Phill Niblock - Music By (1993)

Phill Niblock's music has always been characterized by a single-mindedness in approach, form and content, and for many years was inextricably linked with its means of production, i.e. dense collations of sound amassed using multi-track tape technology.

So it was with great interest that I have looked forward to see what changes, if any, would be manifest as Niblock has adopted contemporary technologies of computer-based music. In his new series of computer compositions, the aesthetic point of view remains the same, yet the ranges of expression are indisputably extended, both with respect to dynamics and pitch extremes.

While one might have feared that Niblock's turn to computer-based music might have undermined one of the most attractive features of his work heretofore, i.e. the wonderful interplay of nuances of pitch, attack and volume in the materials he juxtaposes, in fact these subtleties are even more in evidence now. In a music otherwise without overt drama, there has always been one grand gesture in all of Niblock's pieces, for as each piece concludes the listener is left with the deafening silence of the absence of a sound that lived, breathed and dominated the listening space. Carl Stone

1. Five More String Quartets

Performed by The Soldier String Quartet

2. Early Winter

Susan Steger: flute

The Soldier String Quartet

Eberhard Blum: bass flute

38 sampled and synthesizer voices, computer controlled.

Originally commissioned by Thomas Buckner in 1991.

Released by Experimental Intermedia Foundation in 1993.

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Phill Niblock - Touch Works, for Hurdy Gurdy and Voice (2000)

Niblock achieves his effects through multitracking of live and processed tracks and sampling, all based on original performances on acoustic instruments. He creates an aural illusion of continuity, like the perpetual gush of a waterfall, for instance. In reality, his ingenious layering methods mean that all kinds of infinitesimal but crucial structural and sonic shifts are taking place on a cumulative basis.

The album opens with 'Hurdy Hurry', a stunning hurdy gurdy piece constructed from samples of Jim O'Rourke's playing, recorded in New York at Robert Poss' studio (Band of Susans). This medieval stringed instrument played by cranking a resined wheel seems tailor made for droning, and O'Rourke has been known to drone on himself a bit in ages past. This makes his own early droneworks 'Remove The Need' and 'Disengage' seem like mere practice, but that practice has certainly paid off handsomely. At a cursory listen 'Hurdy Hurry' might seem like fifteen of continuous drone, but Niblock weaves together held tones with exact mathematical relationships to each other, and there is a constant slow evolution and almost imperceptibly gradual increase in mass as the piece unfurls.

It continues with two different versions of what could be Niblock's masterwork, a vocal piece 'AYU'. The letters A, Y and U are hummed by baritone Thomas Buckner and arranged into a continually shifting corridor of sampled sound twenty four voices thick. The second version adds a live throat singing performance from Buckner, pitch shifted one and two octaves down and multiplied fifteen times over. Imagine massed temples of Buddhist monks humming universal nirvana alphabet keys condensed by a sampler into the digital cyberlanes. Niblock is described as 'the forgotten minimalist' in the extensive and illuminating sleevenotes, which include an interview discussing his sound reproduction techniques. After hearing this, it's all the others that'll be more likely to slip from memory. - Graeme Rowland

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