TouchRadio

Buildings, and the spaces and atmospheres that they enclose, are primarily experienced through seeing them and hearing them. Visions of them are the trajectories and alterations of light that travel within them to the observer. Audition of them is via the patterns of reflected and diffracted sound that repeatedly pass the observer as their energy decays and spreads. Just as buildings have a visual signature (what they look like) so they have an aural one. Each is dynamic: changing how a room is lit will change how it looks, making different kinds of noise within it will reveal different aspects of its sound. However, exploration is bounded by the laws of physics and perception and the fixed nature of the buildings themselves. Useful techniques and modes of expression such as feature exaggeration, time manipulation, rapidly changing or impossible perspectives and micro/macro-scoption require augmentation of reality, but enable boundaries to be exceeded. It becomes possible to experience not just what a building is, but how it is in our perception; how, for example, the different elements of its geometry and fabric relate to each other and the individual contributions they make to the whole. The fixed nature of buildings is one of their defining characteristics. They often stand immutable amongst the peoples, their cultures and technologies, that create them and use them. They are perhaps the person made things that change most slowly over time and reach furthest into our present from their past. The National Centre for Early Music is housed within the Medieval church of St Margaret in the Walmgate area of York. Traces of Sound and Light was site-specific fixed-media installation created by this author and the visual artist Annabeth Robinson. Based on data obtained from light detecting and ranging (LIDAR) and acoustic impulse response measurement (AIR) it used technological augmentation of the both the observer and the space to literally enable the audience to see and hear the space which they are within in new ways that would otherwise be impossible. A 3D animation derived from the point cloud obtained from the LIDAR process was delivered to head-mounted smartphones worn by the audience, and audio created solely from the AIR measurements and readings of text fragments inscribed within the space was diffused via multiple loudspeakers.This is binaurally captured (and therefore ideally suited to headphone listening) audio from the version of the installation presented in St Margaret's at the 2019 Audio Engineering Society International Conference on Immersive and Interactive Audio. Image: Annabeth Robinson

This is a composition of field recordings taken at various wind turbine farms over the last year. They are recordings taken as part of a sound project I’m working on which looks at infrastructure; a sonic exploration into the unseen mechanics which underpin our daily lives: Power, transport, sewer systems, communications and supply logistics. The recordings presented here are in a fairly raw state and will be developed and augmented within the wider body of work. However, I think they hold different value in their 'solo' and raw form - and may be of particular interest to listeners of TouchRadio. The modern wind turbine is an awe inspiring machine - gracefully benign from two miles away, yet from within their shadow they assault an image of improbable violence on the senses. Designed to perform modern day alchemy through a screamed slicing of the troposphere, they detune the very skies which hang overhead and broadcast infrasonic resonances into the ground which i was able to record through a geophone from over half a mile away. Within the setting of ‘nature', these machines are the very definition of unnatural; up close, their rotating violations of nature's laws feel viscerally threatening.But then these locations too are, by necessity, raw and unforgiving environments. Bleak moorland at raised altitude or wide unsheltered flatlands; horizon to horizon, exposed, desolate, dystopian. The wind howls across these plains, transforming the totally inert into the wildly volatile at an instant; bracken, heather, gorse, singing fence wires dissecting arbitrary shingle boundaries for mile upon mile. The source material was recorded in multichannel spatial format using various ambisonic and stereo air mics, geophone and contact microphones matrixed to 5 channel surround. Equipment: Sonosax SX R4+ Ambeo / DPA 4060 / MK-416 / Telinga Mk2 JRF contact mics matrixed to 5ch / JRF prototype geophone Thanks to Jez Riley French for the geophone loan, Rudi at Helix Branch and Emily Mary Barnett for her photography/patience.

If the mainstream media (MSM) won't broadcast this, then we will.

