Bleep

Phil Niblock, master of the extended, mind-bending drone nears 80 this year and celebrates with another refined disc on Touch. Fans of Niblock will be well served by the five languorous compositions collected here which all distort the listener’s perception of time and sound itself through their coupling of extended duration and strange tuning techniques which create unusual natural dissonances between sustained pure tones. Though guitar quartets and the wonderful harpist Rhodri Davies feature, their instruments are never employed percussively but always hold tones which seem to stretch out infinitely, and make their source appear mysterious.