Monthly Archives: September 2012

Atmospheres 4 | Touch.30 Live at Beaconsfield

September 30, 2012 » Permalink: Atmospheres 4 | Touch.30 Live at Beaconsfield

atmos4

A two-day festival celebrating 30 years of Touch, with performances, installations and displays, and a full programme of workshops and masterclasses in design and music, recording, mastering and the digital realm. The full programme is now available to read below or to download.

The Festival Pass entitles you to access all events at this festival and is now onsale here:

Atmospheres 4 – Touch.30 at Beaconsfield is the main UK event in a year-round programme of activities celebrating 30 years of existence.

Atmospheres 4 – Touch.30 at Beaconsfield is a two-day festival with performances, installations and displays, and a full programme of workshops and masterclasses. The Festival will explore all aspects of Touch: the music; the distinctive and influential design and photography; the process of recording and mastering; and the opportunities of the digital realm.

Participation in the event will extend well beyond Touch artists and creative team into the hinterland around the label: academics, industry professionals, other ground breaking music organisations etc.

Atmospheres will be curated by two of Touch’s founders and the current creative team, Mike Harding and Jon Wozencroft, and produced by them with along with Touch’s experienced digital and live production team already responsible this year for events in the UK, Germany, Belgium, USA and elsewhere detailed here

Venue: Beaconsfield, 22 Newport St, Vauxhall, London, SE11 6AY
Dates: 5-6 December 2012

Day One – Wednesday 5th December 2012
Afternoon events, 2pm-6pm:
• 2pm: Jon Wozencroft talks about the history of Touch, “Through the Digital Glass”
• 2:30pm: Denis Blackham (Skye Mastering) and Christian Fennesz on mastering for digital manufacture and the demands of the “Venice” project
• 3pm: Chaired by John Kieffer: Denis Blackham, Jason (Transition Mastering Studios) and Jon Wozencroft on digital and analogue sound, and how this determines listening outcomes
• 4:15pm: Chaired by Tony Myatt (University of Surrey): Mike Harding, Seb Jouan (Aecom Acoustic Design & Arts & Culture) on multi-channel with Hildur Gudnadottir. This session reflects upon hi-audio formats, a specific example, and their future
• Sonic interventions from ELEH/Ryoji Ikeda/Mika Vainio & Panasonic. “When did sound become music?” (Followed by questions)

Screening Situations (upstairs), 6pm-7pm
• Coda-plus 47 (audio by Fennesz & Ryoji Ikeda)
• Liquid Music (audio by Fennesz)

Evening Performances, 8pm-11pm
• Hildur Gudnadottir – Leyfɗu Ljósinu (Beaconsfield version)
• audio intervention by David Toop, a presentation of “Yanomamo Shamanism”, released on ‘Touch Travel’ [T4] in 1984.
• Philip Jeck
• audio intervention by BJNilsen, who plays a new piece recorded outside the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, “The cackle of dogs and laughter of death”.
• Playback of a surround-sound rendition of his Touch.30 piece “Brussels Nord” by Chris Watson (in absentia)
• Fennesz

Day Two – Thursday 6th December 2012
Afternoon events, 2pm-6pm:
• 2pm: Mike Harding introduces Touch’s digital presence on the web with Philip Marshall (websites) & Tim Medcalf (iOS devices) followed by at
• 2:45pm: Paul Wilson & Cheryl Tipp from The British Library on the TouchRadio archive
• 3pm: Jon Wozencroft & Garry Mouat – “Bromides and Spray Mount” – Touch design in the early years
• 3:45pm: Design Seminar by Jon Wozencroft – How Touch has responded to changing formats and download culture
•: 4:30pm Jon Wozencroft & Peter Saville discuss their parallel experience of visual culture, and the movement of graphic design to the art world (Followed by questions)

Screening Situations (upstairs), 6pm-7:15pm
• The Whitstable Symphony (audio by BJNilsen)
• The Suffolk Symphony (audio by Philip Jeck & BJNilsen)

Evening Performances, 8pm-11pm
• Thomas Köner
• followed by an audio intervention by Bruce Gilbert – “Sliding off the World”
• CM von Hausswolff
• Jon Wozencroft introduces Jon Savage’s and his pirate broadcast for Network 21 in 1987
• Biosphere – transfiguring Arnold Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht”

To be allocated: audio interventions by People Like Us | Edwin Pouncey | Heitor Alvelos | Simon Fisher Turner…

In the Bar: Photography by Jon Wozencroft: The Listening Eye

Chris Watson – “Sunrise in the Sukau Rainforest” | framework September 2012

September 24, 2012 » Permalink: Chris Watson – “Sunrise in the Sukau Rainforest” | framework September 2012

framework

framework:seasonal issue #3, autumn 2012
Chris Watson: Sunrise in the Sukau Rainforest
2.5 hour high resolution audio dvdr

The framework:seaonal series of fund-raising audio releases continues with a very special issue #3 – the great chris watson, who, we’re sure, needs no introduction amongst framework listeners, has donated a single-take, 2.5 hour field recording from the rainforests of borneo, recorded and published at its full length at higher-than-cd audio quality. this stunning recording has never before been released, and has been donated by the artist in support of framework radio. it is available only through framework, in exchange for your donation of €20 of more on the framework website.

