Philip Jeck

Release date: 15th November 2024
Available to order now on Bandcamp

Track Listing: [DCD – 16 tracks]

CD1
1. Fennesz – Dancer
2. Gavin Bryars & Philip Jeck – 1 Piste
3. Chris Watson – Saltmarshe Station
4. Rosy Parlane – Stoked
5. Cris Cheek – Clocking Off
6. Claire M Singer & Philip Jeck – Sketch One
7. Gavin Bryars & Philip Jeck – 4 Piste
8. Faith Coloccia – Pleione

CD2
1. Philip Jeck – Mono
2. David Sylvian & Hildur Guðnadóttir – I Measure Every Grief I Meet
3. Claire M Singer & Philip Jeck – Sketch Two
4. Jah Wobble & Deep Space – Jeck, Drums, 2 Basses
5. Drums Off Chaos – Keep in Touch
6. Gavin Bryars & Philip Jeck – 8 Piste
7. Chandra Shukla – The Ark Has Closed
8. Jana Winderen & Philip Jeck – Pilots

With rpm, we wanted to join some of the dots of Philip’s life and involve many other collaborators, early and more recent. Fennesz was a friend and kindred spirit on the same label. Claire M Singer formed a new chemistry and partnership and although their plans must now take a different form, Mary found some sketches Philip had laid out using Claire’s organ recordings, for further development. Faith Coloccia & Philip had already released Stardust on Touch in 2021. Their live performance together at 2220arts + archives, Los Angeles in March 2022 celebrating Touch’s 40th anniversary had to be shelved. And in September of that year Iklectik hosted a memorable tribute night with live work from Chris Watson, Liverpool Improvisation Collective, Claire M Singer and others – most of all a dedicated audience who knew and felt that this was a future event and not the end of the story.

A work in progress at the time of Philip’s death, Oxmardyke, a project with Chris Watson, saw the light of day as Touch Tone 83 in early 2023 – working on recordings Chris had sent, Philip with laptop perched on hospital bed, almost to the end. There were other artists who wanted to actively contribute further, whether in performance or contributing to this album: Jana Winderen had already sent Philip her recordings of pilot whales and the track you hear was finished in March 2022. Cris Cheek was in Slant with Philip and Sianed Jones, who also sadly left us that same year – their work together predates Philip’s with Touch. Philip owed much in his early years of composing and playing to his collaboration with dancers, theatre and film makers – in particular, a 10 year working and performing partnership with Laurie Booth, Yip Yip Mix and the 20th Century, which toured widely during the 1980s and early 90s. An early audio visual work, Vinyl Requiem (1993) was created with visual artist Lol Sargent, using 180 record players, nine slide projectors and two 16mm projectors producing a live performance on a huge scale. Vinyl Requiem wasn’t exactly about the end of vinyl, but the dawn of some- thing else regarding sound recording and music. It was never a final statement but a testament to the work to come.

Compiled & edited by Mary Prestidge, Mike Harding & Jon Wozencroft
Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

For more information, you can visit his website here

Reviews:

A Closer Listen (USA):

Top Ten Experimental Albums of 2024

rpm is an incredible collection, a sonic eulogy for a fallen composer. The double album includes contributions and collaborations with friends, some of which had been planned or unfinished at the time of his death. But of course Jeck’s work is the unifying factor, his brilliance shining through every piece. Gone but not forgotten, Jeck was an originator and a trail blazer, and his influence is heard throughout the industry. A huge congratulations to Touch for this indelible tribute, a gathering of like-minded artists, generous in length and in love. [Richard Allen]

and #14 in the 2024 chart

A collaboration with Chris Watson, last year’s Oxmardyke (which also made our Top 20 list) seemed to be the last work of a great experimenter, Philip Jeck. This year’s rpm is a Festschrift of sorts – a volume of dedications, reworkings, and collaborations that sees an impressive roster of sonic investigators clustering around Jeck’s memory. A master of the turntable, the loop, the manipulation of prerecorded sound, Jeck spent much of his career navigating the complexities and possibilities of memory – which can be tactile, audible, psychological, or otherwise. It is impossible to discern the boundaries between Jeck, the various source materials, the hardware, and the collaborators/commemorators on this album. Of course, that’s part of the beauty. Here we celebrate the ephemeral and transitory nature, not just of sound and media, but of human life itself. [Samuel Rogers]

Ambientblog (net):

Philip Jeck, who passed away in 2022, will be remembered as the godfather of turntablism. He worked with old records and record players, playing them as musical instruments and thus creating a new kind of performance art. His ‘Vinyl Requiem’ (with Lol Sargent) used no less than 180 (!) record players – and won the Time Out Performance Award in 1993. He played and performed with many well-known artists such as Jah Wobble, Steve Lacy, Jaki Liebezeit, David Sylvian – and many, many more.

