| Phill Niblock's music has no precedents, invites no comparisons, and doesn't even suggest any metaphors to me. It is simply itself and must be heard to be believed," wrote Tom Johnson in The Village Voice a decade ago. The same is true today--no one is doing what Phill Niblock is doing. Niblock takes the building blocks of music and stacks them in inimitable formations. In Four Full Flutes, adjacent tones beat violently against one another while clouds of harmonics hover above the wavering drone....When the piece ends, it takes the listener a few moments to recover. This physiological experience, when the ossicles slow their vibrating and the membrane hairs come to a standstill, is probably the only aspect of the music not regulated by the score....Playing this compact disc in a different room or moving around the room while the disc is being played actually alters the outcome. Similarly, the music can be experienced anew through different combinations, extra speakers, home stereo pyrotechnics, and volume level alterations. The effects intensify with louder levels of volume. The higher the volume goes, the higher you go. --Neil Strauss
The aural effect is minimal to the max, but it isn't simplistic. The tones vibrate and glow, the densely packed texture shifting hues like a sonic aurora borealis." -- John Rockwell, New York Times
The four pieces on this 80 minute CD are for multiple tracks of alto flutes, flutes, flutes and alto flutes, and bass flutes, performed by Petr Kotik, Susan Stenger, and Eberhard Blum.--Phill Niblock |