Welcome to the Touch Newsletter #155. Yann Novak is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. “Ornamentation” is Novak's first physical release on Touch and continues his investigations of presence, stillness and mindfulness through the construction of immersive spaces, both literal and figurative. On sale now in the TouchShop.
Novak’s release is the latest in a series of Touch artist debuts, following on from our summer releases: Simon Scott’s “Floodlines”, Claire M Singer’s “Solas”, Bethan Kellough’s “Aven” and Lustmord’s “Dark Matter”…
Limited copies of two new tapes from The Tapeworm are available in the TouchShop. “Sabina” by Acid Fountain is a suite of improvised music about nature and magic from the Hylé Tapes founder. Marta De Pascalis’s “Anzar” features two works composed using improvisation on a tape-loop system. Both these remarkable recordings are now available in the TouchShop.
Originally planned for release on Ash International in 2010, “The Inauguration of the Elgaland-Vargaland Consulate for Portugal ~ Lisbon 2009” has only recently been recovered from a long-lost backup drive… Finally available in a cassette edition of 50 copies only.
Touch now has an Instagram account – follow us @toucharchive.
Tone 55 | Yann Novak “Ornamentation”
Limited edition CD + DL.
Photography by Jon Wozencroft.
Mastered By Lawrence English at 158.
Track List
1. Ornamentation 49:00
Presented live in Los Angeles at a small, private event. Source material includes field recordings captured throughout the United States and Canada from 2006 - 2016 and modular synthesizer recordings, all digitally altered.
Yann Novak is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. “Ornamentation” is Novak’s first physical release on Touch and continues his investigations of presence, stillness and mindfulness through the construction of immersive spaces, both literal and figurative. On “Ornamentation” Novak resists modernism’s problematic relationship to race, class and labour, and attempts to decouple contemporary minimalist sound work from this historical precedent.
The title refers to Adolf Loos’s notorious 1913 manifesto, “Ornament and Crime,” in which the author argues that the desire to adorn architecture, the body, objects, etc., is a primitive impulse, and the proper and moral evolution of Western culture depends in part upon the removal of ornamentation from daily life. Loos devalued the labor traditionally associated with aesthetics and beauty, and equated ornamentation with the degenerate. In this context, one could consider ornamentation as a way of viewing decay. His examples as such (tattoos, fashion, style, painting, et al.) predictably fell along divisions of race and class, coding modernity as the next outward manifestation of white, capitalist patriarchy.
Throughout the process of creating “Ornamentation”, Novak attempts to sidestep some of Loos’s modernist intolerances by focusing on the labor of composition itself, rather than particular processes or structures. Novak began by incorporating specific field recordings from his archive, deliberately selected for their poor quality; awkward interruptions, low fidelity smartphone recordings, problematic frequencies. The selection of these difficult sounds, processed alongside recordings of his modular synthesizer, created a unique set of challenges for Novak where the familiar, reductive approaches would fail to be useful and ultimately abandoned in favor of more dynamic, additive, and laborious process. Unlike minimalism with its roots in modernism, or “sound art” with its conceptual biases, Novak creates a work that acknowledges these conventions, yet stands apart as a meditation on beauty, labour, and aesthetics; “Ornamentation” as an adornment of time itself.
Order Yann Novak “Ornamentation” in the TouchShop
www.yannnovak.com
TTW#87 | Acid Fountain “Sabina”
Cassette only – limited edition of 150 copies
Illustration – Simon Scott
Track List
A1: Dreaming/Drumming
A2: San Pedro
A3: Goodbye Industry
A4: Heavy Sand
B1: Terres Rares
B2: Étoiles Filantes
B3: Mujer Espíritu
“Sabina” is a suite of improvised music about nature and magic. About the kind of traces we leave or want to leave on Earth. All music on this tape (except A4) was improvised and recorded in one take in Corbeil-Essonnes, France, during the last week of October 2015. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Richard Francés.
Francés is a French composer/musician born in Alicante in 1981 and now based in Paris. His project Acid Fountain seeks to bring together abstract and representational art, improvisation and composition, experimental and dance musics.
Other projects by Francés include Juju, his “électronique libre” duo with Adrien Kanter. He also composes, arranges and tours with French pop artists such as Owlle and Adrien Soleiman, to name but two… As a live performer, he has worked on Julien Lheuillier’s kosmische musik project Pointe du Lac and in 2015 has collaborated with the French art/dance collective (LA)HORDE. Previously, Richard played drums and synthesisers with French underground psych/kraut/drone band The New Reformed Church of Napalm Katia.
In January 2015 Richard founded the label Hylé Tapes: an experimental electronic music label releasing limited edition cassettes by international artists like Takahiro Mukai, Raphael Leray, D. Burke Mahoney, Jay Glass Dubs and Mortuus Auris & The Black Hand.
Buy Acid Fountain “Sabina” in the TouchShop
More information on www.tapeworm.org.uk
TTW#88 | Marta De Pascalis “Anzar”
Cassette only – limited edition of 100 copies
Illustration – GDP (Untitled,1973)
Track List
A: Anzar
B: Emerso
All music by Marta De Pascalis – synthesizers, tape echo. Mastered by Francesco Donadello at Calyx Mastering. De Pascalis (b. 1987) is a musician from Rome, currently based in Berlin, who works primarily with synthesisers and tape loops.
“Anzar” and “Emerso” are two works composed using improvisation on a tape-loop system, in which patterns of repetition create a sense of a dense, dynamic and cathartic distance. “Anzar”’s cover art is from a series of black ink paintings made by Marta’s father in the 1970s.
Marta De Pascalis writes: “I see these pieces as tied in a cyclical motion with their sounds moving in different directions. In “Anzar”, sounds are constantly “falling” from the source, landing gently and staying on the tape’s surface until they fade out to be replaced by other sounds, finally reaching an austere resolution. In “Emerso”, there’s a different scenario: a persistent theme in the background with sounds that slowly emerge, interact and then dissolve, ending with an abrupt change of tone. Where is the centre of this cycle? Where is the centre of this tape? The centre is moving constantly; the centre is missing. Switch sides. Repeat.” – Marta De Pascalis, Berlin, 19th August 2016.
Buy Marta De Pascalis “Anzar” in the TouchShop
More information on www.tapeworm.org.uk
Ash 9.3 | “The Inauguration of the Elgaland-Vargaland Consulate for Portugal ~ Lisbon 2009”
Cassette only – limited edition of 50 copies
Photography by José Frade.
Designed by the KREV Minister of Nothing.
The Inauguration of the Lisbon Consulate of the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, 12th September 2009, in the presence of King Michael I, HM Ambassador UK and HM Ambassador Portugal. The inauguration took place at Maria Matos Theatre, Lisbon. The curator was Pedro Santos.
You will hear: the King and Ambassadors arriving; speeches; diplomatic discussions; inaugurations; marching bands; the public dinner; and more…
This cassette was planned for release in the summer of 2010, alongside BJNilsen’s “Draught #1” tape. Inlays were designed and printed, only for Ash International to forget where it had backed-up the audio sources.
Four years later, Heitor Alvelos found a copy of the recordings. Final edits were prepared and mastered in Porto by Anselmo Canha on 29th September 2014. 23 months later the tape was finally manufactured…
Buy “The Inauguration of the Elgaland-Vargaland Consulate for Portugal” in the TouchShop
www.elgaland-vargaland.org
www.ashinternational.com
www.teatromariamatos.pt
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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