Door Times : 8pm
Tickets: £8 adv / £10 on the door
Elliott Sharp is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer and central figure in the avant-garde music scene in New York City for over thirty years. He’s played OTO a few times before and this one promises something different but equally enchanting as he pairs up with Philip Jeck on record players and keyboards.
We have 40 free tickets available in the TouchShop for:
May 3rd Touch.30 live at Kingston University Improvisation and Digital Arts Festival
Market House, Kingston Upon Thames, Surrey UK
Live:
Philip Jeck
BJNilsen
Chris Watson
1500-1700 Touch Seminar: Mike Harding chairs a panel with the artists
2000-2200 Touch.30 Live
The 13th Spire will take place at St. Botolphs without Aldgate on Thursday 21st June 2012 as part of The Spitalfields Summer Festival
7.00pm-9.30pm (Installation by Marcus Davidson from 6.00pm)
Insight with Scott McMillan (The Liminal), Charles Matthews and Mike Harding
Performers:
Charles Matthews – organ & piano
John Beaumont – tenor
Marcus Davidson – organ, piano & tape
BJ Nilsen – electronics
Philip Jeck – turntables & samplers
and
The Eternal Chord
Programme to include:
Charles Camilleri – Sonata Semplice
JS Bach – Komm, Heiliger Geist
Ligeti – Harmonies
Diana Burrell – Lauds
Arvo Pärt – Pari Intervallo
Marcus Davidson – The Conscious Sky
You can book tickets here
Tickets: £12 unreserved/£5 Student tickets (further concessions available)
Series Tickets Offers: Discounts available when booking three or more concerts
From its earliest inception as the Hydraulis to the latest in organ technology, the organ has had incredible influence on the history of music and sound. Spire celebrates this ‘Emperor of Instruments’ with live performances for organ, electronics, piano and voice, contrasting digital and analogue to create a rich sonic journey unique to each performance location. See Spire in Spitalfields for the first time, visiting St Botolph without Aldgate and its newly restored Harris organ.
You can see a film of Philip Jeck performing live at Altmusic, May 23rd 2008 here
“I’d been reading The Wire casually for years before I actually got around to hearing Philip Jeck’s music (who’s name-checked in every issue). When I did finally hear it, I was blown away by its visceral aspects. Jeck’s turntablism can be as menacing as Wolf Eyes or as soothing as Popol Vuh, sometimes within the same piece. In terms of sampling, Jeck rarely borrows a whole melody or phrase; instead processing and breaking his source material down into its elemental form—basic building blocks for composition. And perhaps more than any DJ-centric genre, Jeck’s music could be the ultimate example of vinyl fetishism, with the actual music pressed in the grooves at times being less important than the crackles and noises of the wax itself. I guess Christian Marclay is usually credited with bringing turntablism to the avant garde, but it’s Jeck’s music that brings the, well, music.”
The resurgence of vinyl in recent years is a phenomenon which has not gone unnoticed; as CD declines sharply, its audio limitations exposed not only by advances in other technologies, but also by the myths propagated at the inception of digital exposed, so artists explore and demand other formats to express their work. Although a business model is still some way off the traditional artist » label » distribution » shop paradigm, it is clear this is being radically overhauled and replaced by online sales platforms set up by the artists themselves. But vinyl seems to have escaped this process, and continues to grow. Why is that?
ZKM – Karlsruhe, Germany, 21.04.12
Touch presents…
Philip Jeck
Achim Mohné
The Ash International Sound System
Studio 672 – Köln, Germany 23.04.12
Touch presents…
BJNilsen
Achim Mohné
The Ash International Sound System
16th September – 21st November 2011
Never Records with Philip Jeck & Touch
This September, Never Records will open at 11 Southwark St. near London Bridge tube station, as part of Illuminate Production’s Merge festival, sponsored by the Tate Modern, and Better Bankside. Philip Jeck will be performing from 8pm The Bear Pit at on 24th September.
In the daytime, Touch will be recording at Never Records at 2pm for two hours. Two vinyl cuts will be made of the recording, one for display and listening in the shop and one, the other copy goes to the archives…
Never Records is a multi‐media multi‐artist project by New York artist/musician Ted Riederer. Exploring the potential of a record store and record label to unite, educate, and uplift a community through recorded sound, Riederer’s project began in an abandoned Tower Records near Union Square in New York City. In January 2010, Riederer, in collaboration with curators No Longer Empty, created what the Wall Street Journal described as a “mock shop” that served as a “love letter to the dying concept of the record store.”
