In a creative response to the challenge of the day, 20 new and exclusive tracks by Touch label artists will be made available over the coming weeks through Touch: Isolation, a project via which we’re urged to support their artists; a series of new exclusive tracks, each with bespoke photo/cover image, will be periodically put out by individual Touch artists, subscription proceeds (£20 for 20+ tracks) being pooled and divided among contributors (including: Oren Ambarchi, Richard Chartier, farmers manual, Fennesz, Bana Haffar, Howlround, Philip Jeck, Bethan Kellough, Daniel Menche, Yann Novak, Zachary Paul, Claire M Singer, Geneva Skeen, Mark Van Hoen, CM von Hausswolff, Chris Watson, Jana Winderen, and others to be confirmed.)
Help support independent music—while it still exists!
These times of lockdown and social distancing have seen the cancellation of gigs and festivals severely impact sound artists creatively and financially, while also denying prospective audiences an opportunity to see them play and support them. In such a climate independent music, especially of a more experimental stripe, risks becoming even more lost in self-isolation than the hermeticism it already labours in.
In a creative response to the challenge of the day, 20 new and exclusive tracks by Touch label artists will be made available over the coming weeks through Touch: Isolation, a project via which we’re urged to support their artists; a series of new exclusive tracks, each with bespoke photo/cover image, will be periodically put out by individual Touch artists, subscription proceeds (£20 for 20+ tracks) being pooled and divided among contributors.
Touch’s call to arms offers a unique opportunity to help artists without whom there’d be no alternative to corporate art and industries contributing to realizing their work—unsung producers, designers, software developers, vinyl cutters, distributors, mastering engineers, friends and family, whose symbiotic interrelation brings them to fruition.
The new interventions will include works by Oren Ambarchi, Richard Chartier, farmers manual, Fennesz, Bana Haffar, Howlround, Philip Jeck, Bethan Kellough, Daniel Menche, Yann Novak, Zachary Paul, Claire M Singer, Geneva Skeen, Mark Van Hoen, CM von Hausswolff, Chris Watson, Jana Winderen, and others to be confirmed.
‘We don’t need studios to the same extent, but we do need a stage, a physical reference and if not, a mental space with which to question the drive to online existence,’ says Touch.
Accompanying images provide visual commentary on social distancing: the photos were taken on Hampstead Heath in the early days of UK/London lockdown, 25/03/20, mainly in West Heath and around Golders Hill, whose open space minimizes the problems of social distancing. The weather, serene after weeks of high winds and heavy rain, seemed a metaphor for regeneration and recovery, trees coming into bloom—in stark contrast to the scene witnessed 33 years earlier after the Great Storm of October 1987, after which the Heath resembled an arboreal graveyard. Objective: ‘to find a sense of quiet celebration, to look at the balance between the detail and the scaling force of open spaces. Let’s hope they can remain open,’ says Touch.
Making 20+ record covers in under a week for yet-to-be-heard sound/music with photography matched to each contribution may seem somewhat in the style of the children’s game, Pin the tail on the donkey, Touch admits, while proffering that it may be more congruent than pretending it knows how it all fits together at this juncture. With echoes of the year 2000 and the millennium bug threat, it might also be seen as opportunity to give early voice to the Zeitgeist of 2020, which ‘…may well become known as the year when x melted into y, to avoid z. Roughly a dozen years ago, life went broadband. Today we see our reliance on digital systems like never before.’
Dystopian undertones aside, the key message is: help support independent music—while it still exists!
Touch: Isolation Sampler is available on Touch.
