 | This article includes a list of general references, but it remains largely unverified because it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(January 2011) |
Touch (sometimes mistakenly written 'Touch Records' and sometimes written Touch Music, which is technically the publishing side of the company) is a British audio-visual organisation, operating the Touch label. Touch was founded in 1982 by Jon Wozencroft and Mike Harding. [1]
Touch Music is the main arm of the London-based multimedia publishing company Touch, established in 1982 with such composers as Oren Ambarchi, Jasmin Blasco, Christian Fennesz, Soliman Gamil, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Philip Jeck, Phill Niblock, BJNilsen (alias Hazard), Yann Novak, Rosy Parlane, Zachary Paul, Peter Rehberg, Simon Scott, Claire M Singer, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Chris Watson [2] ( El Tren Fantasma ) [3] and Jana Winderen on their roster.
Since January 2005 Touch's project Touch Radio has broadcast monthly programmes of varying lengths by artists including Niblock, Watson, and Jeck. In 2011 the Touch Radio archive was added to the British Library Sound Archive. [4]
Owned labels:
Coldplay are a British rock band formed in London in 1996. They consist of vocalist and pianist Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, drummer Will Champion and creative director Phil Harvey. They met at University College London and began playing music together from 1996 to 1998, first calling themselves Pectoralz and then Starfish.
Phill Niblock is an American composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a parallel branch in Ghent, Belgium.
The Wire is a British music magazine publishing out of London, which has been issued monthly in print since 1982. Its website launched in 1997, and an online archive of its entire back catalog became available to subscribers in 2013. Since 1985, the magazine's annual year-in-review issue, Rewind, has named an album or release of the year based on critics' ballots.
Band of Susans was an American alternative rock band formed in New York City in 1986 and active until 1996. It originally consisted of Robert Poss (guitar/vocals), Susan Stenger (bass/vocals), Ron Spitzer (drums), with Susan Lyall (guitar), Susan Tallman (guitar), and Alva Rogers (vocals). The band would undergo several permutations over the years, usually involving three guitarists. Poss, Stenger, and Spitzer were the band's core members throughout its duration. They originated in the New York noise rock scene, but due to their layered guitar sound were sometimes seen as the American counterparts to the UK shoegazing bands and also drew influence from modern experimental composers Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca.
Fila Brazillia is an English electronica duo from Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, England, formed in 1990 by Steve Cobby and David McSherry.
Chas & Dave were a British pop rock duo, formed in London by Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock. They were most notable as creators and performers of a musical style labelled rockney, which mixes "pub singalong, music-hall humour, boogie-woogie piano and pre-Beatles rock 'n' roll". For a time, Rockney was also the name of their record label, their major breakthrough being "Gertcha" in 1979, which peaked at No. 20 in the UK Singles Chart, and was the first of eight Top 40 hit singles the duo played on. They had their biggest success in the early 1980s with "Rabbit" and "Ain't No Pleasing You". They also had nine charting albums. In October 2013 they released That's What Happens, their first studio album in 18 years.
Philip Jeck is an English composer and multimedia artist whose work is best known for utilising antique turntables and vinyl records, along with looping devices and both analogue and digital effects. Initially composing for installations and dance companies, since 1995 he has released music on the UK label Touch. He has collaborated with artists such as Gavin Bryars, Jah Wobble, Jaki Liebezeit, David Sylvian, and Janek Schaefer.
Z'EV was an American poet, percussionist, and sound artist. After studying various world music traditions at CalArts, he began creating his own percussion sounds out of industrial materials for a variety of record labels. He is regarded as a pioneer of industrial music.
Éliane Radigue is a French electronic music composer. She began working in the 1950s and her first compositions were presented in the late 1960s. Until 2000 her work was almost exclusively created with the ARP 2500 modular synthesizer and tape. Since 2001 she has composed mainly for acoustic instruments.
Robin Rimbaud is an electronic musician who works under the name Scanner due to his use of cell phone and police scanners in live performance. He is also a member of the band Githead with Wire's Colin Newman and Malka Spigel and Max Franken from Minimal Compact.
Trans-X is a Canadian 1980s synth band formed in Montreal, Quebec. They are known for their hit song "Living on Video" which was a worldwide hit single.
Christopher Richard Watson is an English musician and sound recordist specialising in natural history. He was a founding member of the musical group Cabaret Voltaire, and Watson's work as a wildlife sound recordist has covered television documentaries and experimental musical collaborations.
Ghost Box is an independent, UK-based electronic music record label, launched in 2004 by graphic designer Julian House and producer Jim Jupp. Its roster includes artists such as Jupp's Belbury Poly, House's The Focus Group, and the Advisory Circle, as well as releases by Broadcast and John Foxx among others.
Jon Wozencroft is a graphic designer, author and instructor.
British Library Sounds is a British Library service providing free online access to a diverse range of spoken word, music and environmental sounds from the British Library Sound Archive. Anyone with web access can use the service to search, browse and listen to 50,000 digitised recordings. Playback and download of an additional 22,000 recordings is available to Athens or Shibboleth users in UK higher and further education. The service was originally launched with funding by the Jisc.
Plunderphonics is a music genre in which tracks are constructed by sampling recognizable musical works. The term was coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative", and eventually explicitly defined in the liner notes of his Grayfolded album. Plunderphonics can be considered a form of sound collage. Oswald has described it as a referential and self-conscious practice which interrogates notions of originality and identity.
Post-punk is a broad genre of rock music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from the raw simplicity and traditionalism of punk rock, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-rock influences. Inspired by punk's energy and DIY ethic but determined to break from rock cliches, artists experimented with styles like funk, electronic music, jazz, and dance music; the production techniques of dub and disco; and ideas from art and politics, including critical theory, modernist art, cinema and literature. These communities produced independent record labels, visual art, multimedia performances and fanzines.
The Sinking of the Titanic is a work by British minimalist composer Gavin Bryars. Inspired by the story that the band on the RMS Titanic continued to perform as the ship sank in April 1912, it recreates how the music performed by the band would reverberate through the water some time after they ceased performing. Composed between 1969 and 1972, the work is now considered one of the classics of British experimental music.
El Tren Fantasma is a 2011 album by Chris Watson. It was released on 14 November 2011 by independent record label Touch Music on CD and 12" vinyl record.
Hauntology is a genre or loose category of music that evokes cultural memory and the aesthetics of the past. It developed in the 2000s primarily among British electronic musicians, and typically draws on British cultural sources from the 1940s to the 1970s, including library music, film and TV soundtracks, psychedelia, and public information films, often through the use of sampling.
