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A rare viewing of Jon Wozencroft's film 'Liquid Music', produced for Christian Fennesz's live performances, can be seen at Faster Than Sound on 9th June 2006. This installation will be shown with a selected edited audio track from a Fennesz concert.

The DVD remains unreleased...

Philip Jeck also performed - here is a review of his set:

from k-punk:

Philip Jeck, photograph by Jon Wozencroft

Philip Jeck - a godfather of sonic hauntology, of whose work I was shamefully ignorant until last weekend. Using two turntables and a magic-box of effects which defamiliarise the vinyl source material to the point of near-abstraction, Philip reconceives DJing as the art of producing sonic phantasmagoria. The occasional recognizable fragment (the Byrds, Mantovani-like lite classical kitsch, sonic objet as made all the more alluring by their partial submersion) thrillingly bobs up out of the whooshing delirium-stream. As he performs, Philip leans over his machines with a look of tender melancholy (perfectly captured in Jon Wozencroft's picture, above), almost as if he is tending a dying puppy.

Earlier in the evening, there was a duet from Hildur Guadtir & BJNilsen.

Here is what kpunk says about their set:

"Hildur Guadtir: first to perform in the 'Multi-National Circle', an outdoor concrete circle adjacent to a runway, Hildur overcame the unceremonious conditions in which she was asked to play (she wasn't introduced, and the late afternoon sunlight threatened to dissipate any atmosphere) with a performance of sombre rapture, her cello multiple tracked (with live playing augmented by laptop loops) into a slow sonic ocean sound whose ebbs and flows were shifted expertly around the six speakers of the ultravivid PA by BJNilsen. Hildur achieved something akin to the dark tranquility about which Dominic writes so eloquently, the suspension of all urgencies in a viscously tactile sound that gives the illusion of being poised on the edge of stasis (perhaps it's no accident that Xasthur use cello)."

There is also a review in the Financial Times

Tate Etc.

"With every year that passes, Joy Division seem less like the transmitter of their own era's geist than the medium through which the ghosts of a dead future - our present - first made their sepulchural voices heard." k-punk

Touch # Tone 30
CD - digipac
Artwork by Jon Wozencroft
5 tracks - 56:30

Lasse Marhaug: electronics
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 fluctuating character, as well as with the power of the full organ. Marhaug's tools belong to the world of sine wave oscillators and noise generators. The aim was to set a sonic frame into which they could both gradually tune.

The two musicians met again in June 2006 just before Oslo Cathedral (which contains Asheim's favourite instrument) closed down for a few years of renovation work. One day of soundcheck and musical work and one night of recording produced an improvised flow of one hour, afterwards structured into five tracks.

The recording was made in a live setup on the organ loft. Nils Henrik Asheim was sitting at the organ console and Lasse Marhaug right behind, playing his electronics through a loudspeaker system in order to make the electronics and the acoustic organ sound blend as close to each other as possible. Sound engineer Thomas Hukkelberg used two custom-built condenser mics for the organ, two Shure KSM 44 for the electronics and two Neumann U87 by the altar for the ambience. He used a Millennia Media HV-3 preamp and an Apogee AD-16X converter. The recordings were made at night to avoid unwanted ambient city sounds. The final mix was made by Marhaug in January 2007.

Now available from the TouchShop here

Reviews of this album may be read here

Touch # Tone 32
CD - extended digipac
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft
11 tracks - 51:56

Track Listing:

oto/aware/haru/trace/kuni/mono/
kokoro/cendre/amorph/glow/abyss

This release features a duet between Christian Fennesz [guitar/lapop] and Ryuichi Sakamoto [piano/laptop] - a continuing collaboration between two highly regarded composers. Their first, 'Sala Santa Cecilia', was a 19 minute overture from their live performance in Rome in November 2004 [Touch # Tone 22, 2005]. Bill Meyer in Magnet (US) wrote: "Cross-generational encounters are never a sure thing, but this one strikes sparks" and Max Schaefer in Cyclic Defrost (USA): "...a moment of much beauty, not to mention anticipation for the promised full-length effort to come." Tom Sekowski adds in Gaz-eta (USA): "We can only hope this astonishing collaboration will turn into something more tangible, more permanent." [more reviews on this release may be read here]

So now we have 'Cendre'... Cendre was recorded between 2004 and 2006 in New York City by Ryuichi Sakamoto and in Vienna by Christian Fennesz. They came together for the mix in New York City in February of that year. Fennesz would send Sakamoto a guitar or electronic track and Sakamoto would compose his piano piece. This process was also reversed - Sakamoto initiating the track with a piano composition and Fennesz responding. Meanwhile they met for live shows, or communicated via digital means to compare notes, swop ideas and develop themes... And the cyclical process continued right up until the final mix.

Ryuichi Sakamoto and Christian Fennesz blend the unstructured and imaginative qualities of improvisation with the satisfying sculpture of composition. Sakamoto's piano, his style reminiscent of Debussy and Satie, perfectly complements Fennesz with his powerful blend of shimmering guitar and passionate electronics.

Together they have combined to create 11 tracks of satisfying and challenging possibilities...

Now available from the TouchShop here

Reviews of this album may be read here

Back in stock:

Ryoji Ikeda - 0ｺC [TO:38]

Now available from the TouchShop

Touch is appearing at Faster than Sound...

A performance by Philip Jeck and an audio-visual installation by Jon Wozencroft will take place on 9th June 2007 at Bentwaters Airbase, Suffolk, as part of the Aldeburgh Festival.

A festival on the airbase in the most secretive airbase in the UK. For a one day only the Airbase where Spacecadets were filmed and the Rendlesham UFO sighting took place will be open to the public. Faster Than sound is a sound experiment joining the dots between musical genres and digital art forms. The Festival will provide public access to the previous inaccessible Bentwaters Airbase. Come and join us in a celebration of light and sound across the cold war buildings of the space.

Faster Than sound is a sound experiment joining the dots between musical genres and digital art forms. Artists from various backgrounds will collaborate and explore the worlds of electronic music genres, contemporary classical practice and interactive visual arts. A range of immersive installations, musical collaborations, a wireless walk in the woods, illuminated cold war buildings and a large dome filled with inspiring sounds will make this a day you won't forget for a long time. Allow yourself to be taken somewhere you've never been before to experience the unexpected.

There is an article on the death of the audio cassette here and recycling suggestions for your old cassettes...