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ExploratoryVol. 1 + 2 (CD)

Phill Niblock - Exploratory
The new magistral piece from Phill Niblock, played by the Arditti String Quartet, David Watson and the Phoenix Ensemble Basel.
One of Phill Niblock's most beautiful and powerful works, Exploratory 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 Niblock.
Performed by the Arditti String Quartet (Irvine Arditti, violin; Ashot Sarkissjan, violin; Ralf Ehlers, viola; Lucas Fels, cello), David Watson (half scottish bagpipes, half guitar, half of those acoustic and half e-bowed electric) and Ensemble Phoenix Basel (Christoph Bösch, flutes; Toshiko Sakakibara, clarinets; Hannah Walter, violin; Nenad Markovic, trumpet; Michael Büttler, trombone; Samuel Wettstein, synth; João Pacheco, percussions; Aleksander Gabrys, double bass; Maurizio Grandinetti, E-Guitar; Thomas Peter, electronics).
One of the most important multimedia artists of his generation, American minimalist composer, filmmaker and video artist Phill Niblock (1933-2024) has produced a multidisciplinary work. His "Intermedia Art" features a combination of minimalist music, conceptual art, structural cinema, systematic or even political art, and has actively contributed to transform our perception and experience of time.
Admittedly one of the greatest experimental composers of our time, Phill Niblock initiated his career as a photographer and film director. A jazz passionate, he moved to New York in 1958 where he started photography In the mid-1960s, specializing in portraits of jazz musicians (Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Billy Strayhorn...). In the middle of the 1960s, he made his first films for the dancers and choreographers of the Judson Church Theater. From 1968 on, Phill Niblock focused on music and composed his first pieces, which, according to the artist, should be listened to at loud volume in order to explore their overtones. He pursued his film projects independently with The Movement of People Working, a series of films lasting over 25 hours, made between 1973 and 1991, in which the repetitive nature of work movements acts as a direct echo to his musical compositions.
Since the mid-1960s, his analogue photographic work has explored New York's architecture and urban planning. The sequencing and layout of his images offer a mapping of the location and object photographed, such as the areas in South Bronx (1979) fallen into disuse or the facades of SoHo Broadway district (1988). Phill Niblock was particularly interested in the screening of moving images—films and slideshows. Produced between 1966 and 1969, Six Films, a series of short films with sound realized with 16mm film, heralds his experimental method through portraits of artists and musicians such as Sun Ra and Max Neuhaus.
In 1968, the artist started experimenting a combination of his visual productions with his musical scores in order to create sound architectural and environmental compositions. Recreated by the artist for the first time since its last presentation in 1972 for the purpose of this exhibition, the Environments series extracts the reality of different surroundings through images, all the while generating a dense and intense temporary environment of projected images, music and movements throughout the museum space.
Phill Niblock was the director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade-hopping.
Mastering & cut: Frédéric Alstadt.

Photography by Phill Niblock.

Graphic design: Cedric D'hondt.
 
published in December 2021
 
20.00
 
in stock


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