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viewing 1 To 18 of 18 items
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CD
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KOO 003CD
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Selected tracks and images from the exhibition "Working Photos" at Fridman Gallery, NYC (2019), specifically in reference to the black-and-white photo and video series "Light Patterns", here represented in a ten-page booklet by seven selected pictures and an exclusive retrospective story by the author related to memory and place. The tracks include aquatic elements, crickets, bells and other stories from the Greek islands, Belgium, the Danube and the Rhine Delta in a real-life experience that comes back to mind as a fluid sensation. This CD celebrates Phill Niblock's personal history, recounting episodes from his personal life, from the purchase of his first tape recorder in 1953, to his nocturnal activity as a DJ in the radio station during his military service, to the beginning of his musical career in 1968. A journey through magnetic tapes, through what today would be called "sound art", the transition to digital processing, up to this celebratory adventure developed at a distance together with Giovanni De Donà of Koo Editions during the pandemic isolation. This project is not only about the canonic digital edition in CD, digipak with booklet, of material selected by the artist from an art exhibition. Includes Leporello booklet that includes seven selected images from the exhibition "Working Photos"at Fridman Gallery NYC (2019) and a personal Phill Niblock story that celebrates his 60 years career; edition of 200 (numbered).
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CD
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XI 145CD
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A 65-minute electroacoustic composition featuring Dafne Vicente-Sandoval, bassoon. "The aural effect is minimal to the max, but it isn't simplistic. The tones vibrate and glow, the densely packed texture shifting hues like a sonic aurora borealis" --John Rockwell, The New York Times. NuDaf (2020) is the second longest piece in Phill Niblock's repertoire of recorded audio works. NuDaf is a departure from his previous pieces in that he makes extensive use of multiphonics and constructed the work with fewer tracks than usual, creating uniquely transparent and ephemeral textures. The piece is the result of a collaboration between Niblock and the stellar bassoonist Dafne Vicente-Sandoval. Her musicality and breadth of knowledge, extended bassoon performance, and uncanny timing inspired the piece. This is the first of three collaborative projects between XI Records and Akoh Media. Akoh initiated the project, suggesting that Phill confront a longer form that also seemed eminently suitable to Dafne Vicente-Sandoval's interests. Akoh, as is its tradition, presents the work in a limited numbered edition of a one-of-a-kind Petri dish that incorporates Niblock's photos in an exquisite and unique design. From the liner notes by Michael Pisaro-Liu: "... over the course of the long duration of NuDaf we listen to a slow-motion explosion that frees it, creating a spectacular shape, right before our ears."
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CD/BOOK
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RM 4122CD
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Room40 present a reissue of Phill Niblock's G2,44+/X2, originally released in 2002. Matte laminate embossed sleeve; includes insert card and 24-page book with liner notes from Bill Meyer, interview, and photos. Design by Traianos Pakioufakis.
Liner notes from Bill Meyer: "In 2001, Phill Niblock wrote, 'You should play the music very loud. If the neighbors don't complain, it's probably not loud enough.' In 2019, Niblock can no longer host his annual six hour-long solstice concert at the Experimental lntermedia loft; not only did the neighbors complain, the landlord sued. But the validity of his prescription is undiminished, for it takes sonic volume and spatial confinement to unlock his music's true nature. Give the sound waves a boost and something hard to smack against, and they begin to shiver and multiply so that tones transform tones and every turn of the head (or every new room) yields a new listening experience. But 'Guitar Too, For Four' is notable in Niblock's oeuvre for its independence from loudness. While it sounds great turned up, the additive process that yielded the CD's two versions has resulted in music that changes most rewardingly, even when heard at modest volume. Victor Frankl opined that in the hierarchy of essential human motivations, meaning eclipses pleasure. In some ways, this music hews closer to the pleasure principle. Once you let go of the yearning for tunes and grooves, it's a sensuous delight to dunk yourself in the warm sound-bath of his music. And Niblock would be the first person to scotch any efforts to assign the sort of cosmic significance that certain other drone-oriented minimalists did to their art. But consider this notion; Niblock's music is fundamentally social. It only truly happens in spaces where people gather. While he does much of the composing and assembling of this music alone, Niblock didn't treat 'Guitar Too, For Four' as finished until he got some more people in on the act. He asked Rafael ToraI and Jim O'Rourke to contribute to a CD edition. And when O'Rourke declined to play on his own production, but instead invited Kevin Drumm, Alan Licht, Thurston Moore, and Lee Renaldo to do the honors, Niblock's reaction was the more, the merrier. To the extent that connecting people is an essentially meaningful activity, this music is the connective tissue of meaning."