Sifting through his archive of live recordings, Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) chose this performance from 2015 (in a very cold church in Bochum, Germany) as a favourite. As with most of his gigs, the concert was improvised, using an analogue tone generator as the main sound source, a radio, a contact mic, and a selection of pedals. Always a hit-and-miss venture, but always exciting (though at times nerve-wracking for the artist). Photo by Constantly Consuming

Whilst on holiday in Sicily Stuart wanted to capture the sound of the local church bells. Choosing to record at 12 noon every day seemed a reasonable way to record more elaborate bell combinations whilst also fitting in other holiday plans with his travelling companion. An edit of ten minutes from each location is included here, with 12 o’clock being positioned in the middle at five minutes to afford some context of the local area. Sicilian dialect has been used to indicate each day. Church names have been used to indicate location rather than street names, and bells from nearby churches can also be heard as the timing on each church is slightly different. Some churches ring twice, and one church not at all. The bird sounds were made by an old man hiding behind the tree that I was recording under. Recorded using a Sound Devices Mix-Pre 6, and a stereo pair of LOM Usi omni-directional mics attached to a coat hanger. Màrtiri – San Francesco di Paola, Palermo Mèrcuri – Cattedrale di Palermo and Parrocchia Ss Maria Assunta Iòviri – Parrochia San Girolamo, Mondello Vènniri – Chiesa di San Domenico, Palermo Sàbatu – Cattedrale di Monreale Dumìnica – Chiesa del Gesù, Palermo

"Between the City and the Forest" collects field recordings made between 2015-2018 in areas around Los Angeles, Mojave, and the Sierra Nevada. The piece features a millipede walking on a tent, many species of birds, treefrogs, electromagnetic and other urban city textures, as well as some websdr recordings. Special thanks to Bill, Laurel, Greg, Russ, and all those I met on the Sound Recording and Analysis Workshop in June 2018.

Estonia has a rich and powerful nature orchestra, and this might be because two thirds of the country is covered with forests and bogs which are often almost untouched. Estonian nature sound is sometimes discrete and quiet, sometimes powerful, but it is always magical. This sound piece features the magnificent performance of the orchestra over a period of 24 hours in the spring. The recording opens with a dawn chorus in the Alam Pedja nature reserve. It then travels to the primaeval forest of Jarvselja and the wetlands south of the Ahja jogi, close to Lake Peipsi and the Russian border. The latter is a boreonemoral, drained peatland and swamp forest area. Chirping birds, croaking frogs, a barking deer and a rumbling thunderstorm make up the choir. The star performers, howling wolves, end this nature symphony just before the sun rises over the forest. Great care has been taken to make the sound piece time and rhythm coherent as well as biogeographically consistent. Man-made noise such as woodworking has been kept as it is, an integral part of the soundscape. The intention is to render the reality as is, not to change it: quiet sounds have remained quiet and might require more concentrated listening on the part of the listener. The music of nature moves slowly. The recorded piece invites the listener to an immersive experience. Take the time to listen through the full length and hopefully be transported. Our thanks go to Robert Oetjen and Triin Libe of the Palupohja nature school, to Andrus Kannel as well as to Mariell Jussi and Rene Valner who have helped make these recordings possible.

This recording was made at the Block Gallery in New Cross on May 27th 2018 to mark the closing of the ‘Maquettes’ exhibition. The full text of the reading is available in issue 3 of Satori magazine. Richard Bevan supplied the recording. The photograph is by Rachel Hollings.

Through the Night was recorded on June 10th 2018 at Glenshee, Scotland during ‘Murmurations’. Mixed with Rob Aitken, with thanks to Chris Watson + Jez Riley French.

An extract from Zachary Paul's live scoring to the 2013 movie "Under the Skin" (dir. Jonathan Glazer, original score by Mica Levi). Recorded live at PLUM, Stories Books and Café, Los Angeles, on Monday 16th July 2018. With thanks to Lena Pozdnyakova and Eldar Tagi at The 2vvo.

