Phill Niblock

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Phill Niblock (born 2 October 1933, in Anderson, Indiana) is a minimalist composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a parallel brach in Ghent, Belgium.

After an early period studying economics, Niblock came to New York in 1958. Initially he worked as a photographer and filmmaker; his first musical compositions date from 1968. Unusually amongst the avant-garde composers of his generation he has no formal musical training. His early works were all done with tape, overdubbing instrumental sounds in four, eight or sixteen tracks. More recently he has worked with computer technology, notably with Protools, and his later works are correspondingly more dense in texture.

Niblock's music usually consists of simultaneous drones created from tape (later computer) manipulations of recorded pitches performed by instrumentalists such as Rafael Toral, David First, Lee Ranaldo, and Thurston Moore, on Guitar Too, for Four (G2,44+1x2); Ulrich Krieger, Carol Robinson, Kaspar T. Toeplitz, and Reinhold Friedl, on Touch Food; and Petr Kotik, Susan Stenger, and Eberhard Blum, on Four Full Flutes.

Niblock's works typically consist of thick, loud, atonal drones of music, filled with microtones created by layered instrumental timbres that generate overtones by pulsing against each other in the performance space. Simultaneously, he generally accompanies performances by presenting his films/videos that look at the movement of people working, or computer-driven, black-and-white abstract images floating through time. Since the mid-1960s, he has been making music and intermedia performances that have been shown at numerous venues around the world. His musical works are notated (if at all) as actual frequencies (cycles per second) and often transform slowly from consonance to dissonance or the reverse. Unlike Charlemagne Palestine, whose approach to works of sustained sound is similar, Niblock works with absolute pitches, while Palestine generally works with tonal clusters. During performance instrumentalists often accompany the playback of recorded tracks adding subtle colorations to the music. Since 2003, Niblock frequently tours and collaborates with electroacoustic improviser Thomas Ankersmit.

Since 1985, Niblock has been the director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York where he has been an artist/member since 1968. He is the producer of Music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 (about 1000 performances) and the curator of EI's XI Records label. In 1993, he opened a house with window gallery at Sassekaai 45, in Ghent, Belgium, and in 1997, the co-ordinating committee - Phill Niblock, Maria Blondeel, Zjuul Devens, Lieve D'hondt and Ludo Engels - founded a Belgium organization, the Experimental Intermedia v.z.w. Gent.

Phill Niblock's music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode, and Touch Records labels. A DVD of films and music is available on the Extreme label, and his film The Magic Sun, an abstract, avant-garde film featuring the music of Sun Ra and members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, is available on DVD from Atavistic Records. He has released three albums on Touch Records, a UK label: Touch Works, Touch Food, and Touch Three.

[edit] Selected Discography

G2 44 +/X 2 (contains Guitar too, for four – Toral Version; Guitar too, for four – the Massed Version). Moikai, 2006.

Touch Three (contains Harm; Sethwork; Lucid Sea; Parker’s Altered Mood, aka, Owed to Bird; Zrost; Not yet titled; Valence; Alto tune; Sax Mix). Touch, 2006.

Disseminate (contains Disseminate Ostrava; Kontradictionaries; Disseminate Q-O2). Mode Records, 2004.

Touch Food (contains Sea Jelly Yellow; Sweet Potato; Yam Almost May; Pan Fried 70). Touch, 2003.

Touch Works, for Hurdy Gurdy and Voice (contains Hurdy Hurry; A Y U, aka “as yet untitled”; A Y U, Live). Touch, 2000.

YPGPN (contains Held Tones; Didjeridoos and Don’ts; Ten Auras; Ten Auras Live; A Trombone Piece; A Third Trombone; Unmentionable Piece for Trombone and Sousaphone). XI Records, 2002 (originally released 1994).

Music by Phill Niblock (contains Five More String Quartets; Early Winter). XI Records, 1993

Four Full Flutes (contains P K, S L S, P K & S L S, Winterbloom Too). XI Records, 1990.