Touchradio

NYE Berlin-Schneberg 31.12.2014

In May 2014, we were lucky enough to have direct access to the great machines of the industrial revolution on display in Londons Science Museum; the Mill Engine, by the Burnley Ironworks company, 1903, the Difference Engine No2, by Charles Babbage 1849. Sound has been integral in the relationship of the machines and their operators; used as a primary diagnostic tool, the sound of various operating components reveal the machines state of well being. Operators listened to the song of their engines, gaining insight in to particular problems, and clues to required maintenance. Using accelerometers fixed to the steelwork of the engines, we could extract this world of sound; escaping steam, muscular pistons, popping and crackling valves rhythmic and stuttering, sensitive and forthright the man made qualities of the engineering being exposed in the recordings. Track 01. Mill Engine: A series of recordings of various parts of the engine. Track 02. Difference Engine: A complete recording of a calculation cycle, th

Repose was a site specific performance in Cocky Eeks inflatable performance space, Sphr, commissioned by the 2014 AxS Festival in Pasadena, California. The performance highlighted this unique space through a gesture-less performance of sound and light. The piece is comprised of a purely synthesized sound devoid of traditional compositional elements and was accompanied by 180 projections of pure color. Repose is presented here in a longer form to take advantage of the digital format. Photo: Terry LeMoncheck

3 mixes, 3 directional speakers, sound installation 2014, Jiyeon Kim @ SeMa Biennale MediaCity Seoul 'Grandmothers' Lounge - From the Other Side of Voices' is a joint work of radio producer Sang-il Choi (KR) and sound artist Jiyeon Kim (KR), commissioned by SeMa Biennale MediaCity Seoul 2014. Largely based on Sang-il Choi's anthropological audio recordings of folksongs and stories of grandmothers from South Korea, Jiyeon Kim made this sound installation adopting 3 directional speakers. This mix is especially prepared for TouchRadio. birds without mouths 00:00~06:17 Grandmothers who had lived in mountain villages used to play with imitating bird's call. Songs about birds and imitative sounds of birds call were passed on orally. For the people who lived in mountainous areas, birds were believed to be the reincarnation of the dead, who had oppression and resentment during their lives. Most of the words and lyrics concern listening to one's sorrows and comforting one's soul. You can hear calls of the lark, ow

In Spring 2009, I find myself by chance just a few hours by boat from Japans last frontier, the island of Iriomote, but I had no way to get there. Not enough time. Total frustration. The southern most island of Japan is 90% covered with rainforest and mangrove and home to many local species including not only insects, frogs and birds, but also Ryukyu flying foxes and the famous cat-leopard called Yamaneko, which was only discovered in 1965. I make a promise to myself to return, even for short time, but with my recording equipment. Finally this year it was possible. I went back this Summer with the help of the Tropical Biosphere Research Center University of the Ryukyus and the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris, I spent a week on the island recording with a four channel microphone setup. Sadly I didnt have the chance to see the neko this time Unmastered field recording featuring amongst others: Elegant scops owl, Ryukyu flying fox, Yaeyama harpist frog, Ryukyu ruddy kingfisher, cicadas, Ryukyu g

Since technical evolution tends to unfold rapidly, human beings have not been able to evolve a (forewarning) sense of new forms of technology (for instance to detect radioactivity). Electronic emissions are also not sensually detectable. No one knows exactly how the technology of wireless transmitting devices affects humans. Radio, television, radiotelephones, mobile phones, GPS, computers, bluetooth and WiFi routers flood every place on earth with countless electronic waves. Recordings of a standard WiFi router serve as the basis for the Fritz Kiste. Actually one cant really speak of (audio) recordings since the electronic waves of the WiFi are soundless. Their energy triggers the sensitive microphones, since these have been placed directly at the remote transmitting antenna. The recording - made with a D-40 Tascam, equipped with one microphone for each antenna - tapes the different transmission signals on the right or on the left channel as a stereo signal. The WiFi router transmits at 3.4 MHz and so gene