This recording is made off the back balcony of the Cube Gallery in the village of Moira at around 8:15pm on March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day), 2018. The balcony looked out onto an area of open land, with a Hindu temple on one side and an old Portuguese-style cathedral on the other. I am struck by the merging of layers of sound in this scene — birds and insects, but also sometimes traffic (though the road is distant), voices, power tools and non-power tools, dogs, and various unknown activities. In the middle of the recording, an unseen train passes and somehow overtakes everything for a moment. There are sounds I cannot identify no matter how hard I listen to them. This piece is composed by all the forces that had assembled themselves in that place at that time, on the edge of night. Many thanks to Satinder Singh and Eric Patrick for making this recording possible.

"You really should hear the frogs," suggested our hosts. They had taken us to their country house on a warm evening in May 2017, situated beside Little River, Beaverdam, Virginia. Late that evening, we were led down the lawn, through the darkness towards the river nearby, a few hundred yards from the house. As we neared the water, we began to hear calls from a large scattered array of frogs, littering the shallows of the near and far banks of the river. Two main species were present; the Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans) was the most common, its twangy call sometimes compared to a loose banjo string. This call is often repeated a few times, each decreasing in volume. The other call, a more sporadic, slightly comedic deep tenor is from the American Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus). Naturally, I wanted to get a recording. Problematically, my sound equipment had been left in Durham, North Carolina, two hundred miles away. I was over from the UK working on a documentary in NC and I only had a phone without additional mics, so had to make do. The next day, listening back to the functional recording I’d made on my phone was deeply underwhelming. I decided that I really needed to drive back to Durham, get my sound kit and return to Little River and have another go the following night. This recording was made with a spaced pair of DPA 4018s into a Zaxcom Nomad. Photography: Siemon Allen. Many thanks to Siemon Allen, Kendall Buster, Noah Angell, Kay Dickinson Pascal Wyse and The Virginian Herpetological Society.

Recorded live as part of “Touch presents…” with Philip Jeck and Yann Novak in Amsterdam on 15th March 2018. Play loud!

A free in-store performance at Noize after the 1st Mutek Festival. Heavy on sounds from his ‘pop’ album “PostFabricated”, it was accidentally recorded in mono at the event.

It was 1995; a cold fall day with heavy fog just north of the San Francisco Bay between the Bay Bridge and Jenner in Northern California. I had a spaced pair of B&K 4003 omni-directional microphones with me to capture bay backgrounds. Due to the fog I was able to capture a variety of horns throughout the day. The piece is a collage of these horn backgrounds along with a freight container ship horn from the Port of Los Angeles. The discovery of hearing these together was a happenstance while previewing the files in unison and hearing a suspended chord automatically I perceived it as a composition. I also added an underwater sound recorded with a B&K 8011 hydrophone of jet streams from a pool filter.

Edited 31st December 6-8AM GMT.

Performance recorded from the desk, live at Iklectik Art Lab, London, on 21st May 2016. With thanks to Eduard Solaz, who took the photo.

"tic-tac-toe" was written for Gilbert Ratcliffe, who in 2017 was a final-year dance student at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire. For this performance, called "You Watching Me?", choreographed for a small group of dancers, Gil wrote: "My research was centred on the physical and mental manifestation of my journey with Tourettes Syndrome. I explored it through the collaborative process between choreographer and dancers to see if we could create a non-narrative, abstract dance work that was able to elicit an emotional, performative response." Gil knew what the broad structure needed to be, and the dancers had ideas about sounds that would resonate well with the subject but there was lots of freedom between those staging posts. I loved how the dancers only needed occassional markers, between which they related to the sounds but werent bound by them. No need for anything as prosaic as counting out beats. Gil's research involved talking to lots of people with TS, and reading through it I got keen on the simple idea of the electrical impulses that run through the body as it moves whether voluntarily or involuntarily. In the end, its all a synaptic dance. I recorded the feet of the dancers as they rehearsed, so that the piece could conjour up unseen dancers around the stage. Elsewhere metal spins against metal, balls bounce to a stop, there is a visit to the sea shore and a recording I made of the old editor of the Guardian being "banged out", in the tradition of old Fleet Street. The painting is courtesy of Gil's mum Melanie an artist and painter who has often worked with dancers.

