Philip Jeck began his artistic life in the visual arts but then was diverted by explorations into using turntables to compose music in the early 1980s. The phrase ‘turntablist’ doesn’t seem quite right for Jeck’s approach to vinyl appropriation though and insight into his technique and its sublime lightness of touch may come from merely examining his table top. Vintage Dansette turntables (he has a store room full of hundreds of them), primitive sampling keyboards and minidisc recorders reveal an artist who’s found the perfect tools for this work – and hearing his compositions really is like being given the keys to a secret garden. The nearest comparisons to the world he creates are possibly the work of Ekkehard Ehlers, Fennesz or Tom Recchion but Jeck’s sound has a tender sumptuousness that’s all his.
In 1993, Philip Jeck and Lol Sargent won the Time Out Performance Award for their Vinyl Requiem, a performance involving 180 Dansettes and numerous projectors. Since then he’s released a raft of great recordings, largely via the Touch label, and developed a great reputation as an unmissable live performer. At TUSK in 2914, Philip Jeck performed a piece specially commissioned by the festival.
