Music by Phill Niblock

Track Listings

1. Five More String Quartets (25 minutes)

2. Early Winter (45 minutes)

Editorial Reviews
Bill Tilland, Option
The second piece, "Early Winter," is even more extreme, with 51 individual "voices" (computer-generated, live and recorded) creating what the composer calls a "thick mush" of sound and sustaining a single, textured drone for 45 minutes. About 15 minutes into it, my wife, kids and dog ran howling from the room. However, under the right circumstances, this piece is even more mind-altering than the first. My own breakthrough came at about 20 minutes, on headphones, during my morning commute to Seattle across Puget Sound. All of a sudden I got the point (at least for a while), and began to imagine a totally new type of music, with only minute differntiations in pitch (everything played, say, in or around G major), which used tonal color, intensity and duration (and, of course, naturally occurring overtones) as its means of expression. Extreme, yes, but worthy of consideration.

"Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Music Guide
This CD contains two compositions"Five More String Quartets" and "Early winter" both of which are long, sustained sound universes that slowly change in pitch and timbre, redefining the form of the sonic space they simultaneously create and occupy. For example, in "Early Winter" for string quartet, multitracked bass flute, sampled and synthesizer voices and flute, harmonics slowly apppear and vanish like the slow onset of winter weather. "Five More String Quartets" creates ghostly different... read more

Music by Phill Niblock

Music by Phill Niblock, Music, Eberhard Blum, The Soldier String Quartet, Susan Stenger, Phill Niblock

Average customer rating:

A whole new way of listening

Music by Phill Niblock
Phill Niblock
Manufacturer: Xi Recordings/Stickfigure
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Jazz | Styles | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
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ASIN: B00004SSMW
Release Date: 1994-02-01

Tracks:

Five More String Quartets (25 minutes)
Early Winter (45 minutes)

Customer Reviews:

A whole new way of listening.......2001-08-31

If you are familiar with "new music" this recording will be a balm to your rattled mind. If you know nothing about "new music" then this is a great place to start. (For an in depth study of this "movement" read David Toop's book, OCEAN OF SOUND, also available on this web site.) This is a great way to learn a whole new way of listening. Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, even Philip Glass, do not quite waft along the waves of harmonics the way Niblock does. If you are moved by David Hykes' Harmonic Choir recordings or Mongolian throat singing you already have the background to appreciate this recording. If you are into trance, you will find this refreshingly free of drum machines. The rhythms here are harmonic, subtlely expanding and waning, overlapping, melding, persistent and irregular as waves on a beach.

Track Listings: