DL – 2 tracks – 1:02:50
Mary Prestidge writes: “I’m recalling the joy Philip had in spinning 70s disco dance music for my 70th birthday bash in 2018.
Philip’s experiments with turntable and vinyl began over 40 years ago using these 12″ singles. It marked a moment of belief that he could take these sounds further…
Play on…”
Philip Jeck’s birthday 70 years ago today, 15th November 1952
Release date 15th November 2022
Now available
Track listing:
1. Philip Jeck – Live in Torino 35:33
2. Philip Jeck & Jonathan Raisin – The Long Wave, Live at Liverpool Philharmonic 27:27
Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Reviews:
Dusted (USA):
Touch has never been about staying in the past, so it makes sense that the firm would experiment with new formats. Resistenza is a digital-only recording issued on what would have been the 70th birthday of the late Philip Jeck, whose passing was just one of those that has made 2022 an especially rough slog. It’s simultaneously a bit sad and quite poetic that the first (and hopefully not last) posthumous release by an artist whose work was all about the stubborn physicality of vinyl would be a non-physical edition. It comprises two live recordings, both made in 2017-18.
The more recent is Live in Torino, a fittingly ephemeral sequence of sounds snatched from old records and manipulated into ghostly scraps that spin and bob like the luminous traces left by deep sea fishes. ‘The Longest Wave,’ which was recorded in Jeck’s home town of Liverpool, is quite the opposite. Jeck is joined by Jonathan Raisin, whose piano trills augment Jeck’s already lush flow. The best moments come when the turntablist breaks out some sub-aquatic bass figures that ballast Raisin’s delay-dampened drizzle of notes. [Bill Meyer]
Avant Music News (USA):
The singular talent of Philip Jeck was a thing to behold. Hearing this posthumous document of two live performances I can’t help but think hell… this guy deserves to stand on the same pedestal as some of the great sound organisers like Parmegiani, Bayle, and Ferrari. The word ‘organiser’ is not enough though. Parm, Bayle, and Ferrari were composers… composers of the highest order, plain and simple. Jeck was too, but he just chose to do it without the typical tools of the trade of the GRM (and others) crowd. A couple of cheap, heavy-duty workhorse turntables and a large collection of old vinyl records are all one really needs to know about Philips’ M.O. This was the basic stuff that was augmented by an equally basic Casio sampling keyboard and other mundane delay and looping stomp boxes and… that’s it. That’s what it took to deliver the world to his doorstep and damn…did he make full use of it!
Resistenza is released by Touch (the label that has made it possible for the world to hear his entire catalog of works) on what would have been his 70th birthday. It grants us a front-row seat for two live performances that further cement Philip Jecks’ particular genius… not that it needs cementing as any listen to past albums would attest to. The first track, simply titled ‘Live in Torino’ is a 36-minute sonic walk through an amorphous cloud of memory, nostalgia, triumphant joy, and deep melancholic beauty.
The first time I heard the ‘Live in Torino’ set I just let it have its way with me. I knew I was in for some of that special kind of weirdness that only Jeck could provide, and it was there. You know… how he drapes everything in a patina of ‘the good ole days’ where life held a certain potential… personal to each listener but common in the way that somehow, things were better back then. It’s that hauntological future… the one that somehow got away, and you start asking yourself how in the world did I get to this point, in the here and now? This is all a Jeck-ian trademark and it’s present in everything I’ve heard from him.
So yes, in that respect ‘Live in Torino‘ is new/old Jeck. Something that a fan would expect. Crazy that the expectation is there to begin with… like, ho hum, another typical Philip Jeck walk down memory lane and oh, have a raw emotional trigger point to mull over in the process. Sure, that happens all the time in music, right? RIGHT?
So, the write-up could pretty much end here by saying Resistenza is a must listen. Music that succeeds this strongly at the ‘feelings’ level should be and IS enough… full stop. But, after going through my own little catharsis, further listens were of a more analytical nature… I know, imagine that? I wanted to try and disassemble the music and search for that element that makes it tick. ‘Live in Torino’ ebbs and flows and, within its many moving parts is the walking path a listener can take that holds them all together. The changes that the piece goes through, and there are quite a few… all work together in painting that memory-stimmed panorama I spoke about above. Funnelling down, it’s the quiet little details, the workers within the music that are the essential building blocks.
The controlled use of the clicks, pops, and scratches in the records he uses, the choices of old, haunted ghostly sounds from those records, the speeds in which he plays them, the way he piles these sound events on top of each other as they loop into infinity, the way he fades from one motif to another… I don’t have the foggiest idea technically what he’s doing but the hard listens I’ve done were incredibly fascinating, in a mind-bending sort of way. What makes the music tick? Well, that’s the wrong question. It just does… and somehow Philip Jeck has tapped into it.
