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Phil Niblock
February 2nd. 2001
THE HERALD
Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh College Of Art
As a sixtysomething New York minimalist composer and multi-media
musician, Phil Niblock is big in the ever shrinking global village.
A director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the
flames of 1968 barricade hopping, Niblock touches down at Edinburgh
College Of Art this coming Monday night for a rare concert.
He's been rated alongside elder statesmen like John Cage and LaMonte
Young, as well as having collaborated with young no-wavers Lee Ranaldo
and Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth; Susan Stenger, of The Band Of
Susans; and guitar experimentalist Jim O'Rourke.
Phil Niblock's music, like his films that frequently accompany it live,
isn't so easy to pin down. For years Niblock's barely released anything
on record, dissatisfied with the tinny, lo-fi delivery of living-room
stereos.
In truth, Niblock's sound - and vision - works best in public and at
full blast. "If you play my music at low volume", says Niblock over the
phone from
a tour date in Belgium, "it's completely different, and you miss so
much that you can only get in a live arena, where I can control the
volume. It's not background music that I make, which is why I wouldn't
call it ambient".
Niblock is speaking from Gent, where the European arm of Experimental
Intermedia occupies a round-roomed installation in a house formerly
owned by a sea captain.
Niblock's life has been quite a voyage, too. Born in Indiana in 1933,
Niblock has spent 30 years combining his work in film, hotography, and
music in a unique manner.
Like his music, Niblock's films are slow-moving documentary-affairs,
often consisting of an insistent solitary shoy concentrating on people
working. The past year has found him at the centre of an
uncharacteristic flurry of activity, culminating in the release of
Touch Works, the album upon which next week's Edinburgh show is based.
Typically, Niblock's Edinburgh trip was mooted only three weeks ago,
after a chance New York encounter between the composer and Inverleith
House curator Paul Nesbitt. A performance was proposed in Inverleith's
Caledonian Hall, where the potential for wood-panelled reverb left
Niblock unfazed but might have scared the neighbours beyond the
greenery. Events have duly been transferred to Edinburgh College Of
Art's, Wee Red Bar.
"I'm making music where there's no given melody or rhythm", says
Niblock. "It's always shifting and changing. There's no score, but
the intention is that the the players create different beat patterns
and harmonic content. It's not improvised, but they pretty much do
what they do".
Niblock's collaborators on Monday will be vocalist Tom Buckner plus
guitarists Matt Rogalsky and Robert H. Lee. Between them, they've
racked up stints with long-lost cultists The Band Of Holy Joy and 4AD
house band This Mortal Coil. Niblock is nonplussed by recent patronage
by younger players.
"Choosing musicians to work with and for depends on them being
interested, but it's largely based on vituosity. I'll play with anyone
as long as they are good, but the whole noise music scence has been
good for me - I've never really fitted into a classical scene."
Neil Cooper
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