• Music

    Philip Jeck & Chris Watson – Oxmardyke

    July 27, 2023 - By 

    There’s little I can say to introduce you to the work of Philip Jeck, the turntablist who passed away in March of 2022, nor would I with Chris Watson, the maestro of field recordings and one-time member of Cabaret Voltaire.  This release is a project that the gentlemen were working on before Jeck’s untimely passing.  From the Touch Records release Bandcamp site: “In 2017 I was recording along the north bank of the Humber estuary and one morning driving back from Faxfleet I was stopped at the Oxmardyke rail crossing. The gates were down. After setting up a microphone array…

  • Music

    Bana Haffar – Genera – Live at AB Salon, Brussels

    February 27, 2023 - By 

    Touch Records has introduced so many experimental recording composers to the world in its 40 years of existence that it’s hard to keep up with them.  This latest release by Saudi-American composer Bana Haffar immediately spins a web for you to get tied into her shimmering compositions.  Found sounds and acoustic instruments feel and sound perfectly balanced, a feat made more impressive since this is a live recording.

  • Music

    Various Artists vs Chris Watson – Star Switch On

    September 14, 2022 - By 

    Once an Industrial music icon during his time performing in Cabaret Voltaire (pre-disco), Chris Watson now records natural sounds with such skill that he makes something that goes well beyond ‘ambient’ music.  As a tribute to his work, Touch Records commissioned several artists, including recently reposed ones like Philip Jeck and Mika Vainio, and supplemented by Fennesz, Biosphere and Watson himself.

  • Music

    Geneva Skeen – Double Bind

    February 10, 2022 - By 

    Perhaps I’ll need to renew my subscription to The Wire or spend more time on other blogs, as I can’t believe I missed the work of Los Angelina Geneva Skeen.  My hometown is producing so many fine artists working within ambient and electroacoustic music that it has become (happily) difficult to keep up with this wellspring of talent. Double Bind defies proper categorization, sitting somewhere between academic musique-concrète, noise-style improvisation and a touch of mysticism in Skeen’s work.  Though bleak, there is a feeling of being inside of a warm, pulsating, silvery ocean in these compositions.  The one which won…