Touch Radio

Touch Radio

The idea behind Touch Radio is brilliant and unique.  You have a successful record company (Touch, out of England)  www.touchmusic.org.uk and then semi-regularly, you invite the artists signed to your label, as well as just about anyone who is willing to contribute, to release music onto your website, which will then be made free to visitors.
Giving people a sample of an artists sounds, giving the artists a way to attract fans and attention, and giving your website a league of followers who are looking to hear new, different sounds at no cost to them.  The majority of releases on the website are collaborations, and live performances.  However, the real attraction here for me, the reason I mention it in Strange Music Spotlight, is the bizarre and off the wall sounds that are sometimes featured on Touch Radio.
It begins as early as Touch Radio session 7, when sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda contributed "Studies of the sonic effects of physical vibration."  In this Touch Radio episode, many sonic complexities were presented including:  the sound of ceramic discs on glass plates while a sounds frequency causes them to vibrate, amplitude of audio signal switching, and an electromagnetic siren vibrating.
In further Touch Radio sessions, other sound tests and experiments were shown, but prominent sound artists who had ideas that although not usual in any sense, were brilliant and strange to say the least.  Experimenting with spoken word, twisted field recordings, and much more.
The musical entries are wonderful, including original music from brilliant artists like Fennesz, KK Null, CM Von Hausswolff, Z'ev, Daniel Menche, Steve Roden, Philip Jeck, Biosphere, and Oren Ambarchi.  The strange recordings for me are capped off with the entry "Gnatonemus Petersii" by Pahnotm Airwaves on Radio 59, in which a fish that emits a low electrical field to see with echolocation, is recorded and mixed into something altogether brilliant and completely different from any such music out there.
It is this continuing endeavor by Touch that must be shared with everyone.  Because really, have you ever heard the sounds of a fish living, up close?
http://www.touchmusic.org.uk/touchradio/