Phill Niblock (born October 2, 1933 in
Anderson, Indiana
Anderson, named after Chief William Anderson, is a city in and the county seat of Madison County, Indiana, United States. It is the principal city of the Anderson, Indiana Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses Madison County. Anderson is ...
) is an American
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and Defi ...
,
filmmaker
Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...
,
videographer
Videography is the process of capturing moving images on electronic media (e.g., videotape, direct to disk recording, or solid state storage) and even streaming media. The term includes methods of video production and post-production. It used ...
, and director of Experimental Intermedia,
Alan Licht
Alan Licht (born June 6, 1968) is an American guitarist and composer, whose work combines elements of pop, noise, free jazz and minimalism. He is also a writer and journalist.
Biography
Licht was born in New Jersey in 1968. His earliest mus ...
, ''Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Musicians 1995-2020'', Blank Forms
Blank Forms is a not-for-profit arts organization based in New York City. It was founded by Lawrence Kumpf in 2016 as a platform for the preservation and presentation of experimental and time-based performance practices. Blank Forms frequently work ...
Edition, ''Interview with Phill Niblock'', pp.453-478 a foundation for avant-garde music based in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
with a parallel branch in
Ghent
Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded in ...
, Belgium.
Early life and education
After an early period studying economics (BA,
Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana.
Campuses
Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI.
*Indiana Universit ...
, 1956) Niblock came to New York in 1958. Initially he worked as a photographer and filmmaker. Much of this activity centered around photographing and filming jazz musicians and modern dancers. An epiphany occurred while riding a motorcycle in the Carolina mountains. Niblock was climbing a grade behind a slow-moving diesel truck when the revolutions of both vehicles' engines nearly synchronized. "The strong physical presence of the beats resulting from the two engines running at slightly different frequencies put me in such a trance that I nearly rode off the side of the mountain."
[Michael Schell]
"Phill Niblock at 85: Austere, Unpopular, Astounding Minimalism"
''Second Inversion'', 2 October 2018. Retrieved 2 October 2018
Career
![Phill Niblock](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Phill_Niblock.jpg)
Niblock's first musical compositions date from 1968. Unusually, even among the avant-garde composers of his generation, he has no formal musical training. He cites the musical activities of New York in the 1960s (and occasional memorable performances, such as the premiere of
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School ...
's ''Durations'' pieces) as a stimulus. All his compositions are worked out intuitively rather than systematically. His early works were all done with tape, overdubbing unprocessed recordings of precisely tuned long tones played on traditional instruments in four, eight, or sixteen tracks. Since the late 1990s his music has been created with computer technology, notably with
Pro Tools
Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed and released by Avid Technology (formerly Digidesign) for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It is used for music creation and production, sound for picture (sound design, audio post-productio ...
on a
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
computer. His later works are correspondingly more dense in texture, sometimes involving as many as forty tracks.
Niblock has also made a number of films and videos, including several in a series titled ''The Movement of People Working''. Filmed primarily in rural environments in many countries and regions of the world (China, Brazil, Portugal, Lesotho, Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, the Arctic, Mexico, Hungary, the Adirondacks, Peru), the films look at everyday work, frequently agrarian or marine labor. These films are remarkable for their stark realism, consistent use of long takes, limited camera movement, and striking juxtaposition of non-fiction content and vivid colors. These scenes of the movement of human manual labor are treated abstractly without explicit anthropological or sociological commentary. As in his music, Niblock counters the static surface of the work with an active, varied texture of rhythm and form achieved by the bodies in motion within the frame; this is what Niblock considers to be the ultimate subject matter of his films.
Music style
Niblock's music is an exploration of sound textures created by multiple tones in very dense, often
atonal
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a s ...
tunings (generally
microtonal
Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones—intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of tw ...
in conception) performed in long durations.
