Browse by Label: TOUCH (UK)

Artist:	GAMIL, SOLIMAN
Title:	Ankh
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	TO 014LP

Vinyl version of this 1990 Touch release. "This is the 2nd release for Touch by Soliman Gamil, after The Egyptian Music. Ankh is the Egyptian symbol of life, of fertility and of growth. From the rich tonality of 'Dance of Ka' to the exuberant 'Clown Dance', Soliman Gamil draws on ancient Egyptian culture to create soundscapes that transcend the stereotypes handed down from films like Cleopatra; in the process they also challenge the shrink-wrapped mentality of 'world music'. On Ankh, Soliman Gamil plays 17 different instruments on 15 new compositions written and recorded since the 1960s. The cover comes complete with full color artwork that features a painting by Panni Charrington."

Artist:	WATSON, CHRIS
Title:	Stepping Into The Dark
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 027CD

1996 release, repressed! "Watson's lead instrument is the tape recorder. After working with Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio, he became sound recordist for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He has since joined a film and video production company, working for BBC wildlife documentaries and occasional feature films. The 12 recordings on Stepping into the Dark contrast a windswept forest in Glen Cannich with the gathering conversations of rooks roosting in a churchyard in Northumberland. Other atmospheres include the heat and wall of sound found on the River Mara in Kenya, fishing bats on a mangrove pool in Venezuela, the ritual dance of snipe at dusk in the Northern Hebrides... a hydrophone at 5m. depth in the Moray Firth captures the signature whistles and clicks of bottlenose dolphins."

Artist:	SCALA
Title:	Beauty Nowhere
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	TO 029LP

Vinyl version of this 1996 release. "This is the 1st release by Scala for Touch, followed by the now deleted CD Compass Heart. Scala were: Daren Seymour/Sarah Peacock/Mark Van Hoen/Justin Fletcher. When we first heard these songs on tape, both the sound and the intensity of the songs stuck us as being something very special, a meeting point between the atmosphere of Joy Division and the Aphex Twin... maybe? A new soundtrack to Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Feminin... perhaps? But it's difficult to pinpoint."

Artist:	IKEDA, RYOJI
Title:	+/-
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 030CD

2011 repress. This is the third edition of this timeless classic, originally released in 1996. Ryoji Ikeda is Japan's top avant-garde minimalist electronic composer, in the tradition of Alvin Lucier/The Hafler Trio/Bruce Gilbert/CM von Hausswolff/Panasonic, etc. +/- has a particular sonority whose quality is determined by one's listening point in relation to the loudspeakers. Furthermore, the listener can experience a particular difference between speaker playback and headphone listening. The sound signals can be thought of in the same way as spotlights. Lastly, a high frequency sound is used that the listener only becomes aware of upon its disappearance.

Artist:	HILMARSSON, HILMAR ORN
Title:	Children of Nature
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 033.14CD

Repackaged re-issue of Children of Nature, the award-winning score to the award-winning 1991 film by Icelandic director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson. It is a lush and resonant lamentation, written by Iceland-native Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson (HoH), now resident of Denmark. HoH has collaborated with Current 93 and the Hafler Trio to name a few noteworthy artists. Hilmarsson says, "Children of Nature is a commemoration for those I have loved and lost." Both introspective and uplifting, the music is a series of miniature symphonies and extended interludes reminiscent of Arvo Pärt. The artwork includes numerous stills from the beautifully shot film.

Artist:	GAMIL, SOLIMAN
Title:	A Map of Egypt Before the Sands
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 033.15CD

1997 release. "Soliman Gamil is a musicologist and composer who lived and worked in Cairo, Egypt. Born in 1924, his soundtracks for theatre and film have won international awards. His compositions are frequently used for radio and television. Soliman Gamil died in 1995. The Catalogue wrote in 1988: 'Instead of trying to create an atmosphere, this record reflects one. From the opening seconds of "Melody of Nile", you are there -- lying in the sand, lips sore, throat parched, staring at the huge river. Quite why this record works when so may other atmospheric records just irritate, I do not know. There are no traditional synth sounds or strange electronic wave noises, just really interesting sounds, alien tunes. The Egyptian Music is wonderfully refreshing.'"

Artist:	IKEDA, KEN
Title:	Tzuki (Moon)
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 033.17CD

"Touch is proud to present the first release by Japanese sound artist Ken Ikeda. Having been recently featured in the Hayward Gallery's Sonic Boom exhibition for his collaboration with the Japanese video artist Mariko Mori, Tzuki (Moon) is Ken Ikeda's first CD release in his own right. Hypnotic sound-fields strangely reminiscent of early Durrutti Column. 'This work has as its purpose taking samples from old movies and, by erecting a memorial for the blanks between frames, communicating with the god of images and attracting that holy being. I will be happy if, by saying a mass for our ancestors, I can reconstruct the time of darkness and the energy of the universe and so reach the far ends of the space between frames. Honouring the place our outer eyes cannot see is most necessary for our present-day materialistic society and for our virtual value standards.' -- Ken Ikeda"

Artist:	AMBARCHI, OREN
Title:	Suspension
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 033.18CD

This is a reissue of the highly acclaimed 2001 album, Suspension by Australian musician Oren Ambarchi. He has released three albums for Touch: Insulation, Suspension and Grapes from the Estate. Oren Ambarchi is an electronic guitarist and percussionist with longstanding interests in transcending conventional instrumental approaches. Born in Sydney in 1969, he has been performing live since 1986. His work focuses mainly on the exploration of the guitar, re-routing the instrument into a zone of alien abstraction where it's no longer easily identifiable as itself. Instead, it's a laboratory for extended sonic investigation. As the title of this release suggests, the listener is suspended in dense tonal fields or complete silence; adrift, never touching the bottom, never reaching the surface but continually held in the realm of the instant. Movement and flux contend with stasis and rigidity. Sounds continually unravel and solidify. These works are endless, eternal, never opting for obvious resolutions or easy destinations. Often beginning in abstraction, seemingly random and irregular pulses and tones coalesce and converge. All elements are part of a greater logic, which reveals itself through intense, immersive and repeated listenings. Ambarchi has performed and recorded with Martin Ng, Christian Fennesz, Otomo Yoshihide, Pimmon, John Zorn, Voice Crack, Sachiko M, Keith Rowe, Phill Niblock, Günter Müller, Evan Parker, Toshimaru Nakamura and many more. He recently toured with Sunn0))), also contributing to their Black One album.

Artist:	IKEDA, KEN
Title:	Merge
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 033.19CD

"Ken Ikeda is a musician and artist who has composed and recorded for David Lynch and for Moriko Mori, latterly as part of the Royal Academy's 'Apocalypse' exhibition in 2001. He featured as part of Sonic Boom, at the Hayward Gallery, London in 2000. He has released two albums for Touch. The first, tzuki [Moon] (Touch # T33.17, 2000), was strangely reminiscent of early Durrutti Column, hypnotic, dreamy and mystical. Here a darker side to his work unfolds; although retaining Buddhist notions of circles and cycles and other natural laws and influences, here he contemplates nature's shadowy side. The title, Merge, has as its root 'to drown' or 'immerse' oneself, its current usage with regard to convergence or (business) partnership not recorded until 1926 (OED). The double-edged nature of this recording is also reflected by its entirely different aspect determined by whether one plays it at high or low volume. These notions are further reflected in Jon Wozencroft's photography -- two small and uninhabited islands almost enveloped by the rising sea levels, juxtaposed with a view of New York's Upper East Side, taken from Central Park, skyscrapers swimming in the cloud cover..."

Artist:	VAINIO, MIKA
Title:	Onko
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 034CD

A collection of sound installation pieces by Finland's Mika Vainio, best known for his classic Sähkö recordings and Panasonic membership. The focus here is on pure sound output, variant streams of electronics, amplified hum, abstract hoverings and repetitious clickery. No beats, pure waves, fully essential sounding experimental music aimed for repeat dosage and maximum pleasure. Beautifully packaged too. "It marks a departure from his previous work, more tranquil, symphonic even, but no less intense in its exploration of the post-digital landscape and its quest to reveal the grain of the one/zero life-form. Imagine the sounds that cellular patterns might make as they face the scrutiny of a high-powered microscope. Or the soundtrack to a road movie, filmed in the Arctic Circle in high summer. 'Onko' means 'Is It.'"

Artist:	JECK, PHILIP
Title:	Surf
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 036CD

Repress of this 1999 release. "Philip Jeck is best known for his highly subversive work 'Vinyl Requiem' with Lol Sargent (a performance for 180 dansette record players, 12 slide-projectors and 2 movie-projectors). He has also worked extensively with the choreographer Laurie Booth, is a member of Slant and has had tracks released by Blast First (on the Deconstruct compilation) and The Soundworks Exchange (First Edition). Surf further explores his experimentation with loops and scratching. His methods leave much to chance; nothing is pre-planned or calculated. The seven tracks on this CD are surprisingly accessible: rhythms unfold from the miasma. Whilst highly original, there is a surprisingly antique feel to the sound: many of the samples, loops and scratches are taken from old vinyl records. Against nostalgia, Surf proves there to be vast potential in analogue recording processes, and by utilizing seemingly outmoded sources, Philip Jeck shows that you don't need a 24 track digital console and an enormous hard disk to make music that is both innovative and involving."

Artist:	WATSON, CHRIS
Title:	Outside the Circle of Fire
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 037CD

"Chris Watson's second CD is a dramatic contrast to the spacious atmospheres of Stepping into the Dark (Touch 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. These are the sounds of secret languages, particular events that have been recorded as close up as possible to try and reveal something of their individual beauty, rhythm, eloquence and sheer power. Several of the sounds would be inaudible or radically degraded more than a few meters from the animal. Yet others collectively use the acoustics of their habitat to modulate the message. They exist, however, whether we hear them or not -- close up details of signals that are beyond our reach outside the circle of fire."

Artist:	IKEDA, RYOJI
Title:	0º C
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 038CD

2007 repress of the second full-length by Ryoji Ikeda on Touch (originally released 2001), following the highly acclaimed +/- (1996). Recorded and mixed at CCI studio in Tokyo, this release features two works in Ikeda's continually expanding electronic style. "OºC" is an exploration at the edge of one's perception -- an extension of +/- and the next step. "C" adds a velocity axis and a density axis to factors, Oº amalgamated numbers, structures, frequencies and sounds.

Artist:	FENNESZ
Title:	Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56'
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TO 040CD

...37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51'08". Originally released by Touch in 1999, this is Christian Fennesz's second full-length solo album after the highly-acclaimed Hotel Paral.lel (Mego, 1997). Fittingly, "+47° 56' 37" -16° 51' 08" takes its title from the coordinates of Fennesz's backyard garden, the site of the open-air studio where these tracks were created. Initial copies came in an oversized gatefold card sleeve, with booklet insert; the second edition was in standard jewel case format. This third edition is in digipak format with unaltered audio. The album has been out-of-print for two years and was Fennesz's first solo album for Touch, preceding his breakthrough Endless Summer (Mego, 2001). Anticipating his next album, The Black Sea (Touch, 2008), on +40º..., Fennesz uses guitar and computer to create shimmering, swirling electronic sound of enormous range and complex musicality. His lush and luminous compositions are anything but sterile computer experiments. They resemble sensitive, telescopic recordings of rainforest insect life or natural atmospheric occurrences, an inherent naturalism permeating each piece.

Artist:	WATSON, CHRIS
Title:	El Tren Fantasma - The Signal Man
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	12"
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	TO 042EP

Chris Watson presents two special mixes for vinyl from his El Tren Fantasma (TO 042CD) release. A radio program was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday, Oct. 30, 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 program in the BBC TV series Great Railways Journeys. Now, 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.

Artist:	IKEDA, RYOJI
Title:	Matrix
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$16.50
Catalog #:	TO 044CD

Touch reissues Japanese electronic composer Ryoji Ikeda's 2001 release, Matrix, without postcards. Matrix is the final element in a trilogy of CDs that began with +/- in 1996. When it was first released, +/- came like a bolt out of the white. Nobody had used digital recording processes to produce sound as pure, as intense and as exhilarating. Since releasing 0° in 1998, Ryoji Ikeda has progressively refined and enhanced the distinctive sonic fields and microsounds that have strongly influenced post-digital composition, resisting the transitory cycle suggested by the term "glitches," creating compositions that deeply probe our relationships to time and space, sound and light. That's the only forewarning of what awaits you on putting the first CD into your player. The layers of sound that make up Matrix transform both the listener and the listening environment into another dimension. The dimensions change as you move about the space, or simply turn your head around the sound like surveying the angles of a building. Matrix has much in common with the work of La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, and Alvin Lucier, but, poised closer to the imminent and auto-interactive virtual world we are promised, Ryoji Ikeda's new work pushes the parameters of the drone to ask timely questions concerning our relationship to our own perceptions, and to our existing living spaces. Double CD in gatefold wallet.