Howlround are the duo of Robin The Fog and Chris Weaver who create recordings and performances entirely from manipulating natural acoustic sounds on a quartet of vintage reel-to-reel tape machines - with additional reverb or electronic effects strictly forbidden. This recording documents their first ever live performance at the Brighthelm Centre as part of the Resonance FM stage at the Great Escape Festival, Brighton, 18th May 2013. It was the first time these delicate, bulky, unpredictable machines had ever left the studio - a complete step into the unknown - and therefore something of an occasion. This recording is presented without edits or overdubs, just the sound of four machines, two people and a huge tangle of quarter-inch tape, looping and snarling precariously around the venue. Photo: Larry Gale

Sunrise at Wandsworth Common railway station, London Photo: Pepa Ivanova

So we pause where we began, with BJNilsen (see TouchRadio 1)... Archival Recordings, Mixed in Berlin October 23, 2013, containing Bits and Pieces from: Beachy Head, Eastbourne, England Karl Marx Tomb, Highgate Cemetery, London, England Whitstable Bay, Kent, England CleanCar Berlin, Mitte, Germany Temple Gas Works, Glasgow, Scotland Fruitmarket City Hall, Glasgow, Scotland Port of Montreal, Quebec, Canada Carlsberg Brewery, Copenhagen, Denmark Unknown Music School, Naples, Italy Galleria Umberto, Naples, Italy Barbed Wire, Todmorden, England Side Street, Lisbon, Portugal Tempelhof Airfield, Berlin, Germany Cave, Durness, Scotland Fishmarket, Via Tribunali, Naples, Italy Hatun, Reykjavik, Iceland The Jacobite Steam Train, Armadale, Scotland London Olympic Rehearsal, Islington, London, England Boleskine Cemetery, Scotland Train Bridge, Nijmegen, Netherlands

"I was invited to Berlin to record the filming process by the director, Cynthia Beatt, for ten days. I shot the sound as they filmed and every evening I made a new piece from the day's rushes. We went to many locations around the invisible wall and its remains. For about an hour I was allowed to wander unsupervised and recorded whatever I wanted. This recording is an edited version of the master."

L@TE: Friday Night at BAM/PFA July 26th, 2013 University of California Berkley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive "Locating" Thingamajigs and Sasha Hom created 9 long vertical scrolls, at once musical score, artwork, poetry, and cartography that ascended the cavernous space, catalyzing the musical performances of three different improvising groups and transforming Gallery B into a collaborative map. Group Three: Kaori Suzuki - original hand built MEM analog synthesizer Marshall Trammell - percussion Zachary James Watkins - electronics.

Protests are under way in dozens of American cities, a week after George Zimmerman was cleared of murdering unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. This one was recorded in Hollywood.

Photograph: Peter Caldries The remote Snaefellsness Peninsula in Iceland is home to the tallest structure in Western Europe. A transmitter built originally in 1963 as a long-range, low-frequency (LORAN-C) navigation system and now used for longwave public radio purposes. During a recent sound recording trip to Iceland, i was fortunate enough to gain access to the transmitter facility and able to take a series of field recordings, using an array of contact microphones attached to the mast and supporting guy wires. Several of these recordings were particularly arresting, capturing the structure as it radiated a myriad of constantly shifting harmonic progressions, in response to the hot Icelandic summer sun and strong icy winds blowing in from the nearby Snaefellsjkull glacier. These two extremes combined caused rapid expansions and contractions in the 200-700metre steel support wires and core mast, to produce a spiralling, ever-changing, kaleidoscopic drone. Of particular note as well, during a quiet point

Photograph: Peter Worth Equipment used: 4 x Reson 4042 Hydrophones, rigged for MS recording, post-processed using Max/MSP; Nagra VI recorder. Location: Placencia Bay, Belize. Date: 13th December 2012. Narrative: After a long day of finicky experimentation in the sun, I returned to the bay to wash salt water from the equipment and to hose down. From 1630'37"N, 8822'1"W I looked out on a tranquil evening scene and decided to attempt one last recording. I had recorded throughout the day in shallow coral seas off the coast of Belize. I'd attempted to capture a spatial impression of the clouds of clicks and pops produced by crustacea and who-knows-what; a sound present at almost every ocean location on Earth. In the evening bay one boat was at anchor, a jet ski idled around and I saw a couple of tiny and distant fishing boats. Yet the underwater acoustic landscape was dense, quite different from the gentle evening scene that played out above the water. I assembled this sequence of recordings to share m

Recorded in Balham, south west London, from 0400 HRS 1st May 2013.