In September 2010, Riederer brought Never Records to the Liverpool Biennial, and expanded upon his original idea by purchasing a vinyl record lathe. He then cut recordings of live performances, including Philip Jeck & Hildur Gudnadottir, inside of record store/performance space, and filled his record store with this library of on site performances.
Review in The Liminal:
But if the first two acts were uneven, and the third rock solid, the evening’s piece de resistance, Philip Jeck, was simply on another planet, to use an exhausted cliche (might not be the only one – Jeck’s music has the ability to make me lose my linguistic dexterity somewhat). In comparison to the videos, darting around and occasional posturing of the preceding trio, the Liverpool-based artist’s performance was understated, as he remained seated throughout in front of his mixing console, effects pedals and pair of battered-looking turntables. Eyes half-closed, seemingly lost in his music from the off, Jeck projected an aura of calmness and contemplation that had the audience, certainly me, rapt.
Comparisons to current The Wire cover star Christian Marclay are misleading but inevitable, given their common use of weathered vinyl to create avant-garde compositions, but for my money (and having seen both live), there is something so much more seductive and powerful about the Briton’s compositions, which is saying something. As the LPs wobbled and span on themselves, Jeck delicately twisted knobs and pressed buttons in front of him, creating an almost solid cloud of sound that poured into the room, filling every space around me, and inside me, unfathomable crackles, wooshes, haunting half-melodies and troubled drones engulfing me with every twist of his wrists or toggle of the stylus. This was sound not so much being played as sculpted, Jeck’s thoughtful manipulations smoothing out rough edges or creating unexpected jagged ones with an intuition worthy of Michelangelo faced with a slab of marble. Hyperbole? Maybe, but it’s hard not to when hearing and seeing Philip Jeck live.
Above all, where Philip Jeck elevates himself above the night’s other performers, and indeed over a great many modern British and international improvisers, is the unfettered emotion he brings to what could, in other hands, be overly cerebral, even cold, music. Part of this is surely down to the records he chooses, but more than that it’s Jeck’s apparently innate sense of flow, as he slowly builds up layers of sound, before dissipating them into waves of new, quieter ones, and so on.
As Jeck’s immaculate sounds rolled out of the speakers and over my senses, I found myself detaching my eyes from the stage to stare out of the window at the rapidly emptying square outside The Vortex. Something in the way the quiet, lamp-lit space glowed in the night, surrounded by darkened buildings and silent vehicles, seemed to reflect the stark, crepuscular music being sculpted in front of me: something melancholic, lonely and beautiful. When I later found myself wandering those streets, with the echoes of crumbling vinyl and quiet distortion still drifting through my head, I felt a strange sort of inchoate peace. Philip Jeck’s music will do that to you. It makes it hard to describe properly in words, which I guess should be your cue to track down his records or go to his next gig. Lucky you.
A special concert for the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, with The Gavin Bryars Ensemble & Philip Jeck.
Composed in 1969 and first recorded for Brian Eno’s Obscure label, Gavin Bryars’s The Sinking of the Titanic was inspired by reports that the ship’s string ensemble continued to play the hymn tune Autumn as the vessel sank in April 1912. Featuring projections of archival images curated by Bill Morrison and Laurie Olinder.
Tonight’s gig sees two seismic forces at the frontline of modern music team up for an extraordinary sonic voyage.
Drums Off Chaos are unlike any other band. Since 1982, Jaki Liebezeit, Reiner Linke and Maf Retter have been creating headspinning storms of multi-layered groove using odd meters and unconventional rhythms. Liebezeit is best known as the beating heart of Can (whose frontman, Damo Suzuki, took the Set by storm last year), and his culture-changing rhythms have been required fuel for the likes of Brian Eno, Chet Baker, Eurythmics and many more.
Together, Liebezeit and his fellow master drummers play like a football team talented enough to have stayed in the Premiership for 30 years, improvising on self-made instruments with a sensitivity and fluidity which is nothing short of psychic. This is powerful, hypnotic, life-affirming music.
For Kilkenny they team up with award-winning turntable artist and composer Philip Jeck, who creates seductive, crackling soundscapes from salvaged vinyl. It’s a world into which you drift gently, following each thread of melody through veils of repetition and delay. This unique collaboration promises to be one of the most memorable and groundbreaking shows of the festival. Bring your dancing shoes!
