Welcome to the 142nd Touch Newsletter. Selected editions of Chris Watson’s Touch catalogue are now available to download from his Bandcamp shop, complete with pdfs of the booklets and CD artwork. Full details of these editions follow below.
Jana Winderen’s “The Wanderer”, originally produced as a multi-channel installation for the Lorch Schive Art Prize, Trondheim Kunstmuseum in 2015, is now available as a stereo download version from her Bandcamp shop.
Spire Live in Cambridge, 26th February 2016: “Spire Live” – John Beaumont, Marcus Davidson, Philip Jeck, Charles Matthews, Simon Scott, Claire M Singer and The Eternal Chord at The Unitarian Church, Cambridge, UK.
In 2001 Savage Pencil, Zenlo and Skylon formed an improvising trio named Nothing. Aptly, nothing was ever released. But now, The Tapeworm rectifies this with “The Wrong Answer Became Right”, a limited cassette in an edition of 100 copies. Available to pre-order now.
26.2.16 | “Spire Live” – at The Unitarian Church, Cambridge
Friday 26th February 2016, 5-9pm
The Unitarian Church
5 Emmanuel Road
Cambridge CB1 1JW
Performers:
John Beaumont
Marcus Davidson
Philip Jeck
Charles Matthews
Simon Scott
Claire M Singer
The Eternal Chord
This concert will be recorded and a donation towards entry guarantees you a free copy of the recording which will be made there [wav file].
More info and tickets: www.touchshop.org
Visit www.spire.org.uk for a full programme
Directions: www.cambridgeunitarian.org
Ash 11.8D | Jana Winderen “The Wanderer”
Digital download. Stereo version of multi-channel installation.
Track List
The Wanderer [31:21]
Zooplankton and Phytoplankton are organisms which drift in the oceans, seas and bodies of fresh water. The word ‘zooplankton’ is derived from the Greek zoon (ζῴον), meaning ‘animal’, phyto is derived from the Greek words φυτόν (phyton), meaning plant and planktos (πλαγκτός), meaning wanderer or drifter.
Mammals, fish and crustaceans feed on zooplankton and they in turn feed on phytoplankton. Phytoplankton need two things for photosynthesis and thus their survival: energy from the sun and nutrients from the water. In the process of photosynthesis, phytoplankton release oxygen into the water. Half of the world's oxygen is produced by phytoplankton photosynthesis.
Local abundance varies horizontally in the water column, vertically with ocean drifts and seasonally with the light.
The Wanderer is a sound composition created from hydrophone recordings from the realm of these creatures in the Atlantic Ocean, made by Jana on her travels from the North Pole to the Equator.
The Wanderer was produced for the Lorch Schive Art Prize, Trondheim Kunstmuseum in 2015.
Download from janawinderen.bandcamp.com
www.ashinternational.com
www.janawinderen.com
TTW#82 | Nothing “The Wrong Answer Became Right”
Cassette only – limited edition of 100 copies
Illustration – SavX
Track List
A1: AUM
A2: Sudterranean
A3: Going To Mela’s
A4: Raising Fire
A5: Tight Time… Wonder
A6: Summer Pow
A7: Summer Pow Coda
(there's nothing on the B-side…)
Zenlo: Soprano sax, harmonica, psalmody
Skylon: beats and electronicz
SavX: forgotten Fender
Recorded at The Garage, Highbury and Islington, London, UK, 30.vi,2001.
RECORDED LIVE AND TOTALLY IMPROVISED.
Pre-order Nothing “The Wrong Answer Became Right” in the TouchShop
More information on www.tapeworm.org.uk
Chris Watson on Bandcamp
We have now made available selected editions of Chris's Touch catalogue on Bandcamp, complete with pdfs of the booklets and CD artwork:
Stepping into the Dark (1997)
Compact Disc edition no longer available
"In recent years I have noticed that some of the locations I visited as a sound recordist displayed remarkable and particular characteristics. These may be sparkling acoustics, a special timbre, sometimes rhythmic, percussive or transient animal sounds. Without a doubt, playing a recording made at one of these sites can recreate a detailed memory of the original event. Also, as others have described, there is an intangible sense of being in a special place — somewhere that has a spirit — a place that has an ‘atmosphere’. These recordings avoid background noise, human disturbance and editing. They are made using sensitive microphones camouflaged and fixed in position usually well in advance of any recording or animal behaviour. The mics. are then cabled back on very long leads to a hide or concealed recording point, the aim being to capture the actual sound within each particular location without external influence. Sites are discovered by researching local natural or social history, by interpreting features on a map or through anecdote and conversation with people about their feelings for or against particular places. The author and researcher Tom Lethbridge identified the sources of several spirits within the topography of the area. I suspect that this also includes flora and fauna, local time of day, the weather and the season. The following recordings are the atmospheres of special places." [Chris Watson]
Outside the Circle of Fire (1998)
Compact Disc edition no longer available
The purr of a leopard close up against a baobab tree, waiting. Whales surfacing, breathing in cold air. Coll starling imitate the noise of farm machinery from the hollow ring of a ruined bothy. The rattle of wood over a black stream... Chris Watson's second CD is a dramatic contrast to the spacious atmospheres of "Stepping into the Dark" (Touch TO:27, 1996). Featuring 22 close-up recordings of animals, birds and insect life, "Outside the Circle of Fire" enlarges our awareness of the sound universe, intimate with voices from the past. There is an intensity here that television pictures cannot conjure.