Each dvdr is slow burnt onto the highest quality taiyo yuden archival discs, and is hand-stamped with the custom-made image of a borneo-native mushroom, in keeping with the previous issues of the seasonal series. each is housed in an offset and folio printed sleeve from a local printing press, on paper from a local papermill, both here in the southeast estonian town of räpina. the insert as well is printed on additive-free paper from the räpina mill. these audio dvdr’s will play in any standard dvd player, or on any computer.

The details:

Recorded during October 2011 by the river Kinabatangen, Sabah, Borneo from 0430h using Sennheiser MKH 8040/30 middle and side array to a Nagra ARES Pll recorder at 48Khz 16 Bits .wav

“The Sukau rainforest is a relatively narrow strip of primary forest either side of the banks of the river Kinabatangen in Sabah, Borneo. Access to the forest floor is very difficult as there are no trails, however at the back of the lodge where I was staying there was a narrow old and decaying boardwalk that led, snake like, through the dense undergrowth and out into what felt like another world. Each morning for over a week I left my lodge around 0400h and set off carefully along a zig zag pattern of soft and splintered planks into the velvet darkness. Either side of the red glow from my head torch fireflies and other unknown bioluminescent insects blinked and flashed their alien languages whilst dead ahead the small piercing red reflecting eyes of hunting bats streaked, missile like, directly towards me. On several mornings my GPS guided me to a favourite looping curve at the furthermost point of the 2Km trail where I could stop and fix my mikes in a tree whilst trying to bat off the myriad host of mosquitos that quickly find anything warm blooded that is stationary. I rigged and set away the recording before quietly moving off, my ears straining to hear the distant songs of gibbons, the shrieks of macaques and the low whistle of a pitta. Sunrise, such as it is 30m below the canopy, is also accompanied by the slow drip of condensation percolating down through the grey green gloom from a canopy 30m above as the forest is slowly revealed.” (Chris Watson)

Sunrise in the Sukau rainforest is published by Touch Music

To order your copy go to the framework website and donate €20 or more via the donations bar on the right, or click the ‘donate’ button below and do the same. we’ll be in touch to confirm the best shipping address. copies of previous issues of framework:seasonal are also still available – donate €20 or more per issue and let us know which ones you’d like!

send + receive | Canada 14-17th October 2012

September 24, 2012 » Permalink: send + receive | Canada 14-17th October 2012

The 14th edition of send + receive will feature performances and works that explore distinct interpretations of natural sound by artists from across Canada and around the globe.

Featuring performances by:

Akio Suzuki (JP)
Tomoko Sauvage (JP/FR)
Nmperign (US)
the Rita (BC)
Angela Forget (MB)
Jeffrey Allport (SK)
Featuring works by:
Chris Watson (UK)
Douglas Quin (US)
Jana Winderen (NO)
Hope Peterson (MB)
Jane Tingley (QC)
Garth Hardy (MB)
Jamie Woollard (MB/QC)
George Brecht (US)
Christian Wolff (US) ‘stones’ performed by the send + receive Temporary Ensemble (MB)

Complete details are available now on our website: www.sendandreceive.org
For press enquiries please contact our Director crys cole

The Uranus Music Prize 2012

September 13, 2012 » Permalink: The Uranus Music Prize 2012

As the dust settles on another year of uninspired Mercury Music Prize nominations, The Liminal have decided upon a selection of 12 albums that far better represent the variety of extraordinary music being produced in Britain today…

Chris Watson – El Tren Fantasma

TO42 - El Tren Fantasma - Chris Watson

The title of the sound recordist Chris Watson’s latest CD, borrowed from a Mexican film from the 1920s, translates as “The Ghost Train”. The name makes reference to the fact that the recordings were made while he was working on the BBC show Great Railway Journeys, where he took a ride on one of the very last passenger trains which ran from Mexico’s Pacific coast to the Gulf on the other side, a journey that since 1999 can no longer be made. However, as you listen to it while studying a map of the route, from Los Mochis in the west, through Chihuahua and Mexico City to Veracruz on the east, you begin to trace a number of branch lines which lead off from the main line. You find yourself making connections, hitching your wagon to a number of different trains, in order to chase down some fascinating – and very resonant – ghosts from Mexico’s history.

The Uranus Prize
You can buy this album in the TouchShop here

HY-BRASIL | BBC Radio 4 5th September 2012

September 5, 2012 » Permalink: HY-BRASIL | BBC Radio 4 5th September 2012

BBC Radio 4, Wed 5 Sept, 11.02am

Writer and narrator Paul Evans, Wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, Producer Sarah Blunt

Hy-Brasil is a phantom island which features in many Irish myths. It appears on a map in 1325 off the south west coast of Ireland and said be cloaked in mist except for one day every seven years, when it becomes visible but still cannot be reached. There are rumours of strange creatures and a lone magician who inhabit it.

Written and narrated by Paul Evans, with sound recordings by Chris Watson, Hy-Brasil tells the story of a journey across a sea of imagination in search of this phantom isle.