Phil's Fills by Phil Strong
Donations in Phil’s memory are gratefully accepted by www.doctorswithoutborders.ca. As the always generous Phil would no doubt wish, in lieu of paying extravagantly here to own these tracks, please consider supporting Doctors Without Borders.
Phil Strong 1963 — 2022
Tracklist
| 1. | qui, a brief version | 1:40 |
| 2. | scissorcopter | 0:49 |
| 3. | plunderPHILe | 4:44 |
| 4. | arkelopeanizations | 2:26 |
| 5. | swanning | 0:26 |
| 6. | an excerpt to a continuous journey | 1:44 |
| 7. | a time to hear for here (binaural overhear) | 3:07 |
Videos
Credits
released September 4, 1963
In 1991 Phil Strong rang the bell of the mLAB. At first glance, seeing him through the cracked-glass front door i thought ‘who is this young guy looking like an eager beaver?’ He introduced himself as the intern assigned to be my audio technician for an hour-long soundtrack i was scheduled to put together a few months hence at the recording studios of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, high in the Rocky Mountains of Canada. Phil, still on my doorstep, said he was just heading out there, and asked if there was anything he could do to prepare for this. I, off the cuff, on a whim and a dare, replied that he could try to record the sound of snow falling. It was still the season for this, and it would likely no longer be so by the time i got to Banff; which was convenient because i had no idea of how one would record a snowfall audibly.
To read more about what happened next, click on the title of track #2: ‘scissorcopter’ in the playlist above (or you can also hover your cursor over the blank space beside the ‘video’ link for each track and click the ‘lyric’ link which will appear). As is true of all the FONY releases on bandcamp, there is an individual image for each track, and for Fills each track has a related video, plus my story of how Phil created or contributed in a big way to each of these compositions as well as the many other unusual projects we concocted together over these past three decades, during which i quickly discovered that giving Phil free reign to create would consistently produce magnificent music. — john oswald
The cover image of Phil is not a collage. He is reflected in a two-metre mylar mirror mounted in the trees near Banff, one of several sites we used for a dawn to dust series of performances in motion entitled Inverted Mountains, Fluid Sky. Phil also has a smaller circular mirror pinned over his heart.* The largest of these mirrors was ten metres in diameter, resting at the foot of a mountain, and visible from its top, reflecting the rising sun.
* revision: Since the writing of this we decided to invert the colour spectrum of the forest behind the mirror, or in other words we flipped it to its negative state.
In 1991 Phil Strong rang the bell of the mLAB. At first glance, seeing him through the cracked-glass front door i thought ‘who is this young guy looking like an eager beaver?’ He introduced himself as the intern assigned to be my audio technician for an hour-long soundtrack i was scheduled to put together a few months hence at the recording studios of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, high in the Rocky Mountains of Canada. Phil, still on my doorstep, said he was just heading out there, and asked if there was anything he could do to prepare for this. I, off the cuff, on a whim and a dare, replied that he could try to record the sound of snow falling. It was still the season for this, and it would likely no longer be so by the time i got to Banff; which was convenient because i had no idea of how one would record a snowfall audibly.
To read more about what happened next, click on the title of track #2: ‘scissorcopter’ in the playlist above (or you can also hover your cursor over the blank space beside the ‘video’ link for each track and click the ‘lyric’ link which will appear). As is true of all the FONY releases on bandcamp, there is an individual image for each track, and for Fills each track has a related video, plus my story of how Phil created or contributed in a big way to each of these compositions as well as the many other unusual projects we concocted together over these past three decades, during which i quickly discovered that giving Phil free reign to create would consistently produce magnificent music. — john oswald
The cover image of Phil is not a collage. He is reflected in a two-metre mylar mirror mounted in the trees near Banff, one of several sites we used for a dawn to dust series of performances in motion entitled Inverted Mountains, Fluid Sky. Phil also has a smaller circular mirror pinned over his heart.* The largest of these mirrors was ten metres in diameter, resting at the foot of a mountain, and visible from its top, reflecting the rising sun.
* revision: Since the writing of this we decided to invert the colour spectrum of the forest behind the mirror, or in other words we flipped it to its negative state.
License
CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. See the Creative Commons website for details.
FONY is a 21st centuy record label focused on audiocentric creations by John Oswald and his associates—
works including Plunderphonics, the Rascali Klepitoire, Mystery Tapes, plus miscellaneous soundtracks, sonic inventions, site-conditioned performances or installations, et cetera.
Video and audio production and mastering passes through mLAB, where Oswald is Director of Research.