Recorded from 10:00 to 10:25 on the day of the partial eclipse (approx 65%) at UCLA Court of Sciences, California.

This is a two channel recording of a live solo performance using the Moog guitar plus stuff. The set was improvised and only the second time Id performed solo with the Moog (the first being the night before in Swansea). The gig was at the Brunswick Club in Bristol which houses several arts groups including BEEF (Bristol Experimental Expanded Film) who, via sound and video artist Kathy Hinde, had invited me to perform. When I arrived in Bristol and gave the taxi driver the address, he told me that the Brunswick Club was closed down, and even if it wasnt, he doubted Id be performing there. Apparently it used to be a Working Man's Club frequented by taxi drivers. Not any more. Equipment: Moog Guitar, ebow, shortwave radio, tone generator, guitar pedals (reverb, delay, distortion and fuzz factory), plasma and bicycle lights, a childs light wand, two vibrators, portable CD player (unplugged), modified fans, mixer, and miscelaneous debris. Recorded by Kathy Hinde.

On the edge of the jungle, where the Amazon Rainforest begins in southern Venezuela, where the Gran Sabana ends, humans are still trying to enter a world dominated by nature. Trees, rivers, animals and insects extend to the horizon, and the sounds reach our ears to remind us of their empire.

This crepuscular recording was made from 4:45am on the 14th December 2016 in the south Indian city of Kochi. I was there to play Drifting, a performance at Vasco da Gama Square, for Convening #2 hosted by the TBA21 Academy on the following day.

Live at Human Resources, Los Angeles, February 18, 2017 1. Geneva Skeen - Pop Song 16:48 2. Sarah Rara - Separating the Air 20:12. For the closing of Yann Novaks exhibition Repose,Novak invited Geneva Skeen and Sarah Rara to perform inside/alongside his installation. Each artist's performance was accompanied by the sound of Novaks installation demonstrated here via a room-recording from the event. Skeens Pop Song is a temporal response to Novaks drone work, and a cultural response to our times. In harmonizing with Novaks loop - divided into 3-4 minute segments (the average acceptable length of a pop song) - SkeensPop Song acknowledges that populist times call for populist measures, but refuses populist comfort, acceptance, and pale standards of beauty as means of resistance. Raras Separating the Air games of listening and learning between voice and computer at the boundary between music and speech. Each part is a device to punctuate silence, divide time, move the air. Photo: Christopher Wormald.

Farmers Manual is an electronic music and visual art group, founded in Vienna in the beginning of the 1990s. This computer set mode to c'mon in dictation on the B minor Asian. All ReachOut has paragraph and has a hot rod UART 13 of the real problems with seen a shift away levels here promotion and unsuccessful menu change and use the case yet this and this year amended in step 0 for restructuring and chill for Celsius until Vander all the four sources that are real and organs to be called from as a place you'll Flushing's police and how often initially and rendering rulz lives and the madness of all this is the hell is extreme frequencies fat and salt and flickering image's bourse your office. Photo: Nik Gaffney (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Victorian acoustician Herman Helmholtz studied sound and sensation in the 1800s; through his research he developed the Helmholtz Resonator, this object, usually made from glass or brass, is tuned to a specific resonant frequency and used to demonstrate the principle of acoustic resonance. Helmholtz writes about using these tuned devices to listen to sustained pitches from musical instruments. He also accounts hearing waterfalls, the howling wind and horse drawn carriages through his handheld resonators, using these devices to extract tones from the environmental sounds around him. Inspired by the work of Helmholtz, this piece incorporates both tuned and un-tuned vessels to explore resonant sound objects. Using two large glass carboys (designed as liquid transportation vessels) partially filled with rainwater, alongside two smaller Helmholtz Resonators, Surrounding Air comprises extended recordings of these acoustic objects. Each vessel contains its own unique sound space, a distinct resonating signature quietly bellowing and heard only at the point at which it meets the outside world. Placing small omnidirectional microphones and hydrophones inside the glass reveals a unique perspective on this space. Recording a rainstorm through the vessels we hear a complex and ever-changing sound world from this fixed listening point. After capturing the sonic signature of the vessels I built a semi-generative synthesis engine in tune with the containers, moving towards a musical world tempered to these glass vessels, extracting tones from the surrounding environment in honour of Helmholtz. Listening through these objects allows us to hear the world as he may have done over 150 years earlier. Recordings, processing and programming carried out in my home studio and rooftop in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.

