Philip Jeck

Jeck began by scoring Laurie Booth's dance pieces and achieved fame with the installation Vinyl Requiem (1993) for 180 turntables, 12 slide projectors and two film projectors. His early recordings were already obsessed with vintage vinyl, with the noises that the "performer" can extract from the process and with the "sounds" that the records contain. Loopholes (Touch, 1995), ten pieces for tape loops and cheap Casio keyboard, demonstrates how one can use snippets of records to construct imposing electronic symphonies like Anatomy, harrowing threnodies like Ulster Autumn as well as negative-energy dance jams Louie's Riddle. Surf (Touch, 1999) employed the same looping technique to craft slightly more dynamic compositions. If the multi-part Surf Finger sounds indulgent and incoherent, Spirits Up works well as a means to transport from one dimension to another, and the revolving nebula of dust Box Of Lamb even unveils some pathos. 1986 - Frank Was 70 Years Old contains a literal quotation of a guitar riff that becomes a pummeling industrial sound. I Just Wanted To Know even uncovers a melody.

The double-CD Vinyl Coda I-III (april 2000 - Intermedium, 2000) collects three long solo performances for turntables and prepared records in which Jeck does his trick of mixing snippets of old records with a torrent of turntable noises, obtaining a new kind of musique concrete. In the 22-minute Vinyl Coda I a repetitive quasi-blues pattern dissolves into shapeless chattering sounds and electronic drones. The 62-minute Vinyl Coda II is the most accomplished narrative of the three. It explores a vast space of found sounds but organizes them in a way that flows like a stream of consciousness, like a digital version of Alvin Curran's collages, all the way to its cryptic and ominous finale. The 44-minute Vinyl Coda III opens with a hissing wall of glitches, then turns into an industrial machine, then veers into ethnic percussion and ends again with factory-like metronomy. The transitions are perhaps too arbitrary. Vinyl Coda III was re-released in 2019 as a 45-minute piece.

Vinyl Coda IV (Intermedium, 2001) adds another monumental, 45-minute long, improvisation, where his method of combining tape loops and glitches achieves an almost tribal kind of repetition.

These are the works that show Jeck at the virtuoso peak of his art.

Viny'l'isten (march 2002) documents a 20-minute solo live performance and a 31-minute duet with Claus van Bebber.

Soaked (may 2002 - Touch, 2002), a collaboration with Danish sound sculptor Jacob Kirkegaard, sounds like a sort of battle of analog versus digital. Live at ICC (Touch, 2002) and Stoke (Touch, 2002) collect more live performances. Invisible Architecture #1 (july 2000 - Audiosphere, 2002) documents a live performance with Martin Tetreault and Yoshihide Otomo. Full Moon Warship (Vergilreality, 2003) is a jam with Vergil Sharkya on guitar and Stefen Kazassoglou on cello.

Host (Bubble Core, 2003) contains a tour de force of turntable noises, the 24-minute Skew, like a meeting of Gordon Mumma and Jimi Hendrix, as well as the 14-minute Accomodation, a violent maelstrom of samples.

7 (Touch, 2003) contains seven pieces that build alien textures out of the pure sounds of the turntable (the frantically fibrillating, raga-like Bush Hum) and occasionally from actual records (Now You Can Let Go, used as a repetitive pattern for a glitch-minimalist concerto). It is one of his most expert and inventive excursions into abstract art. The fluttering rumble of Wholesome harks back to cosmic music, except for the coarse texture of the drones and for the metallic noises in the background. By the end of the piece, it sounds like an orchestra of cellos. The ten-minute Veil is the atmospheric and ambient zenith of the album, a gloomy static drone from which there rises a lulling cello-like melodic pattern that becomes predominant but also more and more dilated until it disappears inside the buzzing dust of a galaxy. The timbres of Museum change rapidly from a horn fanfare stretched into a drone to a repetitive organ phrase over a jarring rumble. Pennies creates a gothic atmosphere out of cryptic organic noises and a lugubrious background drone.

Songs For Europe (Asphodel, 2004) is a collaboration with Janek Schaefer that builds ambient soundscapes from old Greek and Turkish records.

Sand (Touch, 2008) completely abandoned the discontinuous, glitchy format of his beginnings and turned to crystalline, slowly-revolving, quasi-ambient soundscapes. Unveiled is a muffled cosmic trip. The three-movement "Fanfare Song Trilogy" bridges the wavering bombastic drones of Fanfares with the subliminal eleven-minute trance of Fanfares Over.

Suite (Touch, 2008) documents a live performance from 2006.

Spool (The Tapeworm, 2009) manipulates the sound of a bass guitar.

The single Spliced (Touch) documents a live performance with keyboardist Marcus Davidson.

An Ark For The Listener (Touch, 2010), a concept inspired by Gerard Hopkins' poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland", consists of psychological vignettes like the supernaturally ethereal Ark, the suspense-filled Twentyninth and the anemically organic The Pilot (Among Our Shoals); but it feels like a lightweight effort, and a bit unfocused, compared with his major works.

Then came: Cardinal (2015), for "Fidelity record players, Casio Keyboards, Ibanez bass guitar, Sony minidisc players, Ibanez and Zoom effects pedals, assorted percussion and a Behringer mixer"; the live Iklectik (2017); the live Arcade (2018); Stardust (2021) with Faith Coloccia; and the live Resistenza (2022).

Jeck died in 2022 at the age of 69.