Tag: Phill Niblock

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Phill Niblock – NuDaf [Xi Records XI 145/AKOH 145]; Tom Chiu – The Live One [Xi 144]

NuDaf an hour-long, electroacoustic drone work, is the newest release from composer Phill Niblock. Composed in 2020, the piece is constructed out of a series of recordings bassoonist Dafne Vicente-Sandoval made in Cologne in 2015, some of which were used in Niblock’s shorter, 2016 composition Praised Fan. For NuDaf, Niblock layered Vicente-Sandoval’s long tones rather sparingly, creating unisons, near-unisons separated by microtones, and slowly-changing, sometimes startling harmonies. Because Niblock avoids building massive blocks of sound, the piece is dense yet always harmonically legible.

Violinist/composer Tom Chiu also offers a layered electroacoustic work on The Live One, a two-CD set that features Chiu in solo, duo, trio, and quartet settings, most of which were captured live. It is a fine portrait of a versatile artist. The piece is Into the Forest (2011), whose basic material is a set of brief violin passages processed and assembled (by Terence Pender) into a moving work by turns melodic and abstract. RETROCON (2015) for string quartet, is a relentlessly dynamic, dramatic piece performed by the Flux Quartet (Chiu and Conrad Harris on violins; Max Mandel on viola; and Felix Fan on cello) the recurring theme to which is an undulating swarm of arpeggiated chords seemingly threatening to tip over into an abyss of emotional chaos. Chiu’s Duo Improvisation 16741 with modular synthetist Michael Schumacher, recorded live in 2017, likewise takes as its starting point a rapidly bowed arpeggio, but it very quickly develops into a broad exploration of pure sound and extended technique. Extended technique is also very much on display in BABIP, a live solo recording from 2008. The wryly titled deKonstrukt (2013) is another live solo performance, but here Chiu in fine postmodern form appropriates quotations from classical music’s past which he juxtaposes and loops with original material as well. The Live One also includes a 2020 beat-driven trio improvisation with Dan Joseph on hammer dulcimer and Jason Candy on modular synthesizer and beats.

Daniel Barbiero

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Ensemble neoN – Niblock/Lamb [Hubro HUBROCD2601]

For their new CD, Ensemble neoN, a Norwegian chamber group dedicated to performing works of new music, chose to program together two conceptually and sonically dovetailing works by composers Phill Niblock and Catherine Lamb. Call it two perspectives on drone music.

Niblock’s To Two Tea Roses (2012), a paradigmatic work, is a long-tone composition for combined live and prerecorded orchestras. Niblock makes good use of nuanced movement within a solid block of sound, giving the piece the character of a sustained, suspended major chord with a fluctuating undertow of microtonal disquiet. Ensemble neoN’s realization employs an octet of winds, strings, piano and bowed vibes that fuses into a composite voice that has the ringing sound and subtle, cyclical dynamics of a particularly dense tamboura.

Catherine Lamb’s Parallax Forma (2016), like To Two Tea Roses a long-tone work, is less dense than Niblock’s and includes more overt harmonic movement. The piece’s foreground is dominated by singers Stine Janvin Motland and Silje Aker Johnsen, whose voices float ethereally over the seven-piece chamber orchestra.

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Quatuor Bozzini – Phill Niblock: Baobab [Collection QB CQB 1924]; Simon Martin: Musique d’art [Collection QB CQB 1922]

Founded by the Bozzini sisters, cellist Isabelle and violinist Stéphanie, the eponymous Montréal-based string quartet has been a significant presence in Canadian new music since the early 2000s. The Bozzini’s two CDs, one each of works by US composer Phill Niblock and Québec’s Simon Martin, are the latest additions to a substantial catalogue of recordings of sound- and concept-based contemporary music.

