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Vinyl Coda I-IV
all composed and played by Philip Jeck

Vinyl Coda I-III first released on double cd
in 2000

Vinyl Coda IV first released on cd in 2001

Bandcamp: Philip Jeck deploys all the trademark techniques of experimental turntablism: taping, gluing, or disfiguring vinyl, incorporating surface noise, and manipulating playback. However, he goes in precisely the opposite direction of Knížák: instead of manic shuttling between and across records, Jeck builds up stately, slow-moving colossi of sound. His signature approach is to play a record on an old Dansette record player set to 16 rpm. At that speed, he says, even the album’s composer would not recognize the music. Looping these molasses-slow fragments of vinyl allows Jeck to compose in real-time, sometimes assisted by delay pedals and samplers. Most famously, he applied this technique to Vinyl Requiem, a piece for up to 180 Dansettes that he would walk amongst and turn on or off as the flow of the music demanded. His Vinyl Coda series (completed with Vinyl Coda III-IV) was commissioned for German radio and broadcast live. It showcases a master at work: the dirge-like pace and live setting leave him nowhere to hide a mistake, and he successfully transports the listener through nearly three hours of deeply engrossing, all-encompassing loops and echoes.

Philip Jeck (1952-2022) worked with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes. He really did play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Philip Jeck makes geniunely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art not the gimmick.

1. philipjeck.com