William Hooker & Phill Niblock

Hooker and Niblock

DRM4165

November 24, 2023

A note from Phill Niblock on Hooker & Niblock

We met in a festival in Riga Latvia, a few years ago.

He did a long set, with other jazz players and followed that with a solo drums set. He also used a video projection during that piece. It was a long beam of light on the screen, which wiggled around.

I had an idea and offered it to him.

A while later he came to my loft with a limited drum set, and I tried to get the effect I had envisioned, but failed.

But we shot a bunch of material which I modified the look of in the editing, and I kept making that approach darker in successive generations.

I seem to remember some slowing down (stretching).

A lot of tracks of sound combined, not that he can’t play a lot of sound.

William tried it out and it worked.

Here’s what is to seen:

Two sections, the first is the top of a cymbal, highly magnified; the cymbal is responding to Hooker’s drumming with a drumstick and is superimposed several times, the area seen is one square inch, so it is jumping around.

The second is a section of the drum head, again with William drumming, and superimposed several times. I had chosen a section with a figure on the head which keeps jiggling around.

credits

releases November 24, 2023

Drums – William Hooker
Film – Phill Niblock
Sound mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space