Phill Niblock died on January 8, 2024, at the age of ninety. Two days earlier he had called Neil Leonard from his hospital bed to talk about the premiere and tour of BLK+LND, a piece he had finished only a few weeks before. Leonard went along with the planning to keep him occupied, until Niblock admitted that none of the dates existed anywhere but in his head and that he was handing the project over to him. This LP brings together BLK+LND and its companion K&L for KL, two of the last compositions Niblock completed, which he had always intended to be heard as a pair.

Both pieces are made the way Niblock made everything for over fifty years. A few musicians record long tones across every octave the piece needs, and he then layers the recordings on top of one another, shifting pitches by a few cents so that the beating between them keeps the sound in constant slow movement. No harmony, no melody, no rhythm, as he put it himself. Here all the material is low register, which gives the result more weight than usual. BLK+LND is for acoustic bass and bass clarinet, recorded in 2021 by Robert Black and Neil Leonard. Black had commissioned the piece and died in the summer of 2023, before it was finished. Niblock completed it that November in Pro Tools with Davide Capobianco, so the record also closes a collaboration with a musician he admired a great deal and who did not live to hear it.

K&L for KL is for two bass clarinets. Katie Porter and Lucio Capece, who play together as Phase to Phase, travelled to Johan Vandermaelen's studio in Aaigem on December 1, 2022 to record with Niblock in person. He had caught COVID and ended up directing the session over Zoom, while Vandermaelen ran the room and the two players worked through every octave and every variation he asked for. The piece was premiered in Berlin in April 2023 and performed again that September at Niblock's ninetieth birthday concert at Silent Green, both times with Niblock projecting his films behind the players. It is dedicated to Katherine Liberovskaya.

Niblock wanted the two works to mirror each other and to be toured together. The tour did not happen, but the pairing on this record is the one he asked for. He spent decades outside the official history of Minimalism, running his loft concerts on Centre Street and the Experimental Intermedia foundation while the story was being written elsewhere, and this is a good record to end on. Black vinyl with insert.