TO:95 | BJ Nilsen "Eye of the Microphone"

December 16, 2013

BJ Nilsen’s new album is now available to order in the TouchShop. ‘ Eye of the Microphone’ was recorded and mixed in London, 2012-13.  You will receive a free download of Nilsen’s recent performance at Café Oto with this album, when purchased in the TouchShop.  We are now taking advanced orders.  Release date is December 16th. 

Extended Digipak - 3 tracks - 43:19

Mastered By Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft

Track listing:

1.  Londinium
2.  Coins and Bones
3.  Twenty Four Seven

BJ Nilsen (b,1975 Sweden) Is a sound and recording artist.  His work is based on the sound of nature and its effect on humans.  He primarily uses field recordings and electronic composition as a working method.  He has worked for film, television, theatre, dance and as sound designer.  His newest album presented here is “Eye Of The Microphone” [Touch # TO:95, 2013] - a somewhat surreal audio rendition of the sounds of The City of London.  Currently also working on The Acoustic City, a book publication with CD, co-edited with Matthew Gandy, [2014, JOVIS Verlag, Berlin]. 

Recorded and Mixed in London 2012 – 2013

++ To stroll properly, one should not have any particular plans ++

In 2012 I received a scholarship from the Leverhulme Trust for a one-year Artist in Residency at the UCL Urban Laboratory in London, to introduce sound as an art practice to urban scholars and students.  As part of my research I decided to dérive the city. 

I spent full days and sometimes nights sweeping the streets and its interiors for sound - walking and listening with no route or intention.  A city without sound does not exist.  Every location, passageway, alley, road, park, and pub contains its own world of isolated sound events and patterns - the sound of a shopping bag caught by the wind on the asphalt of a busy street when a bus passes by.  What seems to be merely a bus is also a cacophony of sounds, a sound world in itself: hydraulics, breaks, interior noise, honking, public announcements, humans, rolling bottles, cell phones, mp3 players.  The rattle of an air-conditioning unit in an old pub toilet gradually develops its broken down sound over many years, creating a raga for it own demise.  Nobody seems to hear it.  Is it there?  The choice of sound varies; it's a personal selection, some sounds made it into this composition, many hours of recording didn’t. 

Sound composition can alter space and time and transform a specific location and experience into an imaginary world.