.org
30.touchmusic.org.uk

The source of the Stonehenge bluestones is widely accepted to be the Preseli Hills, in Pembrokeshire, SW Wales, a heritage site seldom studied but rich in sonic phenomena, notably the lithophones that litter Carn Menyn, the main rocky outcrop on the Preseli range.

A central premise of the Landscape & Perception project is to question the hierarchy between vision and sound in the building of prehistoric monuments, in particular the sacred sites of Avebury and Stonehenge, whose acoustic dimensions have never been properly assessed.

Supported by the Royal College of Art, Paul Devereux and Jon Wozencroft present this updated report on their findings. The website is designed by Rebels in Control and represents five year's worth of research into these two "power spots".

www.landscape-perception.com

Touch.30 USB flash drive + title card in velvet string bag
Flash drive contents: .mov + text & images (2GB) - 32:30

Tracklist:
1. Liquid Music
[click here to view an excerpt on Vimeo]

Jon Wozencroft writes:

"Liquid Music was made in 2001, in conjunction with the music Christian Fennesz was developing during that fertile period when the future was still a good idea. The first version – this is it – was premiered during the Touch tour of 2001, the time of Fennesz’s Endless Summer and the steady movement towards Venice.

The footage for Liquid Music originates from Prague, Paxos, Crete, Cephalonia, Messinia, London and one short clip from Monterey Bay. It was filmed on Hi–8 and mini–DV between 1995 and 2001. The main idea was to film everything through the lens, with no post production other than the compilation of many years work into a coherent whole. Fennesz’s music, and its ascendent quality, made that a pleasure. The optical quality is on the cusp between analogue and digital resolution. In many respects it’s an exchange of values as much as working methods.

I feel it’s one of the best works we did in the last 10 years. The Brighton concert, where the audio comes from, was a key moment on the Touch 2001 tour. The PA was Loud. Everything worked. The film, as on all nights, was played in parallel, it is not sync’d in the conventional sense. Every time is was shown it was different. On this night, the second night of the tour, the audience was shocked in a way that shock rarely happens these days.

This very same year, industry experts got together in California to set the MPEG compression codes for DVD mastering. MPEG4 algorithms basically sample 3 frames out of the PAL 25 frames-per-second standard, and interpolate, which is OK if you’re trying to get a drama onto a DVD, but hopeless if the film involves very fast movement and transitions. Liquid Music is in some respects a laptop response to the celluloid flicker film from the 1960s – Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad, Stan Brakage – Peter Kubelka’s Arnulf Rainer. We tried everything Soho facilities houses had to offer but there was no way the film was going to master accurately onto the DVD format.

The movement of water is a difficult thing to film, and to sonify. For years the only way Liquid Music could be shown was either as a live projection or a dedicated screening – these have taken place at Tate Modern, the BFI, Austria, Hungary, Germany... Ten years later, the satisfactory outcome is to see what it looks like on an iPad or an iPhone, and then to imagine it on the big screen."

Thanks are due to: David Metcalfe, Kamal Ackarie, Steve Connolly, Andrew Lagowski, Philip Marshall and Denis Blackham.

See also: Callum Coats, Living Energies – An Exposition of Concepts Related to the Theories of Viktor Schauberger, Gateway, Dublin 1996.

Buy fennesz wozencroft "Liquid Music" [USB Stick] in the TouchShop
www.fennesz.com

Today, 11th March, is the official 30th anniversary of the founding of Touch in 1982...

First contact with New Order after their concert at the Newcastle Mayfair on 11th March 1982…

Visit the Touch Archive pages
Touch's history