Achim Mohné on Touch Records

Here's a conceptual art single for you. Touch records is always pushing the envelope when it comes to packaging and releasing contemporary composers, but the fact they still appreciate this format is amazing to me. This one is a single sided 7" from Achim Mohné where the A-Side is a digital download and is to be played immediately after the record ends and vice versa, hopefully there's just enough time to run over to the record player or computer every time. A weird way to interact with both machines and I'm interested in how he's creating sound sculpture out of the playing of the medium itself. Something abut magnifying the sound of the dust in the grooves I guess in a way so every record is different? Here's a format that should be exactly reproducible every time but he's flipping that entire idea and then making you hear the whole piece on multiple formats.

What exactly a "small sachet of swarf" is anyone's guess, but it's in there.

Touch says:

Limited edition of 100 copies

“Seite B” – one-sided 7” white label vinyl, hand screen-printed cover
“Seite A” – one track WAV download

“Seite B” is the second excerpt of Achim Mohné’s live set at Kunsthaus Dresden on 24.v.12, as recorded by Arno Jordan (Analog Inn). It has been pressed on a one-sided white label 7”, screen-printed in white ink on white by Berlin-based artist Lukas Julius Keijser, in a hand-numbered edition of 100 copies only. Inside each sleeve you will find a small sachet of swarf, recovered from this record’s cut at Transition Studios, London.

The first excerpt – the conceptual “flip-side” of the single – is titled “Seite A” and available for you to download, once the vinyl has been purchased. This pair of recordings work together like a Möbius tape – the end of “Seite A” is the beginning of “Seite B” and “Seite B” ends where “Seite A” starts… Listen to “Seite A” on your digital player and to “Seite B” on your record player, at 45 rpm.

Mohné started working with record players and other audio playback devices in the mid 90s. He experiments with the space and time intervals inherent in these machines and is especially interested in “music that lies hidden in the medium itself”.

He subjects sound carriers, from vinyl to tape and beyond, to a forensic autopsy - for example, by analysing the dust particles inside a vinyl groove.

Buy Achim Mohné "Seite B c/w Seite A" [One-sided 7" Vinyl + WAV] in the TouchShop

Chris Watson on touch records

I had a great vinyl album from the 70's once. The back cover was a guy sitting in a canoe with a huge parabolic mic and headphones. This kind of blew my mind a little. You could release an album of environmental sounds? This would be perfect for sampling.
I wonder if he had any idea albums like this would be used that way in 20 years.
It was called solitudes and I remember listening to it every now and then and the rackle and pops would add to the weirdness of listening to this place that maybe didn't exist anymore. That all these animals were dead, it's probably full of condos now....it was like listening to ghosts. The mst undane thing was important...and you didn't even know it.
This touch series is pretty amazing...releasing conceptual singles like this and from all kind of contemporary composers(?) just messing with ideas of sound and music and on this great format that's easy to pick up. I don't know of anywhere domestically carrying these so it's still a far away dream, but I'd pick any of these up if I came across them.

The seven inch is perfect for these little experiments, and this one is locked groove even. I wonder if that's just at the end or the whole disc is locked grooves, getting shorter and shorter. What's even better about this recording from Chris Watson is that there's no way you could humanly hear these sounds. This place, underwater with stereo mics. You may as well be in outer space. The trouble to capture these two tracks and press them on vinyl is incomprehensible.

I want the job of freelance sound recordist.

There was a great interview with the sound effects guy from industrial light and magic how he was hiking around in California and touched a wire that was anchoring a utility pole on a hill and it made this twang that went from the ground to the pole and back, he ended up using that for the base for the lazer sound. He said the best sounds come from his short wave radio, all the stuff inbetween stations....

I love sound.

Chris Watson - Oceanus Pacificus
Touch # TS02
7" vinyl only

Track Listing:

1. 3m
2. 10m

Locked grooves on both sides...

The voices and rhythms of the Humboldt current around the Galapagos Islands recorded April 2006 using a pair of Dolphin Ear Pro Hydrophones onto a NAGRA ARES-Pll digital audio recorder.

Chris Watson, originally from Sheffield but now resident in Newcastle, England, is the world's leading wildlife sound recordist. After co-founding Cabaret Voltaire with Richard Kirk and Stephen Mallinder, he left in 1981 to work for Tyne Tees Television and he also joined The Hafler Trio. He then left to become the sound archivist for the Royal Society for Protection of Birds. He is now working full time as a freelance sound recordist.

fennesz - Touch 7 inch series

I love the idea that a guitar can create all this sound....on one hand you think musicians will always be using guitars, they're so versatile, but at the same time if you're making sounds like these than conceivably you could do it with any instrument, so what's the point? Are you making guitars obsolete or more relevant?
I'm really getting lost in the weird guitar manipulations of Fennesz, checking out the ambient looped stuff on myspace I don't know how exactly this would work out on 2 sides of a seven inch, how the break is handled because the original track was an 8 minute digital download from Touch, who just recently pressed it on vinyl. Unfortunately I couldn't find this anywhere but imported from Touch or other mailorder places overseas.
A track like 'A year in a minute' is really dense and full of every type of sound, it's really hypnotic but structured to be more than just ambient noise, it's like listening to that disintegration loops stuff, it's slowly changing and kind of needs a lot of time to get everything, let it sink in. The Touch label has all kinds of other experimental music from Ryoji Ikeda and the like, but I might look for one of these full lengths by fennesz domestically.

Fennesz-Transition-Limited edition seven inch pressing from fennesz on the touch label. Part of the ongoing touch singles club series. The single features two tracks never released on vinyl before. The ep opens up with the track on a desolate shore which featured as a very limited digital release on the touch website last year along with a totally exclusive track a shadow passes by. Both tracks are quite reminiscent of the sounds of his amazing endless summer album with lots of glitchy sound effects layered behind washes of fuzzy guitars. Both sides end in locked grooves so you can basically listen to the last few second for ever. April 2008-7"-Touch

This is available from Touch records, or roadrecs in Ireland.

The big Matador Jay Reatard sale is tomorrow, so set your alarms for 3PM eastern time.....more tomorrow.