The power of manipulation. A night with ILIOS and Philip Jeck

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In our role as apprentices, some shows at ZEMOS98 bring us back the modesty, the power of silence, the domestic and the common of a music profession dignified by a dedication akin to craftsmanship. Ilios and Phil Jeck, with very different propositions, contributed with their noise to the Sound Experiences.

“It´s about vibration, the use of frequencies, how sound affects space, the use of space or how sound affects our body,” says Ilios about his work. But we didn´t hear a thing for the first few minutes, or perhaps we thought we didn´t hear a thing. Afterwards, two loud bangs. A few scared little shouts and laughs in the audience. Ilios likes “making the space sound”, but yesterday he had to deal with space and people, who are always part of the space in an act of communication.

British artist Philip Jeck, a white-bearded 56-year-old with light eyes, brought in his luggage two portable record players, around 30 vinyls with stickers on, a minidisk and an little keyboard – old, from a junk shop, almost toy-like – that can record a few sampling seconds and make them into a loop. Jeck makes music with four pesetas and a secret ingredient you cannot buy for all the Queen of England´s money: a passion for vinyl about which he could talk for hours. He feels, touches, reads and physically fiddles with the history of vinyl written on the very same material; he rescues it and turns it into his own music. A CD´s sound remains the same forever, whereas vinyl ages, modified by fingerprints, scratches, dust or stains. What many saw as the reason to condemn vinyl and replace it with digital technology is what makes so valuable the work of a sound builder such as Jeck.

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