Vinyl Coda IV
by Skip Jansen Following two CDs on Touch, British sound artist Philip Jeck continues his study of vinyl deconstruction; he has created a series of beautiful experimental compositions with surface noise and loops of depleted discs. Where other experimentalists, such as Otomo Yoshahide and Christian Marclay, fetishize discarded and damaged vinyl for either improvisation or sound installation art, such procedures often achieve a music only as deep as the damaged groove. With Jeck's chance compositions, these multiple turntablist pieces create a highly evocative and powerful music, using history and memory by default. The suggestive sound of a looping scratched record evokes something in everyone, and this is more prominent material in Jeck's compositions than the gesture of reuse/recycle. When the orchestra of sometimes up to 100 or more turntables is set in motion, Philip Jeck lets chance take its course and the works result in a dense symphony of rhythm and texture. When the repetitions culminate into glorious crests, it sounds as if recorded history in its entirety is singing one last song in the death throes of the waste bin.