Touch, the label that released many of Jeck’s albums, now honors the artist with a 16-track double CD of his music in collaboration with an impressive array of artists: Fennesz, Gavin Bryars, Chris Watson, Rosy Parlane, Cris Cheek, Claire M Singer, Faith Coloccia, David Sylvian & Hildur Guðnadóttir, Jah Wobble & Deep Space, Drums Off Chaos, Chandra Shukla, and Jana Winderen.

RPM is not a collection of remixes of precious tracks, but a selection of music these artists worked on with Philip Jeck during the last years of Jeck’s life. It is an ode to the versatility and diversity of his music, including restless turntablist loops, calm ambient dronescapes, processed field recordings, dubby bass, and fierce rhythms. In working with so many different artists, Jeck proved himself a musical chameleon: each track is undeniably his, yet it unmistakably reflects the style of the artist he collaborates with.

By ‘joining some of the dots of Philip’s life and involving many other collaborators, early and more recent’, Touch created a monumental tribute to this unique artist. [Peter]

Bandcamp (USA):

The late, great Philip Jeck will be remembered most of all for his monumental works repurposing old records: Vinyl Requiem, Vinyl Coda, Surf, Stoke, and 7. But Jeck was an inveterate collaborator as well, working with forward-thinking musicians from all disciplines. His final album was 2023’s Oxmardyke with field recording legend Chris Watson, but at his passing he had several other projects underway as well. Rpm is a collection of these works in progress along with memorials from some of those closest to him. Among its songs are excellent field recording pieces: Watson appears again with a recording of a train station in the vein of their previous work together. Cris Cheek, his bandmate in Slant, shares what he calls a “domestic elegiac” for Jeck of sounds from an empty 1810 house. Jana Winderen had sent Jeck a recording of pilot whales for him to work with, and the unfinished track appears here. All these and much more are gathered in memory of Jeck, a fitting tribute to a generational talent and a touching reminder of how much work he still had left to do. [Matthew Blackwell]

salt peanuts* (SWE)

British Philip Jeck was an experimental turntablist-composer (1952-2022) who created a unique and personal musical language by playing old records and record players salvaged from junk shops as musical instruments. The double album rpm celebrates Jeck’s seminal work and connects the dots of his career with kindred spirits and close collaborators, including Fennesz, Gavin Bryars, David Sylvian & Hildur Guðnadóttir and Jah Wobble.

This album begins with the atmospheric-cinematic «Dancer» by Jeck’s friend, sound artist-guitarist-composer Christian Fennesz, who, like Jeck, releases his work via the Touch label. The suggestive pieces of Jeck with double bass player-contemporary composer Gavin Bryars stress the genre-defying spirit of his groundbreaking work. The pieces with sound artist Chris Watson, who focuses on natural history, are taken from a work in progress of him and Jeck, with Jeck and his laptop on a hospital bed, days before his death, completing his parts for Oxmardyke (Touch, 2023).

Sound artist Rosy Parlane contributed the melancholic, cinematic «Stoked». Sound poet Cris Cheek, who has worked with Jeck in the Slant trio with producer Sianed Jones at the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties, composed the mournful and touching «Clocking Off». Electronics composer Claire M Singer planned a joint project with Jeck and began working on her meditative organ recordings, now presented as sketches for further development. Electronics player Faith Coloccia, who has worked with Jeck on Stardust (Touch, 2021), contributed the 15-minute, minimalist yet seductive «Pleione», titled after the Oceanid nymph in Greek mythology, the mother of the Pleiades. Jah Wobble, who collaborated with Jeck (on Wobble & Deep Space, Five Beat, and with Jaki Liebezeit, Live in Leuven, 30 Hertz, 2003 and 2005) contributed the rhythmic «Jeck, Drums, 2 Basses» from Five Beat, with drummer Mark Sanders. This vibe is expanded with the German collective Drums Off Chaos’ hypnotic «Keep in Touch» (with Liebezeit). «The Ark Has Closed» by electronics musician Chandra Shukla is an atmospheric soundscape.

