Discography and Reviews

Here are Chris Watson's releases with the titles linked to the relevent page in the TouchShop. Reviews of all of Chris Watson's releases can be read here, for Star Switch On here, and for Number One here

A new series of 7" vinyl releases on Touch:

Touch Sevens

TS01 Amoroso
Christian Fennesz/Philip Jeck/Charles Matthews

Christian Fennesz plays Charles Matthews | Philip Jeck plays Charles Matthews

Charles Matthews plays the grand organ at York Minster for Spire 20th January 2007

Cut by Jason at Transition 7th August 2007


TS02 Oceanus Pacificus
Chris Watson

The voices and rhythms of the Humboldt current around the Galapagos Islands recorded April 2006 using a pair of Dolphin Ear Pro Hydrophones onto a NAGRA ARES-Pll digital audio recorder

Side A: 3m

Side B: 10m

locked grooves...


This release is now available from the TouchShop



Storm
Chris Watson ¬ BJNilsen

[Touch # Tone 27, 2006]
CD - 3 tracks

“During December 2000 several significant storm fronts developed across the North Sea and Scandinavia.

Benny remarked to me that he had recorded some of these on the Baltic coast and proposed a collaborative cd project based around our mutual interests in the rhythms and music created when the elements combine over land and out to sea.

We spent the next few years gathering recordings on our respective coastlines and islands during the very active weather windows during the autumnal equinox and winter solstice. This was focused around our following one particular cyclonic system, which veers over Snipe Point on Lindisfarne to the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, and finally descends upon Öland and Gotland where Benny listened in with a favourite pair of Sennheiser omnidirectional microphones.”

Number One
kk null Chris Watson z'ev
[Touch # Tone 24, 2005]

CD - 5 tracks

Traditional Noh correspondences for their 5 part cycle of plays.

Kazuyuki Kishino: electronics & electro-percussion produced January 2004.
Chris Watson: location sounds recorded in East Africa.
Z'ev: 25 binary-acoustic files produced January 2004.
Edits, assembling and mixes produced 20-24 March 2004.

Chris Watson sources:
1: dawn in acacia woodland. Rapid light and temperature changes.
2: vultures down on an animal carcass in the short grass plains. The intense activity of a feeding battle resolving into the song of a single sooty chat - the fire of midday.
3: elephant herd led by a powerful matriarch, grazing on the edge of a marsh… Gazelles and zebra swish through the long grass… Contact rumbles from the herd females.
4: the on-coming storm; wind rush and the deep smell of change. Low infrasonic thrum. Disorientation and confusion.
5: the amphibian chorus, enveloping yet impossible to locate. Rhythmic dusk and rapid darkness.

Weather Report
Chris Watson

[Touch # TO:47, 2003]
CD - 3 tracks

The weather has created and shaped all our habitats. Clearly it also has a profound and dynamic effect upon our lives and that of other animals. The three locations featured here all have moods and characters which are made tangible by the elements, and these periodic events are represented within by a form of time compression.

This is Chris's first foray into composition using his location recordings of wildlife and habitats - previously he has been concerned with describing and revealing the special atmosphere of a place by site specific, untreated location recordings. For the first time here he constructs collages of sounds, which evolve from a series of recordings made at the specific locations over varying periods of time.

Star Switch On
Chris Watson with AER/Biosphere/Fennesz/Hazard/Philip Jeck/Mika Vainio

[Touch # Tone 18, 2002]
CD - 8 tracks

Every two years or so, Touch has produced a sampler giving an overview of our current activities and affiliations. Following Touch 00 (2000), and even prefiguring its release, we wanted to make something that reflected the increasing reliance on the already recorded, whilst suggesting a more lateral approach to the use of source material. This first tendency is manifest everywhere, from tribute bands, to remixes, to updates or clones of earlier sound successes (Oasis and Blur vs. The Beatles and The Kinks, and so on). Another syndrome has developed whereby sounds are transformed by various software programmes, and what seems to be an innovation soon reveals itself to be generic.

"Star Switch On" is not an answer to such questions, but it is a reflection of the current obsession with ‘mapping’, ‘storing’ and ‘modulating’. We were interested in what would happen when artists were given a 'carte-blanche' to work with recordings that had a definite and undeniable subject, location and atmosphere - the wildlife sound recordings of Chris Watson published on “Stepping Into the Dark” (TO:27) and “Outside the Circle of Fire” (TO:37) – imagining a perverse take on library music, sampling, remix, all inadequate in denoting the soundscapes we hoped such a brief would encourage.

"Star Switch On" features two new recordings by Chris Watson, alongside Biosphere, Fennesz, Hazard, Mika Vainio, Philip Jeck and AER.

Outside the Circle of Fire
Chris Watson

[Touch # TO:37, 1998/2003]
CD - 22 tracks

The purr of a leopard close up against a baobab tree, waiting. Whales surfacing, breathing in cold air. Coll starling imitate the noise of farm machinery from the hollow ring of a ruined bothy. The rattle of wood over a black stream... Chris Watson's second CD is a dramatic contrast to the spacious atmospheres of "Stepping into the Dark" (Touch TO:27, 1996). Featuring 22 close-up recordings of animals, birds and insect life, "Outside the Circle of Fire" enlarges our awareness of the sound universe, intimate with voices from the past. There is an intensity here that television pictures cannot conjure.

Stepping into the Dark
Chris Watson

[Touch # TO:27, 1996]
CD - 12 tracks

The tracks are the atmospheres of "special places", recorded with the use of camouflaged microphones.

Low Pressure Glen Cannich, Inverness-shire, Scotland
(57.21°N 04.57°W) 0810h 6 October 1994
Embleton Rookery Embleton, Northumberland, England
(55.30°N 01.38°W) 0600h 7 May 1983
The Crossroads Kiedler Forest, Northumberland, England
(55.09°N 02.27°W) 0620h 27 March 1994
River Mara At Dawn River Mara, Maasai Mara, Kenya
(01.25°S 35.07°E) 0615h 16 September 1994
A Passing View Los Olivitos, Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela
(10.46°N 71.02°W) 2350h 3 April 1991
Bosque Seco Santa Rosa National Park, Costa Rica
(10.49°N 85.39°W) 0540h 6 April 1995
Sunsets Breachacha, Island of Coll, Scotland
(56.36°N 06.37°W) 2230h 16 May 1994
The Blue Men Of The Minch Moray Firth, Scotland
(57.30°N 04.15°W) 1400h 30 July 1995
High Pressure Ravenstonedale, Cumbria, England
(54.25°N 02.24°W) 0550h 25 February 1994
Gahlitzerstrom Ummanz, Rügen Islands, Germany
(54.32°N 13.11°E) 1740h 5 October 1993
The Forest Path Meallan na Ceardaich, Glen Affric, Scotland
(57.19°N 04.52°W) 0625h 7 October 1994

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