Unprocessed recordings of a 16 foot pipe organ - built 1861, standing in a 13/14th Century rural church in West Penwith, Cornwall), guitar feedback, unprocessed field recordings, ventilator and microtonal dubplates & turntables. Field recordings from contained and reverberant spaces in the cities of Berlin (2007), Tokyo (2006), Sydney (1999), Milan (2008), Hamburg (2009) and Osaka (2006). Live 8-channel diffusion at The Exchange, Penzance, Cornwall as a response to the exhibition "An Urban Silence" curated by Blair Todd. Diffusion through 8 Genelec 8040A monitors with 7070A & 7050B subwoofers courtesy of University College Falmouth/Dartington College & Rob Gawthrop. Live room recording by Martin Clarke Mixed and mastered by Robert Curgenven

Equipment Used: Pearl MS-2 CL microphone outputting MS, matrixed in a Sound Devices SD302 mixer and recorded stereo to a Nagra BB+. Location: Camp Forktail Creek just outside the Corbett Tiger Reserve near Ramnagar, Uttaranchal, Northern India. Date: March/April 2009. [On a Wildeye trip to India with Chris Watson.] Narrative: After our evening meal of vegetable curry which followed a long, bumpy day in the Corbett Tiger Reserve (looking for... tigers of course!), we settled down to the sound of distant thunder. Our hosts advised that we took shelter before the rain started and soon after the short walk to my hut the first spots were falling. Recording equipment was hurriedly set up under the veranda and my hut-mate and I settled down on deck-chairs. After only a very short wait, with skipper frogs calling from the nearby pond, the rain started. Very soon the only sound was of rain and distant thunder and everyone, even the monitor lizard that lived in the thatch of our roof, stayed put until the storm pass

Photo: David Cowlard Live at Silo 6, Auckland at the Audio Foundations Now! Here! Festival 12.08.12 A performance in one New Zealands most reverberant spaces, a complex of six disused cement silos on Aucklands waterfront. Harnessing their amazing acoustics, Stanier Black-Five made a series of initial field recordings within the silos, which were then re-introduced into the same space as the source material for this live performance. All the reverb is natural. No effects were used. Stanier Black-Five is the New Zealand-based sound artist and writer, Jo Burzynska. Her audio work is largely based on the manipulation of her own environmental recordings and found sounds, which she uses to create dense soundscapes that use sources such as the pounding rhythms of trains to the sounds of the earthquakes that have recently shaken her city. She also creates multi-sensory installations that combine sound and taste. Thanks to the Audio Foundation for hosting the event, David Hornblow & Shaun Collins for the live

Photo: Jez Riley French bower floor | dawn chorus with rain | canyon wires music sits above and under the first impression. when duration allows these things come into focus, increasingly. in swifter moments a sense of quietude is possible. still, finding pace with listening as a lens, moving recorded september 2012, during time spent following a residency at The Wired Lab, this piece begins with two recordings playing at the same time. One of a bower floor, with contact microphones and geophone (nb. some of these low frequencies will not be audible via computer speakers) alongside a dawn chorus amidst light rain - drops falling centimetres from a conventional stereo microphone. Towards the middle of the piece, a further contact microphone recording enters, revealing one of the most bizarre fence wire sounds i've yet managed to gather. Despite returning to the same stretch of canyon fence several times, this particular effect was only present on one occasion and lasted for around 10 minutes. My best gues

Photo: Zoe Drayton Recorded at the Now! Here! Festival to celebrate the launch of the book "Erewhon Calling: Experimental Sound in New Zealand". Mastered by Rachel Shearer. Thank you: Zoe Drayton, David Hornblow.