Philip Jeck is appearing at the Beam Festival on Saturday 25th June 2011.
Curated by Sarah Nicolls, the festival takes place from June 24-26 at Brunel University, Uxbridge.
Tickets can be purchased here.
“BEAM Festival was devised by Artistic Director Sarah Nicolls, an experimenting pianist, as a way to bring together some of the amazing artists, researchers, and DiY electronics builders and enthusiasts she has met over the years.
A truly global event, BEAM is an experimental playground for both veterans/experts and beginners – in workshops, over demonstrations, during a meal break or informally during a game or evening gig we hope you’ll talk, learn and swap creative ideas.
Since technology can involve objects or computer code that can be abstract, we’re offering loads of great workshops where you can try your hand at soldering, building an instrument or moving your own body to make music. See the WORKSHOPS page for more.”
“Tables Are Turned” (Composed by Bernhard Lang)
Performed by Philip Jeck and Alter Ego
MaerzMusik, Berlin at 20.00 hr on 22/03/2011
Kammermusiksaal,
Berlin Philharmonie
Herbert-von-Karajan-Str.1
10785 Berlin
Tel: +49 (0) 30 254 88 0
HIVEsessions, Leaf
Bold St., Liverpool
Thur 24th March – from 8pm – free entry
We’re pleased to announce the first HIVE session at Leaf starting on Thur 24 March. Free, themed and dj led, they offer a refreshing take on city centre listening from the outer limits. Quality guests and the occasional live act from across the electronic music spectrum join the HIVE residents and visual artists, all for free. For the first, we’ve asked Philip Jeck to dig into his crates and put together a dj set spanning the range of his influences. As someone who first became interested in the creative potential of vinyl after a sojourn in NYC in the golden era of the late seventies, we’re sure this will be unique and inspirational, a great way to kick off what is shaping up to be a pretty special run of guests.
On Thursday, Philip Jeck appears live at Liverpool’s the Bluecoat, with support from Ex-Easter Island Head and DJ Alextronic (Hive)
During the lead-up to Ted Riederer’s Never Records installation at the recent Liverpool Biennial, Mugstar, Hot Club de Paris, Philip Jeck and others were recorded live and cut direct to vinyl, capturing the heart and soul of the current Liverpool leftfield music scene. For this special event Jeck, renowned for his soaring soundscapes using predominantly with turntables and electronics, returns to the Bluecoat to create a unique composition from these records. Ex-Easter Island Head’s piece for mallet guitars opens the proceedings.
A collaboration between Samizdat and the Bluecoat as part of PRS for Music Foundation’s New Music Plus. North West scheme.
For further information and tickets: www.thebluecoat.org.uk
Announcing a special evening of performances at London’s Café Oto in December…
Buy tickets for The Tapeworm – Unleashed in the East – Café Oto 09.12.10
London Town’s finest tape-only label, The Tapeworm, presents its second night at Dalston’s Café Oto. Fine performances are to be expected from a splendid line-up of the label’s favourites.
Taking the train from Liverpool, just for you, the one and only Mr Philip Jeck. Flying red-eye from Brooklyn, Randy Gibson. Stretching their Oyster cards to the limits, London’s Zerocrop and Cathi Unsworth. From the other side of the planet we welcome New Zealand’s Adam Hayward. And playing the piano, Mr Andrew Poppy.
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. Most of Jeck’s audio work is released on Touch. Tonight for The Tapeworm, Jeck plays the Bass. Expect a performance of wall-destroying stature.
