YPGPN

by Phill Niblock.
XI Records, New York, 2002.
2 cd's (78:40 and 61:43 playing time) with booklet.
UPC: 725531022122; XI 121.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen,
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent,
Belgium,

stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

Ever wondered what a didjeridoo can do for you? Ask no more! Phill Niblock has the answer.

I met Phill Niblock once, in 1995. He walked into my apartment together with media artist Maria Blondeel, whom I was helping out with some technical stuff for a web-art piece she was doing. While Maria and I were struggling at the computer with some pre-wysiwyg html coding, Phill browsed through my modest cd collection. I could see from his face that he didn't approve. He was too polite to say so, but he modestly and gently enquired why I had a David Bowie cd standing between Bela Bartok and the Dagar Brothers (Indian Raga's). Obviously eclecticism was not his choice. I tried to explain how it was at the root of all twentieth century music. Of course I didn't know then that this unpresumptuous man was himself an icon of a specific strain of contemporary music.

It is the commitment to a specific concept of music that makes Niblock an important composer from the last decades of last century. It must be over thirty years now that he is treating us to music as a spatial and tangible phenomenon. Usually, during a performance, one or a few musician interact with a pre-recorded tape piece. The music, sounded at high volume, creates a specific and unique bath of sound. At first it appears to be very monotonous but on closer listening, one detects actual chords of approximately similar sounds.

Over time, pitch and colour change infinitesimally and very slowly, causing the ear to percieve tones that are not even performed. At different positions in space, the general hear-and-feel of the music takes on different aspects. The musicians more often than not move through this space and interact with the sonoric build-up at certain spots, creating a richer and more complex texture.
Obviously, it is impossible to re-create an exactly similar experience on cd. But that is not the point. With some imagination and an adventurous spirit, you can actually turn these 2 cd's in a different performance each time you feel like it. I advise the following: warn your neighbours that there is nothing wrong with the plumbing. Turn up the volume of your stereo. Make sure you can hear the sound through the speakers as well as through your headset. Put one or both of the speakers on a moving surface: a kitchen trolley will do but if you've got something that moves of its own accord that is better still. Start the cd, start moving, put the trolley in motion and by all means: start lístening and start feeling. Reach out to feel the music, use your ears to touch the sounds and fill in the spaces with whatever emotion or meanings you happen to have to spare at the time. The architecture has a life of its own, but it unveils its secrets only when you put in some effort. The music is not ready to be consumed, it needs to be unraveled and put together again and the nicest thing is that it changes completely each time you go through the process.

YPGPN (the Young Person's Guide to Phill Niblock) contains two cd's with 7 pieces. "Held Tones" is a piece from 1982 for flute and tape. "Didjeridoos and Don'ts" is for, yes, didjeridoo. "Ten Auras" for tenor saxophone is recorded twice: once as a tape composition and once as tape with live accompaniment.
On the second cd are "A Trombone Piece" (1978), "A Third Trombone" (1979) and "Unmentionable Piece for Trombone and Sousaphone" (1982).
All material has been released before by Blast First/Disobey in London via special arrangement with The Wire magazine, so this a re-release of a rare object.