Touch



			Jon Wozencroft - Touch & Fuse Touch # TO:15 Book - softback and hardback 64pp 50% colour 25% 2 colour 25% black and white - 60 images Published by Faculdade de Belas Artes de Porto (Portugal), in association with Touch Images from artwork for releases from Touch, Ash International, London Records, R&S, Swim, Sub Rosa, and articles, images and design for publications from Merge, Stockholm, Compendium Books, London, Vagabond, London and Fuse, London - some never published before Ash International Ian Curtis Cusp DIN Dumb Type Fuse Soliman Gamil g-man The Hafler Trio Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson Mark Van Hoen Ryoji Ikeda Philip Jeck Joy Division Richard H. Kirk Andrew Mckenzie & John Duncan merge mesmer New Order Panasonic Evan Parker & Lawrence Casserley Rehberg & Bauer Sandoz Scala Scanner Swim Touch Vagabond Mika Vainio Chris Watson Annie Williams Wir Wir3o		Jon Wozencroft / info Jon Wozencroft's designs make your eyes feel like remote sensors. His work decorates the sleeves of many of the CDs on the Touch, Ash International [R.I.P], OR (no it hasn't! &endash; ed.), R&S, Sub Rosa and Swim labels; and he has pretty much claimed the use of the remarkably beautiful DIN Mittelschrift font as his own territory. Unlike the mannered virtuosity of the Designer's Republic or tomato, or the much feted Vaughan Oliver's filigree and shadow designs for the 4AD label, which often window-dressed some fairly naked examples of third rate indie rock, Wozencroft's clinical, cool (in the best sense) image making produced material of considerable substance. Whether using one of his stilled, hushed photographs of a contemporary modernist architectural interior, a found print of trainee Chinese riflewomen, or a plane of smeared lettering, his layouts make you feel like you should be looking harder &endash; and by extension listening deeper. Touch and Fuse is a 'best of' monograph anthologising Wozencroft's CD sleeves, posters (including unused sketches) and writings over the past decade &endash; from Hafler Trio manifestos to Mika Vainio digipacs. Working as he does alongside a largely wordless musical medium, it becomes extra important for the package to speak its mind through the clothes it wears. Wozencroft is outspoken about the waymedia and advertising often reduce design packaging to "colourful foam", and he sets out to redess the problem. He is enamoured of video screenshots &endash; making the viewer always the secondary observer &endash; but evades the pornography of the hidden camera: you choose how innocent or charged the image (a caterpillar on a leaf, a speeding boat, an overhead cityscape) should become. He can make a jumbo jet touchdown or the ragged edge of a woven tablemat seem equally worthy of contemplation. It is surprising how often he has resorted to rural images (for example, see the CD release by Christian Fennesz &endash; Touch # TO:40 &endash; ed.), using close-ups of cacti, forest trails, graveyards and the like. Wozencroft's elegant arrangements make nature and technology appear less divisable. In his work, woodland is perceived as a vast and complex organism; a church is revealed as a machine for making sense of mystery. (Rob Young, The Wire)