Baobab presents two large-scale works by Niblock (b. 1933). Both pieces—Baobab, originally composed in 2011, and Disseminate, composed in 1998—were first written for orchestra and appear here as revised in 2017. By means of multi-track layering, they’ve been rearranged for string quartet multiplied times five. Both pieces are quintessential Niblock—thickly textured swarms of drones made up of microtones and moving timbres. Sustaining the requisite long tones undoubtedly is a challenge to the players’ physical stamina, but the sounds never falter.

For Musique d’art, a five-movement, hour-long work for string quintet by Martin (b. 1981), the quartet—which in addition to the Bozzini sisters includes violinists Alissa Cheung and Clemens Merkel—is joined by double bassist Pierre-Alexandre Maranda. Like Niblock’s two pieces, Musique d’art is centered on the development elongated chords, but with more variability of density, dynamics and rates of harmonic change. Pitches drop out and fade in; discordant tones come and go as the intervals between notes widen and narrow; bow articulations shift to introduce changes to timbre and to add complexity to the stacked overtones. Not all of this is about pitch relationships: while at times the quintet sounds like a robust, tuned and detuned tamboura, at other times their collective sound dissolves into harsh, grey noise and rough, unpitched textures. Martin set out to create a fecund dialectic of sound and music with the piece, and in that he has succeeded.

https://www.actuellecd.com

http://www.quatuorbozzini.ca

Daniel Barbiero

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Reviews

Bagatellen Reviews

From Bagatellen:

Phill Niblock – Touch Strings
Touch
Following 2006’s monumental 3-CD set Touch Three, amid the uppermost pinnacles in Phill Niblock’s career, the latest bulletin by the Indiana dronemeister – who forces the aficionados to settle for just a double helping this time – is completely dedicated to string instruments, both electric and acoustic. The release was repeatedly postponed, generating the sort […]

David Sylvian – Manafon
Samadhisound
Blemish must have marked a mini-seismic ‘event’ for David Sylvian when it was recorded over a six week hiatus, marking a departure from his normal precision in the studio. The songs were stark, aching confessionals that recalled the work of the late modernist Samuel Beckett in the honest nature of their ruminations on everything […]

Jon Mueller – Physical Changes
Table Of The Elements
Percussionist and composer Jon Mueller’s discerning creativity does not rule out a willingness to put the listener’s ears through the ordeals. His music is often bewilderingly violent, yet retains a pumping nucleus connecting it with all that matters in life, good or bad: bodily functions, natural phenomena, ecologic disasters, contagious enthusiasm. The […]

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Performances

Eli Keszler & Ashley Paul at Metropolis 8/10

From Syracuse’s New Thing Productions:

August 10th @ 8pm
Eli Keszler & Ashley Paul
$5-$10 Donation
Metropolis Underground
615 S. Main St (backside of bldg, first door on your left)
N. Syracuse, NY 13212

Eli Keszler, using drums, along with crotales, bells, bowed metal, strings, Eli creates a unique whirlwind of sound that balances sparse droning harmonics with intense, fast, free rhythms. He has performed, recorded or collaborated with artists such as Jandek, Phill Niblock (performed a new work of his for bowed crotales and saxophone), Roscoe Mitchell, Loren Connors, Charles Cohen, Anthony Coleman (appearing on his New World Records Release), Aki Onda, Bryan Eubanks, David Linton, Steve Pyne (Redhorse), Greg Kelley, Ashley Paul. Eli has performed at venues like The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Irving Plaza, Merkin Hall, Issue Project Room, The Stone and The Knitting Factory (NYC and LA), and countless bookstores, basements, and small galleries around the US and Europe. He has released solo CD’s and cassettes on REL as well as labels such as Rare Youth (debut solo LP, Livingston), Reverb Worship and Something on The Road.

