Phill Niblock marks winter solstice with shimmering minimalism — review

One might assume that Phill Niblock’s concerts on the longest night of the year would mean his longest concerts. They are long enough — spanning six hours from 6pm to midnight — but the American composer has been known to stretch to eight hours in the past, without even the Winter Solstice as an excuse.

One of the earliest such events took place in 1973, and the basis of his music hasn’t changed much since. They used to take place in his shabbily comfortable loft in SoHo, home of the 1970s New York downtown performing arts scene, where the audience was loyal but paltry; sometimes only two or three of us lounging in the sprawling armchairs. (I have never lasted the full marathon; people come and go.)

Now they have moved on to Roulette, the nicely appointed Brooklyn home of the musical avant-garde, and Niblock’s audience has grown. The expansion is partly due to Roulette’s comforts (a fine sound system, though the one in Niblock’s loft was pretty good, too) but also to his slowly growing reputation. Now, at 89, he is an icon.

Over his long life he has been inspired by his peers among New York downtown composers as well as by Mark Rothko’s paintings and Morton Feldman’s music. He has collaborated with the likes of the cult composer Arthur Russell and the alternative rock band Sonic Youth.

His concerts have sometimes enlisted live composer-performers. But the basis has remained constant. His music consists of linked segments some 20 to 30 minutes each, dense chords or conglomerations of steady tones, played loud. Mostly these are recorded wind instruments with their attacks and decays snipped off to form steady drones, perhaps with electronic tuning or enhancement. Some of the chords are sort of consonant; others densely dissonant. Some segments are pitched high, some lower. But even with rumbling bass and a growling mid-range, the effect is rarely threatening. The close juxtaposition of pitches sets up a pulsing aura, shimmering with beats and overtones.

Niblock is also a film-maker, and over the decades has amassed a collection of films of people from around the world hard at work at everyday tasks: fishing, cooking, breaking rocks. Landscapes look lushly tropical, and the people seem content — even if their efforts look back-breaking. The films juxtapose modern tools and machinery with others that must be thousands of years old, such as water buffaloes struggling to drag wooden ploughs. Roulette boasts a large centre screen, two big side screens and two smaller monitors. There is no correlation between images and sounds, but the whole achieves a kind of unity.

The overall experience is consoling or boring or maybe both, depending on your taste or your mood. Or perhaps your state of consciousness. This is true minimalism. Not as reductive as La Monte Young’s earliest conceptual pieces, but more than the busy motoric minimalism of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Niblock’s obsessions produce something utterly distinctive.

★★★☆☆

roulette.org