British Philip Jeck was an experimental turntablist-composer (1952-2022) who created a unique and personal musical language by playing old records and record players salvaged from junk shops as musical instruments. The double album rpm celebrates Jeck’s seminal work and connects the dots of his career with kindred spirits and close collaborators, including Fennesz, Gavin Bryars, David Sylvian & Hildur Guðnadóttir and Jah Wobble.

This album begins with the atmospheric-cinematic «Dancer» by Jeck’s friend, sound artist-guitarist-composer Christian Fennesz, who, like Jeck, releases his work via the Touch label. The suggestive pieces of Jeck with double bass player-contemporary composer Gavin Bryars stress the genre-defying spirit of his groundbreaking work. The pieces with sound artist Chris Watson, who focuses on natural history, are taken from a work in progress of him and Jeck, with Jeck and his laptop on a hospital bed, days before his death, completing his parts for Oxmardyke (Touch, 2023).

Sound artist Rosy Parlane contributed the melancholic, cinematic «Stoked». Sound poet Cris Cheek, who has worked with Jeck in the Slant trio with producer Sianed Jones at the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties, composed the mournful and touching «Clocking Off». Electronics composer Claire M Singer planned a joint project with Jeck and began working on her meditative organ recordings, now presented as sketches for further development. Electronics player Faith Coloccia, who has worked with Jeck on Stardust (Touch, 2021), contributed the 15-minute, minimalist yet seductive «Pleione», titled after the Oceanid nymph in Greek mythology, the mother of the Pleiades. Jah Wobble, who collaborated with Jeck (on Wobble & Deep Space, Five Beat, and with Jaki Liebezeit, Live in Leuven, 30 Hertz, 2003 and 2005) contributed the rhythmic «Jeck, Drums, 2 Basses» from Five Beat, with drummer Mark Sanders. This vibe is expanded with the German collective Drums Off Chaos’ hypnotic «Keep in Touch» (with Liebezeit). «The Ark Has Closed» by electronics musician Chandra Shukla is an atmospheric soundscape.

Jeck’s only solo piece «Mono» corresponds with his influential work with visual artist Lol Sargent, Vinyl Requiem (Touch, 2013), where they used 180 record players, nine slide projectors and two 16mm projectors for a huge-scale, live performance that was not a real requiem but a testament to the work to come. David Sylvain, who collaborated with Jeck on his Uncommon Deities (Samdhisound, 2012), and cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir anchor the moving, emotional core of this compilation with Emily Dickinson’s poem «I Measure Every Grief I Meet» (Dickinson was one of Jeck’s favorite poets). This thoughtful compilation is concluded with «Pilots», sound artist Jana Winderen’s work with Jeck based on her recordings of pilot whales, and finished just a few days before Jeck’s passing.

Eyal Hareuveni