As part of the Touch Conference series of events which took place on the west coast of USA April-May 2016. With thanks to Brooke Wentz.

As part of the Touch Conference series of events which took place on the west coast of USA April-May 2016. With thanks to Andrew Freid.

As part of the Touch Conference series of events which took place on the west coast of USA April-May 2016 Recorded by Jake Muir. With thanks to Steve Peters and Vance Galloway.

Ever the archivist at heart, my father, Francisco Alvelos, had the foresight of recording the national radio and television broadcasts of the Portuguese "Carnation" Revolution as it unfolded on the 25th of April, 1974. Just audio, that is: home video was still years away, as was colour TV I was then seven years old, and remember an afternoon without school, the radio hosting strange voices, a still image on the TV set. By dinner time TV broadcast had been restored and some very serious-looking men in strange garments made very serious speeches, my parents expressions of expectancy and excitement an obvious indicator that, despite being beyond my comprehension, something major was taking place. That somehow made up for the disappointing disappearance of cartoons... The World was different back then for a seven-year-old under an ailing European dictatorship. By chance I recently unearthed the cassette tape my father recorded, and took great care in digitising it as it might not survive one last playback. It did snap once, but I managed to successfully improvise a bit of tape surgery Here, then, are the newsflashes and the first public address of the Revolution Council to the nation: I edited out the obvious copyrighted material, and kept the marching anthems to a sensible degree. At 20 50 on this edit, we hear a declaration summarising the motives for the military upsurge; remarkable how a significant part of what is said still resonates in 2016 - and how timely that I found this recording on the eve of the Portuguese presidential election. The last 30 seconds of this edit, the tail-end of the junta declaration and the ensuing silence, are eerie in their prescience: What now?, the fumbling silence seems to wonder. It still does. Listening while digitising, the recordings brought vivid memories of my father. And somehow I felt I was fulfilling his wish, rendered audible almost 42 years later: to preserve and convey a historical document for future generations to remember, reflect and interpret. Heitor Alvelos, January 2016 Mono recording by Francisco Alvelos from national radio and television broadcasts in Aveiro, Portugal, April 25, 1974. Edited and mastered by Heitor Alvelos, January 2016. The dedication should be self-evident.

If ever there was a reason for 333 to break its own rules, this is it: the 33rd anniversary of the very first Touch release. So we skip our proverbial anonymous random modus operandi just this once. We even managed to produce proper liner notes to a 3-track extravaganza. And just this once, we -are- naming our sources. This special edition of Touch Radio is a quasi-random mash-up of prior editions: 3, 24, and 33, finely sliced into 3 hit singles in the making, each a good 3 minutes and 33 seconds in length (this one rule is unbreakable). The original cover image was a gift from Shawn Splane, slightly altered with the addition of a further digit.

