There are a handful records where the sound of the first few notes is enough to tell me that it’s going to take me to my happy place. Radiohead’s Kid A, which starts with the gorgeous synth swell of Everything In Its Right Place, is one that springs to mind. This is another. The layers […]
Tag: label_touch
I don’t often buy compilation albums, and this is roughly speaking one — and, in fact, I nearly didn’t buy it. I listened to it when it came out last November, obviously, and at the time I passed it over. I think I rather sniffily opined that it didn’t cohere as an album. Coming back […]
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KMRU: Natur (digital, Touch, July 2024)
I am happy to admit that my feelings about this kind of music are highly subjective. After all, this album consists largely of various rather quiet buzzing type noises, synth “melodies” that often consist of two very long notes (or occasionally even just one: you may think that this is not possible, but I suggest […]
I loved Solas when it came out seven years ago. I think it was a small milepost in the evolution of my listening habits. I still love it. I’m pleased to report that this album is differently but equally great. We’re still basically in the territory of church-organ-forward classical drone. But where much (though by […]
This arrived as a bit of a surprise to me: apparently, I had pre-ordered it, I think on the basis of a link from a Touch newsletter, and then forgotten all about it until it plonked through my letterbox. In this spirit, I have decided not to educate myself about its backstory. I can tell […]
It’s the best part of a decade since I last encountered Michał Jacaszek. Glimmer is one of those records I’ve been dead into, then kind of forgotten about, then been delighted to rediscover all over again. I seem to love it a little more each time around. I kind of fell in love with Gardenia […]
UnicaZürn are Stephen Thrower out of Coil and David Knight out of Shock Headed Peters, and Sensudestricto is a mix of moody ambient and pulsating psych-tinged drone. Across four long tracks (five on the digital streaming version) they pull an impressive array of blarps, bloops, squishes, and swirls out of what sounds like mostly analogue […]
What with the excellent recent records from Claire M Singer and Bethan Kellough, Touch have been on a pretty stunning run of form recently, and this release absolutely keeps up the good work. As with Solas, the composer is doing some awesome melodic drone work on a pipe organ, in this case the astonishing Acusticum organ […]
Ooh, now this is really, really good. Claire M Singer, who is the musical director at the Union Chapel, has apparently been writing and performing for 14 years, but this is her first record. It’s really top notch classical drone stuff, with the traditional strings supplemented by some juicy work on the Union Chapel’s organ, […]
This is a short (28 minutes) but perfectly formed bit of intense atmospheric ambient. It’s made mostly of Kellough’s own droning string arrangements, field recordings (from Iceland and South Africa), and a bunch of processing. From the opening seconds you’d be forgiven for thinking this was going to be at the floaty end of the […]
dogrando writes about some records 