Ashley Paul plays reeds, unique string instruments, electronics and sings. Her dream-like music juxtaposes aggressive, sustained high pitched blasts, floating vocals, clattering strings and bells, cry- like saxophones and is somehow tied together by oddly melodic songs. In the past year she performed with Loren connors, Aki Onda, Joe Morris, and Greg Kelley, premiered a new work by Phill Niblock for soprano saxophone and bowed crotales (written for her and Eli Keszler), performed as part of the US premiere of Mauricio Kagel’s masterpiece ‘Der Schall’ at Merkin Concert Hall in New York and was heard in a live feature on wzbc’s Rare Frequency. Additionally, Ashley performs regularly with Anthony Coleman in duo, trio and on his recent New World Records release, plays duo with Eli Keszler and has recently begun performing solo, sharing the stage with Thurston Moore, Mats Gustaffson, Chris Corsano and others.
http://www.myspace.com/elikeszler

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Eli Keszler, Ashley Paul, Silvum at Sonic Circuits

From DC’s Sonic Circuits:

Tuesday July 7
Doors 730pm Music 8pm SHARP
$7
PYRAMID ATLANTIC
8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring MD 20910
301.608.9101
located three blocks south of the silver spring metro station (red line)
Free parking in gated lot out front
DIRECTIONS: http://www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org
INFO: dc-soniccircuits.org

Eli Keszler

Using drums, along with crotales, bells, bowed metal, strings, Eli creates a unique whirlwind of sound that balances sparse droning harmonics with intense, fast, free rhythms. He has performed, recorded or collaborated with artists such as Jandek, Phill Niblock (performed a new work of his for bowed crotales and saxophone), Roscoe Mitchell, Loren Connors, Charles Cohen, Anthony Coleman (appearing on his New World Records Release), Aki Onda, Bryan Eubanks, David Linton, Steve Pyne (Redhorse), Greg Kelley, Ashley Paul. Eli has performed at venues like The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Irving Plaza, Merkin Hall, Issue Project Room, The Stone and The Knitting Factory (NYC and LA), and countless bookstores, basements, and small galleries around the US and Europe. He has released solo CD’s and cassettes on REL as well as labels such as Rare Youth (debut solo LP, Livingston), Reverb Worship and Something on The Road.

Ashley Paul

Ashley Paul plays reeds, unique string instruments, electronics and sings. Her dream-like music juxtaposes aggressive, sustained high pitched blasts, floating vocals, clattering strings and bells, cry-like saxophones and is somehow tied together by oddly melodic songs. In the past year she performed with Loren connors, Aki Onda, Joe Morris, and Greg Kelley, premiered a new work by Phill Niblock for soprano saxophone and bowed crotales (written for her and Eli Keszler), performed as part of the US premiere of Mauricio Kagel’s masterpiece ‘Der Schall’ at Merkin Concert Hall in New York and was heard in a live feature on wzbc’s Rare Frequency. Additionally, Ashley performs regularly with Anthony Coleman in duo, trio and on his recent New World Records release, plays duo with Eli Keszler and has recently begun performing solo, sharing the stage with Thurston Moore, Mats Gustaffson, Chris Corsano and others.

links/sounds: http://www.myspace.com/elikeszler http://www.myspace.com/ashleygpaul http://www.relrecords.net/catalogue.html http://www.relrecords.net http://www.myspace.com/elikeszler

Silvum

“I’m always trying to focus and clarify where I am going with my sound works to generate the most honest creations possible. Like anyone, I am inevitably influenced by many things (to view that as negative is utopian), but never want those influences to overcome my expression. In the spectrum of my goals, there’s no point in recreating what has already been done (I have no problem with stylistic explorations of established styles or approaches in other artists / genres), and I am always realizing that my works can be easily classified (I’m not destroying any boundaries). While sound revolution is not the point, I do want to create something as “true” and refined as possible, something that is me, or more practically a part of me: a mood a sensation, a memory. An alchemy where I take the standard elements and generate something unique.”

http://www.myspace.com/silvum

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Ulrich Krieger at Lampo

From Chicago’s Lampo:

ULRICH KRIEGER
FEB 7 9pm
Something loud, then quiet, then loud again from Ulrich Krieger, German saxophonist, in his hotly anticipated Chicago debut.