Artist:	REHBERG/BAUER
Title:	Passt
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 045CD

"Five years ago, Faßt declared itself to be entirely made up of the 'mistakes' and system errors of the digital processes Rehberg & Bauer had used in its making, thus finding themselves at the front end of an emerging tendency in new music that came to be known as 'glitch'... frustratingly to those actively involved, because it freeze-framed the more critical dimension of such works into a genre that quickly became a gliché. Following Faßt and ballt, and originated live on their tour of Australia last year, Passt completes Rehberg & Bauer's trilogy for Touch; as such, it provides a window through which to monitor the progress (and atrophy) of this phase of development, now that the laptop seems as commonplace as the electric guitar. In 2001, surface abstraction is easily output. Passt therefore is an attempt to relocate this mode of music-making into something once again more progressive. Peter Rehberg (aka Pita) & Ramon Bauer (aka General Magic) run Mego in Vienna, Austria."

Artist:	WATSON, CHRIS
Title:	Weather Report
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 047CD

Repressing of Chris Watson's critically-acclaimed 2003 release, Weather Report. After working with Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio, Watson became a sound recordist for the UK's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He has since joined a film and video production company, working for BBC wildlife documentaries and occasional feature films. It is with this naturalist spirit and background that Watson applies his work, capturing sound footage that illustrates a deep understanding of silence, space, and ecological wonderment. Weather Report understands that 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 -- Kenya's Masai Mara, a Scottish highland glen and an Icelandic glacier -- 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 is Chris' first foray into composition using his location recordings of wildlife and habitats -- in his previous releases, he was concerned with describing and revealing the special atmosphere of a place by site-specific, untreated location recordings. On Weather Report, he constructs collages of sounds, which evolve from a series of recordings made at the specific locations over varying periods of time, distilling vast, diverse arenas of sound into pointillistic sound-poems. As Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in Time Out New York in 1999: "Listen to your world. It may be more interesting than all the things you buy to escape from it."

Artist:	TORAL, RAFAEL
Title:	Violence Of Discovery And Calm Of Acceptance
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 048CD

2010 reissue. Originally released by Touch in 2001 (and on vinyl via Staubgold). Considered by the Chicago Reader to be "one of the most gifted and innovative guitarists of the decade," Rafael Toral has developed a unique sound world, having been as influenced by Alvin Lucier and Brian Eno as by Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine. Using the guitar as part of a complex electronic instrument, Toral has collaborated with Jim O'Rourke, John Zorn, Sonic Youth, Rhys Chatham and Phill Niblock and played in many European countries. He's also a member of MIMEO, the electronic orchestra featuring Keith Rowe, Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg, Kaffe Matthews, and many others. Violence Of Discovery And Calm Of Acceptance is a collection of ten small pieces crafted by Toral with extreme precision and care through the last 7 years. Using guitars and analog technology, it can be described as Toral's best work, embodying all the directions he explored in his previous critically-acclaimed records, Sound Mind Sound Body, Wave Field and Aeriola Frequency but taking them into new dimensions. The highly evocative, intricate and subtle guitar drones are captured in the beautiful photography of Heitor Alvelos, a Portuguese artist, and in the artwork of Jon Wozencroft. The background noise on track 10 is a recording of silence during a Space Shuttle mission real-time webcast. All other sounds were made by electric guitars. The album was recorded between 1993 and 2000 and mastered at Noise Precision, Lisbon.

Artist:	NIBLOCK, PHILL
Title:	Touch Works, For Hurdy Gurdy And Voice
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 049CD

Featuring the following works: 1. "Hurdy Hurry" (15:20, October 1999; Jim O'Rourke, hurdy gurdy [samples]). 2. "A Y U", aka "as yet untitled" (21:30, October 1999; Thomas Buckner, baritone voice [samples]). 3. "A Y U, Live", (21:30, October 1999/2000; Thomas Buckner, baritone voice [samples and live]). "Phill is a sixty-something New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade-hopping. He says: 'What I am doing with my music is to produce something without rhythm or melody, by using many microtones that cause movements very, very slowly.' The stills in the booklet are from slides taken in China, while Niblock was making films which are painstaking studies of manual labor, giving a poetic dignity to sheer gruelling slog of fishermen at work, rice-planters, log-splitters, water-hole dredgers and other back-breaking toilers. Niblock writes: 'In October 1999, I made a concert at Merkin Hall in New York, as part of the series Interpretations, produced by Thomas Buckner and the World Music Institute. The concert was shared with Ulrich Krieger, a composer and saxophonist living in Berlin. Normally, concerts in this series have two parts. Since Ulrich and I are collaborators for some years, we decided to interleave our works, and also to make a long concert. It was about three hours, nearly twice as long as is usual in this recital hall. I was preparing two new works for this concert. You guessed it, the pieces on this CD. The works are for hurdy gurdy, a stringed instrument played by cranking a resined wheel, and voice. I had met Jim O'Rourke some time before, and had asked him if I could make a piece using samples of his playing the hurdy gurdy. I recorded the samples in the studios of Robert Poss sometime in the winter of 1999. Tom Buckner and I had talked for some years about a possible piece. I asked him if we could do it for this concert. Later, he explained that he commissions works, so that was a pleasant surprise. When we were recording in Poss' studio, Tom was interested in doing some throat singing. I expected to work on these pieces during the summer of '99. I didn't, of course. I didn't start until two weeks before the concert date. I finished the voice piece on October 11, made the hurdy gurdy piece on the 12th and 13th. The concert was the 14th. On the hurdy gurdy piece, we hear only the samples recorded by O'Rourke. In the first version of A Y U, we hear only the original recorded samples of Tom Buckner singing. On the second piece, Tom recorded again in the studio, singing a line along (listening with headphones) with the first version of A Y U, and four channels of pitch shift were added to his live voice. He did this three times, for the entire length of the piece. Thus version one has twenty four voices, multitracked from samples. Version two has an added 15 tracks of the live voice. In each piece, I constructed some pitch shifted samples, and some of them were one and two octaves down. These were used along with the original samples as source material. There is not any other modification of the samples during the recording and mixing process.' [A review by Kyle Gann, published in the Village Voice, New York, November 9, 1999]"

Artist:	BIOSPHERE
Title:	Substrata 2
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TO 050CD

2010 repress, originally released 2001. "Biosphere's 2nd release for Touch after Cirque is a double CD in digipak designed by Jon Wozencroft. The release consists of: CD1 -- Substrata: Originally released in 1997 on All Saints Records, this remastered version of Substrata contains 11 tracks with a total length of 55:20. '...by many (the undersigned included) considered to be the finest ambient album of the 1990s'. CDTwo -- Man with a Movie Camera: Contains 9 tracks, total length 53:32. The first 7 tracks consist of the soundtrack to Man with a Movie Camera [Verdov, USSR 1929], originally commissioned for the Tromsø International Film Festival in 1996, released here for the first time. The last 2 tracks, 'Endurium' and 'The End of the Cyclone', were originally released on the limited edition Japanese version of Substrata in 1997 -- they have never before been released outside Japan."

Artist:	LOCUST
Title:	Wrong
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TO 051CD

"Mark Van Hoen's second for Touch after The Last Flowers from the Darkness. The instrumentation is purely electronic analog synthesizers, edited and manipulated in Digidesigns' Protools. Mark Van Hoen, who programmed and produced the LP, wanted to invoke some of the spirit of late '70s British electronic music, combining that sound with his now familiar brand of electronics for which he became known during the '90s. The fragility and unpredictability of vocalist Holli Ashton's personality and vocals, combined with the decayed and warped quality of the sound offer a warmth rarely found in such pure electronic music. Imperfections are the source of that warmth and there are several connections here between the late 70's (the period which first inspired Mark to make music) and the last few years. Electronic music in the late '70s was forced to become more inventive because the limitations of the instruments of the time needed the musician to craft each sound by hand, and the instruments often went wrong; out of time and out of tune. These same instruments were used on this album; there are no samplers, guitars or anything else but analog synthesizers and vocals on this recording. More recently, artists such as Ryoji Ikeda, Pan Sonic, and Hazard have sought to bring out imperfections in digital music, and those influences are here, too. Even the second CD, to be played simultaneously with the first is a 'misuse' of technology, yet it makes a beautiful sound."

Artist:	JOHANNSSON, JOHANN
Title:	Englabörn
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TO 052LP

Englabörn is the highly-acclaimed first solo album from consummate Icelandic musician, composer and producer Jóhann Jóhannsson, originally released on CD by Touch in 2002, now issued in a gatefold vinyl edition. Derived from music he wrote for an Icelandic play of the same name (written by Hávar Sigurjónsson), the music recorded for this album was revised and restructured to make it stand as a work on its own and not simply function as a collection of cues. Written for string quartet, piano, organ, glockenspiel and percussion, these organic elements were processed and manipulated, adding delicate electronic backgrounds to the otherwise entirely acoustic recordings. "Odi Et Amo" casts Catullus' famous poem as a computerized counter-tenor vocal singing a Latin text. Set for the final scene in the play, the text fit the melody perfectly and was also thematically perfect for the play. Says Jóhannsson, "What I really like about it is the harsh contrast of the computer voice and the strings, the alchemy of total opposites, the sewing machine and umbrella on a dissecting table." What is achieved here is spine-tingling -- a sense of cold detachment set against powerful melancholy and gorgeous, emotional instrumentation. Jóhannsson continues: "The play is extremely violent and disturbing and basically when faced with the script, I decided to work against it as much as possible and just try to write the most beautiful music I could." Even outside the context of theater, Englabörn is a stunning achievement, taking compositional leitmotifs and sparse, non-intrusive, well-chosen electronics to paint dramatic, ice-rimmed scenes and portraits that could just as easily be invoked from the theater of the imagination.

Artist:	FENNESZ
Title:	Venice
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 053CD

2010 repress; universally acclaimed as one of the major releases of 2004! "Venice was recorded on location in the summer of 2003 and subsequently assembled and mixed at Amann Studios, Vienna in January/February 2004. Venice, the fourth studio album by Christian Fennesz, finds electronic music at a crossroads between its early status as digital subculture, and the feeling that there has to be something more, an emotional quality that rises above noise and moves towards melody and rapture. Includes the continuation of his collaboration with David Sylvian on the track 'Transit', following the success of their duo on Sylvian's 2003 solo album, Blemish.

Fennesz burst upon the scene with Instrument [Mego, 1995] and followed that up with a succession of ground-breaking and highly original solo albums. As The Wire wrote, 'he offers all the puzzles and adventures of experimental music, but with a more assimilable grasp of melody -- and a prominent role for the guitar', and to be sure, 'though the process may sound simple, it takes some skillful manipulation to simultaneously tug those heartstrings and poke them with tiny pins.' [Nick Phillips, City Pages, USA]. Fennesz has been active in film soundtrack work -- for Gustav Deutsch and his forensic view of cinema, film ist'... Live performances, improvised music within a modus operandi that adheres itself more to jazz than computer software... everywhere from Tokyo to Bratislava. Fennesz has also taken part in many collaborations: Fenn O'Berg, with Jim O'Rourke and Peter Rehberg [Mego], a duo with Rosy Parlane [Synaesthesia], and with Polwechsel [Erstwhile]. He has also been recording with Sparklehorse, the first fruits of this collaboration appearing on the recently released Spire [Touch # Tone 20]. He lives and works in Paris and Vienna."

Artist:	VAINIO, MIKA
Title:	In The Land Of The Blind The One-Eyed Is King
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 054CD

"This is Mika Vainio's 3rd solo CD for Touch, after Kajo and Onko. Best known as one-half of Pan Sonic (Blast First), Mika is from Finland and now lives in Berlin. Generally speaking, contemporary musicians produce too much stuff. It is easy to do. But if you feel like sighing, 'Oh, it's another Mika Vainio CD', then Mr Vainio himself has anticipated such sentiments with the opening track, a 2 minute blast which sounds like an angry animal breaking free of its cage. What follows is probably Vainio's most accomplished work to date, a series of rich soundscapes whose beauty is always on the edge of darkness. Not wanting to bang a drum, anyone who has been invigorated by the work of Mika and Ilpo in Pan Sonic will be keen to hear these more pastoral takes on their more propulsive sound -- in places, being reminiscent of Artemyev's recordings for Tarkovsky films, in others, suggesting sound recordings of frogs and insect life. All framed by the distinct touch of Mika Vainio, who confirms his long?standing reputation as one of the most acute musicians of our times."

Artist:	JECK, PHILIP
Title:	Stoke
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 056CD

Repressing of this 2002 release and Jeck's third release for Touch, after Loopholes and Surf. Stoke was made using Bush, Fidelity and Philips record players, a Casio keyboard and an Alba portable CD player. This record mainly consists of edits of live performances from England, Japan and Vienna. The notion of turntablism may be associated with flashy, deck-hopping scratch gymnastics, but the use of the record player as an instrument harks back to a less ostentatious tradition of music making. John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Schaeffer, and James Tenney recognized records and turntable mechanisms as malleable sound sources. In essence, sampling began with the real-time deployment of gramophones in performance by these artists and academics. Philip Jeck, like peers Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, and Martin Tetreault, legitimizes the turntable as a musical instrument.

