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2CD
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TONE 086CD
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With rpm, Touch wanted to join some of the dots of Philip Jeck's life and involve many other collaborators, early and more recent. Fennesz was a friend and kindred spirit on the same label. Claire M Singer formed a new chemistry and partnership and although their plans must now take a different form, Mary found some sketches Philip had laid out using Claire's organ recordings, for further development. Faith Coloccia and Philip had already released "Stardust" on Touch in 2021. Their live performance together at 2220arts + archives, Los Angeles in March 2022 celebrating Touch's 40th anniversary had to be shelved. And in September of that year Iklectik hosted a memorable tribute night with live work from Chris Watson, Liverpool Improvisation Collective, Claire M Singer, and others -- most of all a dedicated audience who knew and felt that this was a future event and not the end of the story. A work in progress at the time of Philip's death, Oxmardyke, a project with Chris Watson, saw the light of day as Touch Tone 83 in early 2023 -- working on recordings Chris had sent, Philip with laptop perched on hospital bed, almost to the end. There were other artists who wanted to actively contribute further, whether in performance or contributing to this album: Jana Winderen had already sent Philip her recordings of pilot whales and the track you hear was finished in March 2022. Cris Cheek was in Slant with Philip and Sianed Jones, who also sadly passed away that same year -- their work together predates Philip's with Touch. Philip owed much in his early years of composing and playing to his collaboration with dancers, theatre and film makers -- in particular, a ten-year working and performing partnership with Laurie Booth, Yip Yip Mix, and the 20th Century, which toured widely during the 1980s and early '90s. An early audio-visual work, Vinyl Requiem (1993) was created with visual artist Lol Sargent, using 180 record players, nine slide projectors and two 16mm projectors producing a live performance on a huge scale. Vinyl Requiem wasn't exactly about the end of vinyl, but the dawn of something else regarding sound recording and music. It was never a final statement but a testament to the work to come. Also featuring Gavin Bryars, Rosy Parlane, Cris Cheek, Faith Coloccia, David Sylvian & Hildur Guðnadóttir, Jah Wobble & Deep Space, Drums Off Chaos, Chandra Shukla, and Jana Winderen.
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2LP
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GODREC 048LP
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dieb13 on Philip Jeck: "... In his hands, a tool as simple as a hammer that blocks the arm of the record player creates a loop with a taste of eternity. Two or three such hammers can create musical galaxies far beyond the reach of traditional instruments, where no human ear has ever been before. From unidentifiable rumble and grinding to brilliant instrument-snippets and comical voice fragments, Philip Jeck glues sounds together as if they were never meant to exist on their own. Whether it be Pachelbel's Canon or some mid-90s dance music that's on Philip's vinyl, but what we hear in the Vinyl Coda is his very unique musical voice -- articulated with a perfect sense for structure, suspense and sound."
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CD
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TONE 058CD
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The sixth in the series of limited edition compact disc live recordings -- following releases in the series by Thomas Köner & Jana Winderen (TONE 051CD), Simon Scott (TONE 053CD), Bethan Kellough (TONE 054CD), Yann Novak (TONE 055CD), Robert Crouch (TONE 056CD) -- offers a recording of Philip Jeck live at Iklectik, London. Philip Jeck studied visual arts at Dartington College of Arts in the 1970s and has been creating sound with record-players since the early '80s. He has worked with many dance and theatre companies and played with musicians/composers such as Jah Wobble, Steve Lacy, Gavin Bryars, Jaki Liebezeit, David Sylvian, Sidsel Endresen, and Bernhard Lang. He has released eleven solo albums, the most recent Cardinal, a double vinyl release on Touch (TO 098LP, 2015). Suite, another vinyl-only release, won a Distinction at The Prix Ars Electronica, and a cassette release on The Tapeworm, Spool (2009), sees him playing only bass guitar. His CD Sand (TO 067CD, 2008) was second in The Wire's top 50 of the year. His largest work made with Lol Sargent, Vinyl Requiem was for 180 record-players, nine slide-projectors, and two 16mm movie-projectors. It received a Time Out Performance Award. Vinyl Coda I-III, a commission from Bavarian Radio in 1999 won the Karl Sczuka Foderpreis for Radio Art. Philip also still works as a visual artist, usually incorporating sound and has shown installations at The Bluecoat, Liverpool, Hayward Gallery, London, The Hamburger Bahnhof Gallery, Berlin, ZKM in Karlsruhe, and The Shanghai and Liverpool Bienalles. Philip Jeck has won the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers 2009. A presentation ceremony took place at The Royal Institute of British Architects, London, on November 9th, 2009. He has toured in an Opera North production playing live to the silent movie Pandora's Box (composed by Hildur Gudnadottir and Johann Johannson). He has also worked again with Gavin Bryars on a composition "Pneuma" for a ballet choreographed by Carolyn Carlson for The Opera de Bordeaux and has recently made and performed the sound for The Ballad Of Ray & Julie at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. Recorded and mastered by Jeff Ardron of St. Austral Sound. Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft. CD comes in a slipcase; Edition of 500.
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2LP
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GODREC 040LP
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Philip Jeck works as a composer, multi-media artist, choreographer, but above all, he is most well-known as a turntable manipulator. At the end of '90s, he produced something which later would be considered a cult piece - his four part masterpiece Vinyl Coda. It is probably his most important work and the peak of his art; it defines not only his musical language, but also the entire turntable culture, as well as the deconstruction of vinyl. The work is nothing less than a powerful lo-fi symphony which, through magical looping, allows the listener to hear things they otherwise wouldn't hear.
