tag:,2012:/39 2012-04-19T13:20:03Z Ash International - a haberdASHery audio project. R&D not A&R. Ash International was unleashed onto an unsuspecting world in early 1993 by Mike Harding who also runs the label Touch with Jon Wozencroft. He was initially aided and abetted by Robin Rimbaud (without whom...), but he departed to run his Scanner operation full time in early 1995. Electronic communications, radio emissions and other natural frequencies are an endless source of material... from the early Scanner releases to the Disinformation releases, - both eaves-dropping in their way. Movable Type 3.35 tag:www.ashinternational.com,2012://39.3483 2012-04-19T12:18:25Z 2012-04-19T13:20:03Z

Download "Hikari" [zipped mp3]]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2012://39.3435 2012-03-04T18:00:02Z 2012-03-04T18:00:31Z

tag:www.ashinternational.com,2012://39.3422 2012-02-22T12:06:39Z 2012-02-22T12:09:29Z

Touch.30 makes a two-date trip to Germany in April. Both performances will be supported by The Ash International Sound System making a noise… Touch writes: "The resurgence of vinyl in recent years is a phenomenon which has not gone unnoticed; as CD declines sharply, its audio limitations exposed not only by advances in other technologies, but also by the myths propagated at the inception of digital exposed, so artists explore and demand other formats to express their work. Although a business model is still some way off the traditional artist » label » distribution » shop paradigm, it is clear this is being radically overhauled and replaced by online sales platforms set up by the artists themselves. But vinyl seems to have escaped this process, and continues to grow. Why is that?" ZKM – Karlsruhe, Germany, 21.04.12 Touch presents... Philip Jeck Achim Mohné The Ash International Sound System Studio 672 – Köln, Germany 23.04.12 Touch presents... BJNilsen Achim Mohné The Ash International Sound System]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3307 2011-11-29T12:44:01Z 2011-11-29T12:53:22Z

Field www.field.nu “In Dreams” T-shirt [Ash International # Ash 8.3] has been received and documented by its dreamer, Philip Jeck, on 29th November 2011. Continue reading for photographic evidence.]]> T-Shirts provided by Shirty Something]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3252 2011-10-24T16:27:07Z 2011-10-24T19:44:20Z

Buy Purity Supreme's "Always Already" in the TouchShop Purity Supreme on YouTube]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3229 2011-10-10T10:41:36Z 2011-10-10T10:44:05Z

"Interference" - Ash International # Ash 6.9, 2006]. Nordwall went on to play in various experimental music projects, spent time in Paris and London. Back in Sweden he formed iDEAL Recordings in 1998 and joined the sweaty avant punk rock group Kid Commando the year after, touring like mad, eventually hitting rock bottom in 2005. After the death of KC, he formed the ritual rock/drone band The Skull Defekts which has kept him busy ever since (recently releasing records on Chicago-based Thrill Jockey Records). In 2006 his first solo album was released under his 'The Idealist' moniker, entitled "I Am The Fire". A few years in the making, the album offered was a deep study of Nordwall's interior life, during a time when everything was pitch black inside. Today, Joachim Nordwall is very active curating his iDEAL label and organisation for festivals, concert series and sound art exhibitions. He is also the chairman of the legendary Stockholm venue for experimental stage art, Fylkingen. Nordwall is a man that lives and breathes sound. A few years have passed and "Ignition" is here, Joachim Nordwall's second solo album. Recorded under brighter circumstances but still with many shadows present. "Ignition" is on one hand a solid, highly electronic trip, on the other hand a very sensitive, analogue and warm drone symphony. "Ignition" was released (and is still available) on cassette - also on Ash International, in 2010, thus asserting the primacy of the analogue format. Buy Joachim Nordwall "Ignition" [CD] in the TouchShop Also available on cassette www.idealrecordings.com]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3198 2011-09-17T13:47:15Z 2011-09-17T13:52:21Z

"6, we find our mode. On the other hand we play records all night & write unambitious 6 bad books of poetry in those disastrous last 8 years." Christophe Van Huffel & Leslie Winer are Purity Supreme. "Famous Inhabitants of Louth" is the third track on "Always Already" - released on 24.10.11 as a vinyl EP and a digital download. Video & images by Sébastien Chou & Anna Paola Guerra. This song is about someone. “If you want to call someone a thieving pig fucker, you’d better be prepared to produce the pig.” — Hunter S. Thompson Leslie Winer writes: "Purity Supreme is a project named after a particularly & spectacularly filthy supermarket that was near my grandmother's house in the 70s. Here's a little piece of honeybaked ham covered in hair and sidewalk salt jamming the wheels of your shopping cart. Purity Supreme."]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3196 2011-09-15T12:10:55Z 2011-09-15T12:18:02Z

