Touch

The photograph to accompany ‘My Old Man (A Meditation On Impermanence)’ by alka / Andrew Brenza was taken by Touch co-founder Jon Wozencroft. The location is an old storefront on the corner of Crispin Street and Brushfield Street, opposite Spitalfields Market on the frontier of London’s East End. Pairing this photograph with the track felt right. The music hall song ‘My Old Man (Said Follow The Van)’ - which you can hear me singing with my late father in 1979 / 80 - was by an East End singer called Marie Lloyd. My dad was obsessed with the East End because his mum was born in Stepney. Jon didn’t realise, but his photo was taken on the same street where my dad’s mum went to school. It all just seemed to fit. I work two minutes from where the photo was taken. I can see where my nan went to school from my desk. The school was demolished and replaced by an insurance company, which seems kind of fitting. Available now at mortalitytables.bandcamp.com @toucharchive @touchactivities @magicksquare @sigilist_press

New-In: #restock of what could easily be an all-time favorite on Touch … and train records are our thing here in the shop, and this is that genre’s #darksideofthemoon Chris Watson _El Tren Fantasma_ (2011), one-part radio play b/w another more trad field recording. From the one-sheet: “Take the ghost train from Los Mochis to Veracruz and travel cross country, coast to coast, Pacific to Atlantic. Ride the rhythm of the rails on board the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FNM) and the music of a journey that has now passed into history […] a thrilling acoustic journey across the heart of Mexico from Pacific to Atlantic coast using archive recordings to recreate a rail passenger service which no longer exists.” Watson spent a month on board the train with some of the last passengers to travel this route, as part of the film crew working on a program in the BBC TV series Great Railways Journeys. Station stops act as chapters. Overheard conversations become phantom characters. Train rhythms become, well, rhythms. DJ #punishers please perpetually keep this CD in your fuggin “gig” bag, as you’ll get endless repurposing. Just don’t tell Dr. Watson. Cc: @touchactivities @toucharchive