CD Reviews

Philip Jeck

Sand | Touch

By SUSANNA BOLLE | June 11, 2008

3.5 Stars

A recurrent theme of decay and loss haunts UK turntablist Philip Jeck’s music. The basic tools of his trade — thrift-store vinyl and vintage turntables often set at a tortoise-paced 16 rpm — are themselves haunted relics. As much medium as artist, Jeck coaxes warbling, spectral sounds from the worn grooves of his records. Half-familiar melodies are shrouded in a gauzy crackles and hums that mimic the soft temporal distortions of memory. On Sand, his seventh full-length on the lauded Touch label, the mood can be languid and melancholic, as on the hallucinogenic “Shining,” with its swirling flutes and trippy sitar(esque) motifs, or it can be gloriously exuberant, as during an exultant trio of fanfares. The last of these, “Fanfares Over,” spirals skyward in increasingly eccentric, quasi-drunken reverie, rising higher and higher until, without warning, it cuts to nothing. The sense of loss in the silence that follows is stunning.

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Topics: CD Reviews , Philip Jeck , Philip Jeck

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