Philip Jeck (1952-2022)
Photo by Dave Knapik
Philip had a passion and ear for all music but was not a conventionally
trained musician or composer. He initially studied fine art at Dartington
College of Arts, where access to all the arts and performance were open
and so made available for him. Later, jostling alongside, seeing and creating work amongst the experimental artists and cooperatives of the 70’s and 80’s, (London Musicians Collective, London Filmmakers Coop and X6 Dance
Collective at Butler’s Wharf), provided an ideal context and support for his
own experiments in performance and making music.
Hugely influenced by the extended vinyl dance music mixing phenomenon, particularly the producers Walter Gibbons and Larry Levin, Philip evolved
this practice firstly as a DJ and later working with lo tech ’50s and ’60s record players whereby he could control and manipulate the speed of the turntable
and the needle on vinyl. Each record player has its own unique sound.
Significant too was Philip’s early collaboration with dancer/choreographer Laurie Booth over a ten year period particularly touring the performance
‘Yip Yip Mix and the 20th Century”. Philip continued throughout his career composing and performing live for dance, theatre and film.
“Vinyl Requiem”, created with visual artist Lol Sargent, was an epic work
made with 180 record players, 9 slide projectors and 2 16mm movie
projectors. It received a Time Out Performance Award 1993. Vinyl Coda I-III,
a commission from Bavarian Radio in 1999 won the Karl Sczuka Foderpreis
for Radio Art.
His first album “Loopholes” was released on Touch in 1995. “Suite”, a vinyl-only release, won a Distinction at The Prix Ars Electronica. His CD “Sand” (2008)
was 2nd in The Wire’s top 50 albums of the year. He played on Gavin Bryars’s “The Sinking of the Titanic” (2008) and collaborated with Chris Watson on the album “Oxmardyke” (2023), both also released on Touch.
Photo by Oddbjorn Steffensen, Ekko festival, Bergen, Norway 2013
Live performance expressed his work best.Touring extensively throughout
the world from the 1990s, he also collaborated over that 30 year period with Gavin Bryars, Jaki Liebezeit, BJNilsen, Jana Winderen, Jah Wobble & many others.
Philip created sound and visual installations for The Bluecoat, Liverpool,
The Hayward Gallery, London, The Hamburger Bahnhof Gallery, Berlin,
ZKM in Karlsruhe and The Shanghai and Liverpool Biennales.
He has toured in an Opera North production playing live to the silent movie “Pandora’s Box” (composed by Hildur Guðnadóttir and Jóhann Jóhannson).
Jeck also worked again with Gavin Bryars on “Pneuma” for a ballet choreographed by Carolyn Carlson for The Opera de Bordeaux and in 2016
made and performed the sound for “The Ballad of Ray & Julie” at the
Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. A more recent partnership, sadly cut short,
with Michaela Grill Video and Karl Lemieux 16ml film toured as ‘Jeck/Grill/Lemieux‘.
Philip Jeck was a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for
Composers in 2009.
“At their best, the records of experimental British composer and producer
Philip Jeck can make you reimagine the way you hear the world. For most
of his career, Jeck has used the [vinyl] record and the record player as both primary inspiration and chief instrument. He processes the static sounds archived on forgotten LPs, sampling and obfuscating the source material
until it yields and blurs into new pieces.” Grayson Haver Curren review
in Pitchfork (extract)
You can read about Philip’s work in Pitchfork (Philip Sherburn, March 2022):
“Artists have been using—and misusing—the turntable as a musical instrument for decades, but no one played it quite like Philip Jeck. He employed a battery
of vintage monophonic record players to create otherworldly soundscapes out
of thrift-store vinyl…”
And watch a live set from V-A-C x Synthposium in 2018
And listen to an interview and live set on Daniel Blumin’s show on WFMU
in 2012