#873: 2024.01.21 [phill niblock]

this edition of framework:afield is the second of two shows in memory of the great composer phill niblock, who sadly passed away on january 8th of this year at the age of 90. this is a rebroadcast of a show recorded with phill live in the resonancefm studios in london on the 5th of february, 2007. here again are a few words i wrote for last week’s show, which can be heard at https://frameworkradio.net/2024/01/872-2024-01-14/:

i first met phill here in estonia in 2006 during an art festival in the small village of mooste, and friendship was immediately kindled. this was nothing unusual – phill traveled copiously, and had friends in every corner, and kept in touch with all of us. he had a way of making every one of his friendships feel special, and was somehow able to maintain them all. soon after that first meeting, we were meeting again in the states, and then the uk, and then france. everywhere i went, he seemed to be there. i performed in his loft in new york, and helped organise his performance in london. interviewed him for resonance fm, and hosted him for a brief holiday, with plenty of red wine, in the french countryside. my time with him was always also time with his partner of 22 years, katherine liberovskaya, and often also time with other friends we had both met that summer in estonia, rie nakajima and marie roux, now of the performance group o yama o.

and i haven’t even mentioned his music yet. his oft-quoted description of his own sound begins to sum it up: No harmony. No melody. No rhythm. No bullshit. phill’s sound was massive, and he preferred to listen to it that way, presenting is to live audiences at 110dB. he had definite favorites, which he even presented to me (and many others, i’m sure) on a home-burned cdr with ‘personal faves’ hand-written on it.

i hadn’t seen phill in person in several years, but our last communication was just this past may, in response to the announcement for a show i made featuring sounds from my own home. it was short, succinct, and typical of phill’s communication:

patrick
phabulous indeed
phill

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#872: 2024.01.14 [phill niblock]

we lost another giant this week – phill niblock, long-time friend and supporter of the program, passed away on monday, january 8th 2024 at the age of 90.

i first met phill here in estonia in 2006 during an art festival in the small village of mooste, and friendship was immediately kindled. this was nothing unusual – phill traveled copiously, and had friends in every corner, and kept in touch with all of us. he had a way of making every one of his friendships feel special, and was somehow able to maintain them all. soon after that first meeting, we were meeting again in the states, and then the uk, and then france. everywhere i went, he seemed to be there. i performed in his loft in new york, and helped organise his performance in london. interviewed him for resonance fm, and hosted him for a brief holiday, with plenty of red wine, in the french countryside. my time with him was always also time with his partner of 22 years, katherine liberovskaya, and often also time with other friends we had both met that summer in estonia, rie nakajima and marie roux, now of the performance group o yama o. rie and marie were kind enough to record the framework introduction for this show together (yet remotely) in tribute to phill.

and i haven’t even mentioned his music yet. his oft-quoted description of his own sound begins to sum it up: No harmony. No melody. No rhythm. No bullshit. phill’s sound was massive, and he preferred to listen to it that way, presenting is to live audiences at 110dB. he had definite favorites, which he even presented to me (and many others, i’m sure) on a home-burned cdr with ‘personal faves’ hand-written on it. but that’s not what we’re going to be listening to in this edition. next week we’ll be relistening to the show i did with him for resonance fm in 2007, featuring his own selection of favorite tracks and an extended interview. but for this edition, we’re exploring a different side of work: the pieces he gave to me over the years specifically for airplay on framework. these pieces are (almost) entirely field recording based – two were contributions for framework editions releases, our very first release, framework250, in 2009, and the follow-up framework500 a few years later. but also some other then-unreleased works (some of which have subsequently been released) and one even composed from the sounds of his own car engine recorded in mooste during our first meeting in 2006.

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#859: 2023.09.24 [steve roden]

this special edition is our second week in tribute to steve roden, who passed away on september 6th at the age of 59. we are listening to a selection of his works spanning a period between 1993 and 2020, both under his own name and as in be tween noise, including the track he contributed to our very first release on framework editions in 2009, the 4-disc compilation framework250. we began the show with a special framework introduction recorded in his memory by steve peters. links to the releases online, wherever possible, are included in the tracklist below. the image we are using was gleaned from steve’s website. we highly recommend, if you are unfamiliar with steve’s work, that you explore it – here are a few links you could a start with, including one to the piece written by lawrence english from which we read in the show:

https://www.inbetweennoise.com/
https://inbetweennoise.blogspot.com/
https://steveroden.bandcamp.com/
https://thequietus.com/articles/33373-steve-roden-obituary

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#858: 2023.09.17 [steve roden]

steve roden passed away on september 6th, 2023. we are dedicating two shows to him: this first one, a repeat of the edition of framework:afield he produced for us back in 2008, and a second one next week which is a mix of our own favorite steve roden / in be tween noise works. here are a few words i wrote last week about his passing:

a few days ago, we lost another artist who has been incredibly important to framework radio, and to my personal development as an artist, for years, or rather decades. steve roden was a gentle, open, kind, incredible composer and visual artist with a spectacular ear for detail, texture and structure. his early work as in be tween noise was one of my first discoveries in the world of experimental music as a young hopeful in the 90’s, and his subsequent development of and into the lowercase sound movement under his own name never failed to impress. i never had the pleasure of meeting him in person, despite many failed attempts on the rare occasions when we found ourselves in the same city, but our correspondence over more than 15 years was always encouraging, warming and thought-provoking. steve’s work made regular appearances in the show (the first in one of our earliest editions), he contributed a beautiful program to the first round of our framework:afield series of guest-produced programs, and he graciously contributed a new track to our very first release on framework editions, 2009’s framework250 compilation. steve passed away far too early, at the age of 59. we are heartbroken that we never got to shake his hand.