"At half past 7 element nor implement be seen & place was where the presence was – circumference between. (& the one trick pony you rode in on.)" Christophe Van Huffel & Leslie Winer are Purity Supreme. "Half Past 3 Cowboy" is the second track on "Always Already" - released on 24.10.11 as a vinyl EP and a digital download.]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3193 2011-09-14T10:36:08Z 2012-01-11T17:06:24Z

Buy Purity Supreme "Always Already" in the TouchShop 4 tracks - 20:55 12" Vinyl EP / Digital Download Cut by Jason @ Transition Studios, London Track Listing: A1. Milk St. A2. Half Past 3 Cowboy AA1. Famous Inhabitants of Louth AA2. Dunderhead "They are visiting relatives. I want you to notice your hand me the glass. The felt presence of direct experience." Four new tracks from Purity Supreme. Purity Supreme is a collaboration between French musician, composer and producer Christophe Van Huffel and American writer, musician and composer Leslie Winer. "Always Already" was recorded in France at Studio7Love in May 2011. Leslie Winer's 90s album "Witch", released under the artist name ©, is a genuine lost classic, pioneering many of the sounds that have followed. Since this prescient release she has chosen to work in the shadows. Leslie's voice has graced recordings by Bomb The Bass, Jon Hassell and Holger Hiller, and her words used on "This Is", the lead track on Grace Jones's latest effort. Alongside Purity Supreme, she is currently writing short stories to be published by The Bookworm. Christophe Van Huffel, ex-guitarist of Tanger, has recently worked producing legendary French singer, Christophe. He is based in France. Reviews: Amazon (USA): 5.0 out of 5 stars Zang! Pow!, October 27, 2011 By Pecos Pete "Forever a student" (Los Angeles) Ms Winer surfaces again, rare and unpredictable like a lone, great sea creature whose path and life is unknowable, except for these moments. We must mark the place and start triangulating. Once. she appeared in one corner of the night sky, and disappeared out the other, and some would say that appearance sprinkled the dust that spawned the "trip-hop" genre. Witch . Her work tends to hold a superficial attraction that quickly leads you on to finding a depth that rewards the consideration. And if the individual pieces are not pop-song short, their careful construction insures the interest... and then cuts out leaving you wanting. In Christophe Van Huffel she has found a worthy creative partner. He brings sparkling guitar based aural textures that dance around Winer's more text centered genius. The natural song forms he uses add structural sense to the slow, deliberate momentum of the spoken story. It would seem Winer likes to make you work for the words, only to find several possible interpretations. The choice, of which equally as wonderful interpretation, dances just out of reach with the guitar, and by the end you have to decide to wait until next time to decide. Where most who work collage of found material and the re-appropriation of cliché court the bad taste of someone trying to snake credit for the strength of the original work, Winer's strong and careful craft not only justifies any appropriation, but brings an added value. These "songs" sound great. I can enjoy just driving around with the "Famous inhabitants of Louth" playing along like the track to some classic great rock track I can't quite remember... while Winer's voice burbles on about something that sounds important (in this, it is perhaps, the most aleatoric seeming combination of music and words on the EP). "Milk St." is a short film noire - the gated, distorted guitar like an industrial machine angrily spinning up to disintegration over eternity's harmonium drone, but it is "nice to see you". "Half past 3 cowboy" is like being "stuck inside a fairy ring" with the ghost of your Dickinson loving, very stoned college girlfriend - the bottleneck whines on like the soundtrack to Performance is being played by your roommate... all in all, an ambivalent acid-trip you were glad to have taken, in retrospect. "Dunderhead" is a character sketch, she explains herself to herself, as she deliberately marches across the great plain. The drums, the riff, the march builds and builds... this is no country for old men. Dunderhead is serious, and GOING TO TOWN! But... "it's all good". These tracks are worth the time. Foxydigitalis (USA): This seems like an unusual one for the much-respected Touch affiliate Ash International, although in keeping with the label’s eclecticism. It’s a four-song collaboration between French composer and producer Christophe Van Huffel and notorious ex-model and avant-gardian writer Leslie Winer. Winer’s surfacing is notable here, as after some activity in the ‘80s in the New York orbit of William S. Burroughs and Basquiat, she has not been active except for producing the culty-loved ‘90s album Witch. Mostly Always Already consists of vaguely menacing, sometimes rootsy rock music—a touch of the dark swing of Fiona Apple—with Winer’s spoken-word poetry over the top. The vocals are clearly the focus here, and Winer’s delivery is distinctive: a deep, jaded narcotic sigh, scorched around the edges, like she can barely get the words out. Like she has seen it all. Sometimes her narrative is wearily cyclical: “I got stuck inside of a faerie ring / Jesus, I couldn’t get out,” she repeats on “Half Past 3 Cowboy.” Sometimes there’s gory wordplay: “I got a couple of drops of Indian blood, mostly on my hands,” she drawls casually on “Dunderhead.” There is disjointed closeup imagery, as when describing a watch, a propos of nothing, on “Famous Inhabitants Of Louth.” Typically Winer repeats the full lyrical cycle, an interesting choice that calls attention to certain passages in an important way, constantly dodging and shifting. Definitely an odd charm to this one, if you can dig the musical choices.]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3192 2011-09-14T10:26:22Z 2011-12-04T18:48:37Z

