PHILL NIBLOCK
Touch Five
Boomkat Product Review:
Posthumous reminder of the elemental power to Phill Niblock’s drone music, pulling five pieces from his archive developed between 1998-2012 in commissions for The Sage, Gateshead, and written for instrumentalists, Arne Deforce, Rhodri Davies, and various guitar quartets
The world is at once poorer (and perhaps quieter) for the recent loss of pivotal image maker, sound artist and composer Phill Niblock, who died aged 90, in Manhattan, 2024 - but also massively richer for his landmark contributions to experimental music and art since the ‘60s. ’Touch Five’ is his penultimate retrospective issued by longtime patrons and supporters of his work at London’s Touch, and focusses on his latter phase of work, when he shifted from the laborious method of painstakingly layering instrumental recordings on tape to achieve his hypnotic microtonal masses, to the relative short-cut afforded by ProTools DAW software in the ‘90s, with equally powerful results. Opening with ‘Feedcorn Ear’, a glacially whelming 30 minute work for cellist, Arne Deforce, recorded at Marcus Schmickler’s studio in Köln, and finished at Niblock’s EI facility, it also fixes the more rustic burr of ‘A Cage of Stars’, in a commission for Sage, Gateshead, featuring harpist Rhodri Davies, and a trio of ‘Two Lips’ works for the Zwerg Guitar Quartet, Dither Guitar Quartet, and Coh Da Guitar Quartet who all derive different, yet similarly transfixing, results, from Niblock’s score.
“Phill Niblock writes: “These CDs include pieces made in two different ways. Traditionally (since 1968), I recorded tones played by an instrument (by an instrumentalist), arranging these single tones into mutli-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 1992-94, 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 ten instrumental parts. The twenty separate parts should be distributed randomly amongst the musicians of the ensemble; the ‘A group’ and the ‘B group’ are not separated spatially.”
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Boomkat Product Review:
Posthumous reminder of the elemental power to Phill Niblock’s drone music, pulling five pieces from his archive developed between 1998-2012 in commissions for The Sage, Gateshead, and written for instrumentalists, Arne Deforce, Rhodri Davies, and various guitar quartets
The world is at once poorer (and perhaps quieter) for the recent loss of pivotal image maker, sound artist and composer Phill Niblock, who died aged 90, in Manhattan, 2024 - but also massively richer for his landmark contributions to experimental music and art since the ‘60s. ’Touch Five’ is his penultimate retrospective issued by longtime patrons and supporters of his work at London’s Touch, and focusses on his latter phase of work, when he shifted from the laborious method of painstakingly layering instrumental recordings on tape to achieve his hypnotic microtonal masses, to the relative short-cut afforded by ProTools DAW software in the ‘90s, with equally powerful results. Opening with ‘Feedcorn Ear’, a glacially whelming 30 minute work for cellist, Arne Deforce, recorded at Marcus Schmickler’s studio in Köln, and finished at Niblock’s EI facility, it also fixes the more rustic burr of ‘A Cage of Stars’, in a commission for Sage, Gateshead, featuring harpist Rhodri Davies, and a trio of ‘Two Lips’ works for the Zwerg Guitar Quartet, Dither Guitar Quartet, and Coh Da Guitar Quartet who all derive different, yet similarly transfixing, results, from Niblock’s score.
“Phill Niblock writes: “These CDs include pieces made in two different ways. Traditionally (since 1968), I recorded tones played by an instrument (by an instrumentalist), arranging these single tones into mutli-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 1992-94, 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 ten instrumental parts. The twenty separate parts should be distributed randomly amongst the musicians of the ensemble; the ‘A group’ and the ‘B group’ are not separated spatially.”
Boomkat Product Review:
Posthumous reminder of the elemental power to Phill Niblock’s drone music, pulling five pieces from his archive developed between 1998-2012 in commissions for The Sage, Gateshead, and written for instrumentalists, Arne Deforce, Rhodri Davies, and various guitar quartets
The world is at once poorer (and perhaps quieter) for the recent loss of pivotal image maker, sound artist and composer Phill Niblock, who died aged 90, in Manhattan, 2024 - but also massively richer for his landmark contributions to experimental music and art since the ‘60s. ’Touch Five’ is his penultimate retrospective issued by longtime patrons and supporters of his work at London’s Touch, and focusses on his latter phase of work, when he shifted from the laborious method of painstakingly layering instrumental recordings on tape to achieve his hypnotic microtonal masses, to the relative short-cut afforded by ProTools DAW software in the ‘90s, with equally powerful results. Opening with ‘Feedcorn Ear’, a glacially whelming 30 minute work for cellist, Arne Deforce, recorded at Marcus Schmickler’s studio in Köln, and finished at Niblock’s EI facility, it also fixes the more rustic burr of ‘A Cage of Stars’, in a commission for Sage, Gateshead, featuring harpist Rhodri Davies, and a trio of ‘Two Lips’ works for the Zwerg Guitar Quartet, Dither Guitar Quartet, and Coh Da Guitar Quartet who all derive different, yet similarly transfixing, results, from Niblock’s score.
“Phill Niblock writes: “These CDs include pieces made in two different ways. Traditionally (since 1968), I recorded tones played by an instrument (by an instrumentalist), arranging these single tones into mutli-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 1992-94, 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 ten instrumental parts. The twenty separate parts should be distributed randomly amongst the musicians of the ensemble; the ‘A group’ and the ‘B group’ are not separated spatially.”
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Boomkat Product Review:
Posthumous reminder of the elemental power to Phill Niblock’s drone music, pulling five pieces from his archive developed between 1998-2012 in commissions for The Sage, Gateshead, and written for instrumentalists, Arne Deforce, Rhodri Davies, and various guitar quartets
The world is at once poorer (and perhaps quieter) for the recent loss of pivotal image maker, sound artist and composer Phill Niblock, who died aged 90, in Manhattan, 2024 - but also massively richer for his landmark contributions to experimental music and art since the ‘60s. ’Touch Five’ is his penultimate retrospective issued by longtime patrons and supporters of his work at London’s Touch, and focusses on his latter phase of work, when he shifted from the laborious method of painstakingly layering instrumental recordings on tape to achieve his hypnotic microtonal masses, to the relative short-cut afforded by ProTools DAW software in the ‘90s, with equally powerful results. Opening with ‘Feedcorn Ear’, a glacially whelming 30 minute work for cellist, Arne Deforce, recorded at Marcus Schmickler’s studio in Köln, and finished at Niblock’s EI facility, it also fixes the more rustic burr of ‘A Cage of Stars’, in a commission for Sage, Gateshead, featuring harpist Rhodri Davies, and a trio of ‘Two Lips’ works for the Zwerg Guitar Quartet, Dither Guitar Quartet, and Coh Da Guitar Quartet who all derive different, yet similarly transfixing, results, from Niblock’s score.
“Phill Niblock writes: “These CDs include pieces made in two different ways. Traditionally (since 1968), I recorded tones played by an instrument (by an instrumentalist), arranging these single tones into mutli-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 1992-94, 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 ten instrumental parts. The twenty separate parts should be distributed randomly amongst the musicians of the ensemble; the ‘A group’ and the ‘B group’ are not separated spatially.”
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