An Ark For The Listener

Philip Jeck writes: "A version of "An Ark For The Listener" was first performed at Kings Place London on 24/02/2010. It is a meditation on verse 33 of "The Wreck of the Deutschland", Gerard Manley Hopkins poem about the drowning on December 7th 1875 of five Franciscan nuns exiled from Germany. This CD version was recorded at home in Liverpool and used extracts from live performances over the last 12 months. The "coda:" tracks are remixes of 2 pieces from "Suite: Live in Liverpool". "Chime, Chime (Re-rung)" was originally made for Musicworks magazine (#104, Summer 09) and "All That's Allowed (Released)" is previously unreleased. All tracks were made using Fidelity record-players, Casio SK1 keyboards, Sony mini-disc recorders, Behringer mixers, Ibanez bass guitar, Boss delay pedal and Zoom bass effects pedal." An Ark... is Jeck's 6th solo album for touch since 'Loopholes' in 1995. The Wire reckoned it was 'Stoke' (Touch, 2002) which 'made him great, but his body of work and his achingly brilliant live sets are rapidly defining him as one of our best artists, and his recent award from The Paul Hamlyn Foundation confirms him as such.

One of experimental music's current stars, Jeck expertly mixes, loops, and layers passages from old records into an instantly identifiable aesthetic.

Since the 1980s, Philip Jeck has been creating sound sculptures -- some of them quite abstract, others structured with beats and audible progressions -- using junk-shop record players, outdated Casio keyboards, basses, effects, and other digital and analog miscellanea.