Buy Joachim Nordwall "Ignition" [CD] in the TouchShop Also available on cassette Track Listing 1: I am the Beginning of Every End 2: Slow Motion Broadcast 3: My Skull is a Breathing Fire 4: Dead Air 5: My Face Appeared on a Black Screen (Then Disappeared) Received and recorded by Joachim Nordwall at Morgan Avenue (Brooklyn), Lampo (Chicago), iDEAL (Gothenburg), EMS (Stockholm) 2006-2010. Technical specifications: RITM-2, iDEALIST DRONE MACHINE, LITTLE BLACK BOY, GLAMOUR BOX, KORG MS-20, iDEALIST NOISE MACHINE, MacBook Pro (various software) and various effects. Analogue sound sources, sometimes processed digitally. Joachim Nordwall is deeply interested in the power of sound, and how sound can create certain states of mind - but also the other way around; how certain states of mind can create sound. Since his teens in the late 80’s, growing up in the remote, crude south east Sweden, he has experimented with something he prefers to call ‘Psychic Broadcasting’ rather than composition, at first in the still almost active analogue synth drone duo Alvars Orkester [‘Interference’ - Ash International # Ash 6.9, 2006]. Nordwall went on to play in various experimental music projects, spent time in Paris and London. Back in Sweden he formed iDEAL Recordings in 1998 and joined the sweaty avant punk rock group Kid Commando the year after, touring like mad, eventually hitting rock bottom in 2005. After the death of KC, he formed the ritual rock/drone band The Skull Defekts which has kept him busy ever since (recently releasing records on Chicago-based Thrill Jockey Records). In 2006 his first solo album was released under his ‘The Idealist’ moniker, entitled ‘I Am The Fire’. A few years in the making, the album offered was a deep study of Nordwall’s interior life, during a time when everything was pitch black inside. Today, Joachim Nordwall is very active curating his iDEAL label and organisation for festivals, concert series and sound art exhibitions. He is also the chairman of the legendary Stockholm venue for experimental stage art, Fylkingen. Nordwall is a man that lives and breathes sound. A few years have passed and “Ignition” is here, Joachim Nordwall’s second solo album. Recorded under brighter circumstances but still with many shadows present. “Ignition” is on one hand a solid, highly electronic trip, on the other hand a very sensitive, analogue and warm drone symphony. Ignition was released (and is still available) on cassette - also on Ash International, in 2010, thus asserting the primacy of the analogue format. Reviews: Grounded (SE): Joachim Nordwall, of Ideal Records fame, is a highly productive fellow when it comes to making his own music as well. Although predominantly busy with the band Skull Defekts, his solo oeuvre pops up frequently and contain different kinds of aural expressions. This one, Ignition, is a record filled with warm, fuzzy ambient music. Atmospheric, minimalistic, non-demanding and quite often beautiful in its simplicity. The best parts are the long, droning segments, with very small nuances floating in the sonic spheres, like evanescent clouds on a really hot summer’s day. It’s mysterious enough to keep the attention alert, yet relaxing enough to not become scholastically boring. Occasionally the sounds impose themselves on a sacral space in a more traditional sense – sounds of organs of different kinds evoke old churches and sinister goings on. This also leads on to other possible associations, one of them being horror films. Much of the ”Ignition” CD would work wonderfully well in some Mario Bava giallo thriller from the 1960s, complete with saturated technicolor pastels, demonic possessions, slasher violence and Hitchcockian nymphs screaming away as some mad monk lustfully puts an end to all their sinning. Echoes of John Carpenter also lurk beneath the surface, with warm electronic sweeps that build up and gradually take over. Most of this music seems performed on vintage analogues, so the Carpenterian resonance is not difficult to trace (or imagine). ”Ignition” is highly pleasant to listen to and to keep playing ambiently in one’s quite often busy background. In this day and age of fragmented listening, I really want to put across that this is a very good and very slow record. It’s a new kind of sacral music floating on top of waves of warm, fuzzy electricity. Buy it and listen to it. Boomkat (UK): Not a cover of R. Kelly, unfortunately, but a really dynamic and varied long-form synthesizer piece on Touch-affiliated Ash International from Joachim Nordwall, a member of noise heroes Skull Defekts. There's a real butchness and bite to this work that's just completely blowing us away: Nordwall's sticky, tactile analogue interventions range from monkishly reserved ambience to jutting techno pulsation, and all the while the sense of dread is unrelenting. It's rare to hear this much presence and authority in this kind of work; fans of Lustmord, John Carpenter, Senking's List, Eduard Artemiev, Oneohtrix Point Never, Prurient and other darkling synth wizards should pay close attention. Minimal, menacing, and highly recommended. The Wire (UK): Bild (Sweden): deepshitbynordwall.tumblr.com Sound of Music (Sweden): Dronens förmåga att påverka våra sinnen är välprövad. Så välprövad att den till och med delvis tappat sin kraft av det otal halvtaskiga försök som dessutom getts ut på skiva. I slutändan handlar det alltid om ljudets själva konsistens. Utan kvalitet går luften ur och intresset sviker obönhörligen. Joachim Nordwall har länge haft ett brinnande intresse för hur dronen påverkar våra mentala tillstånd och motsatt, hur våra sinnen kan påverkar dronen. Naturligtvis kan man bygga ut begreppet drone till det vidare begreppet ljud eller sound. Men på Ignition som nu släpps på cd (finns på kassett sedan förra året) är det dock dronen som är den centrala byggstenen. Och Nordwall kan sin sak, med analoga synthar, effekter och dator fyller han dronerna med sinnesutvidgande innehåll. Intressant nog är det ändå när han lägger in parallella handlingar, eller till och med tillfälligt lämnar dronen, det blir som bäst. Som när en analog synth statiskt hugger upp ny mark, eller en kyrkorgel bystar upp sig med djupa klanger. Stundtals finns det till och med drag av en estetik som påminner om elektroniska nykrautgrupper som Roll the Dice. Just vid dessa tillfällen släpper mystiken sitt grepp och musiken blir mycket konkret. [Magnus Nygren]]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3190 2011-09-11T15:13:21Z 2011-09-15T12:15:16Z

