SPIRE - Organ Works Past Present & Future

2 CDs and booklet in special wallet - the first in a series with volume following later in 2004...

Touch # Tone 20
Double CD + booklet in special gatefold wallet
Design and photography by Jon Wozencroft

Track listing:

CDOne: Leif Elggren   Z'EV   Philip Jeck   Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson   Charles Matthews   Marcus Davidson   Scott Minor/Fennesz   Finnbogi Pétursson     Biosphere  Toshiya Tsunoda   Tom Recchion    Lary 7/Jeff Peterson

CDTwo: BJNilsen   Scott Taylor   Jacob Kirkegaard   Oren Ambarchi/Tom Recchion   Chris Watson

...and on the web: Stillupsteypa

1st fruits of collaboration between Fennesz and Sparklehorse - recorded in Geneva by Christian Fennesz and Scott Minor

Touch regulars Biosphere, Philip Jeck, Benny Nilsen [Hazard], Chris Watson...

Newcomers include US free music composer and designer Tom Recchion, UK's Scott Taylor, Icelandic artists Finnbogi Pétursson and Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, and one of Sweden's premier performance artists Leif Elggren [The Sons of God, Firework Edition Records etc.], and one of the Kings of Elgaland-Vargaland. Also included are works by one of the UK's finest organists Charles Matthews and classical composer Marcus Davidson, highly regarded Japanese field recordist Toshiya Tsunoda and many others.

The story:

The thought of producing a compilation where the tracks were all either inspired by or more directly influenced by the organ had been frequently aired over the years. The conversations were always animated and expansive. The organ works of Arvo Pärt, those performed by Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, a pupil of Richard Rodney Bennett at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and others, have reached a wider non-classical audience. Eventually Benny Nilsen arranged to visit St. Mary's Church, Warwick and work with one of England's finest, Charles Matthews. Crawling around inside the instrument, positioning microphones most appropriately in the Church, or 'capturing' the psalms composed by Marcus Davidson, Nilsen explored the possibilities with all the familiar lust of the avant-garde.

As the brief widened, so did the responses... some contributors referred to earlier versions of the organ and its often highly political usage, others explored aged instruments themselves. Some studied the effects of the sounds produced on the physique and the psyche, others conceptualised the brief and either built their own or recorded natural or man-made phenomena which utilised the same basic process, wind through pipes.

The organ represents the marriage between acoustic complexity and ritualised space. It is impossible not to be drawn upward, towards the spire of the church or cathedral, or to the huge and daunting forest of pipes themselves. The organ dwarfs all comers, and unlike other instruments, it is this non-musical element which makes the organ stand apart.

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