Artist:	JECK, PHILIP
Title:	7
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 057CD

Philip Jeck, who lives and works in Liverpool, studied visual art at the Dartington College of Arts in Devon, England. During the early 1980s, he drifted from painting and sculpture to music, and began working with old and discarded turntables. Though he's roughly a contemporary of Christian Marclay, recognition for Jeck came much later, beginning in 1993 with his massive installation "Vinyl Requiem", which incorporated 180 record players and multiple film projections. This is Philip Jeck's 7th solo album, and 4th for Touch, after Loopholes (1996), Surf (1998) and Stoke (2002). He has also released a collaboration with Jacob Kirkegaard, Soaked (2002), and a recording of a live concert he gave in Japan, Live at ICC (2001). He is currently touring with Jah Wobble & Deep Space, and is heavily featured on their latest album Five Beat (30hertzrecords, 2003).



       Philip Jeck writes: "All seven are edits of home and concert recordings (UK Germany & Belgium) using Bush, Ferguson, Fidelity & Philips record-players, Sony portable mini-disc and Casio keyboards. 'Bush Hum' was made from the amplified hum of a Bush record-player and delay pedal. 'Wipe' was originally made for a video by Marisa Zanotti."

Artist:	PARLANE, ROSY
Title:	Iris
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 058CD

"Rosy Parlane lives in New Zealand; he began playing music with the avant-garde rock trio Thela. Thela released two CDs, Eponymous and Argentina on the label Ecstatic Peace! He subsequently began working with abstract electronic based music, both as a solo artist and as Parmentier with fellow Thela collaborator, Dion Workman. His full and intricate soundscapes are comprised of sample-loops, pianos, guitars, and field recordings manipulated via digital means. Parlane has released two solo albums on Sigma Editions, and a collaboration with Christian Fennesz on the Australian label, Synaesthesia [Live, SYN001]. Iris is the result of a concentrated period of activity and artistic development that will introduce Rosy Parlane to an audience hungry for innovative music. He both challenges and invigorates the current bias towards immersive sound, without ever losing sight of the human touch."

Artist:	NIBLOCK, PHILL
Title:	Touch Food
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$16.50
Catalog #:	TO 059CD

Repressed! CD1: "Sea Jelly Yellow" [Ulrich Krieger, baritone saxophone]; "Sweet Potato" [Carol Robinson, bass clarinet, basset horn, and Eb clarinet]; "Yam Almost May" [Kasper T. Toeplitz, electric bass]. CD2: "Pan Fried 70" [Reinhold Friedl, piano]. "In the music of Phill Niblock, we are confronted with the aural equivalent of trompe-l'oeil. Apparently static clouds of harmonically dense material turn out to be not so static as they appear. What's more, one has the distinct impression that the music is changing spatially over time. How is all of this possible? The key is in Niblock's use of time. In his music, the experience of time is as very slow and continuous. There are no disruptive, discontinuous musical events to disrupt the flow of time. Time is suspended. Niblock's music gives the impression of having always been and continuing to be. Yet, this is not the idea of Being as stasis. Each time one feels tha Niblock's music isn't changing, one realizes that it is never the same, an yet, always the same. Being and Becoming as one. Moving Immobility. This is a music that breathes slowly and deeply. It changes its spatial form slowly, as a person who is in deep meditation changes the form of his body ever so slowly as he peacefully expands and contracts the walls of his chest cavity with each new cycle of inspiration/expiration." -- Gerard Pape. "Phill Niblock is a sixty-something New York based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade hopping. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant garde ever since. In the history books Niblock is the forgotten Minimalist. That's as maybe: no one ever said the history books were infallible anyway. His influence has had more impact on younger composers such as Susan Stenger, Lois V Vierk, David First, and Glenn Branca. He's even worked with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo on Guitar two, for four which is actually for five guitarists. This is Minimalism in the classic sense of the word, if that makes sense. Niblock constructs big 24-track digitally-processed monolithic microtonal drones. The result is sound without melody or rhythm. Movement is slow, geologically slow. Changes are almost imperceptible, and his music has a tendency of creeping up on you."

Artist:	AMBARCHI, OREN
Title:	Grapes from the Estate
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 061CD

"Oren Ambarchi's third solo project for Touch sees him reaching beyond the work for electric guitar that he's become recognized for, expanding his palette and taking his investigations into another sphere entirely. Grapes from the Estate features new instrumentation (strings, tuned bells, percussion and others that can only be guessed at), but the singular and unmistakable influence that Ambarchi exerts on these new materials is what makes it such an indelible work. There is a reconciliation of his love of song based music and his determination to deal in pure sound. The result is a work that truly eludes such arbitrary definitions. Grapes From The Estate is an all consuming experience that draws the listener out of an ordinary sense of time, into a world beyond it. On more than any other release, his entire body of work to date can be experienced in a single statement. There are the seemingly random tonal structures that are such a large part of his vocabulary, the playfulness and humor of his formative noise schooling, his love of free jazz, of pop music, and rhythmic elements, perhaps subconsciously derived from his Sephardic heritage. Another outpouring of personal, intimate and enduring music from Oren Ambarchi."

Artist:	Z'EV
Title:	Headphone Musics, 1 To 6
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 063CD

"In 1967 Z'EV took a tape music class at the UCLA night school. The leader of the course was Joseph Byrd who was the founder and theoretician of the first electronic rock band; The United States of America. So while it's almost 40 years now that he has been involved in the production of electro-acoustic music, Headphone Musics marks the first release of a product exclusively featuring this form of music. All of the source material is drawn from the collection of cassette tapes Z'EV has amassed over the last 30 years -- sounds and soundscapes he has either recorded himself or witnessed, or tapes that have been given to him by various peoples on his travels or been received by him through the mail from fans etc. Technically he remains a bit orthodox in that basically he still plies the old tools of the tape manipulation trade in the current digital sphere. What this means is that he concentrates on editing, phase relationships, time dilation, and inherent and 3rd harmonic distortion as his only means of processing the information he is transforming. There is no looping involved, although #2 features a recording he made in 1984 using his controlled-skipping Lenco turntable. 'As Is As' is a live recording of a sound poem Z'EV produced and performed under the name 'S. Weisser' at a Sound Poetry Festival in 1976 at the La Mamelle art space in San Francisco. It was produced using 2 reel to reel tape decks, 3 cassette decks, and 2 microphones."

Artist:	JOHANNSSON, JOHANN
Title:	Virthulegu Forsetar
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	TO 064LP

This is the second album for Touch from Iceland's Jóhann Jóhannsson, originally released in 2004 -- now available on vinyl. Virthulegu Forsetar contains one hour-long piece for 11 brass players, percussion, electronics, organs and piano. The piece had its live debut in Hallgrimskirkja, a large church in Reykjavik and the city's towering edifice, and was named "the most memorable musical event of 2003" in Iceland's leading newspaper. The piece has Englabörn's quiet, elegiac beauty, but abandons the brevity of the first album's exquisite miniatures in favor of an extended form that reveals a long, slow process. A simple theme played by the brass section is repeated throughout the entire piece using different voicings and instrumentation. As the piece goes on, the tempo slows down, until it is extremely slow. Around the middle of the piece, the tempo starts to speed up again, until it reaches the original tempo. Space and the sense of place were very important in the performance and recording of the piece. Players were positioned both in front and at the back of the church and two organs were used, again, one in front and one at the back. This created a sense of immersion and a sound that is powerful without ever being "loud." Johann writes: " I had a number of things going through my mind during the writing of the piece, some of them being an obsession with entropy, Pynchon's The Crying Of Lot 49, postal horns, cybernetics, small birds, heat, space, energy, 'singularities,' Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence, Moebius strips. I'm absolutely not interested in imposing any one 'meaning' on the piece, but all these things were flying around somewhere in my head. A casual listener might categorize the piece as ambient or meditative, but I think this is really wrong -- for me, it's much more about chaos and tension rather than harmony." Virthulegu Forsetar is performed by The Caput Ensemble, conducted by Guðni Franzson, with Skúli Sverrisson on bass and electronics, Matthias M.D. Hemstock on bells, glockenspiel and electronics, Hörður Bragason and Guðmundur Sigurðsson on organs and Jóhann Jóhannsson on piano and electronics.

Artist:	NILSEN, BJ
Title:	Fade to White
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 065CD

Benny Nilsen writes: "Fade To White contains material from the making of 3 pieces which were created within a different season and then edited, re-arranged and re-mixed in the summer of 2004. 6 pieces contain outdoor field recordings from travels in mainly central Europe in 2003 [Gdansk/Poland, Narva/Estonia, Sarajevo/Serbia Herzegovina, Arad/Romania, Trieste/Italy], and static indoor recordings from 2004 Stockholm/Sweden, Brussels/Belgium, Amsterdam/Netherlands, Vienna/Austria, Geneva/Switzerland. I used acoustic and electrical instruments recorded in open spaces picking up the natural ambience, blending those with environmental sounds of nature and then arranged it in the computer, creating dynamic layers of sound that feed from one another." This is BJNilsen's 3rd album for Touch, after Land [Touch # Tone 17 - as Hazard] and Live at the Konzerthaus, Vienna [Touch # TO:CDR5]. He also recorded 3 Hazard albums for Ash International."

Artist:	JECK, PHILIP
Title:	Sand
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TO 067CD

This is Philip Jeck's fifth solo album for Touch. Sand was recorded live in Holland and England in 2006/2007 and edited in Liverpool in January, 2008 using Fidelity record players, Casio SK keyboards, a Behringer mixer and Sony mini-disc recorders. Following Philip Jeck's acclaimed collaboration with Gavin Bryars and Alter Ego on a new version of The Sinking of the Titanic, Sand is a set of seven new compositions that highlight Jeck's mastery of vinyl manipulation and personal and collective memories. During the past year, Jeck has refined and consolidated his unique sound, playing superb sets at the Faster Than Sound festival and at York Minster for Spire. Sand is at once elegiac, celebrational, mournful and uplifting. Those who have followed Jeck's development since his first release, Loopholes, will observe his return to the industrial textures that colored that collection, though here they are fused with his symphonic grace and continued development as a composer and live performer. Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops, turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. His is genuinely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art, not the gimmick.

Artist:	PARLANE, ROSY
Title:	Jessamine
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 068CD

This is New Zealand-based (and former Thela member) Rosy Parlane's second full-length release on Touch. His previous album, Iris (2004), was hailed by Jim Haynes in The Wire who wrote: "Jon Wozencroft's impeccable photography and design packages Rosy Parlane's Iris inside a predominantly blue package, inextricably linking the music to the emotional resonance of the color... He flushes his soundfields with cascades of digital fragments which he separates into two distinct compositional categories. On the one hand, Parlane stretches sounds from guitar, piano and organ into unrecognizable drones that swell into dense layerings, every once in a while coalescing into fluttering half-melodies. On the other, he emphasizes the textural qualities of those digital fragments, simulating the natural acoustics of ice crackling from trees in winter or the gentle patter of rain on a windowsill. When fusing these together by placing the textures against the backdrop of the drone, Parlane effectively builds pointillist sound environments with a profoundly human melancholia." With Jessamine, Rosy develops these themes, and continues to incorporate new musical elements from unconventional as well as orchestral instrumentation. To him, everything is an instrument: from household objects to nature sounds. But it is the human element which gives his work such a distinctive sound. Ranging from ambient to noise, he gives full rein to textures of living; to start, languid and mournful; later harsh and assertive. Jessamine is a magnificent follow-up to a classic Touch debut. Rosy Parlane: electric and acoustic guitars, piano, melodica, accordion, violin, trombone, snare drum, shimsaw, amplified sawblade, bowed metal, household objects, contact microphones, field recordings, radio, computer. Additional contributions by Marcel Bear, Tetuzi Akiyama, Lasse Marhaug, Anthony Guerra, Michael Morley, Donald McPherson, Matthew Hyland, David Mitchell, Stefan Neville and Campbell Kneale.

Artist:	NIBLOCK, PHILL
Title:	Touch Three
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	3CD
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	TO 069CD

2006 release, repressed. This is Phill Niblock's third release on the Touch label. Phill Niblock is a New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade hopping. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant garde ever since. In the history books Niblock is the forgotten Minimalist. His influence has had more impact on younger composers such as Susan Stenger, Lois V. Vierk, David First, and Glenn Branca. Touch Three is minimalism in the classic sense of the word, if that makes sense. Niblock constructs big 24-track digitally-processed monolithic microtonal drones, and the result is sound without melody or rhythm. Movement is slow, geologically slow. Changes are almost imperceptible, and his music has a tendency of creeping up on you. The vocal pieces are like some of Ligeti's choral works, but a little more phased. He says: "What I am doing with my music is to produce something without rhythm or melody, by using many microtones that cause movements very, very slowly." These nine pieces were made from March 2003 to January 2005. They were all made (except "Sax Mix") by recording a single instrument with a single microphone. The recordings were direct to the computer/hard disk, most of them using a Powerbook G4, Pro Tools, an M-box and an external firewire drive. The resulting mono sound files were edited to remove breathing spaces, leaving the natural decay of the tone, and the attack of the subsequent iteration of the same tone. Each note was represented by several repetitions, perhaps ten for each tone, of about 15 seconds duration each. Each piece uses a few tones. A simple chord, perhaps. Additional microtonal intervals were produced in Pro Tools using pitch shift. The pieces were assembled in multitracks, usually either 24 or 32 tracks. The recording environment varied from a simple apartment in Berlin (Ulrich Krieger's) to a very large hall used for symphony orchestra performances and recordings, with a sizable audience space. The recordings were generally done quite closely miked. One hears only the sound of the instrument. There is no electronic manipulation in the recording, the editing of the tones, or in the mix. The only changes to the recorded tones are the pitch shifts to create microtones...the microtones are doing the work.