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DVD
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VON 021DVD
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A milestone film from American composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock, presented for the first time in DVD with two alternate soundtracks. T H I R is a mesmerizing and hypnotic film from his Environments series shot in upstate New York in 1972. This film is one of Niblock's finest and undiscovered jewels. A must have classic release. The material to make the film, T H I R, is taken from "Ten Hundred Inch Radii", a performance of film and music from the series -- Environments, premiered at the Everson Museum in Syracuse NY in 1972. The original music for this film, finished in 1975, was recorded and mixed at Intermedia Sound in Boston, in 1971-2. The DVD features a new soundtrack by Phill Niblock, with the piece "One Large Rose" as well as the original soundtrack from 1972. Filmed with a Beaulieu 16 mm around Keene Valley, New York in the Adirondack Mountains in 1971-1972. T H I R original soundtrack recorded in 1972. T H I R new soundtrack "One Large Rose" (T H I R edit 2015) recorded in 2008. Recorded in Christianskirsche (Hamburg, Deutschland), May 16 and 18, 2008. Final mix at Experimental Intermedia October 13, 2008. "One Large Rose" edited at Experimental Intermedia, February 1, 2015. Edition of 1000. NTSC format, region free.
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CD
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IMPREC 443CD
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Phill Niblock's Music For Cello collects three pieces from the '70s and early '80s, performed by cellist David Gibson. This CD includes a 16-page unpublished interview with Niblock. Since the late sixties Phill Niblock has been composing long-form acoustic drones with a focus on the rhythms and overtones that rise from closely tuned instruments. His highly original and influential music is an exploration of timbre, microtonality, stability, duration and psychoacoustic phenomenon.
"3 To 7 - 196' is very direct, aggressive, and gritty. The overtone patterns that are produced by the proximal pitches become more prominent with louder volume. So please, play this piece very loud. This was the first piece of mine in which the musician was precisely tuned, in which I chose exact pitches in hertz. We used a sine wave oscillator and frequency counter for the tuning. 'Descent Plus' has four cello tones descending one octave over twenty-two minutes, from 300 hertz to 150 hertz. David Gibson played these tones without lifting his bow from the strings, constantly retuning. I made four different scores, manually changing an oscillator to which he was tuning, for each track's recording. For the revision, we added six more tracks, with David playing long tones which were not descending. The second part of the recording was made nearly twenty years later. 'Summing II' (one of four parts) is mellow and sonorous. David plays two strings simultaneously, one of which is retuned for each successive recording of that pair of tones. This is a mix of an eight-track tape. It's better played loud also." --Phill Niblock, from the liner notes.
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LP
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SV 157LP
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"Composer, filmmaker and photographer Phill Niblock is a true pillar of the New York avant-garde. In the past 50 years, he has curated over 1,000 performances at his Centre Street loft and steadfastly built a massive, multidisciplinary body of work. While his earliest musical compositions date back to 1968, Niblock waited until the early '80s to release any recordings. Nothin To Look At Just A Record, a powerful debut with densely layered trombones, would be the first to unfurl his unique approach to sound. The second album and perhaps the most rare in Niblock's vast catalogue, 1984's Niblock For Celli/Celli Plays Niblock is a meeting of two great minds. Working with reed player Joseph Celli (a composer in his own right, who has collaborated with John Cage, Pauline Oliveros and Ornette Coleman), Niblock nimbly removes the breathing pauses from Celli's oboe and English horn to create seamless, enchanting drones. Niblock insists that his music be played loud: only in this way can one experience the visceral ringing of these long instrumental tones through the speakers and their natural overtones generated by the room. Niblock For Celli remains deeply absorbing. This first-time reissue is recommended for fans of Alvin Lucier, Yoshi Wada and Dome."