The layering of long tones only very slightly distinct in pitch creates a multitude of
beats and generates complex
overtone
An overtone is any resonant frequency above the fundamental frequency of a sound. (An overtone may or may not be a harmonic) In other words, overtones are all pitches higher than the lowest pitch within an individual sound; the fundamental i ...
patterns and other fascinating psychoacoustic effects. The combination of apparently static surface textures and extremely active harmonic movement generates a highly original music that, while having things in common with early
drone
Drone most commonly refers to:
* Drone (bee), a male bee, from an unfertilized egg
* Unmanned aerial vehicle
* Unmanned surface vehicle, watercraft
* Unmanned underwater vehicle or underwater drone
Drone, drones or The Drones may also refer to:
...
-based
Minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
, is utterly distinct in sound and technique. Niblock's work continues to influence a generation of musicians, especially younger players from a variety of musical genres.
Niblock's compositional process usually begins with recordings of single, absolute tones played by a specific musician, with the breathing and
attack and decay edited out; these single tones are then layered, creating a monumental, continuous sound.
Collaborations with such musicians have been crucial to his composing life, and the range of musicians with whom he has worked include David Gibson, in the cello works of the 1970s;
Petr Kotik
Petr Kotik (surname originally KotÃk) (born January 27, 1942, in Prague) is a composer, conductor and flutist living in New York City. He was educated in Europe (Prague Conservatory, graduated 1961; Vienna Music Academy, graduated 1966; AMU Pragu ...
, Susan Stenger, and
Eberhard Blum
Eberhard Blum (April 28, 1919 – July 9, 2003), born in Kiel, was the fourth head of the German Federal Intelligence Bureau (BND). He served for the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front during World War II, last in the position of a Rittmeister. After ...
, on ''Four Full Flutes''; Rafael Toral,
David First
David First (born August 20, 1953) is an American composer. His music most often deals with drones and interference beats, the latter aligning his music with that of Alvin Lucier. He usually plays computer or guitar and has led the World Cas ...
,
Lee Ranaldo
Lee Mark Ranaldo (born February 3, 1956) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, guitarist, writer, visual artist and record producer, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth (guitar and vocals). In 2004, ''Rolling ...
,
Thurston Moore
Thurston Joseph Moore (born July 25, 1958) is an American musician best known as a member of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label. Moo ...
, Susan Stenger, and
Robert Poss
Robert Poss is an American guitarist and music producer. He was the front man and primary composer for Band of Susans between 1986 and 1996. He has also collaborated with Rhys Chatham and the band When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water ...
on ''Guitar Too, for Four'' (G2,44+1x2);
Ulrich Krieger
Ulrich Krieger (born 1962 in Freiburg) is a German contemporary composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician based in Los Angeles.
Krieger's artistic work spans a broad field from contemporary classical composition and free impro ...
, Carol Robinson,
Kaspar T. Toeplitz, and Reinhold Friedl, on ''Touch Food'';
Dave Soldier
David Sulzer (born November 6, 1956) is an American neuroscientist and musician. He is a professor at Columbia University Medical Center in the departments of psychiatry, neurology, and pharmacology. Sulzer's laboratory investigates the interact ...
and the
Soldier String Quartet
The Soldier String Quartet was a string quartet, founded by composer and violinist Dave Soldier, that specialized in performing a fusion of classical and popular music. The quartet proved a training ground for many subsequent experimental classical ...
on ''Five More String Quartets, Early Winter''; and many others. In the past decade he has produced several works for orchestra: ''Disseminate'', ''Three Orchids'' (for three orchestras), ''Tow for Tom'' (for two orchestras), and ''4 Chorch + 1'', the latter a commission for the Ostrava Music Days 2007 for chorus and orchestra with solo baritone (Thomas Buckner). The premieres of all these works have been conducted by
Petr Kotik
Petr Kotik (surname originally KotÃk) (born January 27, 1942, in Prague) is a composer, conductor and flutist living in New York City. He was educated in Europe (Prague Conservatory, graduated 1961; Vienna Music Academy, graduated 1966; AMU Pragu ...
