DISCOGRAPHY & REVIEWS
Here are Philip Jeck's releases with the titles linked to the relevent page in the TouchShop. Reviews of all of Philip Jeck's releases can be read here
[Touch # TO:67, 2008]
CD - 7 tracks
Sand was recorded live in Holland and England in 2006/7 and edited in Liverpool January, 2008 using Fidelity record-players, Casio SK keyboards, Behringer mixer and sony mini-disc recorders.
Following Philip Jeck's acclaimed collaboration with Gavin Bryars and Alter Ego on a new version of 'The Sinking of the Titanic' (Touch Tone 34), 'Sand' is a set of seven new compositions that highlight Jeck's mastery of vinyl manipulation, personal and collective memories.
During the past year Jeck has refined and consolidated his unique sound, playing superb sets at last summer's Faster than Sound festival and at York Minster for Spire. He has recently released 'Amoroso' [Touch # TS01, 7" vinyl only with Fennesz] where he responds to Charles Matthews's homage to Arvo Pärt.
7
[Touch # TO:57, 2004]
CD - 7 tracks
This is Philip Jeck's seventh solo cd, and 4th for Touch, after Loopholes, Surf and Stoke. He also made Soaked with Jacob Kirkegaard, and the Live in Tokyo CDR. Philip has recently been touring with Jah Wobble & Deep Space, who released 'Five Beat' on 30hz Records.
7 is Philip Jeck's 7th solo album... All Seven are edits of home and concert recordings (UK Germany & Belgium) using Bush, Ferguson, Fidelity & Philips record-players, Sony portable mini-disc and Casio keyboards. Bush Hum was made from the amplified hum of a Bush record-player and delay-pedal. Wipe was originally made for a video by Marisa Zanotti.
"Johnny Mathis advances the art of remembering" (Mort Goode 1972)
... points of origin slip into areas of acceptance then long listening eliminates any worries about that acceptance and parts the normally tightly bound, throwing seldom acknowledged emotions through newly opened doors...
[Touch # TO:56, 2002]
CD - 7 tracks
The Wire [UK]:
With its acrobatic athleticism and penchant for charming gimmicks, in all likelihood HipHop will indefinitely dominate the field of turntablism. Even record-spinning abstractionists like Christian Marclay and Martin Tetrault, who may not always share HipHop's necessity for the beat, put on flashy demonstrations that engage the machismo of technique, alongside their critically minded recombinations of cultural readymades. While Philip Jeck's performances, installations, and recordings have centred around his arsenal of turntables (at last count, he was up to 180 antique Dansette record players, though more normally he performs on two or three, and a minidisc recorder), he isn't terribly interested in the contemporary discourse of turntablism, preferring to coax a haunted impressionism with those tools. However as a calculating improvisor, he shares affinities with the turntable community. Once he is in control of the overall context of the music, he leaves much to the spontaneous reaction towards sound at any given moment.
A typical Jeck composition moves at an incredibly lethargic pace through a series of looped drone tracks caught in the infinities of multiple locked grooves. As he prefers to use old records on his antique turntables, the inevitable surface noise crackles into gossamer rhythms of pulsating hiss. Occasionally, Jeck intercedes in his ghostly bricolage with a slowly rotated foreground element - a disembodied voice, a melody, or simply a fragment of non-specific sound - which spirals out of focus through a warm bath of delay. For almost ten years now, Jeck has been developing this methodology, building up to Stoke, his strongest work to date. Its opening passages are on a par with his Vinyl Coda series, with Jeck effortlessly transforming grizzled surface noise into languid atmosphere.But Stoke really gets going with the breathtakingly simple construction of Pax, upon which Jeck overlays an aerated Ambient wash with the time-crawling repetition of a single crescendo from an unknown female blues singer. By downpitching her voice from the intended 78 rpm to 16 rpm, he amplifies its emotional tenor by making her drag out her impassioned declarations of misery far longer than is humanly possibly. The effect is just beautiful. Philip Jeck has always been good, but Stoke makes him great. [Jim Haynes]
[Touch # TO:5CDR1, 2000]
CD - 1 track
Recorded live by Mike Harding at ICC, Tokyo, on a short tour with Disinformation & Ash International
[Touch # TO:36, 1999]
CD - 7 tracks
AT A PLACE that is yours or mine. It is morning, evening, anytime. You are driving to work, to a theatre, home. You are in a crowd or all alone. You are in Rio, Chicago, Sydney, on a plane to Madras, a ferry to Dublin. You are at college, in a rest home; the children are sleeping, the grandparents are on the phone.
You have your own time, own place. You listen to whatever comes out of now, the past. The sound can drip with well won laurels of acceptance, of transience, of longevity. There is a touch, a method that changes, adapts with the mood of the music and times. The touch is always personal, passionate: it embraces, repels, passes, returns.
with Jacob Kirkegaard:
[Touch # TONE 15, 2002]
CD - 1 track
This recording is taken from their live performance at the Moers Jazz Festival, Germany, in May 2002
“There are grains of truth in the suggestion that, in moving, you may find yourself in or out of some one’s favour. But, listen to the slow, delicate, even introspective background: some breeze, some chimes, some distant thunder as each focal point remains a lament.”
This blistering work was recorded live at the Moers Jazz Festival, Germany, in May 2002 and follows hot on the heels of Philip Jeck’s highly acclaimed “Stoke” [Touch # TO:56, 2002], about which The Wire said “Philip Jeck has always been good, but Stoke makes him great” and Side-Line wrote: “an essential record for the lovers of meaningful experimental and ambient stuff!”.
Jacob Kirkegaard is a member of Danish combo Aeter who work in a mixed media context. He was born in Denmark, 1975 and studied at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne. Germany. He now lives in Berlin. He has taken part in numerous festivals throughout Europe, playing live, improvising with samplers and other electronics, as he does on this recording.
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