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LP
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GODREC 043LP
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For his premiere recording on God Records, Phill Niblock confirms his minimalistic musical approach and composes two monumental pieces for flutes and additional voices, respectively. Commissioned by Erik Drescher and Natalia Pschenitschnikova, Niblock again delivers an almost stripped, uncompromising one-way sound monolith. Tremendous, straight, and to the point... Personnel: Phill Niblock - composition; Natalia Pschenitschnikova - bass flute, voice; Erik Drescher - glissando flute.
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CD
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XI 101CD
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1990 release. "'Phill Niblock's music has no precedents, invites no comparisons, and doesn't even suggest any metaphors to me. It is simply itself and must be heard to be believed,' wrote Tom Johnson in The Village Voice a decade ago. The same is true today--no one is doing what Phill Niblock is doing. Niblock takes the building blocks of music and stacks them in inimitable formations. In Four Full Flutes, adjacent tones beat violently against one another while clouds of harmonics hover above the wavering drone... When the piece ends, it takes the listener a few moments to recover. This physiological experience, when the ossicles slow their vibrating and the membrane hairs come to a standstill, is probably the only aspect of the music not regulated by the score... Playing this compact disc in a different room or moving around the room while the disc is being played actually alters the outcome. Similarly, the music can be experienced anew through different combinations, extra speakers, home stereo pyrotechnics, and volume level alterations. The effects intensify with louder levels of volume. The higher the volume goes, the higher you go" --Neil Strauss. "The aural effect is minimal to the max, but it isn't simplistic. The tones vibrate and glow, the densely packed texture shifting hues like a sonic aurora borealis" --John Rockwell, The New York Times. "The four pieces on this 80-minute CD are for multiple tracks of alto flutes, flutes, flutes and alto flutes, and bass flutes, performed by Petr Kotik, Susan Stenger, and Eberhard Blum." --Phill Niblock
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CD
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XI 111CD
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1993 release. Music by Phill Niblock features The Soldier String Quartet performing in Five More String Quartets, a piece for five multi-tracked string quartets and in Early Winter for flute, bass flute, string quartet, and synthesizer, also featuring Susan Stenger (flute) and Eberhard Blum (bass flute). In Five More String Quartets the musicians are tuned to specific pitches by calibrated sine tones as they play and the sound they produce is recorded, unprocessed, to multitrack tape. The piece is built up by means of multitrack recording. Early Winter has a different structure: a mixing of recorded instruments, computer controlled electronic instruments, and live instruments in the studio.