.
In performance, live musicians may play, wandering through the audience changing the sound texture through reinforcement of or interference with the existing tunings. Simultaneously, Niblock generally accompanies performances by presenting his films and videos (often those from ''The Movement of People Working'' series, or computer-driven, black-and-white abstract images floating through time). These performances fall into two types: (1) an installation of several hours' duration, with the music pieces played consecutively, with a long loop of several hours of work before repetition, and with multiple images that are shown simultaneously; or (2) a performance, with several simultaneous works of music and film, usually lasting between one and three hours. In these performances Niblock generally projects three (or more) film images simultaneously, on large screens three to four meters wide. The films are 16mm and color. The music is produced from stereo or quad tapes, with four or more speakers in the corners of the space. His more recent video pieces are played individually or with several simultaneously, using large video monitors.
Experimental Intermedia Foundation
Since 1985, Niblock has been the director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York where he has been an artist-member since 1968. Niblock received a 1994
Foundation for Contemporary Arts
The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), is a nonprofit based foundation in New York City that offers financial support and recognition to contemporary performing and visual artists through awards for artistic innovation and potential. It was ...
Grants to Artists Award and a 201
Foundation for Contemporary ArtsJohn Cage award. He is the producer of music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 (about 1,000 performances) and the curator of EI's XI Records label. In 1993, he opened a house with window gallery at Sassekaai 45 in
Ghent
Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded in ...
, Belgium, and, in 1997, the coordinating committee—Phill Niblock, Maria Blondeel, Zjuul Devens, Lieve D'hondt, and Ludo Engels—founded a Belgian organization, the Experimental Intermedia v.z.w., Ghent. He taught at the
College of Staten Island
The College of Staten Island (CSI) is a public university in Staten Island, New York. It is one of the 11 four-year senior colleges within the City University of New York system. Programs in the liberal arts and sciences and professional studi ...
, a CUNY school, from 1971 to 1998.
Phill Niblock's music is available on the XI, Moikai,
Mode Records
Mode Records is an American record label in New York City that concentrates on contemporary classical music and other forms of avant-garde music. The label was founded by Brian Brandt in 1984, with a goal of releasing music composed by John Cage ...
, and
Touch
In physiology, the somatosensory system is the network of neural structures in the brain and body that produce the perception of touch (haptic perception), as well as temperature (thermoception), body position (proprioception), and pain. It is ...
labels. A double-sided DVD of films and music, lasting nearly four hours, is available on the Extreme label.
Discography
*''Working Touch'', 2022.
*''Touch Five'', 2013.
*''Touch Strings'', 2009.
*''G2 44 +/X 2'', 2006.
*''Touch Three'', 2006.
*''Disseminate'', 2004.
*''The Movement of People Working'' (DVD), 2003
*''Touch Food'', 2003.
*''Touch Works, for Hurdy Gurdy and Voice'', 2000.
*''A Young Person’s Guide to Phill Niblock'' (or short: YPGPN), 1994.
*''Music by Phill Niblock'', 1993
*''Four Full Flutes'', 1990.
Filmography & Videography
*''Morning'' (1966-67, B&W, 16mm, 17 min., sound)
*''The Magic Sun'' (1966-68, B&W, 16mm, 17 min., sound) with
Sun Ra
Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific out ...
*''Max'' (1966-68, B&W, 16mm, 7:30 min, sound) with
Max Neuhaus
Max Neuhaus (August 9, 1939 – February 3, 2009) was an American musician, composer and artist who was a noted interpreter of contemporary and experimental percussion music in the 1960s. He went on to create numerous permanent and short-term soun ...