Over 18 people have died as over 40 inches of snow fell on the eastern seaboard of the United States. It was the second largest in New York City, where over 29 inches fell, since 1869... This recording was made in Williamsburg, Brooklyn using a Zoom iQ6 microphone and iPad Air 2. Photo: Dave Knapik

"In Spring 2013 I was part of an ornithological survey (bird migration census) in a desert area in the Nile Valley, Egypt. Our team lived, considering local conditions, in a rather modern building in a town called Sandafa Al Far. Apart from the actual work, our standardised observations, I most of the time made sound recordings of birds, amphibians, insects and the general soundscape in the vicinity of our house. Sometimes guarded by two policemen (because of an allegedly unsafe situation after the so-called Arab Spring) but always accompanied by a cluster of curious and noisy children. The combination of an extreme climate, a precarious political situation, witnessing violence, experiencing severe health problems and not least being surrounded by an omnipresent, diverse and sometimes almost too powerful soundscape led to a somewhat surreal memory of my time there." Photo: Marcus Held

Performed live at Resonant Forms on 11th September 2015 in Hollywood, Los Angeles. Also live that night were Simon Scott & Jen Boyd. With thanks to Volume, Rafa Esparza and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.

"After a heat wave of almost one month in the south of France this is the sound of that first rainy morning at the swimming pool. I recorded the rain and thunder in the countryside near Quissac (between Nmes and Montpellier) with 2 Line Audio CM3 microphones in a spaced pair configuration into a Mixpre-D into a Sony PCM-M10."

"Mark (Van Hoen) and I visited the tunnels underneath downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday. Many miles of these tunnels are closed to the public, but a section underneath the city archive collection is open. We recorded using an iPhone 6 and a Zoom H6. One of the signs had been adapted to read SOUNDs HORNy.

To call this field recording would be crediting the situation with more adventure than it deserves. At five in the morning, with a hangover starting to percolate, the ideal conditions are surely to just roll over, hit record and go back to sleep and that is pretty much what happened here. End of disclaimer. Boats, whether out at sea or in harbour, have a particular vocabulary of sounds. On the water, they are masked by the white noise of the ocean, in which as many sailors have reported you can hear almost any sound imaginable. Moored up, where things are quieter, the water laps and slaps the hull while the wind plays aeolian harp on the mast. That rigging sound is often a chorus of tapping lines against masts, but this particular boat a cruising yacht with a Bermuda rig, moored at Yarmouth after a days sailing had an unusually musical voice, sounding clear notes as the wind passed through its structure. At sea this was a contented hum, but at night it felt much more ominous. The tones in this piece were recorded in one of the sleeping cabins in the stern, a little resonant box. Of course, there has been some processing mainly to remove the snoring of sailors.

The word gibbet is used both to refer to an executional structure and to a hanging iron cage that used to display the remains of executed prisoners; when someone is thusly displayed, it is known as gibbeting. Recording the wooden gibbet in 2012, believed to be haunted burial site and located at Caxton in Cambridgeshire, to capture the sound of the gallows wood (elm) and saproxylic (dead wood) invertebrates (beetles) that lived within it was a challenge because of the vast amount of traffic that passes by. It is located beside a busy roundabout (A428 to Cambridge) and I initially found it difficult to capture the wooden gibbet creaking and moving in the way I had envisaged. I therefore used contact microphones to get inside the construction. I was inspired by the grim history of this location, the place of multiple murders and capital punishment, and also from reading about Bernie Krause (b.1938) who, on the CD included in his wonderful book Wild Soundscapes, explains that "recordings are an illusion the best microphone systems and recorders cannot possibly reproduce exactly what our ears hear in the holophonic way that we hear it." (2002) He documented acoustic environments that faced dramatic change or extinction but often needed to recreate the sounds of nature by double tracking or changing microphone placement. This location has changed dramatically recently as a McDonalds fast food restaurant opened a restaurant on this site recently.

This composition features unprocessed recordings from Krafla Geothermal Power Station and the nearby mudpools and steam vents of Hverir in Northern Iceland. The recordings were made in June 2014, on the Wildeye sound recording course led by Chris Watson and Jez Riley French, using a SoundField SPS200 and JrF contact microphones. The composition draws upon the spatial experiences of recording at these sites, journeying from the booming, all-encompassing drone emitting from the boreholes; through the uncontained, explosive energy of steam vents and bubbling mud-pools; and into the inner sonic worlds of the metal pipes and geodesic structures that punctuated the lava field.