Artist:	GUDNADOTTIR, HILDUR
Title:	Without Sinking
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TO 070CD

Hildur Ingveldardóttir Gudnadóttir (b. 1982) is a classically-trained Icelandic cellist and composer, and this is her first full-length release for the Touch label. Best known for her collaborations with múm and guest appearances with Pan Sonic, she has a rich catalog of collaborations and varied projects behind her. Gudnadóttir began playing cello as a child, entering the Reykjavík Music Academy and then moving on to musical studies/composition and new media at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and Universitat der Kunste in Berlin. Back in Iceland, she became very active in the neu-Iceland scene as a member of Kitchen Motors, a Reykjavík-based think tank, record label and art collective, along with internationally-renowned composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. In 2004, she started playing with the band Angel (Ilpo Väisänen and Dirk Dresslehaus). Around that time, she made an album with Dirk (Mr. Schmuck's Farm), and went on to play live with Pan Sonic, later collaborating on their album Katodivaihe/Cathodephase. She released her first solo album, Mount A, under the artist name Lost In Hildurness, on the Reykjavík-based label 12 Tónar in 2006. Gudnadóttir played all the instruments on the album -- vibraphone, viola da gamba, harp and vocals, constructing a work of delicately-layered, contemplative, cello-based ruminations. She has also played frequently with field recording artist and performer BJ Nilsen; delicate duets that conjure the somber rapture of multi-tracked cello -- Gudnadóttir's live playing augmented by laptop loops. As a composer, she has written music for plays, dance performances and films, pieces for chamber orchestras, various instruments, voices and electronics. Gudnadóttir likes to explore the nature and movement of sound, and often turns her experiments into sound and visual installations. Touch presents the work of an artist who has quickly risen in status as an essential staple in modern music composition due to her notable collaborations, her deft touch and her haunting, evocative soundscapes. Composed and recorded in Berlin and Reykjavík; Hildur Gudnadóttir (cello, zither, processors and voice); additional recordings by Skúli Sverrisson (bass and processors on all tracks except track 7); Jóhann Jóhannsson (organs and processors on tracks 2, 3 and 9); Guðni Franzson (clarinet and bass clarinet on tracks 6 and 10).

Artist:	GUDNADOTTIR, HILDUR
Title:	Without Sinking
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	TO 070LP

Gatefold 2LP version. This release contains 3 extra tracks in addition to the ten on the CD version of Without Sinking (TO 070CD). Hildur Ingveldardóttir Gudnadóttir (b. 1982) is a classically-trained Icelandic cellist and composer, and this is her first full-length release for the Touch label. Best known for her collaborations with múm and guest appearances with Pan Sonic, she has a rich catalog of collaborations and varied projects behind her. Gudnadóttir began playing cello as a child, entering the Reykjavík Music Academy and then moving on to musical studies/composition and new media at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and Universitat der Kunste in Berlin. Back in Iceland, she became very active in the neu-Iceland scene as a member of Kitchen Motors, a Reykjavík-based think tank, record label and art collective, along with internationally-renowned composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. In 2004, she started playing with the band Angel (Ilpo Väisänen and Dirk Dresslehaus). Around that time, she made an album with Dirk (Mr. Schmuck's Farm), and went on to play live with Pan Sonic, later collaborating on their album Katodivaihe/Cathodephase. She released her first solo album, Mount A, under the artist name Lost In Hildurness, on the Reykjavík-based label 12 Tónar in 2006. Gudnadóttir played all the instruments on the album -- vibraphone, viola da gamba, harp and vocals, constructing a work of delicately-layered, contemplative, cello-based ruminations. She has also played frequently with field recording artist and performer BJ Nilsen; delicate duets that conjure the somber rapture of multi-tracked cello -- Gudnadóttir's live playing augmented by laptop loops. As a composer, she has written music for plays, dance performances and films, pieces for chamber orchestras, various instruments, voices and electronics. Gudnadóttir likes to explore the nature and movement of sound, and often turns her experiments into sound and visual installations. Touch presents the work of an artist who has quickly risen in status as an essential staple in modern music composition due to her notable collaborations, her deft touch and her haunting, evocative soundscapes. Composed and recorded in Berlin and Reykjavík; Hildur Gudnadóttir (cello, zither, processors and voice); additional recordings by Skúli Sverrisson (bass and processors on all tracks except track 7); Jóhann Jóhannsson (organs and processors on tracks 2, 3 and 9); Guðni Franzson (clarinet and bass clarinet on tracks 6 and 10).

Artist:	HAMPSON, ROBERT
Title:	Vectors
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 071CD

Touch releases an album by UK experimental musician Robert Hampson. Before his involvement with acousmatic sound, Hampson was the originator behind such guitar-based acts such as Loop and Main. He was also a member of Godflesh, and collaborated with Jim O'Rourke and Organum. Vectors features three pieces, two of which were commissioned by the Group du Recherches Musicales (GRM) which had their debut performances on the Acousmonium in Paris. "Umbra" (2006) is a 16-channel piece that had its debut performance on the Acousmonium -- GRM's speaker orchestra -- at Salle Olivier Messiaen, Maison de Radio France, Paris. The umbra (Latin: shadow) is the darkest part of a shadow. From within the umbra, the source of light is completely concealed by the occulting body. In astronomy, an observer in the umbra is said to be in the shadows experiencing total eclipse. This phenomenon is a direct influence on the work in the sense of the way that sounds are cast in the shadow of others, slowly becoming more distinct as the piece progresses, materializing and then casting a shadow of their own. "Ahead -- Only The Stars" (2007) was commissioned by Vibrö for a performance at the Planetarium de Poitiers in 7.1 Surround ratio. Inspired by and dedicated to the astronauts of the NASA Mercury Missions space program and possibly the greatest pilot ever, Chuck Yeager. After the introduction of jets blasting across the soundstage, the piece is then interspersed with radio transmissions (communication bleeps and static, with dialogue removed) that form the framework. "Dans Le Lointain" (2008), also commissioned for GRM, is a 2-channel Stereo piece. It also had its debut performance on the Acousmonium at Salle Olivier Messiaen, Maison de Radio France, Paris. Sounds of shortwave radios, recorded by Hampson in the early '80s and recently rediscovered on a cassette, are manipulated through very traditional techniques utilized by early tape experimental works of the GRM and collected with more modern forms of digital manipulation. The title ("In The Distance") refers to the distance radio signals can travel, but also the distance of time that elapsed since the shortwave recordings were made on a four-track recorder and dubbed onto cassette by Hampson around 1981/1982.

Artist:	VAINIO, MIKA
Title:	Aíneen Musta Puhelin (Black Telephone Of Matter)
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 072CD

Finland's Mika Vainio presents his fourth solo album for the Touch label, after Onko (1997), Kajo (2000) and In The Land Of The Blind One-Eyed Is King (2003). He is one-half of Pan Sonic with Ilpo Väisänen, and also records solo as Ø. Vainio's solo works are akin to meditative sound installations -- ruminations on the inner-working heart of machine-made music. Sometimes juxtaposing warm analog sounds with harsher electronics, or isolating and diminishing sounds into ambient gauziness, Vainio is an important technician who has firmly established himself in the cadre of minimal, carefully-sculpted electronics.

Artist:	WINDEREN, JANA
Title:	Energy Field
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 073CD

Armed with four 8011 DPA hydrophones, DPA 4060 omni mics, a Telinga parabolic reflector mic and a Sound Devices 744T digital hard disk recorder, Norwegian sound recordist Jana Winderen studies and records wild places which have a particular importance in our understanding of the complexity and fragility of marine ecosystems. The recordings were made on field trips to the Barents Sea (north of Norway and Russia), Greenland and Norway, deep in crevasses of glaciers, in fjords and in the open ocean. These elements are then edited and layered into a powerful descriptive soundscape. The open spaces of Greenland, northern winds, ravens and dogs in an icy landscape provide the setting for these haunting but dynamic pieces. Sounds of crustaceans, fish such as cod, haddock, herring and pollock recorded as they are hunting, calling for a mate or orientating themselves in their environment, are all included in the mix. The result is a powerful, mesmeric journey into the unseen audio world of the frozen north.

Artist:	NULL, KK
Title:	Fertile
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 074CD

K.K. Null is legendary Japanese noise experimentician Kazuyuki Kishino, and this is his first full-length solo release on Touch, following his collaboration with Chris Watson and Z'ev in 2005, which Boomkat called "moving and atmospheric," and The Wire wrote "...a complex dramatic work from a strict economy of means." K.K. Null is a composer, guitarist, singer, mastermind of seminal noise group Zeni Geva and electronic wizard. One of the top names in Japanese noise music and in a wider context, one of the great cult artists in experimental music since the early '80s. Kazuyuki writes: "In June of 2006, I had the good fortune of visiting Darwin in the Northern Territory in Australia and explored in Kakadu National Park with some good friends. I took my digital recorder along with me and did some live field recordings there. First we encountered a flock of wild birds just beside the South Alligator River, and then we happened to find 'bush fire' flaring just beside the road we were on. I also had a unique opportunity to record a magnificent symphony orchestra of insects, frogs and birds in wetlands just before sunset. At that time I had no idea or no specific purpose for using these field recordings, and in the middle of working on this album (Fertile) in my home studio, suddenly came up with the idea of mixing these field recordings into some of the tracks that were unfinished. I felt comfortable with layering & mixing different sounds from different locations and times, digital and analog sounds into one piece. I like also the balance of spontaneity (field recording) and intentional act (studio recording)." After playing the guitar as his main instrument for some twenty years, K. K. Null has gradually moved towards a more electronic approach. In recent years he has concentrated his efforts on his solo & collaborative recordings, exploring the outer territories of electronica. His intense clashing waves of noise, structured electro-acoustic ambience, broken down rhythmics, scattered pitch sculptures and droning isolationist material could be described "cosmic noise maximal/minimalism."

Artist:	NILSEN, BJ
Title:	The Short Night
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TO 075CD

This is Sweden-born, Berlin-based BJ Nilsen's fourth album for the Touch label. Using location recordings, weather, birdsong and radio, Nilsen continues to map and explore uncharted territory. A follow-up to 2005's Fade to White, BJ Nilsen develops his work further, based on field recordings and electronics. This time he adds harsher yet clearer harmonies with musical elements to the compositions, creating a beautifully complex and detailed study. Recorded in 2006-2007 with mostly analog equipment, using up to 50 year-old tape machines, filters and generators that end up being the soft cushion in these cold location recordings. Location recordings from Mälaren, Stockholm, Sweden; Coombe Gibbet, Berkshire, England and Landakot, Vatnsleysuströnd, Iceland. Telefunken M10 and M5, Studer B67, Ferrograph Series 4, Bruel and Kjær Sine-Random Generator and Frequency Analyzers. Also Monowave, Sequential Circuits ProOne, Korg MS20, Esq1, MOTU 828MK2, Ableton Live, Logic Audio 6. Morin khuur on "Black Light" played by Hildur Ingveldardóttir Gudnadóttir of Hildurness.

Artist:	NILSEN, BJ
Title:	The Short Night
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TO 075LP

This vinyl version of BJ Nilsen's highly-acclaimed 2007 CD album The Short Night was edited and remixed in Berlin in July of 2007. It was cut by Jason at Transition, London, on a Neumann VSM 70 in April of 2009. These tracks have been radically remixed and presented for vinyl. A follow-up to 2005's Fade To White, BJ Nilsen develops his work further, based on field recordings and electronics. This time he adds harsher yet clearer harmonies with musical elements to the compositions, creating a beautifully complex and detailed study. Recorded in 2006-2007 with mostly analog equipment, using up to 50 year-old tape machines, filters and generators that end up being the soft cushion in these cold location recordings. Location recordings from Mälaren, Stockholm, Sweden; Coombe Gibbet, Berkshire, England and Landakot, Vatnsleysuströnd, Iceland. Telefunken M10 and M5, Studer B67, Ferrograph Series 4, Bruel and Kjær Sine-Random Generator and Frequency Analyzers. Also Monowave, Sequential Circuits ProOne, Korg MS20, Esq1, MOTU 828MK2, Ableton Live, Logic Audio 6. Morin khuur on "Black Light" played by Hildur Ingveldardóttir Gudnadóttir of Hildurness. "Thrown by a gust of wind onto the rainy south coast of Iceland, an upset crow is moving around on his shed. Simultaneously we hear an echo from a night in northern Italy where some unidentified animals and birds can be heard. He welcomes the night who has enough provisions. Short are the sails of a ship. Dangerous the dark in autumn, the wind may veer within five days, and many times in a month." Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft.

