Phill Niblock
At Seventy
by Rob Forman (Weekly Dig, Boston)As I enter the enormous loft in Soho that Phill Niblock has occupied since 1968, hemethodically starts flipping switches, and the dark space awakens in a massive
metallic but warm wail of sonic overtones. The large video screens generate theonly light as they alternately display slow motion and looped images of Asian
farmers and field workers. Niblock disappears and leaves me to absorb/experience
the intensity for about 20 minutes before I notice him sitting in a smaller room
engaged in some other activity. A pioneer in "overtone" compositions, having
developed a unique approach in the 1960s in terms of both execution (multitracking live instrumentalists tuning visually or audibly to sine tones in real time)and presentation (playing back these recordings at very loud volumes, allowing the"difference tones" to act on the listener both bodily and aurally), his methods haveremained constant. Each Niblock composition, preferably played or performed at
the loudest volume possible whether it be for guitar, trombone, strings, or flute,
results in stunning sound masses that swarm around and through the listener.
Niblock celebrates his 70th birthday this month. While continuously productive overthe decades, recent years have seen him become a tour de force, giving hundredsof performances a year throughout the world, and having numerous new andreissue documents made available on labels such as Touch, Extreme and Mokai.
Niblock also heads up Experimental Intermedia (XI), a nonprofit foundation andperformance space that has been presenting concerts since the early '70s andreleasing recordings since 1990. Niblock began his artistic career as aphotographer, taking photographs of favorite jazz artists in the late 1950s. “When I
came to New York in '58, I was going to a lot of jazz things, classical as well, andthere were these series around, and it was quite hard to distinguish theexperimental downtown music from the more academic uptown music. The
downtown stuff didn't have a center ... it sort of occurred where it occurred. Seeing
John Cage and David Tudor at the Living Theater, for instance. I first heard Morton
Feldman in 1961 and a piece with La Monte Young where he burns a violin on amusic stand. The idea that this could happen!”Though Niblock was not creating at the time, his hobby of photographing jazzmusicians evolved into photographing actors and dancers. He met thechoreographer and filmmaker Elaine Summers, with whom he eventually founded
Experimental Intermedia in 1968. “When I began making film, I began making itmuch less as a standard filmmaker and more for performance situations. I worked
with a lot of dancers who were using film. I had tried working with a couple ofpeople in terms of making music, but I wasn't really interested in collaborating, andI knew what I wanted and was personally interested in. I made some pieces withmodified sources (non-musical instruments) as well, but the first piece I made withthese masses of sound was using a church organ. I made the first piece for aconcert at Judson Church, which had film, live dance, etc. My first pieces were
essentially very directly related to all of the pieces I have done since, and [those]that I am doing now ... I've really only made this one music, and I've only beeninterested in the one idea of close-ratio tones and getting it loud enough to produce
a lot of overtone patterns. I'm more interested in making architectural,environmental sound pieces, which one can think of as a big, full box. Within thatbox, there are many possibilities of things happening, so if you move around thespace, the sound changes because of the standing waves. All of the pieces workwith that kind of thing, and I vary the structure of the pitches I use from piece topiece. I'm not interested in a tuning structure but more of an architectural structure
to create this environment.”
Over the years Niblock has incorporated film into his performances. His films, ofmanual laborers in repetitive activity, provide what at first could be viewed as
distracting from the non-referentiality of the auditory element but in fact enhance itwith their slow dissolves. Niblock uses only a handful of simple images that areseveral minutes long, with no editing or jump cuts. The sequences repeat but do
not evolve, and there is no narrative. As with the musical element, they erase thesense of time passing. His performances at XI often last as long as six hours, withfour projections paired with the continuous mass of drones. The technical aspect of
the space itself has evolved over the years to accommodate these performances.
When Niblock travels, the concept is the same, but the technical reality of location
provides unpredictability. “You still run into places that have sound systems forplayback that are not the greatest, and it's always hard to find really good
situations. Everywhere I play, my music sounds different, because the soundsystem is different, the architectural space is different, and sometimes even withvery, very good sound systems, it doesn't sound particularly good, because thearchitectural aspect of the space is wrong. I've done things at other places where
there was much less of a sound system, and it was fine, because the acoustics
really worked. In general, the bigger and more echoic it is, the better. Cathedrals
are especially fantastic.”
Experimental Intermedia has hosted over 1000 concerts since the '70s with no signof letting up. The series Niblock now curates consists of a month of concerts inMarch and December. While historically the performances usually featured other
New York artists, the series has expanded to include composers, sound artists andimprovisers from all over the globe, with a strong presence from younger artists.
Niblock acts as a mentor for many of them, and in turn they have created
opportunities for him to perform and release his music on their labels. The space,label and performances all creatively feed off each other. “The documents (LPs,CDs) came partly because of the history of the concert series and partly because itwas interesting to do something that could exist beyond this place. I think artists
should produce other artists. Elaine thought that, when she had the idea for thefoundation. I think a lot of art activity happens because it's produced by artists, andthat people who become known, become known because they get exposed first by
this process, and that's an important aspect of art. I was always leery about records,
but it was also necessary to get some stuff out that could be more widely
disseminated than was possible in making concerts. And, in turn, the recordings
made it possible to do more concerts.”

Though his laconic and unpretentious style, and deliberate but industrious work
ethic has always served him well (he is originally from Indianapolis after all),Niblock has now attained legendary status as an international sound artist andcomposer, and is incredibly visible and involved with many different movements intoday's experimental underground. There is a timeless aspect to Niblock's music
and art, in how it works on the observer but also how it defies being dated by themarkers of history and culture. This quality washes back onto Niblock himself, soeven as he turns 70 this month, one feels as if he has always been doing this artand always will be, even as the rest of us pass by. Recent documents include
Guitar 2, For Four (Mokai), Touch Food (Touch) and the DVD The Movement ofPeople Working (Extreme), a collection of early film and audio works.
Phill Niblock celebrates his 70th birthday on October 1 at Tonic in NY with aconcert featuring Jim O'Rourke, Ryoji Ikeda, Lary 7, Brandon Labelle, Yasunao
Tone and Ken Montgomery. <http://www.experimentalintermedia.org>www.experimentalintermedia.org
rob forman--- sedimental: label(<http://www.sedimental.com>www.sedimental.com)--- continuous drift/test pattern: radio (<http://www.zbconline.com>www.zbconline.com)--- non-event: events (<http://www.nonevent.org>www.nonevent.org)--- dalla terra: wine (<http://www.dallaterra.com>www.dallaterra.com)