At Lampo he presents “R.A.W.”—a new solo program for amplified tenor sax and live electronics. Sub-bass drones, sharp noise attacks, saxophone-controlled pitched feedback, noise and extended playing techniques, ranging from thick wall-of-sound to sparse reductionism. He calls his style of playing “acoustic electronics,” using sounds that appear to be electronic, but that are really produced on acoustic instruments and then sometimes electronically treated.

Ulrich Krieger (b. 1962, Freiburg, Germany) is a composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician. His main instruments are saxophones, clarinets, didgeridoo and electronics. He is perhaps best known for transcribing Lou Reed‘s “Metal Machine Music” for the chamber orchestra zeitkratzer in 2002. As a member of that ensemble he also has performed noise music by Merzbow, Zbigniew Karkowski and John Duncan, scored for and faithfully reproduced by classical instruments. Additional projects include the John Cage-focused quartet A Cage of Saxophones; and Text of Light, a group including Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht and Christian Marclay that improvises soundtracks to avant-garde films. Other collaborations include Phill Niblock, Kasper T. Toeplitz and LaMonte Young. Since 2007 he has lived in Los Angeles, where he is a member of the CalArts music faculty.

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Releases

Shinkoyo Web Releases

Shinkoyo Web has new material out.

PALO – Monument to Our Common Past is Southwestern Folk Music for the 31st Century. Backcountry Zappa-esque vocals haunting tales of Arizona roads and lost loves over Parch influenced alternatively tuned C-sound synthesizers. Palo (Paul Chaikin) was a friend of Shinkoyo at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music TIMARA program (Technology in Music and Related Arts). PALO appears on secret Shinkoyo release (upcoming JUKO re-release!) Elyria Lights by Peter Blasser. Paul Chaikin is lost to us now. Paul Chaikin – PLEASE CONTACT US! If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of Paul Chaikin, please contact us.

REGATTAS – Garudas – is a collection of solo saxophone pieces recorded in different spaces by Sam Hillmer (aka Regattas) co-founder of the band/chamber ensemble Zs as well as Wet Ink, a new music presenting organization, ensemble, and composer’s collective. In addition to his work with Zs, Hillmer is currently playing and performing with Dirty Projectors, MOTH, and John Dwyer (of Ohsees). Hillmer is also active as a curator and educator. In collaboration with artist Laura Paris, he organizes the biannual performance festival and installation YOU ARE HERE: 21 nights of performance in a sculptural maze. Hillmer is currently producing the youth hip-hop recording series Representing NYC. The first volume, The Fly Girlz’ “Da Bratz From Da Ville”, is due out this November on Wisdom Through Music and Socketts CDs. Hillmer has had the privilege of working with and playing the music of Mick Barr, Weasel Walter, Joe Maneri, Christian Wolff, Phill Niblock, Roscoe Mitchell, Petr Kotik, Louis Andriessen and Larry Polansky. Recordings of his music are available on labels threeoneg, Planaria Recordings, Epicene Sound Systems, Tzadik, Zum, Gilgongo, Socketts, New Sonic, and Troubleman Unlimited.

SHINKOYO is the ectoplasm connecting a diverse group of composers, visual artists, improvisers, instrument builders, thinkers, scholars and healers exploring new syntheses of sound and art. We operate on terms of collectivity and collaboration, while supporting the individual voices of all Shinkoyos. Shinkoyo submits to no genres, but Ancient Futurism, Noise Age, and True Age are terms to be discovered. Born in 2000 at the Oberlin Conservatory, we began releasing music in fall of 2002. Shinkoyo has spread its wings from California to New York, with its headquarters at the Paris London West Nile Performance/Gallery Space – Brooklyn’s donation-based center for experimental performance and art. In summer 2008, Shinkoyo launched its SHINKOJUKO free jukebox and donation-based online music store, showcasing our catalog of music releases from 2002 to the present. http://www.shinkoyo.com

PARIS LONDON WEST NILE is Shinkoyo’s donation-based center for experimental performance and art located in the old Domino Sugar Factory building in Williamsburg, NYC. Past performances/art shows/lectures include Tony Conrad, Costes (France), Non Grata (Estonia), Aki Onda, Vampillia (Tokyo), Jessica Rylan, Nautical Almanac, Graveyards (John Olsen), Paul Flaherty & Randall Colbourne, and many many more. See http://www.shinkoyo.com/parislondon/ for more info.

