Touch Five by Phill Niblock

Track listing:

CD One
1. FeedCorn Ear (featuring Arne Deforce) – [you can hear an extract here]
2. A Cage of Stars (featuring Rhodri Davies)

CD Two
1. Two Lips (featuring Zwerm Guitar Quartet)
2. Two Lips (featuring Dither Guitar Quartet)
3. Two Lips (featuring Coh Da Quitar Quartet)

Phill Niblock writes:

“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 microtones as I made the pieces. FeedCorn Ear and A Cage of Stars were made this way. In 1998, Petr Kotik asked me to make a piece for orchestra, so, I began to make scores for the musicians to play from. The form of that piece, and the subsequent six scored works, were patterned after a piece in 1992-94, where the musicians were tuned by hearing tones played from a tape through headphones. These are the instructions for the scored piece on the second CD, Two Lips. The score was prepared by Bob Gilmore, from specific directions by me. TWO LIPS, aka Nameless, is conceived as two scores, A and B, to be played simultaneously, lasting 23 minutes. Each score consists of ten instrumental parts. The twenty separate parts should be distributed randomly amongst the musicians of the ensemble; the ‘A group’ and the ‘B group’ are not separated spatially.”

Phill Niblock (1933-2024 in Anderson, Indiana) was an American composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a parallel branch in Ghent, Belgium.

phillniblock.com