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#796: 2022.04.10 [claude schryer]

this edition of framework:afield has been produced in canada by claude schryer. for more of his work see https://www.claudeschryer.ca. producer’s notes:

Winter Diary Revisited is a new work by Canadian soundscape composer Claude Schryer which was the first presentation of the 2022 Deep Wireless Festival of Radio and Transmission Art which took place on Sunday February 6th at the NAISA North Media Arts Centre in South River, Ontario. This radio documentary is a tribute to Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer who passed away in August 2021. Schafer’s writing and the research undertaken with the World Soundscape Project were foundational to the development of the field of acoustic ecology.

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#791: 2022.03.06 [ukraine]

of course we are all horrified by the recent events in ukraine, and there’s not a lot i can say to address this. but being a radio program centered around listening to sounds and spaces, this felt like the only reasonable response. in this edition we are listening to ukraine – works by ukrainian artists, or sounds recorded within ukrainian borders. the releases we are featuring are available for sale on bandcamp, and the proceeds from their sales are being donated to various organisations and charities committed to providing aid and assistance to ukrainians suffering due to this war. please follow these links and buy these works to show your support:

https://flamingpines.bandcamp.com/album/kaleidoscope
https://mappa.bandcamp.com/album/dilo
https://yalivec.bandcamp.com/album/still-life

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#774: 2021.10.24 [ian rawes]

we learned this week with great sadness of the passing of ian rawes, sonic enthusiast and single-handed creator/curator/producer of the london sound survey; a charismatic fantastic speaker, generous soul, and good friend of the program. he will be greatly, greatly missed, and we dedicate this program to his life, his work and his memory. our thoughts go out to those closer to him than we were.

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#764: 2021.07.04 [embla quickbeam]

we recently learned, through the words of jez riley french in the wire, of a great loss to our community: rowan forestier-walker, who recorded her amazing soundworks under the name embla quickbeam, has passed away. her work was a very recent discovery for us here at framework, much to our shame when we realised it’s been out there in the aether for many, many years (her first full release as embla, as far as we know, dates from 2011 and features in this edition). we encountered it by chance only earlier this year, and first played it on the show, her latest full-length solo work released by chocolate monk, in april. we’ve never had direct contact with the artist, but the sensitivity, compassion and focus that jez makes clear about her in his writing comes through with great force in her work. we regret that we will not get a chance to meet her, or hear her perform, or experience to further development of her work, but we are grateful to have made this discovery and to have the sounds that she left us, her listeners. […]

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#749: 2021.03.21 [willem sannen]

this edition of framework:afield, entitled mixtape #1, has been produced in belgium by willem sannen. for more information see https://soundcloud.com/willemsannen. producer’s notes:

Over the years some field recordings or sound works stayed with me. I tend to replay them which I normally don’t do. I usually listen to an album or a recording once, in full concentration and don’t come back to it. I have the same thing with movies: I don’t see a movie twice. Even the ones I really adore. It has nothing to do with adoration, but everything with not spoiling that first experience. However some field recordings I do revisit and Mixtape #1 is a selection of some of those.

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#696: 2020.01.12

we’re back folks! thank you for bearing with me while i dealt with the passing of my father – it was a difficult and chaotic holiday season, but it’s time to get things moving again. this edition is dedicated to his memory, and features an introduction i recorded with him back in 2003, and also a recording of frogs he proudly made himself and set to me about a decade later. he will be greatly, greatly missed. […]

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#653: 2018.09.16 [dmitry vasilyev]

our first show back after our annual summer break is a sad return to the airwaves, as while we were away we learned of the passing of our friend and colleague, dmitry vasilyev. dmitry was an organiser, podcaster, music and mushroom enthusiast, expert, curator of the monochrome vision record label, and author of the massive treatise on italian experimental music, viva italia. in this edition we pay tribute to dmitry with a mix of his monochrome vision releases, as well as a few tracks from the field-recording based the sound ecology: range compilation released some years back on his other label project, nitkie. dmitry has been steadily sending us the releases featured in this edition since our first meeting back in 2009, and to be honest, the massive, growing pile of amazing sounds to explore was so intimidating that we never managed to get most of them on the air. we’re devastated that this is what it took, but we’re very happy to finally be able to present this great label’s body of work. […]

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#644: 2018.06.03 [manrico montero]

in this edition we pay tribute to the mexican field recordist and sound artist manrico montero, who sadly passed away recently only in his 40’s. we’re featuring a selection of his own solo and collaborative works as released by labels such as unfathomless, sem and impulsive habitat, as well as works by other artists – terje paulsen, james mcdougall, juan josé calarco, christopher mcfall, hiroki sasajima – released on the netlabel that manrico himself curated, mandorla. we didn’t know him personally, but from the tributes that have been made to him throughout the field recording community, it is clear that he will be greatly missed. […]

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#610: 2017.09.17 [matt shoemaker]

we’re back from our summer break, but sadly we’re back with another memorial edition, as we learned during our time away of the death of matt shoemaker, an artist whose work we have admired for a very long time. i first encountered matt’s work in the early 2000’s, through his releases on bernhard günter’s essential trente oiseaux label, and the textures he created and the sensibility in the structuring of his sounds were a great influence on my  own compositional endeavours. we first featured his work on the program back in 2006, and he has graced our airwaves several times since. his work, as has been pointed out, is greatly under-appreciated, whereas his name really deserves to be amongst the greats of our ‘genre’. i never had the pleasure of meeting the man myself, but from the tributes i’ve seen by those close to him personally, it seems this is also something i might regret. but in memory of matt i can at least hope to spread the knowledge of his great work a little, for those of you who may not be familiar with him, and provide a brief space on our airwaves for remembrance, for those of you who are. […]

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