Niblock’s Sound Spectrums – Within Invisible Rivers
Thomas Maury | 2019 | France | 110
‘Niblock’s Sound Spectrums – Within Invisible Rivers’ follows Phill Niblock, one of the popes of minimalist music, over the course of eight years. We follow him during his endless tours, and steal a glimpse of the secret parts of one of the smartest composers alive. From his New-York loft, a laboratory that is, since the sixties, both his home and a concert hall, we end up in the suburbs of Paris to witness a peculiar meeting.
UK Premiere
Production Company: Digital District Production
Producer: Claire Marquet
Cinematographer: Thomas Maury
Music: Phill Niblock
Director Biography
Thomas Maury (Sarlat, France, 1986). Graphic Designer, filmmaker and composer.
He directed the feature film Niblock’s Sound Spectrums – Within Invisible Rivers on Phill Niblock, one of the main American minimalist music composers. In 2014, he created the Hydraphonies festival which focuses on audiovisual performances in churches, chapels and cathedrals.
Major figures of the experimental scene participate such as Phill Niblock, Christian Fennesz, Pierre Bastien, Paul Clipson, Carl Stone, Jozef Van Wissem, etc. He is an art educator teaching currently graphic design and digital studies in Paris.
Director Statement
The feature film I made is a meeting between two image-makers (Phill Niblock and me). It is a co-creation. A bridge, that crosses over different generations. I made this film to participate at the elaboration of a vision. In the film, the images trigger the music and the music trigger the images.
Images, that tell a composer and his musical impetus mixing real and fiction, conscious and unconscious. Images, which tell his images. Images, which tell his music. Images, that tell a way of seeing, hearing and making music. Images to follow the dreamlike state of the music and to flood our listening. Musicians that tell of the impact of this composer and his music on their practice and the way they think about music afterwards. A film, that tells how this music goes present perceptibly and imperceptibly, with permanence and impermanence. Images to get close to the composer’s dreams. The ones, that makes his music tangible. Images to reflect the life that feeds those dreams. I made this film to give shape to those intangible realities by giving them textures, forms, colours and temporalities. I made this film to practice other narrations to coordinate what we believe we can’t see and what we believe we can see.