"Inspired by BJ Nilsen's performance at LACE in Los Angeles last month, I decided to attempt my own composition using field recordings. The source recordings are quite crude in comparison to those made by the great Mr Nilsen; I even used only an iPhone to collect the recordings; but after a little judicious use of processing back at the studio, I am pleased with the results. On leaving LACE after the show, I noticed how many homeless were sleeping in the doorways at the back of the venue, where my car was parked. There were several droning air-conditioners, some emitting quite rhythmic sounds. It occurred to me that there are many that would hear this as music (myself included) but it's very doubtful that those sleeping in those doorways do... or perhaps some do find some comfort or music in such sounds. I assembled several of them to create this, an anthem for the homeless." Photo by Mike Harding taken in downtown Los Angeles

Recorded by Myke Dodge Weiskopf at Touch presents... Live in Los Angeles, 21st January 2015. With thanks to LACE, VOLUME and especially Yann Novak.

Field recording of fireworks on Saint John's Night, June 23, 2014, the local pagan inheritor celebration of the Summer Solstice. Recording by Heitor Alvelos on Bruce Geduldig and Bernadette Martou's balcony, Porto, Portugal. The vantage point, overlooking the tail end of the Douro river from a considerable height, allows the acoustic experience to become as impressive as the visual: the sound of the fireworks travels back and forth through the valley in considerable detail. Recent trends in mass entertainment have dictated the expectation for further ingredients of sensory input, i.e. the "pure" experience of the explosives shall not be enough. Cue the arrival of pop anthems as an added sound layer that, as far as acoustics go, can only be experienced as a distraction. This is the main reason for the dramatic pitch shift in the present recording: the sound fabric is brought down to the point where pop pap no longer hurts. In the meantime, a different landscape emerges, austere and foreboding. Edited by Heitor Alvelos in Sues, August 2014: the recording has been left unaltered save for a pitch shift of -77%. Mastered by Anselmo Canha in Porto, September 2014. Assisted at various times by Jos Maria Lopes, Teresa Serdio, Jos Canha, Antifluffy.

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, this one being the polynomial equation; Y= 41+ 4X + 7X2 + X3 + 5X4 + 9X5 + 2X6 + 8X7 All recordings are exclusive. Audialsense would like to thank Aleksander Kolkowski and the conservators of the Science Museum. Photo: Asako Bavister

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, owl, cuckoo, wood pigeon, pheasant, nightingale, etc mimicked by grandmothers from different mountain villages with rustling leaves and folksong on birds. prayers 06:19~10:58 A mix of grandmothers' confessions during the act of praying with songs used in exorcism rituals. Sounds of metal resonance, water flow and feedback were added to accentuate an aspect of their lives - a shaman in their own families. unfinished chorus 10:59~15:07 This mix starts with one of the old ladies saying, "I can't even sing." As song is assumed as a centralised and capitalised epic, marginal unsong elements are often neglected and erased. With chopped sounds and refrains from mainly labour folksongs, I focused on 'unsung elements' (breaths, humming, laughter, shouts, etc.) to be extended into another kind of song. Grandmothers' chorus would not be finished until they stop breathing.

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 green pigeon, Ryukyu crow, white breasted waterhen Photo: Rodolphe Alexis

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 generates 3.4 billion cycles per second. The actual reception of the signals - eg. recorded during the transmission of an email with an image attachment - are only a few seconds long, but are prolonged through ever deeper analysis. The fragmentation was achieved via different processes, digital and analog, and via 'deceleration'. Thus fragments of a second were distended to minutes in length. In this way the router's timing-in-seconds, much too fast for human perception, becomes open to scrutiny. The results are partly 'technoid' by which sounds are very much dependent on the timing. Sounds emerge at a high transmission activity; send-pauses sound more 'ambient'...

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."