Jeck’s only solo piece «Mono» corresponds with his influential work with visual artist Lol Sargent, Vinyl Requiem (Touch, 2013), where they used 180 record players, nine slide projectors and two 16mm projectors for a huge-scale, live performance that was not a real requiem but a testament to the work to come. David Sylvain, who collaborated with Jeck on his Uncommon Deities (Samdhisound, 2012), and cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir anchor the moving, emotional core of this compilation with Emily Dickinson’s poem «I Measure Every Grief I Meet» (Dickinson was one of Jeck’s favorite poets). This thoughtful compilation is concluded with «Pilots», sound artist Jana Winderen’s work with Jeck based on her recordings of pilot whales, and finished just a few days before Jeck’s passing. [Eyal Hareuveni]

MOJO (UK):

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 70^th 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 70^th 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]

Download only – 1 track – 32:56

Track listing:

1. Arcade

Recorded live at Iklectik, London on March 23rd 2018. Also playing that night were Yann Novak and Simon Scott.

Artwork & photography: Jon Wozencroft

Reviews:

Bad Press (web):

‘Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes.’  For those of us who can’t imagine a more engaging biographical note, Jeck’s new 33-minute epic Arcade is a pure delight.

Recorded live at London’s celebrated Iklectik space in March, the piece features contributions from Yann Novak and Simon Scott. This is turntablism of the highest order.

Jeck has been making music with vinyl and electronics since the early 1980’s. He started out (and continues to work) as a visual artist, studying at the Dartington College of Arts.

That southwest England institute has turned out an impressive list of graduates that includes Sonja Klaus, a set decorator, film art director and production designer, composer and political activist Lindsay Cooper, who also played oboe, bassoon and was a member of Henry Cow and composer/educator Patrick Nunn.

Jeck has 11 solo albums to his credit. He’s collaborated with Jah Wobble, Steve Lacy, Gavin Bryars, Jaki Liebezeit, David Sylvian, Sidsel Endresen, Bernhard Lang and Fennesz.

Each of this new work’s elements – and there are too many of them to count – evokes a time, place, feeling or a combination thereof. The work can be enjoyed equally en masse or as an audio mining exercise. Take it all in or pick it apart.

Its density is a significant part of its appeal. Arcade never overwhelms, but there is so much going on here. His application of surface noise may be the most impressive.

Jeck uses the device more centrally than others. It’s not just louder than you may be used to, it sits at (or at other times, near) the centre of the piece.

It’s a cliché to say that artists like Jeck use the turntable as an instrument but there really isn’t any other way to put it. The fact that he plays these record players so imaginatively and with such a fine sense of their potential has a lot to do with why he’s such an important artist.

Don’t let this be the only Jeck title in your collection. [Kevin Press]

textura (Canada):

Fennesz: Station One
Touch

Philip Jeck: Arcade
Touch

One mark of a true artist is a singular and instantly recognizable voice. By that measure, Christian Fennesz and Philip Jeck both qualify – no more than seconds of their respective material needs to be played for identification to be made – and if the world can be split into innovators and imitators, the Touch artists undoubtedly belong in the first group.

Though the single totals but seven minutes, Fennesz’s ‘Station One’ indelibly captures the guitarist’s style in its two tracks, the first of which, ‘Tom’, first appeared on a 2014 Modeselektor compilation, and the second, ‘Silk Road’, (previously ‘Silk Lane’) was part of a 2016 installation in New York City. For the new release, both were remodelled, remixed, and remastered in Vienna earlier this year.

A thing of luminous beauty, ‘Tom’ sweeps in surreptitiously, its guitar strums shimmering within a drifting, synthetic mass before morphing into a fuzz-enshrouded swirl of guitar and electric piano radiance. The more aggressive of the two pieces, ‘Silk Road’, which apparently was played once in a loop for a whole day, buzzes and roars with machine-like insistence, alternating as it does with a loud, rippling thrum. Much like Fennesz’s work in general, neither of the pieces adheres to a rigid structure; instead, the two unfold like living organisms whose movements seem unpredictable yet nevertheless natural.

