Philip Jeck

Philip Jeck studied visual arts at Dartington College in the 1970's and has been creating sound with record players since the early 80's. He has worked with many dance and theatre companies and played with musicians such as Jah Wobble, Jaki Liebezeit, Gavin Bryars, David Sylvian and Steve Lacy. He has released 9 solo CDs, Suite on vinyl only and Spool, a cassette only release made using a bass guitar. His largest work made with Lol Sargent, Vinyl Requiem, was for 180 record players, slide projectors and 16mm film received The Time Out Performance Award. Vinyl Coda I-III, a commission from Bavarian Radio, won The Karl Sczuka Foderpries for Radio Art. He also still works as a visual artist having shown works at The Hayward Gallery, The Hamburger Bahnhof Gallery, Berlin and at The Shanghai Bienalle. His CD Sand was placed at no.2 in The Wire magazines top 50 of 2008 and was described as “ ...billowingly poignant ...it evokes a simultaneous sense of persistence and decay, both a profound sadness and a sense of joy.” In 2009 he received a Paul Hamlyn Award for Composers and in 2011 a Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction. Most of his releases are on Touch.

“Haunting' is an overused term... yet it is utterly appropriate when talking about Jecks work, music made up of the ghosts of musicians, the specters that float off old vinyl like ectoplasm from the mouth of a spiritualist... he lets each voice join in a grand communion, a heavenly choir of records sounding and resounding in a thousand combinations of loops, speed changes, superimpositions and echoes.” (From review of Vinyl Coda IV in The Wire, by Ed Pinsent.)