Tour of Australia | May 2008
Fri May 16 - Powerhouse, Brisbane
Sat May 17 - Jade Monkey, Adelaide
Sun May 18 - Toff In Town, Maximum Arousal series, Melbourne
this follows his two appearances in London at atmospheres 2
May 8th The Museum of Garden History
May 12th ditto
New albums, CD & vinyl, due from Philip Jeck in Spring/Summer 2008
Fennesz/Jeck/Matthews - Amoroso
Touch # TS01
7" vinyl only
Due in the week beginning 10th March 2008
Side a:
Fennesz/Matthews 3' 34"
Side b
Jeck/Matthews 3' 24"
cut by Jason @ Transition
artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Am`o`ro´so
n. 1. A lover; a man enamored.
adv. 1. (Mus.) In a soft, tender, amatory style.
For more information on this series of Touch Sevens, 7" vinyl only releases, please visit the TouchSevens website
Charles Matthews plays the Grand Organ in York Minster, during Spire Live [http://www.spire.org.uk] on 20th January 2007. This release is a homage to Arvo Pärt...
Arvo Pärt is often identified with the school of minimalism and more specifically, that of "mystic minimalism" or "sacred minimalism". He is considered a pioneer of this style, along with contemporaries Henryk Górecki and John Tavener.
About the players:
Charles Matthews: "I felt you were pure music, not human flesh, music through time, music played from the Universe, without boundaries." [an audience member, July 2007] Born in 1966, Charles Matthews studied at the Royal College of Music, London, and was an organ scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge. His teachers have included Beryl Tichbon, Gwilym Isaac, David Pettit, Patricia Carroll, Nicholas Danby, Charles Spinks and Dr Richard Marlow.
Charles pursues a varied career as pianist, organist, composer and teacher, performing and broadcasting for radio and television within the UK and internationally. He has won numerous awards, perhaps most notably the first prize in the 1999 Franz Liszt Memorial Competition in Budapest. His recordings have been issued by Olympia, Priory, Guild and Touch; he is the organist for the Touch project, Spire, which also includes Christian Fennesz and Philip Jeck.
Christian Fennesz: Fennesz uses guitar and computer to create shimmering, swirling electronic sound of enormous range and complex musicality. “Imagine the electric guitar severed from cliché and all of its physical limitations, shaping a bold new musical language.” - (City Newspaper, USA). His lush and luminant compositions are anything but sterile computer experiments. They resemble sensitive, telescopic recordings of rainforest insect life or natural atmospheric occurrences, an inherent naturalism permeating each piece. He lives and works in Vienna and Paris.
Philip Jeck: Philip Jeck studied visual art at Dartington College of Arts. He started working with record players and electronics in the early '80's and has made soundtracks and toured with many dance and theatre companies as we as well as his solo concert work. His best kown work "Vinyl Requiem" (with Lol Sargent): a performance for 180 '50's/'60's record players won Time Out Performance Award for 1993. He has also over the last few years returned to visual art making installations using from 6 to 80 record players including "Off The Record" for Sonic Boom at The Hayward Gallery, London [2000].
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.
7" vinyl was the quintessential format for popular music. Today, it is an undervalued and mostly promotional medium, used as a fetishistic signpost to a time of musical authenticity and a "healthy" popular culture. It might seem like another retrograde step to launch a vinyl series just as the download format threatens to dominate, and indeed there is an element of "the rear view mirror"... the generation of Touch artists who grew up with vinyl [and cassette] still feeling a strong emotional attachment to it. This series is more than that... an overtly critical, non-digital statement is supported by treatments of audio work which cannot be applied to digital formats - the sonic texture, the use of a locked groove, the A & the B and the additional dimension of the visual counterpoint. As for the aspect of audience participation, we choose not to specify the RPM on the label, encouraging the listener to experiment with playback options and personal preferences. An attempt to make music that works at both speeds. The front cover might actually be the back cover...