A long-form piece recorded live in London in early 2018, Arcade is quintessential Jeck. Using old vinyl discs and record players salvaged from junk shops, he crafts woozy soundscapes where ghostly loops push their way to the surface through thick fields of crackle, static, and vinyl surface noise. One might liken the experience of listening to a Jeck piece to drifting lazily on a barge and viewing the rusty ships and decaying industrial buildings ashore as they appear during the half-hour trip.

Strings figure prominently in this case, with the first violin flourish arising three minutes in and others swarming to the surface thereafter. As expected, nothing so conventional as a recognisable string quartet melody appears; instead, groans, corroded phrases, and high-pitched squeals ebb and flow within the slow-moving, undulating mass, while guitars twang insistently amidst clattering noise at the twenty-five-minute mark. As emphatic as Arcade is in such moments, it also includes passages so gentle and subdued they could induce sleep, and, in fact, midway through, breathing-like sounds emerge that could be mistaken for signs of light slumber. The setting never stays in one place for too long but rather shape-shifts with almost clockwork regularity, and consequently one’s attention never lapses during the thirty-three-minute presentation.

Anyone seeing Jeck’s methodology and gear choice as gimmicky would be wise to attend more carefully; Arcade is as transfixing as anything else in his catalogue and attests to the singularity of his vision. [Ron Schepper]

Released: 22nd September 2017
CD – 1 track – 47:56

Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Recorded and mastered by Jeff Ardron of St. Austral Sound

Track listing:

1. Iklectik

The 6th in the series of limited edition compact disc live recordings (after Thomas Köner & Jana Winderen, Simon Scott, Bethan Kellough, Yann Novak, Robert Crouch) brings Philip Jeck live at Iklectik, London. Recorded 11th May 2017.

Pre-order Philip Jeck “Iklectik” [CD + Download] in TouchShop on 1st September
www.philipjeck.com

Reviews:

Ondarock (Italy):

Philip Jeck è, molto semplicemente, colui che più d’ogni altro ha elevato a forma d’arte sonora la turntable music. Da oltre vent’anni l’etichetta londinese Touch fa tesoro di questa espressione quietamente sublime, tanto negli album in studio quanto in una selezione di registrazioni live. La presente edizione limitata documenta la performance tenutasi lo scorso 11 maggio presso il laboratorio ‘IKLECTIK’, nell’ambito di una serie di eventi curati dallo stesso per il progetto internazionale The Engine Room dedicato alla sound art.

La materia prima di Jeck sono frammenti musicali alla stregua di reperti, accumulazioni di objets trouvés in cui tuttavia le diverse sorgenti non soffrono mai di un contrasto violento bensì, secondo il know-how che contraddistingue anche i migliori dj, si distendono mollemente l’una sull’altra e si armonizzano in maniera spontanea, sfumandosi nei loro rispettivi confini.

Dai tratti definiti dell’avvio – sinistro e vibrante come un lounge bar lynchano – il fluire viscoso del suono cede il passo all’onda lunga di ambientazioni generate dal rallentamento del piatto. Sottili fruscii e scricchiolii sono pressoché gli unici, sporadici elementi para-ritmici tra le campiture di un affresco ininterrotto e dai colori sbiaditi, sottratto al dominio della memoria sonora verso una dimensione astratta e impalpabile.

Tuttavia, come e più che nelle sale da ballo spiritate di Caretaker, l’obiettivo ultimo non è la conservazione ma l’oblio, l’abbandono in quell’area cerebrale in cui la percezione non si sedimenta ma subito si disperde e scompare. ‘Iklectik‘ è un ennesimo, inebriante stream of (un)consciousness musicale da parte di uno tra i più sensibili decani della sperimentazione contemporanea.

cultureel (Netherlands):

Je kunt de klok erop gelijk zetten. Er zal toch wel weer een nieuwe plaat van Philip Jeck komen dit jaar. En jawel. Daarop doet Jeck wat hij altijd doet. Dat betekent: een beetje wat platen opzetten, daar loops van maken, delay erover heen. Klaar is Philip. Wel zo’n beetje.

Toch trekt nauwelijks iemand zulke ambient textuur op. Jeck grossiert in hoogpolige mistbanken van electro-akoestische raadsels en puzzels. Uitgesmeerd en door elkaar geveegd hoor je niks meer dat herinnert aan de originele bronnen. Precies dat is typisch Jeck. Doe het hem maar na.