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2CD
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XI 121CD
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2002 reissue. "YPGPN (Young Person's Guide to Phill Niblock) is the long-awaited re-release of a two-CD set that was a joint production by the UK-based Blast First label and The Wire magazine in 1995. It includes the following works: Held Tones (1982-94) Barbara Held, flute; Didjeridoos and Don'ts (1992) Ulrich Krieger, didjeridu; Ten Auras (1994) Ulrich Krieger, tenor saxophone; Ten Auras Live (1994) Ulrich Krieger, tenor saxophone; A Trombone Piece (1978-94) James Fulkerson, trombone; A Third Trombone (1979-94) Jon English, trombone; Unmentionable Piece for Trombone and Sousaphone (1982-94) George Lewis, trombone and sousaphone. Phill Niblock and his music have been with us now for quite some time. In 1972 he guided an audience that had come to the New York venue the Kitchen for a concert of his compositions, to his loft... Now, some thirty years later, Niblock's work continues to draw new audiences. What is extraordinary about this is that the principles of his music have not changed much over the years; that with the long timespan covered by each piece and the sparseness of the musical material and its elaboration, one could be forgiven to think that it is at odds with contemporary hasty tastes. In fact, just because of that, it has the power to draw attention to itself. The apparently immobile string of tones that is basic to his compositions has a singular mesmerizing quality." --Rene van Peer
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LP
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SV 033LP
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2018 repress, originally released in 2013. "Phill Niblock has pushed the boundaries of sound and visual art for over 40 years. While dutifully producing experimental films and producing multi-media loft performances in New York's 1960s avant-garde circles, His music consists of long instrumental tones, closely pitched together to create beat patterns and multi-tracked into dense layers. Nothin to Look at Just a Record, originally released on esteemed 20th century / jazz label India Navigation in 1982, is Niblock's recording debut and often cited as his masterpiece. To celebrate Niblock's 80th birthday, Superior Viaduct is honored to present the first-time vinyl reissue of Nothin to Look at Just a Record, a high-water mark in 20th century music and listed as #5 on Alan Licht's Minimal Top Ten."
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2CD
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TO 091CD
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This is the fifth album on Touch from New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, Phill Niblock. "These CDs have pieces made in two different ways. Traditionally (since 1968), I recorded tones played by an instrument (by an instrumentalist), arranging these single tones into multi-layered settings, making thick, textured drones, with many microtones. In the early days, I prescribed the microtones, tuning the instrumentalist, when I was using audio tape. Later, I used the software ProTools, and made the microtones as I made the pieces. 'FeedCorn Ear' and 'A Cage of Stars' were made this way. In 1998, Petr Kotik asked me to make a piece for orchestra, so, I began to make scores for the musicians to play from. The form of that piece, and the subsequent six scored works, were patterned after a piece in 1992-1994, where the musicians were tuned by hearing tones played from a tape through headphones. These are the instructions for the scored piece on the second CD, 'Two Lips.' The score was prepared by Bob Gilmore, from specific directions by me: 'Two Lips,' aka 'Nameless,' is conceived as two scores, A and B, to be played simultaneously, lasting 23 minutes. Each score consists of 10 instrumental parts. The 20 separate parts should be distributed randomly amongst the musicians of the ensemble; the 'A group' and the 'B group' are not separated spatially. In each part, one note changes to the next in a graded sequence of microtonal steps. In score A, G gradually goes to F#. In score B, G# gradually goes to A. The piece calls for very subtle gradations of tuning in order to achieve a richness of ensemble sound, full of beatings of near-unison pitches, and with clouds of overtones and difference tones...'Two Lips' is interpreted via three different guitar quartets; Zwerm (of Belgium), Dither (of New York) and an assembled group of world-widers, Coh Da (ad hoc spelled backwards). Each quartet recorded 40 tracks from the score, each playing the 23-minute piece 10 times in one day. 'FeedCorn Ear': This is the third piece that I have made with the Belgian cellist, Arne Deforce. The title, 'FeedCorn Ear,' is an anagram of his name, and it was suggested by the composer Tom Johnson. We recorded the material that I used to construct the piece (in a multi-track, computer environment) in the studios of Marcus Schmickler (Piethopraxis) in Cologne, using a fantastic Brauner microphone. I work with a laptop Macintosh computer, so I progressed with the piece almost anywhere, constructing the score in a 32-track file, in a very tactile fashion. I began the work on this piece in my studios in New York (Experimental Intermedia), but I finished it in a tenth floor apartment in East London, looking out of a window to the west, over all of central London." --Phill Niblock
