Did Phill Niblock inspire The Velvet Underground?
Drone music is about as discordant and niche as it sounds. As pioneered by figures like La Monte Young and Phill Niblock, drone music utilised tone clusters, called drones, to create avant-garde soundscapes with sparse arrangements. There might be some harmonic variation, but it rarely deviates from a small cluster of cords. It was an explorative move, and musicians tried to tease out as many rich tones as they could from meagre material. The efforts of the late Niblock combined with Young’s output shaped an entire generation of experimental composers, and it’s not a stretch to say it directly inspired the low growl of the first Velvet Underground EP.
Young and Underground co-founder John Cale had worked together in Theatre of Eternal Music, who made what they described as “dream music”, a surreal blend of drones and harmonics. When Cale left to form a band with Lou Reed, their genre-defying efforts exploiting the sounds of prolonged notes continued to colour his output.
The Velvet Underground’s first release, 1966’s Loop, continued that thread so strongly it sits apart from the rest of the band’s discography by some margin. Far from the snarl and grit more closely associated with them, Loop was an experimental drone piece featuring Cale on viola and minimal chords laid down by Reed.
The track ‘Heroin’ from that EP laid the groundwork for drone music to take flight as a genre, predating industrial music and eventually appearing on their 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. Reed had written it way back in ’64, and his partnership with Cale – which allowed the influence of drone music to unfurl – provided fertile ground to experiment musically.
With no bass guitar and only two chords, it was discordant and frantic – aided by the drone of Cale’s electric viola. Somehow, even though it was technically restrained – the song was a marvel, with textured elements overlapping and clashing to great effect. While Niblock’s compositions were more avant-garde than the heavy rock track, his defining principles were very much evident.
For him, drone music was about seeing what kind of sonic expanses you could create within specific confines, famously saying music required: “No harmony. No melody. No rhythm. No bullshit.” He later expanded on that philosophy by explaining it was about creating a “richer experience in terms of sensing the differences that occur”.
Young, Niblock and The Velvet Underground, in turn, each unleashed drone music to the general public, creating ripples across rock that sustained the work of My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, and a host of 1970s Krautrock outfits. As Niblock told James Saunders: “The music is so abstract that you take out the melody, rhythm and, you know, harmonic progression, and you’re left with that very simple music with a lot of internal life.”