Dusted (USA):

Live performances by British sound artist Philip Jeck actually manage the impressive feat of being even more immersive than his studio albums. Maybe it’s the immediacy of hearing the sounds, created using faded and damaged vinyl records, synths and other instruments, as they come to life in front of you, conjured by an unassuming man who stares down at his devices, avoiding the eye. Maybe the unpredictability of using such a fragile tool as old vinyl adds a certain tension. Whatever the case, ‘Iklectik’, recorded at the London venue of the same name, is a welcome addition to Touch’s new series of live recordings. Evolving over 45 minutes, the solitary piece that makes up ‘Iklectik’ develops gradually, from a blissful opening sequence of wobbly drones and warm bass through more unsettling tonal surges not that dissimilar to something you might hear on an industrial record and an all-consuming wall of synth bliss to a crackling final section driven by muted beats that fades into silence.

At times, the audience can be heard rustling and crackling, adding to the intimacy of the recording. Where Jeck prefers to divide his studio albums up like suites, the single track flows more organically, following the emotional whims of its creator. Jeck is often compared to the hauntology scene, but in truth his music, especially live, is more introverted and contemplative, making ‘Iklectik’ a sort of avant-garde sonic poem.

Alan Haselden (blog):

Liverpool-based sound artist and improviser Jeck works with phonograph turntables and scratchy old vinyl records prepared to jump or lock the stylus into repetitive loops. In addition he deploys ancillary devices to shape the sounds in real time. Imagine walking somewhere urban with a heavy background simmer of wind, traffic, voices, birds and occasional random events. You turn a corner and detect music playing in the distance but you don’t know what it is. The sounds are the best thing you ever heard, until, that is, you identify the music, which turns out to be some pop ubiquity. That initial moment of aural magic is what Jeck perpetuates in his performances: stammered musical extracts from records, thick with gritty violent surface noise, are layered with each other and transformed by live processing. This 47-minute ‘Iklectik‘ concert on cd was recorded earlier this year and it is Jeck at his best, in my opinion. Brief spoken word emerges towards the end, a female voice, presumably a performance poet.

Double Vinyl + Download – 13 tracks – 64mins
Photography and artwork by Jon Wozencroft
Cut by Jason at Transition

Track listing:

Side 1.
Fleeing
Saint Pancras
Barrow in Furness (open thy hand wide)
Reverse Jersey

Side 2.
… bend the knee 1
Called In
Brief

Side 3.
Broke Up
… bend the knee 5
Called Again

Side 4.
And Over Again
The Station View
Saint Pancras (the one that holds everything)

This album comes with a free download of Philip Jeck “Live in Caen”, recorded by Franck Dubois on 28th February 2015 at Impressions Multiples #4 (ésam Caen/Cherbourg) with thanks to Thierry Weyd.

“… and they sparkled like burnished brass”*

Out of the depths of our complaints, it could be all so simple. To be never fooled by the finesse of a long-yearned for solidity, but in the momentary aplomb of a sleepy walk threading through familiar streets we’d hum our way, alto, baritone and tenor toward some harmonious end. An effect like some wonderful recollection of one or other of those technicolour movies. Not real for sure, but if you are in the mood….

I would like to acknowledge the influence the writer Marilynne Robinson has had on this work. I would recommend reading any/all of her four novels and also “When I was a Child I Read Books” [Virago, 2012]. This collection of essays include “Austerity as Ideology”, which dissects prevailing economic thinking, and “Open Thy Hand Wide…” which continues with a celebration of liberal thinking as Generosity (and also turned over my received knowledge of Calvinism). Her ability to convey a love of humanity and sense of wonder about the great mystery of existence in her writing has, since I first read a book of hers, found a way into the way I think about my work – not illustrating but meditating upon.
“After all, it’s [humankind] debts are only to itself.” (Marilynne Robinson)

To make this record I used Fidelity record players, Casio Keyboards, Ibanez bass guitar, Sony minidisc players, Ibanez and Zoom effects pedals, assorted percussion, a Behringer mixer and it was edited at home with minidisc players and on a laptop computer.

I would like to thank Octopus Collective’s Full Of Noise Festival where “The Station View” and “Barrow in Furness” were first recorded. Guy Madden and InMute’14, Athens who commissioned me to play a live soundtrack to Guy’s film “Cowards Bend the Knee” [2003]. “… bend the knee 1” and “… bend the knee 5” are reworked sections from that performance.

