Philip Blackburn – Another Intensity
Another Intensity? Wait! What? Is this CD a follow-up to redneck rocker Ted Nugent’s Intensities In 10 Cities album from way back in 1981? Ah, well, um…..definitely not! In fact, you could not find an artist or album more diametrically opposed. Philip Blackburn is a British-born, St. Paul, Minnesota-based composer who has been active since the 1980s, when he earned degrees at the Universities of Cambridge and Iowa. Best known as the director of Innova Recordings since 1996, for whom he most notably rescued Harry Partch’s long lost personal archives and released them as the Enclosure Series, Philip left Innova in 2020 to run the Neuma record label. In addition to producing over 650 albums for other composers, Philip is also an environmental sound artist, releasing several solo CDs over the past two decades, the latest being the aforementioned Another Intensity.
“In Praise of Clouds” opens up the disc with a phalanx of dark drones, deep ambience and a haunting boys’ choir keening off in the distance. “Dawn Chorus, Still Life” squeaks on by your field of aural vision with an uneasy hint of bowed bicycle wheels and Australian sheng (a free-reed wind instrument), while “Sounding Xibalba” offers up a gaggle of echoing percussion recorded in Mountain Cow Cave in Belize. In this piece, “Blackburn awakens the uniquely resonant stalagmites and stalactites, surrounded by sacrificial human remains, and summons a whistling spirit with an ancient ceramic bat-flute—a magical experience where ears replace sight.” On “Between Two Waves of the Sea,” a sonically altered orchestra gently wafts across your field of aural vision, while wavering synth drones occupy “Floating Beneath the Surface.” The album closes with “An Illegible Stone” as an understated performance on percussion and cello saw, pluck and drone their way into the farthest reaches of your noggin.
Label: Neuma Catalog Number: Neuma 234 Format: CD Packaging: Mini-LP gatefold Tracks: 6 Total Time: 50:00 Country: United States Released: 2025 More: Bandcamp, Official
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