Remembering Phill Niblock (1933-2024)

Phill Niblock shot the Sun Ra Arkestra per­for­ming on the roof of a New York City apart­ment buil­ding. Capturing extre­me clo­se-ups (fin­gers stri­king keys, lips blo­wing air, cym­bals vibra­ting rapid­ly) on high-con­trast black and whi­te film (with no inter­ne­ga­ti­ve), Niblock craf­ted a stri­king 17-minu­te mon­ta­ge that beca­me a clas­sic of under­ground cine­ma. The Magic Sun​’s kine­tic rhythm per­fect­ly mat­ches the Arkestra’s amorp­hous, free-fly­ing sound. As Niblock’s ima­ges fly by, they seem to mer­ge and blur, much as the fluid cur­ves of the Arkestra over­lap and build into intan­gi­ble clouds of energy.

Comprised of rare moving foot­a­ge of the band in this era, the result is a vir­tu­al­ly abstract music film, edi­ted with pin­point pre­ci­si­on that emp­ha­si­zes the inde­pen­den­ce of ima­ge and sound, save a sin­gle magi­cal moment of syn­chro­ni­za­ti­on at film’s end.

A port­rait of the dan­cer Ann Danoff with a sound col­la­ge soundtrack.

Max pairs a sounds­ca­pe by Max Neuhaus against a suc­ces­si­on of pro­ces­sed ima­ges and hea­vi­ly edi­ted, per­cus­si­on-based per­for­man­ce footage.

Many of Niblock’s ear­ly films are ​“port­raits” of fel­low artists from dif­fe­rent fields of expres­si­on. Here, Niblock films per­for­man­ces of Max Neuhaus, unce­le­bra­ted pio­neer of live elec­tro­nics, per­cus­si­o­nist and instal­la­ti­on artist. Niblock’s shots are jux­ta­po­sed and craf­ti­ly edi­ted by Dave Geary so as to cre­a­te a stran­ge sen­se of con­stant chan­ge within repe­ti­ti­on. The sound­track is pro­vi­ded by Neuhaus himself, who mixes five simul­ta­neous recor­dings of Stockhausen’s Zyklus (which the per­cus­si­o­nist recor­ded in a more con­ven­ti­o­nal fas­hi­on recent­ly) and a feed­back devi­ce cal­l­ed Max-Feed. The result is a noi­se assault in which the per­cus­si­on is hard­ly audi­ble under the shif­ting lay­ers of distortion.

T H I R is a mes­me­ri­zing and hyp­no­tic miles­to­ne film. Shot with a 16mm Beaulieu came­ra around Keene Valley, upsta­te New York in the Adirondak Mountains in 1971 – 1972, the film is com­po­sed of thirty dis­cre­te sta­tic shots of natu­ral detail – inclu­ding extre­me clo­se-ups of lea­ves, streams, flo­wers and craw­ling ants, each las­ting over a minute.

The tit­le is taken from ​“Ten Hundred Inch Radii,” the fourth and final instal­ment in his ​‘Environments’ series of inter­me­dia per­for­man­ce-instal­la­ti­ons. The 1972 pre­mie­re also fea­tu­red the play­back of Niblock’s ori­gi­nal musi­cal recor­dings and live dan­ce by Ann Danoff (Annie) and Barbara Lloyd.

In 2008, Niblock com­po­sed and recor­ded an alter­na­te sound­track, One Large Rose, which was mixed and edi­ted in 2015.