Despite The Water Supply

The seventh in the series of Touch Sevens - 7" vinyl only, with previous offerings from Fennesz, Chris Watson, Oren Ambarchi, Mika Vainio and others. 7" vinyl was the quintessential format for popular music. Today, it is an undervalued and mostly promotional medium, used as a fetishistic signpost to a time of musical authenticity and a "healthy" popular culture. It might seem like another retrograde step to launch a vinyl series just as the download format threatens to dominate, and indeed there is an element of "the rear view mirror"... The generation of Touch artists who grew up with vinyl [and cassette] still feeling a strong emotional attachment to it. This series is more than that... an overtly critical, non-digital statement is supported by treatments of audio work which cannot be applied to digital formats - the sonic texture, the use of a locked groove, the a & the B and the additional dimension of the visual counterpoint. As for the aspect of audience participation, we choose not to specify the RPM on the label, encouraging the listener to experiment with playback options and personal preferences. An attempt to make music that works at both speeds. The front cover might actually be the back cover... Over the last 20 years, besides his own music, Jim O'Rourke has worked with the Merce Cunningham Dance company, Takehisa Kosugi, Derek Bailey, and Tony Conrad amongst many others. He has produced albums for Beth Orton, Stereolab, John Fahey, Brigitte Fontaine, Faust, and Wilco and more. Between 1999 and 2005 he was a memeber of Sonic Youth. He has also scored films for directors Werner Herzog, Olivier Assayass, Shinji Aoyama, and Koji Wakamatsu and more. O'Rourke's own films were part of the 2004 and 2006 Whitney Bienniale and the 2005 Rotterdam Film Festival. He currently lives in Tokyo.