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2LP
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TO 098LP
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Philip Jeck writes: "To make this record I used Fidelity record players, Casio keyboards, Ibanez bass guitar, Sony MiniDisc players, Ibanez and Zoom effects pedals, assorted percussion, a Behringer mixer and it was edited it at home with MiniDisc players and on a laptop computer."
"...and they sparkled like burnished brass"
"Out of the depths of our complaints, it could be all so simple. To be never fooled by the finesse of a long-yearned for solidity, but in the momentary aplomb of a sleepy walk threading through familiar streets we'd hum our way, alto, baritone and tenor toward some harmonious end. An effect like some wonderful recollection of one or other of those technicolour movies. Not real for sure, but if you are in the mood..."
"I would like to acknowledge the influence the writer Marilynne Robinson has had on this work. I would recommend reading any/all of her four novels and also When I was a Child I Read Books (Virago, 2012). This collection of essays includes 'Austerity as Ideology,' which dissects prevailing economic thinking, and 'Open Thy Hand Wide,' which continues with a celebration of liberal thinking as Generosity (and also turned over my received knowledge of Calvinism). Her ability to convey a love of humanity and sense of wonder about the great mystery of existence in her writing has, since I first read a book of hers, found a way into the way I think about my work -- not illustrating but meditating upon." (April 2015)
Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops, turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Jeck makes genuinely moving and transfixing music in which one hears the art, not the gimmick. He started working with record players and electronics in the early '80s and has made soundtracks and toured with many dance and theatre companies in addition to his solo concert work. His best-known work, Vinyl Requiem (with Lol Sargent), a performance for 180 '50s/'60s record players, won the Time Out Performance Award in 1993. In 2010, Jeck won a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award. This gatefold double LP comes with a download code for Jeck's "Live in Caen," recorded by Franck Dubois on February 28, 2015, at Impressions Multiples #4 (ésam Caen/Cherbourg), with thanks to Thierry Weyd.
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CD
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TO 081CD
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This is Philip Jeck's sixth solo album for Touch. Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops, turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Philip Jeck makes geniunely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art, not the gimmick. Philip Jeck writes: "A version of An Ark For The Listener was first performed at Kings Place London on February 24, 2010. It is a meditation on verse 33 of 'The Wreck Of The Deutchsland,' Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem about the drowning on December 7, 1875 of five Franciscan nuns exiled from Germany. This CD version was recorded at home in Liverpool and used extracts from live performances over the last 12 months. The 'coda:' tracks are remixes of 2 pieces from Suite: Live In Liverpool. 'Chime, Chime (Re-rung)' was originally made for Musicworks magazine (#104, Summer 09) and 'All That's Allowed (Remix)' is previously unreleased. All tracks were made using Fidelity record players, Casio SK1 keyboards, Sony mini-disc recorders, Behringer mixers, Ibanez bass guitar, Boss delay pedal and Zoom bass effects pedal."
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CD
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TO 067CD
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This is Philip Jeck's fifth solo album for Touch. Sand was recorded live in Holland and England in 2006/2007 and edited in Liverpool in January, 2008 using Fidelity record players, Casio SK keyboards, a Behringer mixer and Sony mini-disc recorders. Following Philip Jeck's acclaimed collaboration with Gavin Bryars and Alter Ego on a new version of The Sinking of the Titanic, Sand is a set of seven new compositions that highlight Jeck's mastery of vinyl manipulation and personal and collective memories. During the past year, Jeck has refined and consolidated his unique sound, playing superb sets at the Faster Than Sound festival and at York Minster for Spire. Sand is at once elegiac, celebrational, mournful and uplifting. Those who have followed Jeck's development since his first release, Loopholes, will observe his return to the industrial textures that colored that collection, though here they are fused with his symphonic grace and continued development as a composer and live performer. Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops, turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. His is genuinely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art, not the gimmick.
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CD
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TO 056CD
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Repressing of this 2002 release and Jeck's third release for Touch, after Loopholes and Surf. Stoke was made using Bush, Fidelity and Philips record players, a Casio keyboard and an Alba portable CD player. This record mainly consists of edits of live performances from England, Japan and Vienna. The notion of turntablism may be associated with flashy, deck-hopping scratch gymnastics, but the use of the record player as an instrument harks back to a less ostentatious tradition of music making. John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Schaeffer, and James Tenney recognized records and turntable mechanisms as malleable sound sources. In essence, sampling began with the real-time deployment of gramophones in performance by these artists and academics. Philip Jeck, like peers Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, and Martin Tetreault, legitimizes the turntable as a musical instrument.
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CDR
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TO CDR1
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1 track - 34:31. Performance for "Phast of Post Music". The first in the series of live recordings, followed by S.E.T.I. and Fennesz. Unlike later volumes in this series which are typically manufactured CDs, this really is a CDR!
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CD
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TO 036CD
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Repress of this 1999 release. "Philip Jeck is best known for his highly subversive work 'Vinyl Requiem' with Lol Sargent (a performance for 180 dansette record players, 12 slide-projectors and 2 movie-projectors). He has also worked extensively with the choreographer Laurie Booth, is a member of Slant and has had tracks released by Blast First (on the Deconstruct compilation) and The Soundworks Exchange (First Edition). Surf further explores his experimentation with loops and scratching. His methods leave much to chance; nothing is pre-planned or calculated. The seven tracks on this CD are surprisingly accessible: rhythms unfold from the miasma. Whilst highly original, there is a surprisingly antique feel to the sound: many of the samples, loops and scratches are taken from old vinyl records. Against nostalgia, Surf proves there to be vast potential in analogue recording processes, and by utilizing seemingly outmoded sources, Philip Jeck shows that you don't need a 24 track digital console and an enormous hard disk to make music that is both innovative and involving."
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