Random Touch

Random Touch is Accidental;
with the Accident, the intension of the individual and the cosmos are united.
Random Touch is Vibration;
the eye, tuned to the wavelength of Light; the ear, tuned to the wavelength of sound.
Random Touch is Readymade Instruments;
ordinary, sound-generating objects liberated from the obscurity
of industrial scrap heaps and suburban household closets.
Random Touch is Traditional Instruments;
the Music plays, and plays with, these instruments with a past.
Random Touch is Roadnoise;
a music concept originated within the automobile.

Beneath words, beyond any measure of rationality, somewhere below everyday awareness, lies a vast and powerful collective consciousness. In our dreams we often tap this universe, sometimes even contacting and interacting with others. It is this Dream-Time, this great web of connectivity, that Random Touch seeks to access through its music. Once there, we ask the music to play us.

“When we play it’s like entering a trance. Visual elements and even drama materialize of their own accord, as if I’ve fallen into a waking dream. At times I have no conscious awareness that we are making music.” - Christopher Brown

Everyone finds comfort in categories. Stringing together a list of musical styles or genres - say modern classical, free jazz and acid rock – provides a general basis for discussion and understanding. Most music is created around a structure that is a direct descendant of one or more such musical styles. As a result, the shorthand of such style references is often quite appropriate. With Random Touch, however, structure is sourced internally, so that the unconscious takes center stage. The result is a dreamy, hypnotic, and otherworldly sort of music that seems to float, free of gravity, continuously on the verge of cohesion and collapse.

Random Touch founders Christopher Brown and James Day have an old and synergistic relationship that began with collaborations in high school (an original rock opera) and college (commissioned multi-media piece Broken Glass among others). Brown and Day first collaborated with member Scott Hamill (guitar) in 1978 and member Matthew Ebbin (camera) in 1998. In addition to music, the visual arts have been an integral part of their work over the years. To Random Touch they are all vibration. Whether videotaping the tight, electric frequency of the color violet or recording the long and lazy thrum of a hammered steel girder, it is all raw material, ready for the alchemy of transmutation.

2007 marks their seventh package, Alchemy (CD/DVD). Cinematic, emotionally charged music fuels the all too short 68 minute CD. Haunting, dreamlike music videos, live performances, talking heads and expansive menus inhabit the two hour DVD. Many of the video shorts from the Alchemy DVD are screening at film and video festivals.