The two Saint Pancras Tracks are remixes of part a performance at St Pancras Church, London; an earlier version was made for “Touch. 30 years and counting” [Touch, 2012]. Saint Pancras (Latin: Sanctus Pancratius; Greek: Ἅγιος Παγκράτιος) was a Roman citizen who converted to Christianity, and was beheaded for his faith at the age of just 14 around the year 304 AD. His name in Greek literally means “the one that holds everything”.
“Called in” is an edit of a live performance at Spire in Krems, Austria [Kontraste Festival, 2013]. “Reverse Jersey” is an edit of a live performance for WFMU in New Jersey as part of Touch.30 [2012].

“Fleeting”, “Brief”, “Broke Up”, “Called Again” and “Over Again” were made at home in Liverpool between 2012 and 2015.

Thanks to everyone who has invited me to play, to Daniel Blumin at WFMU, to Mike Harding for the original recordings of “Called in” and “Saint Pancras” and a belated thank you to Jacob Kirkegaard for playing the chimes on “Ark” from “An Ark for the Listener” [Touch, 2010].

“… weeping for the wrongs we cannot undo.”

Philip Jeck, April 2015

*from The Book of Ezekiel

www.philipjeck.com

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CD in jewel case
Photography & Design: Jon Wozencroft

TouchShop exclusive – this CD is released elsewhere on 20th September 2010

Mastered by Denis Blackham
The cover shows Mirosław Bałka’s installation at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, “How It Is”, April 2010.

Plus bonus 320kbps .mp3 download – 1 track – 30:59
TO:81DL – Philip Jeck “Live at Corsica Studios”, recorded on 1st July 2010.
This performance was recorded straight to digital from the main desk.

Track listing:

1. Pilot/Dark Blue Night 8:47
2. Ark 4:21
3. Twentyninth 2:36
4. Dark Rehearsal 7:36
5. Thirtieth/Pilot Reprise 2:56
6. The All of Water 8:29
7. The Pilot (Among Our Shoals) 4:33

coda:
8. All That’s Allowed (Released) 3:24
9. Chime, Chime (Re-rung) 7:34

Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Philip Jeck makes genuinely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art not the gimmick.

Philip Jeck writes: “A version of “An Ark For The Listener” was first performed at Kings Place London on 24/02/2010. It is a meditation on verse 33 of “The Wreck of the Deutschland”, Gerard Manley Hopkins poem about the drowning on December 7th 1875 of five Franciscan nuns exiled from Germany. This CD version was recorded at home in Liverpool and used extracts from live performances over the last 12 months. The “coda:” tracks are remixes of 2 pieces from “Suite: Live in Liverpool”. “Chime, Chime (Re-rung)” was originally made for Musicworks magazine (#104, Summer 09) and “All That’s Allowed (Released)” is previously unreleased. All tracks were made using Fidelity record-players, Casio SK1 keyboards, Sony mini-disc recorders, Behringer mixers, Ibanez bass guitar, Boss delay pedal and Zoom bass effects pedal.”

An Ark… is Jeck’s 6th solo album for touch since ‘Loopholes’ in 1995. The Wire reckoned it was ‘Stoke’ (Touch, 2002) which ‘made him great, but his body of work and his achingly brilliant live sets are rapidly defining him as one of our best artists, and his recent award from The Paul Hamlyn Foundation confirms him as such.

Philip Jeck studied visual art at Dartington College of Arts. He started working with record players and electronics in the early ’80’s and has made soundtracks and toured with many dance and theatre companies as we as well as his solo concert work. His best known work “Vinyl Requiem” (with Lol Sargent): a performance for 180 ’50’s/’60’s record players won Time Out Performance Award for 1993. He has also over the last few years returned to visual art making installations using from 6 to 80 record players including “Off The Record” for Sonic Boom at The Hayward Gallery, London [2000). In 2010 he won one of The Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Composition.

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LP – 5 tracks – 31:49
[vinyl only through Autofact, USA]

Track list:

Side A
1. Press
2. Intro Roll

Side B
1. Live With Errors
2. All That’s Allowed
3. Chime, Chime

Recorded at Hive, FACT, Liverpool on 25th October 2006 as part of Touch 25, live to a M-Audio Mictrotrack 24/96
Edited by Philip Jeck April 2007
Cut by Jason at Transition 14th May 2007 on a Neumann VSM 70
Released on Autofact 14th January 2009
Design and photography by Jon Wozencroft

“Suite: Live in Liverpool” follows Philip Jeck’s acclaimed collaboration with Gavin Bryars and Alter Ego on a new version of ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ (Touch Tone 34). It is the companion release to his latest solo album, ‘Sand’; a set of five new compositions that highlight Jeck’s mastery of vinyl manipulation, personal and collective memories.
During the past year Jeck has refined and consolidated his unique sound, playing superb sets at last summer’s Faster than Sound festival and at York Minster for Spire. He has recently released ‘Amoroso’ [Touch # TS01, 7″ vinyl only with Fennesz] where he responds to Charles Matthews’s homage to Arvo Pärt.