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BOOK/2DVD
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PDR PN
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"An overview of Phill Niblock's work since the '60s, through about twenty essays and interviews by musicologists, art critics and historians, various documents, scores, and more than eight hours of videos on two double layer DVDs. With a career spanning more than 40 years, Phill Niblock has not only proven himself as one of the most preeminent composers of the American musical avant-garde, but also an accomplished filmmaker and performer. He is also revered as an events producer through his Experimental Intermedia Foundation, providing a venue and a label that has been of great assistance to numerous other artists and musicians in helping to make their work known. This bilingual book (French/English) provides an in-depth look at all these activities, through various essays and interviews, either newly written, previously unpublished, or that have never been available in French before. These were written by very different people -- from musicians who have played Niblock's music, to fellow composers, from long-time friends to specialized musicologists and art historians. They discuss such various matters as musical and cinematographic aesthetics, psychoacoustic processes, historical background, philosophical insights and technical advice for playing the music, or just give their personal recollections of time spent together with Niblock. The book is accompanied by two double-sided DVDs of atypical videos: Remo Osaka, a continuation of The Movement of People Working series, with a quite peculiar soundtrack; two separate DVDs of the Anecdotes from Childhood, best viewed together as an installation; and Katherine Liberovskaya's 70 for 70 (+1), Seventy (one) Sides of Phill Niblock, realized in 2003/2004 on the occasion of his 70th birthday, which portrays the composer through memories recounted by friends and relatives. With writings by Phill Niblock, Rich Housh, Erika King, Guy de Bièvre, Volker Straebel, Richard Glover, Alan Licht, Seth Nehil, Rob Forman, Johannes Knesl, Arthur Stidfole, Juan Carlos Kase, Raphael Smarzoch, Jens Brand, Bob Gilmore, Ulrich Krieger, Richard Lainhart, Bernard Gendron, Susan Stenger, Mathieu Copeland, and liner notes from the first two LPs." 22.5 x 24.5 cm softcover; 520 pages (English/French dual language text) with illustrations; includes two PAL format, region free DVDs (each is double-sided, 8 hours of total video).
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DVD
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DSV 001DVD
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Die Schachtel in collaboration with O' artspace proudly presents a deluxe DVD featuring six experimental films by New York-based composer, photographer and filmmaker Phill Niblock from the late-1960s. Anybody familiar with Niblock would probably characterize his work by the sound of his long, sonorous drones, producing rich overtones usually combined with a visual element -- since before moving into composition, Niblock was an active photographer and filmmaker. While he usually is known for his films from the Movement Of People Working series alongside performances of his music, Niblock's early works stand apart as unique objects. The integrity and consistency of his style is fully on display in these seldomly-seen or screened 16mm sound films wonders that include: Morning (1966-1969) from an idea by Phill Niblock and Jean Claude Van Itallie, filmed by PN, text by Lee Worley and Michael Corner, with members of the Open Theater group. Starring Lee Worley, James Barbosa, Cynthis Harris, Sharon Gans, Joseph Chaikin; text read by Lee Worley, James Barbosa, Barbara Porte, Dorothy Lyman, Michael Corner. Black & white 16mm film. The Magic Sun (1966-1968) with members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, music by Sun Ra and the Arkestra. Filmed on high-contrast black & white 16mm film. Dog Track (1969) -- a film by Phill Niblock, with a found text read by Barbara Porte. Color 16mm film. Annie (1968) -- a portrait of the dancer Ann Danoff, with a sound collage soundtrack. Color 16mm film. Max (1966-19) -- an image collage film/portrait of percussionist/sound-artist Max Neuhaus, with a collage soundtrack by Max Neuhaus. Black & white 16mm film. Raoul (1968-1969) -- a portrait of the painter Raoul Middleman, with extensive use of time-lapse film technique. The soundtrack is improvised by Raoul Middleman and Phill Niblock. Color 16mm film. Limited edition of 500 copies. NTSC, all-region DVD, stereo, 4:3 format. Run-time: 65 minutes.
