Phill Niblock

New York minimalist composer, film-maker and fringe artist Phill Niblock has been an active purveyor of avant-garde since the 1960s.

He is director of the city's Experimental Intermedia.

His live performances tend to be a multimedia affair that incorporate his own The Movement Of People Working project, which feature labourers filmed in rural environments from non-Western cultures and countries including China, Brazil, Mexico and Peru, as a backdrop.

Niblock's style has hallmarks of the classical and jazz improv discipline.

But his real mastery is in the creation of drone, as tonight's performance in collaboration with Brunel University's music department in the heart of Boho - Dalston - proves.

Using pre-recorded backing tracks to treat a chamber orchestra featuring a range of classical instruments - including clarinet, violin, guitar and double bass - the live musicians hold one note as Niblock treats them with drone effects that rise and fall in crescendos of cathartic cacophony.

The evening is enveloped in an atmosphere of strict seriousness as attendees ponder and chin stroke throughout the three works of monotone drone, performed at around 25 minutes each.

Indeed, in the realm of drone, it is much more about the quality of sound over performance.

Hence every detail, from the acoustics of the room down to the volume control, amplification and playback equipment, is all of the utmost importance to the discerning ear.

Fortunately Dalston's Cafe Oto is well accustomed to fine-tuned performances of this nature.

As a cafe by day, it regularly reopens its doors at 8pm for experimental musicians and has already featured a host of well-established sound artists, including conceptual turntablist Christian Marclay, free jazz drummer Eddie Prévost, saxophonist Evan Parker, anti-art activist Henry Flynt, pianist John Tilbury and tabletop guitarist Keith Rowe.

Needless to say this musical field is Cafe Oto's forte and for that reason it has been endorsed by avant-garde radio station Resonance FM and progressive music magazine The Wire.

Like most of the artists who appear here, tonight is less "a gig" and more an art installation.

The instruments drift in and out of each piece seemingly at set times during each performance, so not all are present from the beginning.

During the final performance - a track dubbed Disseminate - the higher-pitched clarinet suddenly comes in above the double bass both gradually changing in pitch and timbre to create a wave-like, almost otherworldly, soundscape that is more listenable than one would at first assume - even if Niblock's multilayered sound slabs are best heard in the live context and not something you would necessarily whack on your CD player at home.

Although not within the scope of appreciation for those who insist on melody in their music, Niblock's form of sustained microtonal experimentation pushes the boundaries of what it means to be a musician and has consistently produced some of the most remarkable sounds since music became accepted as a science as much as an art form.

Phill Niblock's next performance is on Wednesday February 23 at Bath Spa University.