Artist:	FENNESZ
Title:	Black Sea
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 076CD

Black Sea is the much-anticipated new album from Christian Fennesz, his first since Venice (2004), about which Stylus Magazine's Nick Southall wrote: "Fennesz does with sound what Stan Brakhage did with film, altering its very fabric and texture, employing disorder and error as forms of communication and expression. He forces you to learn a different method of perception and interpretation, to look beneath the chaos that seems to govern the movements of life and find the patterns beneath." Fennesz's career has come a long way since Instrument, his debut for Mego in 1995, and his first solo album Hotel Paral.lel which followed in 1998. Endless Summer (Mego, 2001) brought him to a much wider audience and Venice underlined his mastery of melody and dissonance. His songs usually embody the skillful application and manipulation of dense sonic textures with a genuine feel for the live, and real-time. Black Sea features guitars that rarely sound like guitars; the instrument is transformed into an orchestra. Fennesz lists the elements used to make the compositions: "Acoustic and electric guitars, synthesizers, electronics, computers and live-improvising software lloopp." On "Glide," Fennesz duets with New Zealand's Rosy Parlane, whose work is also released on Touch. Fennesz also teams up with eMego artist Anthony Pateras whose prepared piano features on "The Colour of Three." Fennesz pushes his work into a more classical domain, preferring the slow reveal to Venice's and Endless Summer's more song- based structures. Jon Wozencroft's artwork makes visible this carefully hidden world resting beneath the surface of "the first impression." A series of shots, taken in quick succession as the tide recedes, reveals a world of specific activity only visible at a particular time and place, histories appearing and disappearing.

Artist:	NILSEN, BJ
Title:	The Invisible City
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 077CD

BJ Nilsen is a sound and recording artist born in Sweden. He defines his work as "focused upon the sound of nature and its effects on humans, and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound, often electronically treated." He has numerous recordings on Touch and has collaborated with the likes of Chris Watson, Christian Fennesz, and Z'ev. Recorded and mixed during 2008-2009 in Berlin. All tracks composed by BJ Nilsen using tape recorders, computer, organ, acoustic guitar, electronics, viola, Subharchord. Field recordings from: Sweden, Iceland, Norway, UK, Japan, Portugal and Germany. The Subharchord was recorded in the EAM Studio @ Adk, Berlin. Viola played by Hildur Ingveldardóttir Gudnadóttir. Track notes: 01. "Gravity Station": Subharchord, pitch-regulated viola, amplified chair dragged across floor, window shutters, grand piano, virtual Hammond organ, steel whistle coffee-pot, acoustic and electric guitar feedback run through B&K Frequency Analyzer Type 2107, Various DSP; 02. "Phase And Amplitude": bumblebees, acoustic guitar, Studer B67, various DSP; 03. "Scientia": birdsong feed-backed and overdriven through a B&K Frequency Analyzer Type 2107, B&K Sine Random Generator Type 1024, Subharchord, wing-flaps and bird eating. B&K Sine Random Generator Type 1024, virtual Hammond organ, door slam, glockenspiel, online voice decoder, Studer B67, Various DSP; 04. "Virtual Resistance": Subharchord, acoustic and electric guitar feedback run through B&K Frequency Analyzer Type 2107, cat climbing up door, virtual Hammond organ, broken Fishman parametric EQ, bowed acoustic guitar, footsteps on snow, Studer B67, various DSP; 05. "Meter Reading": virtual Hammond organ, various DSP, Studer B67 tape cut-ups, boat ramp; 06. "Into Its Coloured Rays": wasps run through B&K Frequency Analyser Type 2107, piano, dead trees leaning against each other, crows, Studer B67, various DSP; 07. "Gradient": acoustic guitars, virtual Hammond organ, B&K Sine Random Generator Type 1024, Studer B67, various DSP; 08. "The Invisible City": amplified chair dragged across floor, feed-backed Ferrograph Series 4, rain, acoustic guitar feedback, tape-loops of found sounds, various DSP.

Artist:	NIBLOCK, PHILL
Title:	Touch Strings
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TO 079CD

This is Phill Niblock's fourth release on the Touch label. Phill Niblock is a New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade-hopping. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant garde ever since. In the history books Niblock is the forgotten Minimalist. His influence has had more impact on younger composers such as Susan Stenger, Lois V Vierk, David First, and Glenn Branca, and he's also worked with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. Touch Strings features three new pieces completed between 2007 and 2008. "Stosspeng," a piece for guitars and bass guitars performed by Susan Stenger and Robert Poss, premiered at the Donau Festival in Krems, Austria in April of 2007 after recording sessions to obtain materials for the piece took place at Robert Poss's Trace Elements studio in New York. The material for "Poure" was recorded in Johan Vandermaelen's Amplus studio in Aaigem, Belgium, and premiered at Schuurlo, Sint-Maria-Aalter, Belgium on September 12, 2008. Performed by Arne Deforce on cello, "Poure" was commissioned by the Centre de Recherches et de Formation Musicales de Wallonie, CRFMW, Liege, Belgium. "One Large Rose," performed by The Nelly Boyd Ensemble (Robert Engelbrecht, cello; Jan Feddersen, piano strummed with nylon strings; Peter Imig, violin; Jens Roehm, acoustic bass guitar strummed with nylon strings or e-bow), was made with the musicians playing from a score, and recorded acoustically in real time, with four recordings of 46 minutes each superimposed, until a final mix was completed at Experimental Intermedia, New York in October of 2008.

Artist:	JECK, PHILIP
Title:	An Ark For The Listener
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 081CD

This is Philip Jeck's sixth solo album for Touch. Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops, turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Philip Jeck makes geniunely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art, not the gimmick. Philip Jeck writes: "A version of An Ark For The Listener was first performed at Kings Place London on February 24, 2010. It is a meditation on verse 33 of 'The Wreck Of The Deutchsland,' Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem about the drowning on December 7, 1875 of five Franciscan nuns exiled from Germany. This CD version was recorded at home in Liverpool and used extracts from live performances over the last 12 months. The 'coda:' tracks are remixes of 2 pieces from Suite: Live In Liverpool. 'Chime, Chime (Re-rung)' was originally made for Musicworks magazine (#104, Summer 09) and 'All That's Allowed (Remix)' is previously unreleased. All tracks were made using Fidelity record players, Casio SK1 keyboards, Sony mini-disc recorders, Behringer mixers, Ibanez bass guitar, Boss delay pedal and Zoom bass effects pedal."

Artist:	VON HAUSSWOLFF, C.M.
Title:	800 000 Seconds In Harar
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 082CD

This is Carl Michael von Hausswolff's first album for Touch, but the connection goes back many years, of course. Carl Michael von Hausswolff was born in 1956 in Linköping, Sweden. He lives and works in Stockholm. Since the end of the 1970s, Hausswolff has worked as a composer using the tape recorder as his main instrument and as a conceptual visual artist working with performance art, light and sound installations and photography.
CM von Hausswolff says: "I was approached by my old friend and Radium 226.05 colleague Ulrich Hillebrand, now director of Angered Theatre in Göteborg. He informed me that there was a new play in the process of being written by author and theorist Michael Azar called 'Jag är en annan,' (trans. 'I Is Another') stemming from the famous letter written by Arthur Rimbaud in his youth. The play uses Rimbaud's life from being a young poet in Charleville ending with him being the trader in Harar, Ethiopia. Hillebrand asked me if I was willing to compose the music to this play. I accepted. I told Hillebrand that I needed to use material that had something to do with Rimbaud's life and as he had connections in Ethiopia and in the small city of Harar, he said: 'why don't you go to Harar for 10 days and see what you can find?' So I went to Addis Ababa where a guy was waiting for me and drove me the 10 hours beautiful ride to Harar. I made recordings and looked for other useful material. There are two tracks. On the first track, which consists of three 'parts' I have used material from Harar. The long dronic sounds are taken from an instrument that I, after searching for days, bought in Harar -- it's called a 'krar' and is a stringed instrument. As I could not really master the actual playing of this instrument, I bought a bow for a violin and some rosin and with this I got one good tone out from this krar. Then the computer helped me to sort the modes and pitches out. On this piece there are also two location recordings: the first one you hear is a recording I did outside Harar on a hill where there are next to no car sounds or other machine sounds -- just the wind, insects, some kids. The second location recording was done in the night in my hotel, where I woke up one night and became fascinated by the leaking taps in my bathroom so I decided to record this. On the second there are only oscillators used ... several of them ... AND using one low-pitch oscillator I ran a sound filtered through. This sound is the low 'rhythm' you can hear, and it's a low-pitched Morse code signal... and the text is the famous poem Rimbaud wrote in his youth called 'Le Dormeur Du Val' (trans. 'The Sleeper In The Valley'). This poem is a beautiful text starting off in nature, where a person is sleeping in the grass. Slowly, Rimbaud zooms in and we read that it's a soldier and at the very end we are told he has two red wounds on his chest -- the guy is dead!." Arthur Rimbaud lived in Harar from 1884 until shortly before his death in 1891.

Artist:	AMBARCHI, OREN
Title:	Audience Of One
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 083CD

On Audience Of One, Oren Ambarchi presents a four-part suite which moves from throbbing minimalism to expansive song-craft to ecstatic free-rock. His previous solo albums for Touch exhibited a clear progression towards augmenting and embellishing his signature bass-heavy guitar tones with fragile acoustic instrumentation. Audience Of One, while also existing in clear continuity with these recordings, opens the next chapter. Remarkable in its confidence and breadth, but also in the sensuous immediacy of its details, this is the first time a single record has come close to encapsulating Ambarchi's musical personality in its full range and singularity. The techniques and strategies developed in his refined improvisational work with Keith Rowe and his explorations of the outer limits of rock with Sunn O))) and Keiji Haino are both in evidence, alongside the meticulous attention to detail and composition of his solo works. And on the cover of Ace Frehley's "Fractured Mirror" which closes the record, Ambarchi even points to his roots as a classic rock fanatic, in an epic yet faithful version which extends the shimmering guitar patters of the original into a rich field of phase patters reminiscent of the classic American minimalism of Reich and Riley. The album features a multitude of collaborators, who, far from appearing in incidental roles, are integral to the pieces on which they perform: on "Salt," Ambarchi paints a hypnotic, chiming backdrop for Paul Duncan's (Warm Ghost) vocals, and Joe Talia's virtuoso drumming and driving cymbals are at the core of the epic "Knots," in which Ambarchi, alongside a chamber arrangement by Eyvind Kang, weaves a net of frequencies and textures with the organic push and pull of a '70s psych jam, the bass response of a doom metal ritual and the psycho-acoustic precision of an Alvin Lucier composition. On his previous records, Ambarchi's signature guitar tone was the ever-present bedrock over which other elements sounded. At moments on Audience Of One, this disappears entirely, as on the beautiful "Passage," which, recalling the '70s Italian non-academic minimalism of Roberto Cacciapaglia and Giusto Pio, is composed of overlapping tones from Hammond organ and wine glasses, Jessika Kenney's voice, various acoustic instruments, and the delicate amplified textures of Canadian sound-artist Crys Cole. Rather than being provided by any particular sound, the unified feel of Audience Of One stems simply from the unique, patient sensibility Ambarchi has developed over the last 20 years; abstracting musical forms into their barest forms, while somehow always managing to leave their emotive power intact.

Artist:	BIOSPHERE
Title:	N-Plants
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 084CD

The Touch label releases an album by Norway's Geir Jenssen aka Biosphere. "Early February 2011: Decided to make an album inspired by the Japanese post-war economic miracle. While searching for more information I found an old photo of the Mihama nuclear plant. The fact that this futuristic-looking plant was situated in such a beautiful spot so close to the sea made me curious. Are they safe when it comes to earthquakes and tsunamis? Further reading revealed that many of these plants are situated in earthquake-prone areas, some of them are even located next to shores that had been hit in the past by tsunamis. A photo of Mihama made me narrow down my focus only to Japanese nuclear plants. I wanted to make a soundtrack to some of them, concentrating on the architecture, design and localizations, but also questioning the potential radiation danger (a cooling system being destroyed by a landslide or earthquake, etc). As the head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said: 'the plants were so well-designed' that 'such a situation is practically impossible.' The album was finished on February 13th. On March 17th, I received the following message from a FB friend: 'Geir, some time ago you asked people for a photo of a Japanese nuclear power plant. Is this going to be the sleeve of your new coming album? But more importantly: how did you actually predict the future?'" Art Direction: Jon Wozencroft; cover image: Yusuke Murakami.

Artist:	FENNESZ
Title:	Live at Revolver, Melbourne Australia 3.02.00
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	TO CDR3

"Running time: approximately 17 minutes. Recorded on the recent Mego tour down under, this is Christian Fennesz' first live CD, his second release for Touch. Although it carries a CDR catalog number, this is not a CD-R. The CD will be manufactured at Universal, like all the other Touch CDs. The packaging will be the same as the Phillip Jeck and S.E.T.I. CDRs however- i.e. in a white wallet with a black and white sticker. This edition is limited to 1000 copies."

Artist:	NILSEN, BJ
Title:	Live at Konzerthaus, Wien 06_12_03
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	TO CDR5

"Christian Fennesz has started curating a series of events at the Konzerthaus in Vienna as part of the 'generator' series of live performances held there each month. In early December he performed with Philip Jeck and BJNilsen (aka Hazard) as part of the Touch night, during which Jon Wozencroft also showed his films. All the concerts were recorded, and BJNilsen's becomes the 5th in the TO:CDR series." CD (wallet) -- factory manufactured.