‘Suite’ is at once elegiac, celebrational, mournful and uplifting. Those who have followed Jeck’s development since his first release, “Loopholes” (Touch TO:26) will observe his return to the industrial textures that coloured that collection, though here they are fused with his symphonic grace and continued development as a composer and live performer.
Philip Jeck studied visual art at Dartington College of Arts. He started working with record players and electronics in the early ’80’s and has made soundtracks and toured with many dance and theatre companies as we as well as his solo concert work. His best kown work “Vinyl Requiem” (with Lol Sargent): a performance for 180 ’50’s/’60’s record players won Time Out Performance Award for 1993. He has also over the last few years returned to visual art making installations using from 6 to 80 record players including “Off The Record” for Sonic Boom at The Hayward Gallery, London [2000].

Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Jeck makes geniunely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art not the gimmick.

This is Philip Jeck’s 6th solo album for Touch after ‘Loopholes’ [Touch # TO:27, 1995], Surf [TO:36, 1998], Stoke [TO:56, 2002], ‘7’ [TO:57, 2004] and ‘Sand’ [Touch # TO:67, 2008].
He recently performed on “The Sinking of the Titanic” with Gavin Bryars in Rome, about which Boomkat (UK) said: “The most noticeable addition is Jeck, whose expertise and unique style seems to fit like the final piece of the puzzle as his crackles and motifs melt into the architecture of the recording as if they had always been there. This additional layer of nostalgia brought forth by these found sounds adds a significant sense of history, forcing the mind back into hazy film footage and decomposed photos, a perfect match for the subject matter.”

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CD – 7 tracks – 44:50
Design and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

Track list:

1. Unveiled
2. Chime Again
3. Fanfares
4. Shining
5. Fanfares Forward
6. Residue
7. Fanfares Over

” … the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity”
(from ‘The Chariot’ by Emily Dickinson)

Sand was recorded live in Holland and England in 2006/7 and edited in Liverpool January, 2008 using Fidelity record-players, Casio SK keyboards, Behringer mixer and sony mini-disc recorders.

Following Philip Jeck’s acclaimed collaboration with Gavin Bryars and Alter Ego on a new version of ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ (Touch Tone 34), ‘Sand’ is a set of seven new compositions that highlight Jeck’s mastery of vinyl manipulation, personal and collective memories.

During the past year Jeck has refined and consolidated his unique sound, playing superb sets at last summer’s Faster than Sound festival and at York Minster for Spire. He has recently released ‘Amoroso’ [Touch # TS01, 7″ vinyl only with Fennesz] where he responds to Charles Matthews’s homage to Arvo Pärt.

‘Sand’ is at once elegiac, celebrational, mournful and uplifting. Those who have followed Jeck’s development since his first release, “Loopholes” (Touch TO:26) will observe his return to the industrial textures that coloured that collection, though here they are fused with his symphonic grace and continued development as a composer and live performer .
Philip Jeck studied visual art at Dartington College of Arts. He started working with record players and electronics in the early ’80’s and has made soundtracks and toured with many dance and theatre companies as we as well as his solo concert work. His best kown work “Vinyl Requiem” (with Lol Sargent): a performance for 180 ’50’s/’60’s record players won Time Out Performance Award for 1993. He has also over the last few years returned to visual art making installations using from 6 to 80 record players including “Off The Record” for Sonic Boom at The Hayward Gallery, London [2000].

Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Philip Jeck makes geniunely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art not the gimmick.
This is Philip Jeck’s 4th solo album for Touch after ‘Loopholes’ [Touch # TO:27, 1995], Surf [TO:36, 1998], Stoke [TO:56, 2002] and ‘7’ [TO:57, 2004]. A companion vinyl release to Sand, ‘Suite: Live in Liverpool’ [Tone 28/FACT11] is being released on US label Autofact later this Summer.