The second piece on the album, ‘The Long Wave‘, Live at Liverpool Philharmonic is a 27-minute duet with pianist Jonathan Raisin. In contrast to the many faceted dips and swerves in ‘Live in Torino’, this piece has Jeck sticking, at least for the most part to providing a mid to high-range drone as a bedrock for Raisin’s piano excursions.
The piano is placed high in the mix, certainly higher than Jeck’s electronics so it’s harder to key on whatever detail he’s bringing into the piece other than a sense of smooth smears of sound. This sympathetic base serves its purpose because… by way of contrast, the piano seems to be the star here. Raisin’s playing uplifts this piece into the cinematic zone. I’m occasionally reminded of pianist Ketil Bjørnstad’s water-themed albums from the 90’s on ECM. The Long Wave, while lacking in the ghostly, time folding within itself moments of ‘Live in Torino’ still works wonders. It taps into the limbic system from the direction of something more… hopeful. A sense of yearning, or longing for a redemption that just might be within grasp. We can all use some of that!
Resistenza is a superb document showing two different, but equally great faces of Philip Jeck. This release comes with my HIGHEST recommendation. [Michael Eisenberg]
The Wire (UK):
It feels more appropriate than ever to avoid the word elegiac with Philip Jeck’s first posthumous album, released on what would have been his 70th birthday. It always seemed a bit pat while he was alive, borderline crass with his afterimage yet unfaded. But fading afterimages of lost things were somewhat his métier – along with the poetics of surface. Resistenza calls the latter to mind, but it invites reflection on any facet of Jeck’s quiet profound and abiding influence.
Jeck’s multimedia projects reflected his fine art background. See ‘Vinyl Requiem,’ a semi-automated scratch orchestra of up to 180 rescued Dansette turntables playing locked 12″s, addressing obsolescence kinetic sculpture, the arrive, the found object or readymade, etc. But his albums were arguably more analogous to painting. A few brittle millimetres of deteriorated plastic could convey pristine shallowness or unfathomable depth, or both, depending on technique. The caveat being that said technique recognises the material’s prevailing tendency to do whatever it wants, regardless of dexterity.
Resistenza features a 35 minute piece live recording from Turin, Italy in 2018. At its most touch sensitive for roughly the first quarter, its cascading patinas of tiny reverberating nicks accrue around a minimal harmonic progression. More slated flaring sound is introduced methodically, as though feeding into a sonic loom. Subaquatic impressions ascend, stretched guitar picking teeters and heartsick strings swell, while maintaining the perfect lightness and tactility of something on or immediately below a surface.
The second piece, titled ‘The Long Wave’ and recorded at Liverpool Philharmonic in collaboration with pianist and composer Jonathan Raisin, is harder to square with Jeck’s oeuvre than the first. By necessity, he seems to forfeit his signature permeability, shoring up against the depth and resonance of Raisin’s piano, just so the piece doesn’t sound like a gale force wind conversing with a spiderweb. It’s a polite and considered exchange, but on somewhat compromised terms. [James Gormley]
Nieuwe Noten (NL):
Meer minimalisme en meer van het Engelse Touch. Twee musici die volledig met elektronica werken en dit combineren met veldopnames. Onder de noemer ‘Resistenza’ bracht Philip Jeck twee live opnames uit en verder hier aandacht voor het bijzonder subtiele ‘Evergreen’van Patrick Shiroishi. Beide albums zijn louter te verkrijgen als download.
Rustig stromende klanken in ‘Live in Torino’, een kabbelende drone. Iets verderop afgewisseld met veldopnames van stromend water en dieren die ik niet direct kan thuisbrengen. Het is vredig, maar tegelijkertijd ook spannend en abstract. En het is dat wat deze muziek onderscheidt van ambient. Qua tempo verschilt het niet veel, maar de muziek van Jeck, of van Cleared, dat hier gisteren voorbij kwam, mist dat spirituele, esoterische wat ambient vaak kenmerkt. Hier gaat het er echter anders aan toe, zeker de muziek van Jeck heeft regelmatig eerder iets chaotisch over zich, terloops en willekeurig. Dat we zo rond de twaalfde minuut van dat ‘Live in Torino’ toch ineens in een meeslepende klankstroom terechtkomen doet daar niets van af. Want rond de twintigste minuut viert de abstractie weer hoogtij en is van de ritmiek weinig meer over. Wat volgt is overigens een prachtige scene met als basis een klassiek stuk voor koor, op originele wijze door Jeck bewerkt. Op ‘The Long Wave, Live at Liverpool Philharmonic’ krijgt Jeck gezelschap van pianist Jonathan Raisin wat het stuk een volledig andere lading geeft. Terwijl Jeck een sfeervolle geluidsomgeving creëert horen we Raisin sterk verdichte patronen spelen. Een prachtige combinatie die leidt tot een bijzonder spannend en stuwend muzikaal landschap. [Ben]