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2CD
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TO 079CD
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This is Phill Niblock's fourth release on the Touch label. Phill Niblock is a New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade-hopping. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant garde ever since. In the history books Niblock is the forgotten Minimalist. His influence has had more impact on younger composers such as Susan Stenger, Lois V Vierk, David First, and Glenn Branca, and he's also worked with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. Touch Strings features three new pieces completed between 2007 and 2008. "Stosspeng," a piece for guitars and bass guitars performed by Susan Stenger and Robert Poss, premiered at the Donau Festival in Krems, Austria in April of 2007 after recording sessions to obtain materials for the piece took place at Robert Poss's Trace Elements studio in New York. The material for "Poure" was recorded in Johan Vandermaelen's Amplus studio in Aaigem, Belgium, and premiered at Schuurlo, Sint-Maria-Aalter, Belgium on September 12, 2008. Performed by Arne Deforce on cello, "Poure" was commissioned by the Centre de Recherches et de Formation Musicales de Wallonie, CRFMW, Liege, Belgium. "One Large Rose," performed by The Nelly Boyd Ensemble (Robert Engelbrecht, cello; Jan Feddersen, piano strummed with nylon strings; Peter Imig, violin; Jens Roehm, acoustic bass guitar strummed with nylon strings or e-bow), was made with the musicians playing from a score, and recorded acoustically in real time, with four recordings of 46 minutes each superimposed, until a final mix was completed at Experimental Intermedia, New York in October of 2008.
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3CD
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TO 069CD
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2006 release, repressed. This is Phill Niblock's third release on the Touch label. Phill Niblock is a New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade hopping. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant garde ever since. In the history books Niblock is the forgotten Minimalist. His influence has had more impact on younger composers such as Susan Stenger, Lois V. Vierk, David First, and Glenn Branca. Touch Three is minimalism in the classic sense of the word, if that makes sense. Niblock constructs big 24-track digitally-processed monolithic microtonal drones, and the result is sound without melody or rhythm. Movement is slow, geologically slow. Changes are almost imperceptible, and his music has a tendency of creeping up on you. The vocal pieces are like some of Ligeti's choral works, but a little more phased. He says: "What I am doing with my music is to produce something without rhythm or melody, by using many microtones that cause movements very, very slowly." These nine pieces were made from March 2003 to January 2005. They were all made (except "Sax Mix") by recording a single instrument with a single microphone. The recordings were direct to the computer/hard disk, most of them using a Powerbook G4, Pro Tools, an M-box and an external firewire drive. The resulting mono sound files were edited to remove breathing spaces, leaving the natural decay of the tone, and the attack of the subsequent iteration of the same tone. Each note was represented by several repetitions, perhaps ten for each tone, of about 15 seconds duration each. Each piece uses a few tones. A simple chord, perhaps. Additional microtonal intervals were produced in Pro Tools using pitch shift. The pieces were assembled in multitracks, usually either 24 or 32 tracks. The recording environment varied from a simple apartment in Berlin (Ulrich Krieger's) to a very large hall used for symphony orchestra performances and recordings, with a sizable audience space. The recordings were generally done quite closely miked. One hears only the sound of the instrument. There is no electronic manipulation in the recording, the editing of the tones, or in the mix. The only changes to the recorded tones are the pitch shifts to create microtones...the microtones are doing the work.
