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touchless

by Matt Evans

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nmcr01
nmcr01 thumbnail
nmcr01 What can we give each other
In the brief moments
While lives touch?
If you help me see
If I open your ears
Will I learn to discern
Infinitesimal shades
Of white and blue
In the frozen sky?
As the world labours
To hold on to her gifts,
Will you hear
The music of the stars
In her patient sighs?
On our singular loops
From the void and back
We are each a moving space
Defined by chances
Of what in the world and who
Touches us. Favorite track: Arcto 1.
Aaron Smith
Aaron Smith thumbnail
Aaron Smith Weightless and free, soft and careful. This album with many textures and space is jam packed with love.
Johann Diedrick
Johann Diedrick thumbnail
Johann Diedrick Mesmerizing and hypnotic. This album feels like trekking across the ridge of a snow-covered mountain range at sunrise. Glacial, tender, yet treacherous and cautious at times - like any good excursion through the wilderness. The end of "Touchless" feels like stumbling off a cliff into pillowy, powdery snow. Thank you Matt for sharing this expanse with us! Favorite track: Touchless.
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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD  or more

     

  • Limited Edition Compact Disc
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Comes in a gatefold digipack with an 8-page booklet including liner notes and additional images and text by Devra Freelander.

    Includes unlimited streaming of touchless via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.
Arcto 2 05:34 video
2.
3.
Touchless 07:53
4.
Firn 07:14 video
5.
6.
Arcto 1 06:40

about

touchless is a tender collection of delicately floating, glacially paced, ephemeral meditations on the wandering experience of grief and loss, unfolding like a running commentary spoken in whispers. I made the album between 2019 and 2020 after the loss of my partner, sculptor and eco-feminist artist Devra Freelander. Devra was a light, and through her life and art, she worked tirelessly to imagine ways of expressing empathy and love on a geologic scale. Over six intimately textured tracks that are suspended in a dreamy haze, touchless questions the phenomenology of touch, reaching to transcend the boundaries of the physical to embody touch while remaining touchless.

In the last two years, I've grappled with loss in many forms. In the gaping experience of touchlessness, I find strength and love in our solidarity. For me, making this album has been an attempt to find communication through a mystical and spiritual sense of touch, and to uncover the multi-layered experience of loss by weaving a narrative through the wandering dissonance of depression and the neon glow of love.

touchless is made of three compositional couplets (Arcto 1 and 2, Fluorescent Sunrise and Solar Silhouette, Touchless and Firn). In these three pairs, I investigate the phenomenology of touch and touchlessness by embodying the intrusive and extrusive themes of Devra’s sculptural and print work—fusing practice room pianos with arctic field recordings, tracing sculptural forms with master equalization, and weaving together acoustic performances with forgotten tape recordings—as a way of reaching through time.

touchless builds upon New Topographics, by employing a similar conceptual approach to music-making, but this time, the materials are limited, softer, and more patient. The piano playing is not about its complexity but about the way a chord played with different weight in the fingers can mean something wholly different than another. The chamber recordings center their approach on texture with responsive improvisations from an elite cast of composer-performers, Tristan Kasten-Krause (Whatever’s Clever) Elori Saxl (Western Vinyl) and David Lackner (GALTTA). The drone pieces are about their form, shape, and color.

Making and releasing touchless has been a way to externalize my experiences and make them real outside myself. It’s not about putting the experiences behind me, rather, it’s a way to crystallize some sentiment from the last few years. Ultimately, it’s my way of reaching through the void to touch something lost, and to remember how real those experiences are.

credits

released June 25, 2021

with Tristan Kasten-Krause (Upright Bass, Tracks 3 and 4) David Lackner (Tenor Saxophone, track 3) and Elori Saxl (Violin, track 4)

All other sounds performed and recorded by Matt Evans using a Zoom H4 (capturing field recordings from Iceland), an iPhone 8, various cassette players, various pianos, a Yamaha Portasound, a Korg Minilogue and a Casio 405

Recorded at the only apartment building on Coles St. (2013-2019), a practice room at the New School (2016), Pioneer Works (2018), Avaloch Farm’s Stravinsky Room (2019), Elori’s Island in Minnesota (2020) and Zubin’s studio (2020)

Mixed by Matt Evans and Zubin Hensler between the only apartment building on Coles St. (2019) Ingie’s House / Tortoise Town (2019) and Zubin’s studio (2020)

Mastered by Taylor Dupree (2021), 12k Mastering

Layour and design by Adrian Knight

All artwork by Devra Freelander

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about

Matt Evans Brooklyn, New York

Matt Evans is a drummer and producer making acoustic and electronic music about the poetic interconnections between landscapes: internal, external, fictional, and virtual. Taking cues from millennial esoterica, natural phenomena, and science fiction, Matt uses drum-driven hypnotic soundscapes and improvisatory performances to embody imaginary ecosystems of surreal sonic worlds. ... more

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