Philip Jeck is putting the finishing touches to his new CD for Touch in the next couple of weeks. The album should be released sometime in the Spring of 2008. Here are the details:
Philip Jeck - Sand [Touch # TO:67]
CD digipak
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham
7 tracks - 44:50
Track Listing:
1. Unveiled
2. Chime Again
3. Fanfares
4. Shining
5. Fanfares Forward
6. Residue {to listen, click on the title]
7. Fanfares Over
"... the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity" [from 'The Chariot' by Emily Dickinson]
'Sand' was recorded live in Holland and England in 2006/7 and edited in Liverpool January, 2008 using Fidelity record-players, Casio SK keyboards, Behringer mixer and sony mini-disc recorders.
In memory of Phyllis May Jeck (1920-2008)
The vinyl LP, Suite, is already recorded and is due for release on Autofact/Touch [USA] at the same time.
Here are the details:
Philip Jeck - Suite [Touch # Tone 29]
Side A
1. Press
2. Intro Roll
Side B
1. Live With Errors
2. All That's Allowed
3. Chime, Chime
Recorded at Hive, FACT, Liverpool on 25th October 2006 as part of Touch 25, live to a M-Audio Mictrotrack 24/96. Edited by Philip Jeck April 2007. Cut by Jason at Transition 14th May 2007 on a Neumann VSM 70
The Sinking of the Titanic | Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego
New Release Info:
Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego
The Sinking of the Titanic
Touch # Tone 34
Limited Edition of 2000
CD in Special wallet + postcard [postcard image by Andrew Hooker]
Artwork by Jon Wozencroft
1 Track - 72:37
This version of Gavin Bryars's seminal piece, The Sinking of the Titanic, was recorded at the 49th International Festival of Contemporary Music at The Venice Biennale on 1st October 2005 at the Teatro Maliban.
Gavin Bryars - Double Bass
Philip Jeck - Turntables
Alter Ego - Strings, Brass, Wind, Percussion, Keyboard, Tape Recorder and sound design
Boomkat (UK):
Gavin Bryars' 'The Sinking of the Titanic' is, and I say this with confidence, one of the finest pieces of music you could ever wish to own. Written in 1969 it has journeyed through the lands of modern classical, experimental and electronic music netting dedicated followers on its way, and each and every time I hear it I become more convinced of its genius. Bryars wrote the piece to mirror the last moments of the doomed voyage, when the Titanic sunk and famously the band played on. According to survivors the music being played was a rendition of 'Autumn', an Episcopal hymn which forms the basis of Bryars' composition. The notes and phrases from the hymn are worked in and out of the piece, sinking through the waters, effected by time, nostalgia and the cavernous reverberations of the ship itself with each scrape and hiss worked into Bryars' incredible vision. For this special performance of the piece we see Bryars (on double bass) alongside Italian ensemble Alter Ego (not to be confused with the German electronic duo of the same name) and experimental turntablist Philip Jeck, and the result is arguably its most stunning rendition to date. The most noticeable addition is Jeck, whose expertise and unique style seems to fit like the final piece of the puzzle as his crackles and motifs melt into the architecture of the recording as if they had always been there. This additional layer of nostalgia brought forth by these found sounds adds a significant sense of history , forcing the mind back into hazy film footage and decomposed photos, a perfect match for the subject matter. Also of note are Alter Ego, who surprised me with their stunning renditions of Philip Glass recently, and work comparable magic here on Bryars' composition, with their ensemble bringing in the sounds of bottles, tape recorders, laptops and percussion on top of more traditional instruments. The sounds are merged together effortlessly to form a fog of harmony and memory, perfectly melting the themes which Bryars intended his piece to convey in the first place. Really words can't do justice to 'The Sinking of the Titanic', like William Basinski's 'The Disintegration Loops' there is a timelessness, a patience and an ineffable beauty to this music that almost impossible to describe. Unique, flawless and totally essential music.
You can read other reviews here