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This Weekend at the ISSUE Project Room

Various unusual saxophone variants; clockwise ...
Image via Wikipedia

From ISSUE Project Room:

Issue Project Room, 232 Third Street , Brooklyn N Y;
http://www.issueprojectroom.org

October 8th – October 11th
Celebrating Phill Niblock’s 75th Birthday and his contribution to
Experimental Music
Organized with the help of Katherine Liberovskaya and Alan Margolis
There will be films / video from the “Movement of People Working” series

Wednesday October 8th – Works from the 60s and 70s
Tenor (1969, 13 minutes) Martin Bough, recorded tenor saxophone
3 to 7 – 196 (December 1974, 23:40), David Gibson, cello, recorded
Four Arthurs (April 1978, 22 Min) Arthur Stidfole, bassoon, recorded;
Leslie Ross, bassoon live
A Third Trombone (June 1979, recording revised 1994; 20:54), Jon English,
trombone, recorded, Chris McIntyre live trombone

Thursday October 9th – Works from the 80s and 90s
Didjeridoos and Don’ts (1992, 13:30), Ulrich Krieger, didjeridu
Five More String Quartets (1991-93, 25 min), The Soldier String Quartet,
recorded; Robert Engelbrecht, cello; Peter Imig, violin, playing live
Summing II, (1985, 32 minutes), David Gibson, recorded cello; Robert
Engelbrecht, cello, playing live

Friday October 10th – Works from the 2000s
A set by Phill Niblock, mixing his sound works, and Katherine
Liberovskaya, live video
Pan Fried 27.5 (27:30, 2001/3) Reinhold Friedl, piano played with a single nylon string tied to piano strings, recorded piano; Jan Feddersen, bowed piano, live
Sethwork (21:48, 2003) Seth Josel, unamplified guitars played with e-bow,
recorded guitar;
Byron Westbrook, and The Nelly Boyd Ensemble (Hamburg) –
Robert Engelbrecht, Jan Feddersen, Peter Imig, Jens Rohm, playing live
guitars

Saturday October 11th – Works from the 2000s
Poure (2008, 24 minutes) (New York Premier) Arne Deforce, cello, recorded
One Large Rose (2008, 46 minutes) (World Premier) The Nelly Boyd Ensemble
(Hamburg) – Robert Engelbrecht, cello; Jan Feddersen, bowed piano; Peter
Imig, violin; Jens Rohm, bass, playing live

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Lou Reed and Ulrich Krieger at REDCAT

Lou Reed
Image via Wikipedia

Reed and Krieger play LA’s REDCAT:

October 2-3, 2008

Unclassified: Lou Reed and Ulrich Krieger
World Premiere

“[Lou Reed] has gotten so far beyond us that he has come around to meet us from the other side.” Spin

Rock music icon Lou Reed and sonic experimentalist Ulrich Krieger take the stage together for the first time to improvise music and make soundscapes. The pair use guitars, saxophones and an array of electronic treatments to venture into deep acoustic space, drawing on new music, free jazz, avant-rock, noise and ambient in a set of intense conceptual pieces and intuitive improvisations. The artists first met in 2002 for the premiere of Krieger’s transcription and arrangement of Metal Machine Music — Reed’s seminal guitar feedback epic — for the chamber orchestra Zeitkratzer. More recently, Reed has been touring a new stage version of his 1973 rock oratorio Berlin, a work that was the subject of the stunning concert film by Julian Schnabel released this summer. Krieger, who has collaborated with artists from Reed and Lee Ranaldo to Phill Niblock and Merzbow, has been a member of CalArts‘ music faculty since last fall.

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