"The more specific you get, the more general you’ll be – what you notice is the flaw. 16 unexplained views & the partial skeleton of a small reptile – it’s nice." Christophe Van Huffel & Leslie Winer are Purity Supreme. "Milk St." is the first track on "Always Already" - released on 24.10.11 as a vinyl EP and a digital download. Video & images by Sébastien Chou & Anna Paola Guerra. Leslie Winer notes: "May or may not be of some interest: This was recorded on the same desk as Paint It Black. Nice."]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3184 2011-09-10T07:13:52Z 2011-09-10T07:16:06Z

tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3164 2011-08-26T12:39:06Z 2011-08-26T12:47:31Z

"They are visiting relatives. I want you to notice your hand me the glass. The felt presence of direct experience." Christophe Van Huffel & Leslie Winer are Purity Supreme. "Always Already" - vinyl EP & digital download - 24.10.11 Details soon… you got keys.]]> ]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3117 2011-07-11T08:12:52Z 2011-07-11T08:18:03Z

“In Dreams” T-shirt [Ash International # Ash 8.3] has been received and documented by its dreamer, Sandra Jasper, on 9th July 2011. Continue reading for photographic evidence.]]> T-Shirts provided by Shirty Something]]> tag:www.ashinternational.com,2011://39.3026 2011-05-10T21:42:23Z 2011-05-10T21:46:29Z

“In Dreams” T-shirt [Ash International # Ash 8.3] has been received and documented by its dreamer, Leif Elggren, on 10th May 2011. Continue reading for photographic evidence.]]> T-Shirts provided by Shirty Something]]>