Weather Report (2003)
Compact Disc edition still available
The weather has created and shaped all our habitats. Clearly it also has a profound and dynamic effect upon our lives and that of other animals. The three locations featured here all have moods and characters which are made tangible by the elements, and these periodic events are represented within by a form of time compression.
This was Chris's first foray into composition using his location recordings of wildlife and habitats - previously he has been concerned with describing and revealing the special atmosphere of a place by site specific, untreated location recordings. For the first time here he constructs collages of sounds, which evolve from a series of recordings made at the specific locations over varying periods of time.
El Tren Fantasma (2011)
Compact Disc edition no longer available
Vinyl edition - "The Signalman's Mix" still available
"Take the ghost train from Los Mochis to Veracruz and travel cross country, coast to coast, Pacific to Atlantic. Ride the rhythm of the rails on board the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FNM) and the music of a journey that has now passed into history."
El Tren Fantasma, (The Ghost Train), is Chris Watson's 4th solo album for Touch, and his first since Weather Report in 2003, which was named as one of the albums you should hear before you die in The Guardian. A Radio programme was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 30 Oct, 2010, produced by Sarah Blunt, and described as "a thrilling acoustic journey across the heart of Mexico from Pacific to Atlantic coast using archive recordings to recreate a rail passenger service which no longer exists. It’s now more than a decade since FNM operated its last continuous passenger service across country. Chris Watson spent a month on board the train with some of the last passengers to travel this route. As sound recordist he was part of the film crew working on a programme in the BBC TV series Great Railways Journeys. Now, in this album, the journey of the ‘ghost train’ is recreated, evoking memories of a recent past, capturing the atmosphere, rhythms and sounds of human life, wildlife and the journey itself along the tracks of one of Mexico’s greatest engineering projects.
Further information: chriswatsonreleases.bandcamp.com
Ash 11.2 | Ánde Somby “Yoiking With The Winged Ones”
Vinyl LP + full album download of wav file + bonus track, “Čuoika”.
All downloads are 24 bit recordings by Chris Watson.
Design by Philip Marshall.
Photography by A K Dolven.
Track List
A1: Gufihttar (underworld fairie)
A2: Gadni (spirit of the mountain)
A3: Neahkkameahttun (from the other side)
B: Wolf
+ bonus track “Čuoika” [“Mosquito"] which comes with the digital download of the full album when you order [via wetransfer or ftp download]
Yoiking is the ancient chanting practise of the Sámi People - the indigenous peoples on the top of Europe. Yoiking originates from time immemorial - legend tells that it was the faires and elves of the arctic lands that gave yoiks to the Sámi People. Yoiking was an important element of the religious rituals in pre-christian times and has survived both christianity, imperialism and the fact that Sámi areas were confiscated by the states of the north; Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia.
The recordings are made by Chris Watson, the world famous sound artist and leading field recorder. The recordings took place in Kvalnes, Lofoten mid June in 2014 in a moment while the arctic winds had a little rest. Chris Watson has also done the post production. A K Dolven took the photos for the project and has been instrumental in developing the concept. Thanks also to Tony Myatt.
Buy Ánde Somby “Yoiking With The Winged Ones” in the TouchShop
www.ashinternational.com
www.somban.com
Guerrilla Audio
Guerrilla Audio is a new series of audio raids by Simon Fisher Turner.
guer·ril·la
ɡəˈrilə/
noun
noun: guerilla
a member of a small independent group taking part in irregular fighting, typically against larger regular forces.
Each audio edit will be posted for 14 days and then removed from the site, although the information about each guerrilla activity will be archived, but without the audio. There will be two postings per month with the first (also featuring Klara Lewis & Rainier Lericolais) on 1st August 2015, so please check in regularly to listen to the latest offering.
Guerrilla Audio
www.simonfisherturner.com
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The previous Touch NewsLetter can be found here.
