Since Phill Niblock didn’t begin making music until he was thirty-five, it can be forgiven, perhaps, that his discography is so slight. A dissatisfaction with the limitations of vinyl discouraged Niblock from putting out records, and before the advent of cds, he had only two albums to his name. Luckily, as technology progressed, cds began to surface, both on Niblock’s own Experimental Intermedia imprint as well as the UK label Touch. Niblock celebrated his seventieth birthday last fall, but, if recent work is any indicator, he shows no signs of slowing down, or lightening up. Touch Three, Niblock’s most weighty work to date, is a three-disc collection of pieces constructed in the last three years, and it contains some of Niblock’s best work yet.
Phill Niblock has never veered from his sonic goal or methods; for decades he’s been constructing massive fields of drone through the layering of tones, often recorded from a solitary instrument, and this release is no different. As usual, the music is thick and opaque, with dense drones moving amongst one another, with subtle shifts and intersections causing the microtonal phenomenon for which Niblock is renowned. To the casual (or lazy) listener, Touch Three might seem homogeneous, too much, even of a good thing. But while the album is a momentous one, clocking in at over three hours, Niblock’s music proves him to be a level above most practitioners of the drone, a master of massed tones.
Touch Three is a wonderful (if formidable) introduction to Niblock’s work, as it features a variety of voices and, once past Niblock’s over-arching modus operandi, a diversity of sound that really begins to separate what could have become a series of repetitive exercises. “Lucid Sea” is one of the best, a piece comprised of Lucia Mense’s work on recorder. It begins as, perhaps, Niblock’s most transparent work, as the opening crescendo builds note by note, and even after the notes have combined into a larger mass, the addition and subtraction of the individual voices is more apparent than usual in Niblock’s work. “Harm,” a cello piece commissioned by the Maerz Music festival, is one of Touch Three’s richest tracks, the effect of the layered cello is one of a comforting density, with a nebulous shimmer skirting underneath the ghostly fuax-bagpipe tones created by the strings. “Parker’s Altered Mood, aka, Owed to a Bird” is one of Niblock’s most conceptual constructions, recorded initially as six different takes of Ulrich Krieger playing the thirteen notes that make up the theme of Charlie Parker’s “Mood.” The piece begins with a simultaneous performance of all six takes, superimposed upon one another, before Niblock crafts the alto sax tones into a symphony of celestial waves. “Not Yet Titled,” built from the sound of Franz Hautzinger’s trumpet, traverses a rather normal Niblock path before a heavy buzz arises underneath, constricting the piece’s aural space. Niblock’s notes for the piece mention that airplanes and traffic made it onto the original recordings thorough an open door, but credits the bass to Hautzinger’s horn. “Sax Mix” closes the album with its most beautiful track, an amalgamation of alto, tenor, and soprano saxophone that utilizes wonderfully the differences in tone between the three.
Niblock once stated that if one listened to his music without the neighbors complaining, it wasn’t loud enough, and while his music certainly possesses a rich spatial quality, one needn’t blow out their speakers to enjoy Touch Three. What is necessary, however, is active listening; treating the album like background music is cheating one’s ears, as Niblock’s music must be engaged fully to be enjoyed at its fullest potential, with the listener not simply listening closely, but moving from their chair and encountering the sound from different angles and vantage points. As improbable as it seems, Phill Niblock entrance into his “retirement” years has spawned some of his most rewarding work yet, and if we’d all be lucky to be this creative and productive at the age of seventy. Far too often, musicians fade into the distance as they age, but in the case of Phill Niblock, Touch Three proves that needn’t be a concern.
