title: Tactile
instrumentation: vocalizing cellist, electronics
duration: 9 minutes
written in: 2019–21
text: Alex Temple
I wrote Tactile for cellist Amanda Gookin‘s Forward Music Project, a commissioning project focused on music by women. The piece explores the erotics of everyday life, the variety of types of physical sensation, and the sometimes blurry line between pleasant and unpleasant. Amanda said she wanted to feel vulnerable, so in the piece I call on her to not only play the cello but also sing, speak, whisper and breathe in rhythm; the text she delivers is an unadorned series of described sensations, from “the luxurious softness of his fur” to “the blinding flashbulb shock when a slight motion of your right arm nudges your broken collarbone.” In one passage, I also ask her to improvise in a way that feels tense and uncomfortable; in another, I ask her to improvise in a way that feels good under her hands. Both are part of the spectrum of tactile experience.
Buy
Tactile appears on Amanda Gookin’s album Forward Music Project 2.0: in this skin, along with pieces by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Paola Prestini, Kamala Sankaram and Shelley Washington. You can get it in CD or digital form at Bright Shiny Things, Bandcamp, Doc’s Records, Presto Music, Mills Record Company, or from the monopolistic megacorporation of your choice.
Listen
Amanda Gookin, voice and cello
Jessie Montgomery, producer
Mike Tierney, engineer
Recorded at Shiny Things Studio, Brooklyn, NY, July 2021