He recently performed on “The Sinking of the Titanic” with Gavin Bryars in Rome, about which Boomkat (UK) said: “The most noticeable addition is Jeck, whose expertise and unique style seems to fit like the final piece of the puzzle as his crackles and motifs melt into the architecture of the recording as if they had always been there. This additional layer of nostalgia brought forth by these found sounds adds a significant sense of history, forcing the mind back into hazy film footage and decomposed photos, a perfect match for the subject matter.”

Philip Jeck in the TouchShop

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CD – 7 tracks

Track list:

1. Wholesome
2. Museum
3. Wipe
4. Bush Hum
5. Now You Can Let Go
6. Some Pennies
7. Veil

“Johnny Mathis advances the art of remembering” (Mort Goode 1972)

… points of origin slip into areas of acceptance then long listening eliminates any worries about that acceptance and parts the normally tightly bound, throwing seldom acknowledged emotions through newly opened doors…

British musician Philip Jeck’s life work is with sounds, and how they may be transformed in random and unexpected ways. For instance, a needle stuck in a record’s groove is a source of consternation for most people. Jeck, on the other hand, is eager to let the diamond ride a while because the repeated passage becomes an object for study and transmutation. His artform is an otherworldly sound world of pops, clicks, and crackles, mostly built up from dusty vinyl dug up from junk shops and outdated phonographic equipment no one would cast a second glance at in this day and age. Transcendent and mysterious, 7 is a set of pieces created with a sample keyboard, and a trove of his beloved old vinyl. “Bush Hum” extends the enquiry further by looping the harmonic buzz of an old Bush record player into a polychromatic, shifting swarm. The music is enveloped in a patina of dread and beauty, something that’s remarkable considering how immiscible these two qualities normally are. But Jeck plumbs it with masterful verve. “Now You Can Let Go” references the echo of dub, “Museum” blends a brass fanfare with a mordant groan; “Wholesome” is anything but, considering its skeletal, arpeggio-tinted construct.

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CD – 7 tracks – 53:32

Track list:

1. Above
2. Lambing
3. Vienna Faults
4. Pax
5. Below
6. Open
7. Close

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CDR
1 track – 34:31

Track list:

1. Live at ICC

CD
7 tracks –

Track list:

1. Demolition
2. Box Of Lamb
3. Surf Finger
4. Spirits Up
5. 1986 (Frank Was 70 Years Old)
6. Tilting
7. I Just Wanted To Know

AT A PLACE that is yours or mine. It is morning, evening, anytime. You are driving to work, to a theatre, home. You are in a crowd or all alone. You are in Rio, Chicago, Sydney, on a plane to Madras, a ferry to Dublin. You are at college, in a rest home; the children are sleeping, the grandparents are on the phone. You have your own time, own place. You listen to whatever comes out of now, the past. The sound can drip with well won laurels of acceptance, of transience, of longevity. There is a touch, a method that changes, adapts with the mood of the music and times. The touch is always personal, passionate: it embraces, repels, passes, returns.

Like blurry postcards of someplace you’ve never been, or a fleeting memory of someone you’ve never met, translated into sound. A sound so warm and thick, familiar and inviting, that it transports you to a sonic universe where a skipping record becomes your footsteps, and a repeated crackly phrase becomes the wind through the trees. Easily one of the most transcendentally perfect records ever.

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CD – 10 tracks

Track list:

1. Casio
2. Anatomy
3. Louie’s Riddle
4. Ulster Autumn
5. PS One
6. Harry and Krishna
7. PS Two
8. The Christian Sink
9. The Frequent Pool
10. Incassum, Casio

On Loopholes, his impressive solo debut CD, Jeck uses tape loops and a cheap Casio keyboard to create a lo-tech jungle without the breakbeat – a collision of sources rendered unrecognisable through speed changes, short loop lengths and distortion. The progressive degeneration of material through successive re-recordings is celebrated in Jeck’s blissed out, textural aesthetic. For the Loopholes CD artwork, Touch label partner and graphic designer Jon Wozencroft creates a neat visual analogy to the music using photographs of VHS playbacks of images generated by camcordering TV pictures. The medium loops back on itself and enhances its own idiosyncratic qualities. “Its similar to the way I’m working with sound: just textures and landscapes. You’re not quite sure what they are and it doesn’t matter,” says Jeck. “I’m not brilliant at keeping time with tunes or whatever”…

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