Artist:	IKEDA, RYOJI
Title:	Formula
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	BOOK/DVD
Price:	$36.00
Catalog #:	TO FORMA001

"Book and DVD contained in clear plastic slip-case in numbered edition of 3000. [Book]: 186mm x 136mm, 96 pages, soft cover, with 62 full color and 34 monochrome illustrations [DVD]: features eight sound pieces from installation works and a 35-minute full video documentation of the formula [prototype] concert filmed in Tokyo. The DVD is an NTSC/PAL hybrid for world-wide use.

       This is the first complete monograph about the seminal work of Ryoji Ikeda. With superb attention to detail and layout, the publication documents the artist's latest projects and includes brand-new artwork especially produced for the book. At the same time, formula covers Ikeda's landmark concerts and installations; and his collaborations with, amongst others, celebrated artist/musician Carsten Nicolai, acclaimed performance group Dumb Type and famous architect Toyo Ito. All of the DVD content is only available here, with a 35 minute full video documentation of formula [prototype] concert filmed in Tokyo and 8 sound pieces from installation works.

       Not only the most complete Ryoji Ikeda catalogue, formula is an intimately-scaled minimalist artwork in itself, and an object of desire. How the book is held may cause the numbers and text, picked out in clear varnish on white page, to shimmer. Every aspect of look and feel has been considered by the artist's critical eye. His superlative production values are ever-present in the quality of the images and the finish. Only through repeated investigation does the publication begin to reveal its richness. Readers will be able to pore over the photographs, ponder the schematics and technical data, and enjoy the spacious listings of performances, exhibitions and releases. The artist's first-rate assembly of data, diagrams and video stills create moments of graphic intensity that make the white spaces of the pages surprisingly dynamic. The book is pure pleasure to hold.

       Formula [Book + DVD] reflects precise design and the artist's flawless selection of surfaces and materials. An exceptional publication, it provides a 'heightened sensory experience' in a similar way to his concerts, installations and sound works." Last copies of this limited item.

Artist:	VA
Title:	Light
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	TONE 013CD

"4 new tracks from the 3 audio artists (Hazard, Fennesz, Biosphere) who make up the forthcoming Touch Tour [UK, May 2001]. All are exclusive tracks recorded specifically for this CD, released for the tour. Taking the everyday world as source material and inspiration, the three international collaborations between electronic sound artists and visual artists present a vivid introduction to the work of Touch, the ground-breaking audio-visual label, in its twentieth year. Hazard's compositions evoke extreme climactic conditions and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound. Filmic in scope, his environmental sounds take the listener to another place, sending images cascading through the mind and captivating in an almost hypnotic way. Fennesz uses guitar and computer to create shimmering, swirling electronic sounds of enormous range and complex musicality. Biosphere's music is an intimate reflection of the space and climate of his Arctic base in Tromso."

Artist:	TOUCH RINGTONES
Title:	Touch Ringtones
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 014CD

"99 tracks - 177 ringtones. The process of transferring made-to-measure Ringtones to your mobile phone is, at present, a fixed casino... Chart hits, 'celebrity' voices, action heroes, lame keyboard melodies... so the likelihood of hearing one of these on the 07.34 from Carshalton is, at present, remote, although the J range of Sony mobiles promise better things. However each of these has been composed with exactly this eventuality in mind. All the compositions included here are in one way or another intended to be experienced as isolated, personal interventions: low-res loops, creature calls, in low-res environments, with the branding of surprise. In whichever form you find them here, do sample and employ these humble suggestions... We assume you already agree that the cheap 'cheep cheep' tones of Nokia, Ericsson and the others leave a lot to be desired. But there is huge commercial possibility here, not least with the fact that these selections have not been motivated by database usage... this is far cooler, and the contributors have responded accordingly... With New Order, Fennesz, Ryoji Ikeda, Gilbert & George, Mika Vainio, Mark Van Hoen, PITA, Hazard, Oren Ambarchi, Graham Lewis, Bruce Gilbert, AER, Zbigniew Karkowski, Hecker, Ake Hodell, Main, Chris Watson, Regina Lund, Elgaland-Vargaland, Francisco Lopez, Disinformation, Bigert & Bergstrom, People Like Us and many many others, this release shows what is possible and how far behind the phone companies actually are.... despite their desperation to uncover new ways of selling the next generation of phones to an already saturated market."

Artist:	JECK & JACOB KIRKEGAARD, PHILIP
Title:	Soaked
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 015CD

"'There are grains of truth in the suggestion that, in moving, you may find yourself in or out of some one's favor. But, listen to the slow, delicate, even introspective background: some breeze, some chimes, some distant thunder as each focal point remains a lament.' This blistering work was recorded live at the Moers Jazz Festival, Germany, in May 2002 and follows hot on the heels of Philip Jeck's highly acclaimed Stoke. Jacob Kirkegaard is a member of Danish combo Aerter who work in a mixed media context. He was born in Denmark, 1975 and is currently studying at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne. Germany. He has taken part in numerous festivals throughout Europe, playing live, improvising with samplers and other electronics, as he does on this recording. Philip Jeck, meanwhile, sticks to his turntables. He started experimenting with record players back at school in the 1960s, later won the Time Out Performance Award for Vinyl Requiem [1993] and has released 3 solo albums for Touch - Loopholes, Surf and the abovementioned Stoke. He lives and works in Liverpool."

Artist:	FENNESZ
Title:	Field Recordings 1995:2002
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 016CD

Repressing of this 2002 release. Field Recordings brings together a range of material Christian Fennesz has contributed to compilations, special projects and film soundtracks between the years 1995 and 2002. It also includes his debut 12" for Mego, the awesome Instrument remastered. Contains his remix of Stephan Mathieu & Ekkehard Ehlers, tracks from the Clicks&Cuts 2 comp, the Ash Int'l compilations KREV X and Decay, excerpts of his soundtrack to the movie Blue Moon, and one exclusive new track.

Artist:	HAZARD
Title:	Land
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 017CD

"B.J. Nilsen lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Born in 1975, he began working with experimental music and sound at an early stage. He was influenced by the early tape movements with the pioneers of sonic assault and released his first recordings at the age of 15. Benny founded Hazard in 1996 after a couple of years as a guitarist/bass player in several local bands. He has since then focused on the sound of nature and its effect on humans, field recordings and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound. B.J. Nilsen is currently working with Chris Watson for both live and recorded work, and on a project mapping the acoustic environment in and underneath the modern city + an infrasound installation. This release is the second of the collaborations with Chris Watson after WIND [Ash International # Ash 6.5] and his first release for Touch. Many of the compositions here are based on the live work he produced on the Touch 2001+ UK tour."

Artist:	VA
Title:	Spire - Organ Works Past Present & Future
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TONE 020CD

"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 conceptualized the brief and either built their own or recorded natural or man-made phenomena which utilized the same basic process, wind through pipes. The organ represents the marriage between acoustic complexity and ritualized 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."

Artist:	VA
Title:	Spire: Live in Geneva Cathedral/Saint Pierre
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TONE 021CD

Double CD of exclusive tracks, especially notable for long live tracks by Fennesz (25 minutes) and Philip Jeck (45 minutes). Experimental live Cathedral organ works, documented to the highest level, including superb renditions of Jolivet [France], Gorécki [Poland], Alexandra[Romania] and Davidson [UK].

       "St. Pierre Cathedral, Geneva, was the crucible of the Reformation in 1534....The second release in the 'Spire' series [previous volume was: Spire - Organ Works Past Present & Future, from 2003] is more than a document of 'Spire Live', which took place as part of La Batie 2004, at St. Pierre Cathedral, Geneva, on 5th September 2004. Curated by Eric Linder, from La Batie, and Mike Harding, the dynamism of the event, where the audience rotated between 3 separate venues within the cathedral precinct, is reflected in the individual recordings: Philip Jeck goes heavy metal in the crypt: BJNilsen comes over all moody in the side chapel, and Fennesz soothes and seduces in the same place.

       All this is set up by Charles Matthews and Marcus Davidson on the main organ [4 manifolds, computer operated] which dominates the time and place. Davidson play Gorecki's extraordinary Kantata for organ, [full stops on max employed here] which segues into BJNilsen's ultra-heavy live organ and electronics next door. This follows Charles Matthew's excellent renditions of pieces by Jolivet and Alexandra which, as the text by Thierry Charollais says: 'The event seemed provoking and iconoclastic in contrast to severe and austere atmosphere of the cathedral. Though some of the musical pieces, thus modifying our perception of the cathedral and making the event truly exceptional.'

       And to finish, Fennesz soothed us with sound. His set evoked the rolling centuries in all their pain and beauty, leaving us at once be calmed and energised, but never oppressed under the weight of time."

Artist:	FENNESZ SAKAMOTO
Title:	Sala Santa Cecilia
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	TONE 022CD

Every once in a great while, a collaboration comes along which hints at a brighter future, a collision of giants that indicates a convergence of method and music. This is one such event. Sala Santa Cecilia documents the meeting of worldwide laptop guru Fennesz and Japanese electronic music legend Ryuichi Sakamoto at the Auditorium Parco della Musica for the Romaeuropa Festival in Rome, November 2004. This is a unique and complete 19-minute piece which marks the recording debut of this new collaborative unit. It is exclusively available via this CD EP and will not be released elsewhere, and not as part of the forthcoming Fennesz Sakamoto album. The impact and importance of this recording is difficult to overstate. Christian Fennesz is far and away the standard- bearer of laptop music, his thawed sound of fractured guitar chords and warm noise melts hearts around the world. Ryuichi Sakamoto, meanwhile, a contributing force in electronic music for almost three decades in Yellow Magic Orchestra and his vast solo oeuvre, takes his place on laptop next to Fennesz for this historic meeting. Anyone concerned with the future of sound, or interested in modern music composition, or anyone who simply enjoys sweet ambient music should welcome Sala Santa Cecilia as a herald of what is to come. This is brilliant music from brilliant talents... towards a more brilliant world.

Artist:	NULL/CHRIS WATSON/Z'EV, KK
Title:	Number One
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 024CD

American performance/noise/percussion artist Z'ev, Japanese composer/performer K.K. Null, and field-recording artist Chris Watson (formerly of Cabaret Voltaire and the Hafler Trio) conjoin in a first collaboration for Touch. The idea for this recording, generated by Z'ev, has three elements: 1) to use the structure of the Noh Theatre cycle as the basis for the composition; 2) to consider the initial sound development in terms of developing "characters" which would then interact with one another through the specific "scene;" and 3) to place the "character interactions" as the "figure" inside of particular soundscapes as the "ground." In the production process, Z'ev framed his and K.K. Null's electro-acoustic musics inside Chris Watson's field recordings from East Africa. A dynamic dialogue and inside-outside mirroring of natural and synthetic sound is the result: where the click and rhythm of an insect merges with K.K. Null's drumming; where the calls of the elephants combine with the electronic bass frequencies; where bird and frog song and Z'ev's harmonic structures produce surprising counterpoints. This is carefully-constructed, pure avant-garde.

Artist:	VA
Title:	Touch 25
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 025CD

This is the Touch 25th anniversary edition CD, celebrating the conception and first release from Touch with exclusive tracks from: Oren Ambarchi, Biosphere, Fennesz, Bruce Gilbert, Ryoji Ikeda, Philip Jeck, Johann Johannsson, Jacob Kirkegaard, Mother Tongue, BJNilsen, Pan Sonic, Rosy Parlane, Peter Rehberg, Rafael Toral, Mark Van Hoen, Chris Watson. There are also several insert recordings and a live edit from Hild Sofie Tafjord & Tanja Orning. Touch was conceived by Jon Wozencroft in 1981, and released its first cassette magazine Feature Mist in 1982, and since then, the label has become one of the key touchstones in captivating, intelligent electronic music worldwide. Most artists on this compilation have made a special recording for this CD as a sort of "declaration of intent," envisioning future-music 25 years down the line, using elements from the past. As Wozencroft himself states, "What seems to have taken place, is a sequence of 25 tracks (in itself an accident of numbers) that each in their own space are quite obscure and 'of a refined sense of taste,' but together, build a very emotional journey through the emotional conditions brought on by the lack of emotion in everyday life, and its replacement by extremities." Biosphere reconnects to nature with a proliferation of birds, Pan Sonic and Ryoji Ikeda condense their approach into two five-minute pieces that make you appreciate their past excursions, and Chris Watson presents two recordings based on transportation conditions on water and railway, which connect more obviously to his roots in Cabaret Voltaire than his wildlife sound recordings, but end up re-energizing both. Bruce Gilbert has made a spoken-word story that contains his finest guitar playing to date, and Rafael Toral plays his piece with a data glove. Wozencroft himself contributes a recording he made in 1984 of the plumbing system in his old apartment, as well as a recording of an air traffic control deadzone over Siberia that was recorded in the cockpit of a 747. Touch 25 is the sound of future life. Third edition pressing, now comes in a simple cardboard sleeve.

