Phill Niblock
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.
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.
FO(A)RM N°4 (Magazine + CD)
FO(A)RM no. 4 (topography) treats the movement over, through or across a landscape and the act of documenting, utilizing or noticing an interaction with that landscape. It concerns a mapping of the points between self and space – traversing and/or transforming natural and urban environments. Within these pages, intelligent perspectives find fertile soil.Included within are essays by sound theorist Douglas Kahn (Noise Water Meat) on spherics and and cultural theorist Steven Connor (Dumbstruck) on…
Zound Delta 2
A new piece by minimalist / experimental composer Phill Niblock (1933 - 2024), co-composed and performed by Anna Clementi & Thomas Stern. Intense, menacing layers of thick drones and alien sounds.
Looking for Daniel
We commemorate the late Phill Niblock with this release made in close collaboration with the composer just before his passing in January 2024. His life and work have had a profound influence on many contemporary composers, performers and artists, so it is a great honour to be able to present here, together with Echonance Festival, recordings of some of his very last compositions. The two works on this album, “Biliana” (2023) and “Exploratory, Rhine Version, Looking for Daniel” (2019) represent t…
Rhymes With Water
Much-needed repress. 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 - glissand…
Boston Tenor Index
CD Edition. Alga Marghen returns with what might just be their most historically significant release to date, “Boston Tenor Index”, comprising three, never before released compositions - “Index”, from 1969; and “Tenor” and “Boston III”, both from 1972 - by Phill Niblock, that represent some the earliest works in his catalogue to have ever appeared. Truly stunning in audio terms, and an absolute revelation toward understanding how Niblock arrived where he did a few short years down the road, it’s…
Four Full Flutes
Born in Indiana during October 1933, since his arrival in New York City in 1958, Phill Niblock has occupied a central position within the world of avant-garde and experimental practice. Relentlessly active, his work as a visual artist and composer, in addition to his support of others via Experimental Intermedia - the performance venue he has run from his Soho loft since in 1968 - and XI - the label he founded in 1990 - have continuously lit a path for his peers and the generations that have fol…
Touch Works, For Hurdy Gurdy And Voice
*2023 stock* "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, givin…
Touch Five
*2023 stock* In October 2013 Phill Niblock will be 80 - the grand old man of minimalism. 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…
Touch Food
*2023 stock* "In the mid 1960s, I was riding a two stroke, Yamaha motorcycle up a long mountain slope in the Carolinas, stuck behind a diesel engine truck. Both of our throttles were very open, overcoming the force of gravity. Soon, the revolutions of our respective engines came to a nearly harmonic coincidence, but not quite."The strong physical presence of the beats resulting from the two engines running at slightly different frequencies put me in such a trance that I nearly rode off the side …
Touch three
*2023 stock* 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 Gl…
Baobab
*2023 stock* "Originally written for orchestra, Phill Niblock’s Disseminate (1998) and Baobab (2011) were arranged by the composer specifically for the Bozzini Quartet, or rather, for ‘multiples’ of the Quartet: twenty different tracks are mixed in each piece — twenty different instruments, the equivalent of five string quartets. The music is essentially a work on the shifting nature of overtone patterns that arise from acoustic instruments. As composer Robert Ashley convincingly argued, these p…
Nurturing Exhibitions
*Limited edition of 200 copies. Includes a 48 pages art book and 2CD.* Six musical compositions by Phill Niblock, soil and cutting tree of Amanatsu orange from Masanobu Fukuoka Natural Farm, wooden pedestals, speakers, wooden benches, wooden planter, acrylic case, water, sunlight. An exhibition by Mathieu Copeland.
Nurturing Exhibitions was one of two concomitant exhibitions that formed Exhibition Cuttings at Le Forum / Fondation Hermès in Tokyo, Japan between April 23rd (Fri.) and July 18th (Su…
Working Touch (USB)
USB in digipak; 11 films, three hours 55 minutes. Films includes: Praised Fan, for bassoon (2016, 17 min) Dafne Vicente-Sandoval, bassoon. Commissioned for the Adelaide Festival, Australia, by Ilan Volkov. Material recorded at Marcus Schmickler's P I E T H O P R A X I S studio in Koln, Germany. First Out, for guitar (2015, 22:14) David First, guitar. Completed in November 2015 in Hong Kong. Premiered on Czech Radio in Prague, Czech Republic, Nov. 27 2015. Material recorded at Berklee School of M…
Ghosts and Others
'Ghosts And Others is a singular work in the Phill Niblock canon. It’s singular not just in its material content, but also in its methodology and approach. It represents a highly focused exercise in editing, location recording and acoustic observation. In many ways, this work reflects a kind of acoustic mirroring of his practices as a film maker. It makes itself available to the world and in doing so reveals a particular perspective that says as much about its creator as it does about its subjec…
Exploratory I and II
This bundle includes Phill Niblock's Exploratory I and Exploratory II LPs released by Matière Mémoire. Records come, respectively, on transparent and clear red vinyl and are limited to 300 copies each.Matière Mémoire has the honor to present to you the new masterful work of Phill Niblock: Exploratory. One of the most beautiful and powerful works that Phill Niblock has ever offered to us! Phill reinvents and probes the oceans of drone music possibilities deeper than ever. This piece has been per…
Sound Collages (Art Book + CD)
* 200 copies, Limited and Numbered Edition * Insert: Leporello booklet that includes 7 selected images from the exhibition "Working photos" at Fridman Gallery NYC (2019) and a personal Phill Niblock story that celebrates his 60 years career. 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 10-page booklet by 7 selected pictures and an e…
Exploratory II
**Edition of 300 copies** Matiere Memoire has the honor to present to you the new masterful work of Phill Niblock: Exploratory. One of the most beautiful and powerful works that Phill Niblock has ever offered to us! Phill reinvents and probes the oceans of drone music possibilities deeper than ever. This piece has been performed and recorded for over a year by many great musicians around the world, under the supervision and direction of Phill. Arditti String Quartet, David Watson, Lucy Railton, …
Exploratory I
**Edition of 300 copies on clear Vinyl.** Matiere Memoire has the honor to present to you the new masterful work of Phill Niblock: Exploratory. One of the most beautiful and powerful works that Phill Niblock has ever offered to us! Phill reinvents and probes the oceans of drone music possibilities deeper than ever. This piece has been performed and recorded for over a year by many great musicians around the world, under the supervision and direction of Phill. Arditti String Quartet, David Watson…
NuDaf
A 65-minute electroacoustic composition featuring Dafne Vicente-Sandoval, bassoon. 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 music…
Four Walls Full of Sound
** CD / 4 Pages Digipack + Booklet ** Four Walls Full of Sound is an electronic interpretation of the works of Phill Niblock by the Prague-based group Opening Performance Orchestra. This studio version, recorded at the re-set studio, was preceded by a live performance at the 2017 Ostrava Days Festival of New and Experimental Music. The cover was designed by Jaroslav Buzek and the booklet includes essays by Kurt Gottschalk and Petr Ferenc. Sound designer Stephan Mathieu took part in shaping the r…