Phil Kline Brings His Unsilent Night to Santa Barbara
by Elizabeth Schwyzer
“Imagine you’re coming to a Christmas party with very unusual
music,” said Phil Kline, the New York sound artist whose traveling
urban soundscape, Unsilent Night, makes its first-ever Santa
Barbara stop on Thursday, December 21. “It’s definitely an event
where you’re supposed to have fun.”
Unsilent Night, which comes to town courtesy of Iridian Arts,
Santa Barbara’s first nonprofit dedicated to programming
cutting-edge, contemporary music and multimedia performing arts, is
an electronic Christmas caroling parade that has become a holiday
cult classic. Well known in experimental and electronic music
circles, its creator, Phil Kline, actually started out as a rocker,
cofounding the art-punk band the Del-Byzanteens with independent
filmmaker Jim Jarmusch before collaborating with Glenn Branca
Ensemble. Kline has a long-standing interest in multi-track
recordings and non-traditional sound environments. His focus has
veered toward avant-garde classical composition in recent years,
but he remains gently and thoroughly subversive, both in his
subtext and in his sound. Kline’s work has been described as
strange, unique, and genre-blurring. Some call it rock-influenced
art music, noting Kline bridges the gap between ambient electronica
and avant-garde classical composition.