Artist:	KIRKEGAARD, JACOB
Title:	4 Rooms
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 026CD

This is Jacob Kirkegaard's second release for the Touch label, after Eldfjall. Born in Denmark, now living and working in Germany, here he explores one of the worst man-made disasters in history. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded on April 26, 1986; clouds of radioactive particles were released, and the severely damaged containment vessel started leaking radioactive matter. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from the city and other affected areas. Despite the fact that radiation is still being emitted from the nuclear disaster site, the 900-year-old city of Chernobyl survives, although barely. As of 2004, government workers still police the zone, trying to clean up radioactive material. Some -- mostly elderly -- have decided to live with the dangers and have returned to their homes in the zone's towns and villages. The effects on the environment were catastrophic: huge areas of northern Europe were dosed with radioactivity. This work is a sonic presentation of four deserted rooms inside the "Zone of Alienation" in Chernobyl, Ukraine. Jacob Kirkegaard deliberately picked rooms that once were active meeting points for people: a church in village Krasno, an auditorium, a gymnasium and a swimming pool in Pripyat. Two decades after the event, Kirkegaard explores the phenomenon of radiation with the medium of sound. By listening to the silence of four radiating spaces he aims to unlock a fragment of the time existing inside the zone. Silence, unfolding in space. The sound of each room was evoked by sonic time layering: in each room, he recorded 10 minutes of it and then played the recording back into the room, while at the same time recording it again. This process was repeated up to ten times. As the layers got denser, each room slowly began to unfold a drone with various overtones. From a technical point of view, Kirkegaard's "sonic time layering" refers back to Alvin Lucier's work "I Am Sitting in a Room" (1970). Lucier recorded his voice in a space and repeatedly played this recording back into that same space. In this work, however, no voice is being projected into the rooms: during the recordings Kirkegaard left the four spaces to wait for whatever might evolve from the silence.

Artist:	WATSON + BJ NILSEN, CHRIS
Title:	Storm
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 027CD

This CD continues the collaboration between UK sound archivist Chris Watson (Cabaret Voltaire) and Swedish electronic artist BJ Nilsen (Hazard), which began with Wind (Ash International, 2001) and Land (Touch, 2001) and comprises 3 tracks, 2 solo and 1 collaboration. Chris Watson (formerly of The Hafler Trio) is a sound recordist with a particular and passionate interest in recording the wildlife sounds of animals, habitats and atmospheres from around the world. As a freelance recordist for film, TV & radio, Chris Watson specializes in natural history and documentary location sound together with track assembly and sound design in post production. He has previously released 3 CDs for Touch. BJNilsen lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden, and began working with experimental music and sound at an early stage. He was influenced by the early tape movements and founded Hazard in 1996. He now focuses on the sound of nature and its effect on humans, field recordings and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound. Chris Watson writes: "During December 2000 several significant storm fronts developed across the North Sea and Scandinavia. Benny remarked to me that he had recorded some of these on the Baltic coast and proposed a collaborative CD project based around our mutual interests in the rhythms and music created when the elements combine over land and out to sea. We spent the next few years gathering recordings on our respective coastlines and islands during the very active weather windows during the autumnal equinox and winter solstice. This was focused around our following one particular cyclonic system, which veers over Snipe Point on Lindisfarne to the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, and finally descends upon Öland and Gotland where Benny listened in with a favorite pair of Sennheiser omnidirectional microphones."

Artist:	MARHAUG/ASHEIM
Title:	Grand Mutation
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 030CD

Lasse Marhaug and Nils Henrik Asheim started their collaboration in 2004 at the All Ears festival in Oslo, Norway. This turned out to be a fruitful meeting between two musicians of very different backgrounds. Marhaug's feedback and Asheim's organ sounds in the Oslo concert started to reflect how the work was to develop. Asheim works here 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 favorite 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. Lasse Marhaug (electronics), Nils Henrik Asheim (organ).

Artist:	ENGLISH, LAWRENCE
Title:	Kiri No Oto
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TONE 031CD

Lawrence English is a media artist, composer and curator based in Brisbane, Australia. Working across a broad range of aesthetic investigations, English's work is eclectic and characterizes a long-term exploration into various themes including audio/visual environments, found sound/vision, subtle transformation of public space and sonic artworks that exist at the very edge of perception. The Japanese phrase "kiri no oto" loosely translates as the "sound of fog" or the "sound of mist." In many ways, it's a collection that meditates on the sense of displacement and distortion that occurs in environments which undergo extreme mists, snowstorms and sea sprays. In the same way that visual objects lose their perspective, form and shape in these environments, the sound components that make up Kiri No Oto are not quite as they first might appear. Utilizing a range of divergent mixing techniques, analog filtering and "harmonic" distortion, Kiri No Oto offers an expansive sound space in which the listener must choose to position themselves. Focus, like that in a fog, is in a constant state of flux, as elements are brought into and out of perspective. The first in a series of records employing this technique, Kiri No Oto explores the richness in the frequencies that are usually associated with extremes of volume and through this process, the recordings position the ear itself as another layer of auditory fog as it begins to distort and alter the sounds it comes in contact with. The sounds sources for Kiri No Oto emanate from both instruments and found sound, with recordings on this edition made in Poland, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

Artist:	FENNESZ SAKAMOTO
Title:	Cendre
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 032CD

This is the highly anticipated full-length collaborative release by Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto, following the 19-minute CD EP overture, Sala Santa Cecilia (a completely separate release which is not included here). This release features a massive duet between worldwide laptop guru Fennesz (guitar/laptop) and Japanese electronic music legend Sakamoto (piano/laptop) -- a continuing collaboration between two much-lauded composers. Every once in a great while, a collaboration comes along which hints at a brighter future, a collision of giants that indicates a convergence of method and music. This is one such event. Cendre was recorded between 2004 and 2006 in New York City by Ryuichi Sakamoto and in Vienna by Christian Fennesz. 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, swap ideas and develop themes. And the cyclical process continued right up until the final mix. Christian Fennesz is far and away the standard-bearer of laptop music, his thawed sound of fractured guitar chords and warm noise melts hearts around the world. Ryuichi Sakamoto, meanwhile, has been a contributing force in electronic music for almost three decades in Yellow Magic Orchestra, not to mention his vast solo oeuvre. This remarkable duo blends 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.

Artist:	BRYARS, GAVIN
Title:	The Sinking of the Titanic (1969-)
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TONE 034CD

Performed by Gavin Bryars (double bass), Philip Jeck (turntables) and Alter Ego (strings, brass, wind, percussion, keyboard, tape recorder and sound design). This version of UK composer Gavin Bryars' seminal piece, The Sinking of the Titanic, was recorded at the 49th International Festival of Contemporary Music at The Venice Biennale, October 1, 2005 at the Teatro Maliban. The Sinking of the Titanic is an open semi-aleatoric work written in 1969 and Bryars has developed versions of variable length (from 15 minutes to an hour) that have been performed in different contexts, both as sound installation and as a real concert work. The piece has its origins in an obsession (one in which Bryars meditates on the famous ship's sinking), whose evidence is in a minute handwritten notebook. This brings together information, curiosities, evidence, statistical data on the survivors, technical research on the ship, on the places occupied by the passengers, on projects for the wreck's recovery. This sinking is then a metaphor for the failure of modern technology, of the paradox of modernity, the fact that a super-technological ship could have been rammed and sunk by a block of ice. The version proposed by Alter Ego (a contemporary music group based in Rome, Italy) and Gavin Bryars is an absolutely new approach for the project and for multimedia installation. The other important new figure in this version is Philip Jeck, one of the most important names on the experimental scene. Jeck uses his experience to cover the sound with a blanket of thin dust, which, at the same time, is memory, distance, hallucination, traveling and anxiety. The dust which comes from the obsessive repetition of a short phrase and its melancholy is part of a harmony that Jeck shares with Bryars that succeeds in freezing time in another dimension. This is another important aspect of the Titanic idea: one related to memory and to lifetime, to concreteness and abstraction meant as a metaphor for the journey between life and death, the ocean's surface and depth. Gavin Bryars (double bass); Philip Jeck (turntables); Alter Ego (strings, brass, wind, percussion, keyboard, tape recorder and sound design). Limited edition of 2000 CD in a special wallet + postcard [postcard image by media artist Andrew Hooker]. Artwork by Jon Wozencroft.

Artist:	KIRKEGAARD, JACOB
Title:	Labyrinthitis
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TONE 035CD

This is Jacob Kirkegaard's third album for Touch, after Eldfjall (2005) and 4 Rooms (2006). Born in Denmark, now living and working in Germany, Labyrinthitis was commissioned by Medical Museion in Copenhagen, summer 2007, and was first presented at the international conference "Art and Biomedicine: Beyond the Body." Jacob Kirkegaard has turned his ears inwards: His new work Labyrinthitis is an interactive sound piece that consists entirely of sounds generated in the artist's auditory organs -- and will cause audible responses in those of the audience. Labyrinthitis relies on a principle employed both in medical science and musical practice: When two frequencies at a certain ratio are played into the ear, additional vibrations in the inner ear will produce a third frequency. This frequency is generated by the ear itself: a so-called "distortion product otoacoustic emission" (DPOAE), also referred to in musicology as "Tartini tone." By arranging the tones from his ears in a composition and playing them to an audience, the artist evokes further distortive effects in the ears of his listeners. At first, each new tone can only be perceived "intersubjectively": inside the head of each one in the audience. Kirkegaard artificially reproduces this tone and introduces it, "objectively," into his composition. When combined with another distorting frequency, it will create another tone -- until, step-by-step, a pattern of descending tonal structure emerges whose spiral form mirrors the composition of resonant spectra in the human cochlea. Paradoxical as it may sound: we can listen to our own ears. The human hearing organ -- still often perceived as a passive unidirectional medium -- does not only receive sounds from the outside, it also generates its own sound from within itself. As a matter of fact, it can even be "played on" just like an acoustic instrument.

Artist:	WINDEREN, JANA
Title:	Heated: Live In Japan
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	TONE 036CD

This is a blistering live performance at Super Deluxe, Tokyo, by Norwegian sound recordist, Jana Winderen, performed on October 24th, 2008. Heated: Live In Japan follows her only other release to date, a 7" vinyl limited edition, Surface Runoff, on Autofact (2008). After a spoken-word introduction from Tetsuro Yasunaga, these are improvised recordings based on her field research trips that force the power of the hidden to the surface, making the unheard audible. It's a strange world down there; a world of which we know little, replete with its own instrumentation and orchestras. Tapping into these, Jana's vision encourages us to explore the fertility of the oceans. About the artist: Jana Winderen researches the hidden depths of the sea with the latest technology; her work reveals the complexity and strangeness of the unseen world beneath. The audio topography of the oceans and the depth of glacier crevasses are brought to the surface. She is occupied with finding sound from its hidden source, like blind field recording. Her most recent sound works include Submerge (2008), for Färgfabriken Norr in Sweden, based on hydrophone recordings in the local lake, freq_out 7 curated by CM von Hausswolff at the Happy New Ears festival in Belgium (2008), Rainbow Audio Transformation (2008) at Extra City in Antwerp, Belgium and the 6-channel sound installation +4°C - From Folgefonna To The North Sea (2007) at Sleppet during the centenary of Edvard Greig, Greig07, in Norway. Source material recorded with 2x8011 DPA hydrophones, 2x DolphinEAR/PRO hydrophones and 2x4060 DPA microphones on a Sound Devices 744T recorder in Greenland, Iceland and Norway.

Artist:	NANA APRIL JUN
Title:	The Ontology Of Noise
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TONE 037CD

Nana April Jun is an alias of Christofer Lämgren, a visual artist, composer and art magazine editor/curator (YKKY) based in Gothenburg, Sweden, and this is his debut full-length release. The Ontology Of Noise researches the dark associations of post-black metal. No traditional instruments are used on the album and all techniques are digital in their application. There are almost no arrangements or layers, but the pieces consist of single streams which change intuitively. This makes The Ontology Of Noise a concrete journey through an abstract language evolving around light and darkness, nature and artificiality, and sometimes even takes the form of a sound very similar to an electric guitar. The Ontology Of Noise explores the filmic qualities of noise -- the image-creating mechanisms that arise almost hallucinogenically from subtle variations of frequencies. By using a special set of digital mastering and filtering techniques, the recordings often sound very much like the sounds of nature; wind in trees and water. The Ontology Of Noise opens up an audial perception for these sounds of nature and asks questions about their ontology. Fans of Burzum's Filosofem take note.

Artist:	BIOSPHERE
Title:	Wireless: Live At The Arnolfini, Bristol
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 038CD

The Touch label releases the first solo live album by Norway's Geir Jenssen aka Biosphere. Recorded live at The Arnolfini, Bristol on October 27, 2007 by the doyen of environmental sound recordists, Chris Watson, using 2 x Sony ECM 77s with a Nagra P11 Ares flash card recorder, and from desk to hard drive. The recording was mixed, edited and mastered by Touch stalwart BJNilsen in Berlin during March of 2009. This concert was part of Touch 25 Live, which also featured a performance of Storm (by Chris Watson & BJNilsen). This is Biosphere's sixth release for Touch. In the early 1990s, he was a pioneer of so-called "ambient techno," but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring. His last album, Dropsonde, wasn't a soundtrack like the interwoven Substrata, nor an episodic journey in the way that Autour de la Lune is. It pushed new directions towards the jazz colors of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, while re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread. Here, Geir Jenssen takes this further, incorporating samples of field recordings by Jony Easterby and trumpet by Anders Karlskås, invoking a sparser, more arresting sound. A landmark release for Biosphere -- his first solo live album -- heralding new beginnings without jettisoning the past.

