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NIBLOCK, PHILL / ANNA CLEMENTI / THOMAS STERN - Zound Delta 2

Format: LP Label & Cat.Number: Karlrecords KR115 Release Year: 2024 Note: A new piece by minimalist / experimental composer PHILL NIBLOCK (1933 - 2024), co-composed and performed by ANNA CLEMENTI & THOMAS STERN. Intense, menacing layers of thick drones and alien sounds. Price (incl. 19% VAT): €20.00 More Info A new piece by minimalist / experimental composer PHILL NIBLOCK (1933 - 2024), co-composed and performed by ANNA CLEMENTI & THOMAS STERN. Intense, menacing layers of thick drones and alien sounds. In summer 2022, within just a few weeks and by pure coincidence, 2 proposals regarding PHILL NIBLOCK albums arrived: one suggesting an overdue vinyl reissue of a CD release (more on that when the time has come for it), the other email was from ANNA CLEMENTI saying she and THOMAS STERN were working on new pieces that PHILL NIBLOCK has written for her … when "Zound Delta 2" was complete, PHILL sent photographs for the two artworks, we met twice to discuss details, but unfortunately he died unexpectedly early january this year so the album now is, sad as it is, a posthumous release … an intense goodbye from one of 20thcentury most iconic composers. Phill Niblock Phill Niblock (1933-2024, USA) was an artist whose fifty-year career spans minimalist and experimental music, film and photography. Since 1985, he has served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a branch in Ghent, and curator of the foundation's record label XI. Known for his thick, loud drones of music, Niblock's signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in the performance space. In 2013, his diverse artistic career was the subject of a retrospective realised in partnership between Circuit (Contemporary Art Centre Lausanne) and Musée de l'Elysée. The following year Niblock was honoured with the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award. phillniblock.com Anna Clementi Italian-Swedish singer Anna Clementi grew up in Rome, where she first studied the flute and completed acting training before moving to Berlin and studying experimental vocal music and experimental music theater with the composer Dieter Schnebel at Hochschule der Künste (now UdK Berlin). Anna Clementi sees herself as an "actress of the voice" rather than exclusively as a singer. In this way she also articulates the diversity of her artistic expression, with which she is always searching for new connections between voice, gesture, language, dance and theater. During her decades spanning career, Anna Clementi has performed at the most important festivals, has premiered numerous works, many of which have been composed especially for her, and worked with Fast Forward, Michael Hirsch, Rupert Huber, Christian Kesten, Alexander Kolkowski, Olga Neuwirth, Josef Anton Riedl, Iris ter Schiphorst, Dieter Schnebel, Laurie Schwartz, Elliott Sharp, and many others. A special focus of hers is the work of John Cage, whose pieces she has performed worldwide. www.annaclementi.com Thomas Stern Born in Bremen, Thomas Stern moved to Berlin in 1984 where he joined Mona Mur with Alex Hacke and F. M. Einheit (both from Einstürzende Neubauten, with which Stern also worked as live sound engineer for many years). Around 1987 he co-founded the Berlin set up of Crime And The City Solution (Mick Harvey, Alex Hacke a.o.). Over the years, he has has collaborated with artists like Ulrike Haage, Phew, Nick Cave, Ton Steine Scherben, Meret Becker, Nina Hagen, Jaki Liebezeit, Ben Becker, N.U. Unruh, Gry, Iris ter Schiphorst, Automat, Swans, Hans Joacxhim Irmler and many more, on the road or in his own Sternstaubstudio. www.thomasstern.de credits released April 12, 2024 Anna Clementi: voice Thomas Stern: slide guitar, bass and soundprocessing Composition by Phill Niblock, Anna Clementi and Thomas Stern Recorded and mixed by Thomas Stern at Sternstaubstudio, Berlin Mastering and lacquer cut: Kassian Troyer at D&M, Berlin Cover photography by Phill Niblock Layout and design by kaidoh https://karlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/zound-delta-2 The information tells us about two Niblock proposals arriving simultaneously with this label in the summer of 2022. One is "an overdue vinyl reissue of a CD release", which we will hear of later (I'd rather see a CD reissue of 'Niblock For Celli/Celli Plays Niblock' or 'Nothing To Look At Just A Record'). The other proposal was from Anna Clementi, working with Thomas Stern on a piece by Niblock for them called 'Zound Delta 2'. Clementi is the voice here, and Stern plays slide guitar, bass and sound processing. It's not a traditional Niblock piece, in some ways, at least. For starters, there's a different kind of building of the piece. This time, it's not starting and ending as a wall of sound, but from isolated voice material, the piece starts building, and other instruments, assuming slide guitar and bass here, add to the density of the piece that it arrives after some ten minutes. From here on, the music remains dense, but there are changes within the colouring of the piece. The two versions of the piece are pretty different. The first has a relatively linear building of the piece, whereas the second version, halfway through adds other voice sounds (or even acoustic sounds or field recordings) and then the piece starts building again, but not with the same density. The voice is the primary instrument in this version, whereas in the first version, the voice is on an equal level as the other instruments; or perhaps processed along in similar ways. I have a slight preference for the first, perhaps, because this seems closer to Niblock's sound world, and in the second, the music veers towards improvisation a bit more. Both pieces make up for some interesting variation in the well-known Niblock territory, and that alone is great, but the results are excellent also. (FdW)