Andrew Poppy is a London based composer who makes acoustic and electronic music and has recordings on a number of labels including Touch, Crépuscule and Zang Tuum Tumb. Minimal classical patterns collide with the textures of experimental pop music in an unusual body of work that actively seeks different contexts. There are collaborations with Impact Theatre co-op, Psychic TV, Liverpool Philharmonic, Erasure, Nitzer Ebb, the Royal Opera House, Claudia Brücken and Bernardo Devlin. Since 1989 he has developed a collaborative partnership with visual and theatre artist Julia Bardsley. Andrew performs solo or with his ensemble, which recently completed UK tour dates with ‘…and the Shuffle of Things’. Last month Philip Marshall asked Andrew to make two short piano pieces for a sound installation in Utrecht, each based on only four notes. The first live performance of Number Crunch 1 and 2 will be at Café Oto. “Bewitching, beautifully crafted and highly addictive.” – The Wire. www.myspace.com/andrewpoppy
Cathi Unsworth is a writer and editor who lives and works in London. She is the author of three pop-cultural crime novels, Bad Penny Blues, The Singer and The Not Knowing, and the editor of the short story collection London Noir, all published by Serpent’s Tail. Cathi has written on music, film, art, fashion and culture for Sounds, Bizarre, BFI Flipside, Mojo and Nude, amongst many others. Her collaborator on this release is Pete Woodhead, an electronic composer who cut his musical teeth as part of O Yuki Conjugate and The Sons of Silence and is now best known for his soundtrack contribution to the hit British zombie movie Shaun of the Dead. Pete and Cathi previously collaborated on the Transmissions Series that are available for free download on www.cathiunsworth.co.uk and continue to conspire on new projects. Tonight, Cathi will be doing a special reading for you all: www.cathiunsworth.co.uk
Zerocrop is the pseudonym of London based musician Parker, an independent artist who has been releasing albums through the website www.zerocrop.com since 2000. The music is hypnotic mix of complex vocal melodies and spoken word sequences on unsettling themes, set against a rich backwash of pedal steel, guitars and electronics. Zerocrop has remixed, written songs for and performed with the incomparable Billie Ray Martin and regularly creates the show music for award winning milliner Justin Smith. Zerocrop’s top pop performance for The Tapeworm – Unleashed in the East will see him and his band bring to life these songs with an affectionate punch. www.zerocrop.com
Randy Gibson is a Brooklyn-based composer and a student of seminal minimalist La Monte Young. He works with structure, evolutionary compositional models, and improvisation to create enveloping and ritualistic works in just intonation. His tape for The Tapeworm is titled Analog Apparitions – a pair of 30-minute compositions designed specifically to be recorded and released on cassette tape. Gibson follows in the tradition of prime harmonic just intonation pioneered by Young in the 60’s. Apparitions of The Four Pillars, the underlying composition on this tape, explores the depth of the harmonic series through standard just intonation methods and the use of higher prime harmonic relationships. In the 18 hours of recordings layered onto the two sides of the cassette you can hear the mechanism of the tape itself, the evolution of improvisations over seven recording sessions, and the purity of sine waves in complex prime-harmonic relationships. Tonight Randy will recreate his tape using a just intonation toy organ and boomboxes. This work was funded in part by the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center. www.randy-gibson.com
On 4 September 2010, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck off New Zealand’s South Island. The epicentre was 55km (35 miles) north-west of Christchurch, at a depth of 12 km (7.5 miles). There was widespread damage to buildings and roads as well as power cuts. A state of emergency was later declared in Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city with a 386,000 population. Adam Hayward is director at South Island Dance Network and at The Body Festival of Dance and Physical Theatre. On 4 September 2010, Adam watched the earthquake destroy his home. Tonight at The Tapeworm – Unleashed in the East, Adam will talk about the event and its aftershocks…
www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz
news.bbc.co.uk
The Tapeworm on Facebook
www.cafeoto.co.uk
Pools of Voices (installation)
At Phase 5, 15-21 Seel Street, Liverpool L1
18/09/10 to 02/10/10 14.00 – 18.00
Curated by No Longer Empty
www.nolongerempty.org
Chime, chime… (film version)
at International Gallery, 34a Slater Street, Liverpool L1
18/09/10 to 02/10/10 12.00 – 18.00
Curated by High Tide
www.hightideuk.org
Timed to coincide and in partnership with the London Design Festival, the Anti-Design Festival is an initiative of Neville Brody, designer, Director of Research Studios and incoming Head of Communication Art & Design at the Royal College of Art, London.
Londonewcastle Project Space
28 Redchurch Street, London E2 7DP
18-26 September 2010
Exhibitions: 11am – 7pm
Performances: 7-10pm
FREE entry
www.antidesignfestival.com
The Anti-Design Festival’s Performance Programme presents a panoply of experimental music, sound, moving image, spoken word, performance and digital practice by some of the most exciting artists working in the UK.