Artist:	ELEH/NANA APRIL JUN
Title:	Observations & Momentum
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TONE 039LP

The Touch label presents the Observations & Momentum split LP as a great opportunity to hear noise minimalist Eleh and Swedish visual/sound artist Christofer Lämgren aka Nana April Jun at their finest. Nana April Jun's track "Sun Wind Darkness Eye" is taken from the album The Ontology Of Noise (TONE 037CD), particularly because it stands out as being perfect for a vinyl edition. In the same time-frame, the series of releases by Eleh on Important Records attracted the Touch label's attention. These homages to La Monte Young, Pauline Oliveros and Charlemagne Palestine, as vinyl-only limited editions, stunned with their acuity and passion for detail. There was something acutely other in their sound. Eleh, also, is an artist who prefers the work to speak for itself, and has other provocative ideas about noise. The digital is questioned by a commitment to a working practice based around analog tone-generators and letter-press printed covers. The Important Records/Taiga releases are now sought-after with a passion by anyone who recognizes something truly special occurring. On this recording, Eleh develops the waveforms that the Important Records series started. The split vinyl format is a great meeting point for this idea of digital persona and analog privacy. The effect, it is hoped, is for the vinyl to represent a digital question: that this LP summons up a universal sound and an intimate sphere of operations, which is, of course, a continuing dilemma. Limited edition of 1,000 copies. Art & photography by Jon Wozencroft.

Artist:	AMBARCHI, OREN
Title:	Intermission 2000-2008
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 040CD

Intermission brings together a range of material Australian sound artist Oren Ambarchi has contributed to compilations and limited-edition vinyl releases between the years 2000 and 2008. Highlights include two live recordings -- an early, fragile solo guitar recording taken from a radio broadcast in 2000 and "A Final Kiss On Poisoned Cheeks," his powerful 12" recorded live in Vancouver in 2007 and originally released on Table Of The Elements. Additional tracks include "Iron Waves,"an exclusive track in collaboration with vocalist Paul Duncan and "Intimidator," featuring Australian pianist/composer Anthony Pateras, originally released on Southern Lord. These are special anomalies in the Ambarchi canon, but nonetheless feature the hallmarks of his unique sound-world, all underpinned by his trademark deep guitar tones and meticulous attention to detail. All tracks are newly remastered, many of which are available on CD for the first time. Oren Ambarchi's works are hesitant and tense extended songforms located in the cracks between several schools: modern electronics and processing; laminal improvisation and minimalism; hushed, pensive songwriting; the deceptive simplicity and temporal suspensions of composers such as Morton Feldman and Alvin Lucier; and the physicality of rock music, slowed down and stripped back to its bare bones, abstracted and replaced with pure signal. From the late '90s, his experiments in guitar abstraction and extended technique have led to a more personal and unique sound-world, incorporating a broader palette of instruments and sensibilities. On releases such as Grapes From The Estate (TO 061CD) and In The Pendulum's Embrace, Ambarchi has employed glass harmonica, strings, bells, piano, drums and percussion, creating fragile textures as light as air which tenuously co-exist with the deep, wall-shaking bass tones derived from his guitar. Ambarchi works with simple constructs and parameters; exploring one idea over an extended duration and patiently teasing every nuance and implication from each texture; the phenomena of sum and difference tones; carefully-tended arrangements that unravel gently; unprepossessing melodies that slowly work their way through various permutations; resulting in an otherworldly, cumulative impact of patiently-unfolding compositions.

Artist:	GUDNADOTTIR, HILDUR
Title:	Mount A
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 041CD

This album was originally released by 12 Tónar in 2006 under the moniker Lost In Hildurness, and it is the first solo recording from Hildur Gudnadóttir (who is a member of the Nix Noltes band and has performed regularly with múm and Pan Sonic). In her dreamy soundworld she plays the cello, gamba, zither, khuur and the gamelan, so this CD sounds like nothing else. This is exciting, tranquil, and melancholic stuff and at times it makes you think of a lost place and times gone by -- and the music has the power to take you there. Recording sessions took place both in New York and in a house in Hólar, Iceland, specifically chosen for its good cello acoustics. It is strictly a solo album as Hildur attempted to "involve other people as little as I could." Like the cover art, it is personal and intimate. It has been called "the perfect soundtrack to get lost in a forest at night," but this version, mastered by Denis Blackham, sounds fresher and better than ever. Photography and design by Jon Wozencroft.

Artist:	SOHRAB
Title:	A Hidden Place
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 042LP

Sohrab was born in Tehran in 1984. He was 7 when the Iran-Iraq war ended. His name, from an old poem called "Shahname" means "rouge water," which can also mean "blood." He started a punk band with his brother and a friend, which lasted about two years before splitting. Sohrab is totally isolated in Iran, with little or no connection to what is happening there. Sohrab is, like so many, displaced within his own country and occupies a similar internal cultural isolation. This is suggested by Jon Wozencroft's imagery and artwork; looking in through shattered glass with an air of menace underneath the surface. Sohrab used Reason 3, his midi controller (R)evolution UC-16 and a sampler, recorded live through Ambrosia recording software. He also integrates field recordings and spoken word into his soundscapes. Mastered by Denis Blackham. Cut by Jason @ Transition. Photography by Sohrab and Jon Wozencroft.

Artist:	WATSON & MARCUS DAVIDSON, CHRIS
Title:	Cross-Pollination
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 043CD

Touch presents a piece by British environmental sound archivist Chris Watson and a collaboration between Watson and British composer, producer and keyboard player Marcus Davidson (Spire). "Midnight At The Oasis" is a 28-minute time compression from sunset to sunrise in South Africa's Kalahari Desert and features the dense and harmonic mosaic of delicate animal rhythms recorded in this remote habitat. The piece was first performed at the Marquee in Parliament Street, York, on September 13th, 2007 as part of SightSonic's contribution to the BA Festival of Science. The Kalahari Desert is a vast and open space where most of the wildlife is nocturnal. After sunset, the dunes, grasses and thorn bushes are patrolled by an emerging alien empire -- the insects. "Midnight At The Oasis" presents an unseen soundscape from this beautiful and hostile environment. "The Bee Symphony" is a project by Chris Watson originally for Pestival (an international arts festival dedicated to "insects in the arts and the art of being an insect") in 2009 to explore the vocal harmonies between humans and honey bees in a unique choral collaboration around and within the hives of an English country garden. Recorded live at The Rymer Auditorium, Music Research Centre, University of York, England on December 17th, 2010 by Tony Myatt, using a Soundfield SPS200 microphone recorded onto an Edirol R4 (surround version) and 2 x Neumann U87 microphones via Grace Microphone Preamplifiers, recorded onto an Edirol R44 (stereo version). Composed and arranged by Marcus Davidson using recordings made by Chris Watson & Mike Harding and diffused through a 4.1 Genelec system by Chris Watson.

Artist:	FENNESZ
Title:	Seven Stars
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	TONE 044CD

Fennesz's first solo release since Black Sea (TO 076CD/LP). Using acoustic and electric guitars, bass, synths and computers, Fennesz continues to engage and entrance us in equal measure. Fennesz writes: "Seven Stars was recorded in Vienna in January 2011. I recorded and mixed the album within 3 weeks. 'Liminal' and 'July' were existing pieces which I have reworked. (I wrote an early version of 'Liminal' in a hotel room in Bali in 2010). There is also a version of 'Liminal' that I have been playing live for some time. My friend Steven Hess, with whom I have worked before, happened to be in Vienna at the time of the sessions, so I invited him to join me in the studio. Christoph Amann recorded the drums using a selection of his great microphones, including his amazing new Josephson. I wanted to make a record that has a certain lightness about it and at the same time explore new territory using drums on one track. This might be something I will continue with in the future."

Artist:	FENNESZ
Title:	Seven Stars
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	10"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	TONE 044EP

Fennesz's first solo release since Black Sea (TO 076CD/LP) is a 4-track 10" vinyl. Using acoustic and electric guitars, bass, synths and computers, Fennesz continues to engage and entrance us in equal measure. Fennesz writes: "Seven Stars was recorded in Vienna in January 2011. I recorded and mixed the album within 3 weeks. 'Liminal' and 'July' were existing pieces which I have reworked. (I wrote an early version of 'Liminal' in a hotel room in Bali in 2010). There is also a version of 'Liminal' that I have been playing live for some time. My friend Steven Hess, with whom I have worked before, happened to be in Vienna at the time of the sessions, so I invited him to join me in the studio. Christoph Amann recorded the drums using a selection of his great microphones, including his amazing new Josephson. I wanted to make a record that has a certain lightness about it and at the same time explore new territory using drums on one track. This might be something I will continue with in the future." Printed inner and outer color sleeve.

Artist:	FENNESZ SAKAMOTO
Title:	Flumina
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TONE 046CD

Flumina is the third collaboration between legendary composers Ryuichi Sakamoto and Christian Fennesz. The 24 pieces of Flumina are based on piano compositions/improvisations which Ryuichi Sakamoto had recorded whilst touring in Japan. On that tour Ryuichi played a piano piece in a different key at the begin of every show, always having a Fennesz Sakomoto project in mind. After 24 shows he had 24 tracks in 24 different keys, covering all 24 tonal steps of the western tonal system. Sakamoto sent the tracks over to Christian Fennesz, who worked on them using electronics, guitars and synths. They met in New York then and mixed the album together with Fernando Aponte at KAB Studios. Quiet, restful ambient piano and effected guitar drone. Minimal and masterful. Guitar, computer [laptop] by Christian Fennesz; piano, computer [laptop] by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Artwork & photography by Jon Wozencroft. Mastered by Denis Blackham. Recorded at Amann Studios, Vienna and at KAB Studios, NY and Japan.

Artist:	WATSON, CHRIS
Title:	Oceanus Pacificus
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TS 002EP

Chris Watson is the world's leading wildlife sound recordist. Oceanus Pacificus captures the voices and rhythms of the Humboldt current around the Galapagos Islands recorded in April 2006 using a pair of Dolphin Ear Pro Hydrophones onto a NAGRA ARES-PII digital audio recorder. After co-founding Cabaret Voltaire and playing in The Hafler Trio, he left all of it to become the sound archivist for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He is now a full-time freelance sound recordist.

Artist:	AER
Title:	Project
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TS 003EP

Aer is the occasional recording name for Jon Wozencroft, art director and editor for Touch. Project began as a film soundtrack for The Overcoming of Hazard, by Brad Butler and Karen Mirza, a 3-monitor installation piece presented in the crypt of St. Pancras Church in London. It uses four atmosphere recordings, shortwave radio and an organ stop -- an attempt to confuse inside and out. Mixed with Mathias Gmachi using Digital Performer, one side is for headphone listening, the other for speaker playback.

Artist:	VAINIO, MIKA
Title:	Behind The Radiators
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TS 006EP

Finland's Mika Vainio continues the Touch Sevens 7" vinyl-only limited edition series with an absolute stunner. The crackle and fire of raw analog used as a voice. This series is a non-digital statement that cannot be applied to digital formats -- the sonic texture, the use of a locked groove, the A & the B. The label chose not to specify the RPM, encouraging listeners to experiment with playback options and personal preferences. Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft.

Artist:	O'ROURKE, JIM
Title:	Despite The Water Supply
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TS 007EP

American musician and producer Jim O'Rourke continues the Touch Sevens 7" vinyl-only limited edition series with an epic, two-part track recorded at Tokyo's Steamroom, May 2008. This series is a non-digital statement that cannot be applied to digital formats -- the sonic texture, the use of a locked groove, the A & the B. The label chose not to specify the RPM, encouraging listeners to experiment with playback options and personal preferences. Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft.

Artist:	PEOPLE LIKE US & ERGO PHIZMIZ
Title:	Withers In The Waking
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TS 008EP

This is the eighth release in the Touch Sevens 7" vinyl-only limited edition series. Both songs are the result of the WFMU podcast series "Codpaste," in which Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us) & Ergo Phizmiz publicly composed a series of collage compositions and did a live soundtrack to Christian Marclay's ScreenPlay. This resulted in the online-only album Rhapsody In Glue, from which these two songs are alternative versions, with re-tooled guitars, and vocals added to a Prokofiev melody.

Artist:	GILBERT, BRUCE
Title:	Monad
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TS 012EP

The next in the series of vinyl-only Touch seven inches is Monad by Bruce Gilbert, whose career stretches back to late 1960s British avant-garde art and music scenes, and has since played an important and influential role with his involvement in various rock-based formations, work for choreographic projects and art installations. Instruments: Korg Monotron Analogue Ribbon synth, Zoom RFX-200, Korg Kaos Pad 2, Apple GarageBand. Some words to describe what this sounds like: coruscating, metallic, hard, structured chaos and LOUD.

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Artist:	S.E.T.I.
Title:	Light Shift: Live In Brussels
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CDR
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	TO CDR2

Artist:	VA
Title:	Star Switch On
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TONE 018CD

Artist:	FENNESZ/JECK/MATTHEWS
Title:	Amoroso
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TS 001EP

Artist:	JECK & MARCUS DAVIDSON, PHILIP
Title:	Spliced
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TS 010EP

Artist:	HARDING, MIKE
Title:	Repaired/Replaced
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TS 013EP