**Edition of 300, six-pages digisleeve CD** At ninety-plus years of age, Phill Niblock continues to create music of devastating power and uncompromising vision. A true titan of the American avant-garde, Niblock has pursued his singular aesthetic since the 1960s, building dense, shimmering masses of sound from layered instrumental recordings that seem to exist outside of time entirely. Exploratory I and II finds the master in typically uncompromising form, long-form pieces that demand and reward complete immersion. Niblock's method is deceptively simple in description - he records instrumentalists playing sustained tones, then layers and manipulates these recordings to create slowly shifting fields of harmonic complexity - but the results are anything but simple. This is music that reveals itself gradually, microtonal beating and interference patterns emerging from what initially seems like stasis, the ear learning to perceive subtleties that conventional music never approaches.

Niblock's influence on subsequent generations of drone and experimental musicians - from La Monte Young to Stars of the Lid to the entire lowercase sound movement - is immeasurable, yet his work remains uniquely his own, instantly recognizable and utterly distinctive. The Matière Mémoire label has done invaluable work in documenting Niblock's recent output, and this release stands as another essential chapter in a body of work that ranks among the most important in contemporary music. Not background listening, but music that transforms the space it inhabits and the consciousness of anyone willing to truly engage with it.

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, Phoenix Ensemble Basel, David Maranha, Ben Richter, David First, Andre Goncalves, and many more. Matière Mémoire is now bringing the first two volumes to you By Arditti String Quartet, David Watson and Phoenix Ensemble Basel.