During each night of the festival, specially curated evenings will range from Mark Moore (S’Express) on Saturday 18 September, a daring sub cosplay event with sounds and performance curated by Emily Owusu (Grand Cos Play Ball) on Saturday 25 September and Resonance FM guest curating an event exploring negative space and anti-matter on Tuesday 21 September. On Monday 20 September, Cecilia Wee presents an evening of exploring electro-magnetism, data and ownership, Thursday 23 September sees Jon Wozencroft curating new work by Touch artist Philip Jeck and on Friday 24 September the Obsessive Classification Disorder (masterminded by Yomi Ayeni) takes over the Salon to re-order expectations and understandings of narrative a nd semiotics in a tableaux of story-telling and music. Other nights will feature a lecture about what art will look like in 50 years time by visual artist Tom Badley, new performance by the ever-provocative Mark McGowan, subliminal music by Jennifer Walshe, Rorschach flags made by Peter Lewis and Makiko Nagaya (Redux Projects), stroboscopic noise machines from Ryan Jordan, and new interactive work testing belief by Steven Ounanian
Performances will take place on a specially commissioned stage/interactive audio-visual installation by artists Charlesworth, Lewandowski & Mann, in collaboration with BBC R&D.
An evening of experimental music and live art
Barkers House Farm, South West Campus, Lancaster University
8 July 2010 19.30 – 23.00
To mark the end of its year-long Experimentality programme, the Institute for Advanced Studies presents an evening of turntablism, electroacoustic music, live painting, ambient soundscapes, performance art and vj-ing. Find out how experiments end.
Optional buffet dinner.
Featuring:
– Philip Jeck
– Rodrigo Constanzo and Angela Guyton
– Mary Oliver, Lois Klassen and Craig Vear
– Claire Marshall
– smO
– Paul Morris
– Matt Walch
Experiments End Lancaster University can be attended as a separate event, but is also part of the international conference The Experimental Society (8-9 July), organised by the IAS in collaboration with the Centre for the Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics and Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts.
£5 – event only – pay on door
£20 – event with buffet dinner and wine – book online by 1 July by following ‘online store’.
Photo: Dave Knapik. Click on photo for full size and please credit photographer when used
Double Vinyl + Download - 13 tracks
Track listing:
Side 1.
Fleeing
Saint Pancras
Barrow in Furness (open thy hand wide)
Reverse Jersey
Side 2.
… bend the knee 1
Called In
Brief
Side 3.
Broke Up
… bend the knee 5
Called Again
Side 4.
And Over Again
The Station View
Saint Pancras (the one that holds everything)
This album comes with a free download of Philip Jeck “Live in Caen”, recorded by Franck Dubois on 28th February 2015 at Impressions Multiples #4 (ésam Caen/Cherbourg) with thanks to Thierry Weyd.
“… and they sparkled like burnished brass”*
Out of the depths of our complaints, it could be all so simple. To be never fooled by the finesse of a long-yearned for solidity, but in the momentary aplomb of a sleepy walk threading through familiar streets we’d hum our way, alto, baritone and tenor toward some harmonious end. An effect like some wonderful recollection of one or other of those technicolour movies. Not real for sure, but if you are in the mood….
CD - 9 tracks
Track listing:
1. Pilot/Dark Blue Night
2. Ark
3. Twentyninth
4. Dark Rehearsal
5. Thirtieth/Pilot Reprise
6. The All of Water
7. The Pilot (Among Our Shoals)
coda:
8. All That's Allowed (Released)
9. Chime, Chime (Re-rung)
A version of "An Ark For The Listener" was first performed at Kings Place London on 24/02/2010. It is a meditation on verse 33 of "The Wreck of the Deutschland", Gerard Manley Hopkins poem about the drowning on December 7th 1875 of five Franciscan nuns exiled from Germany. 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.
CD - 7 tracks
Track listing:
1. Above
2. Lambing
3. Vienna Faults
4. Pax
5. Below
6. Open
7. Close
Its opening passages are on a par with his Vinyl Coda series, with Jeck effortlessly transforming grizzled surface noise into languid atmosphere.But Stoke really gets going with the breathtakingly simple construction of Pax, upon which Jeck overlays an aerated Ambient wash with the time-crawling repetition of a single crescendo from an unknown female blues singer. By downpitching her voice from the intended 78 rpm to 16 rpm, he amplifies its emotional tenor by making her drag out her impassioned declarations of misery far longer than is humanly possibly. The effect is just beautiful. Philip Jeck has always been good, but Stoke makes him great.
