Phill Niblock

• Genre: Avant-Garde

About

Phill Niblock is a veteran of Downtown New York's fertile experimental music and art scene of the 1970s, but it's not surprising that much of his work has been released on the UK's Touch, a label of the '90s and onward that specializes in futurist ambient studies and unconventional sonic investigations. Sometimes called history's "forgotten Minimalist," Niblock's work helped lay the foundations for all manner of drone-based electronic and electro-acoustic experiments to follow. In 1968 he founded Experimental Intermedia, a multi-disciplinary studio and performance space that remains active today. His music is often minimalist in the extreme -- not in the pulsing, polyrhythmic vein of Steve Reich or Terry Riley, but in the long, mercurial drones of La Monte Young. Layering long, yawning tones played on a handful of instruments -- strings, winds and electronics appear frequentl -- he lets unitone sounds unravel into frayed ropes of buzzing harmonics and queasy overtones. Niblock's music has had a profound influence on noise-rockers like Sonic Youth as well as electronic musicians like Thomas Koener. His music is truly made for getting lost in.

- Philip Sherburne