*''Annie'' (1968, color, 16mm, 8 min., sound)
*''Dog Track'' (1969, color, 16mm, 8.5 min., sound)
*''Raoul'' (1968-69, color, 16mm, 20 min., sound)
*''THIR'' (aka ''Ten Hundred Inch Radii'' and ''Environments IV'') (1970, color, 16mm, 45 min., sound)
*''The Movement of People Working'' Series (1973-91, color, 16mm unless otherwise indicated, silent):
''Sur Uno and Dos (Mexico and Peru)'' (45 min.)
''Trabajando Uno and Dos (Mexico)'' (45 min.)
''Tres Familias: Essex, La Purificacion, and Alpatlahua'' (90 min.)
''Four Libros'' (45 min.)
''James Bay'' (45 min.)
''Arctic'' (45 min.)
''Hong Kong'' (45 min.)
''South Africa'' (45 min.)
''Lesotho'' (45 min.)
''Portugal'' (45 min.)
''Brasil 83 (Part 1 & 2)'' (75 min.)
''Brasil 84 (Part 1 & 2)'' (90 min.)
''Hungary (Part 1 & 2)'' (75 min.)
''China 86'' (120 min.)
''China 87'' (120 min.)
''China 88 (Part 1, 2, & 3)'' (120 min.)
''Japan 89 (Part 1 & 2)'' (120 min.)
''Sumatra'' (video)
''Romania (Part 1)'' (video)
*''Poets and Talkers'' (1975-1988, 16mm & video, 120 min., sound) with Armand Schwerner, Hannah Weiner, Erica Hunt, Dagmar Apel, and Charlie Morrow
*''Anecdotes from Childhood'' (1986-92, color, video, sound)
*''Terrace of Unintelligibility'' (1988, color, 3/4-inch U-matic video, 20 min, sound) with
Arthur Russell (musician)
Charles Arthur Russell Jr. (May 21, 1951 – April 4, 1992) was an American cellist, composer, producer, singer, and musician from Iowa, whose work spanned a disparate range of styles. After studying contemporary composition and Indian classica ...
, voice, cello
*''Muna Torso'' (1992, color, video, 20 min, sound)
*''Topolo 1'' (2005, video, 11 min., silent)
*''Topolo 2'' (2009, video, 15 min., silent)
*''Remo Osaka 1'' (2009, color, SD mini-DV, 75 min., sound)
*''Remo Osaka 2'' (2010, color, SD mini-DV, 105 min., sound)
*''Meudrone 1'' (2013, color, HD video, 30 min., sound)
*''Meudrone 2'' (2014, color, HD video, 30 min., sound)
*''Vain4 BCN'' (2015, color, HD video, 19 min., sound)
*''Agosto NOSND'' (2017, color, HD video, 19 min., sound)
*''Pulp Elder A'' (2018, color, HD video, 5 min., sound)
*''HookerNiblock'' (2015-19, color, HD video, 18 min., sound) with
William Hooker (musician)
William Hooker (born June 18, 1946) is an American drummer and composer.
Early life and education
Hooker was born in New Britain, Connecticut, on June 18, 1946. He began to play the drums at the age of 12. In high school, he played in a rock band ...
, drums
References
External links
Phill Niblock.com€”Official Web site
Experimental Intermedia Web sitePhill Niblock at 85: Austere, Unpopular, Astounding Minimalism(at Second Inversion)
at HyperReal
in ''FO A RM Magazine'', Issue 4
in Paris Transatlantic Magazine
Sample MP3Phill Niblock interview from American Mavericks siteSample from ''The Movement of People Working''(QuickTime file, 11.3 MB)
(CD supplement, FO A RM Magazine, Issue #4, 2006)
Phill Niblock at Arcane Candy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Niblock, Phill
1933 births
Living people
20th-century classical composers
21st-century classical composers
American male classical composers
American classical composers
Blast First artists
American experimental musicians
Musicians from Anderson, Indiana
India Navigation artists
21st-century American composers
20th-century American composers
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians
College of Staten Island faculty