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2CD
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TO 059CD
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2013 repress, originally released in 2003. CD1: "Sea Jelly Yellow" [Ulrich Krieger, baritone saxophone]; "Sweet Potato" [Carol Robinson, bass clarinet, basset horn, and Eb clarinet]; "Yam Almost May" [Kasper T. Toeplitz, electric bass]. CD2: "Pan Fried 70" [Reinhold Friedl, piano]. "In the music of Phill Niblock, we are confronted with the aural equivalent of trompe-l'oeil. Apparently static clouds of harmonically dense material turn out to be not so static as they appear. What's more, one has the distinct impression that the music is changing spatially over time. How is all of this possible? The key is in Niblock's use of time. In his music, the experience of time is as very slow and continuous. There are no disruptive, discontinuous musical events to disrupt the flow of time. Time is suspended. Niblock's music gives the impression of having always been and continuing to be. Yet, this is not the idea of Being as stasis. Each time one feels that Niblock's music isn't changing, one realizes that it is never the same, an yet, always the same. Being and Becoming as one. Moving Immobility. This is a music that breathes slowly and deeply. It changes its spatial form slowly, as a person who is in deep meditation changes the form of his body ever so slowly as he peacefully expands and contracts the walls of his chest cavity with each new cycle of inspiration/expiration." -- Gerard Pape. "Phill Niblock is a sixty-something New York based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade hopping. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant garde ever since. In the history books Niblock is the forgotten Minimalist. That's as maybe: no one ever said the history books were infallible anyway. His influence has had more impact on younger composers such as Susan Stenger, Lois V Vierk, David First, and Glenn Branca. He's even worked with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo on Guitar two, for four which is actually for five guitarists. This is Minimalism in the classic sense of the word, if that makes sense. Niblock constructs big 24-track digitally-processed monolithic microtonal drones. The result is sound without melody or rhythm. Movement is slow, geologically slow. Changes are almost imperceptible, and his music has a tendency of creeping up on you."
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TO 049CD
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Featuring the following works: 1. "Hurdy Hurry" (15:20, October 1999; Jim O'Rourke, hurdy gurdy [samples]). 2. "A Y U", aka "as yet untitled" (21:30, October 1999; Thomas Buckner, baritone voice [samples]). 3. "A Y U, Live", (21:30, October 1999/2000; Thomas Buckner, baritone voice [samples and live]). "Phill is a sixty-something New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade-hopping. He says: 'What I am doing with my music is to produce something without rhythm or melody, by using many microtones that cause movements very, very slowly.' The stills in the booklet are from slides taken in China, while Niblock was making films which are painstaking studies of manual labor, giving a poetic dignity to sheer gruelling slog of fishermen at work, rice-planters, log-splitters, water-hole dredgers and other back-breaking toilers. Niblock writes: 'In October 1999, I made a concert at Merkin Hall in New York, as part of the series Interpretations, produced by Thomas Buckner and the World Music Institute. The concert was shared with Ulrich Krieger, a composer and saxophonist living in Berlin. Normally, concerts in this series have two parts. Since Ulrich and I are collaborators for some years, we decided to interleave our works, and also to make a long concert. It was about three hours, nearly twice as long as is usual in this recital hall. I was preparing two new works for this concert. You guessed it, the pieces on this CD. The works are for hurdy gurdy, a stringed instrument played by cranking a resined wheel, and voice. I had met Jim O'Rourke some time before, and had asked him if I could make a piece using samples of his playing the hurdy gurdy. I recorded the samples in the studios of Robert Poss sometime in the winter of 1999. Tom Buckner and I had talked for some years about a possible piece. I asked him if we could do it for this concert. Later, he explained that he commissions works, so that was a pleasant surprise. When we were recording in Poss' studio, Tom was interested in doing some throat singing. I expected to work on these pieces during the summer of '99. I didn't, of course. I didn't start until two weeks before the concert date. I finished the voice piece on October 11, made the hurdy gurdy piece on the 12th and 13th. The concert was the 14th. On the hurdy gurdy piece, we hear only the samples recorded by O'Rourke. In the first version of A Y U, we hear only the original recorded samples of Tom Buckner singing. On the second piece, Tom recorded again in the studio, singing a line along (listening with headphones) with the first version of A Y U, and four channels of pitch shift were added to his live voice. He did this three times, for the entire length of the piece. Thus version one has twenty four voices, multitracked from samples. Version two has an added 15 tracks of the live voice. In each piece, I constructed some pitch shifted samples, and some of them were one and two octaves down. These were used along with the original samples as source material. There is not any other modification of the samples during the recording and mixing process.' [A review by Kyle Gann, published in the Village Voice, New York, November 9, 1999]"
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