Sun Ra And His Galactic Arkestra

The chief attraction here is the chance to experience the Arkestra at what many people consider to be its peak as captured by Niblock, whose music and film reputation has also achieved legendary status. His "experimental process" was to shoot the Arkestra in a negative process so that their images are ghostly and abstract — think Man Ray. The music consists of three Arkestra recordings from 1963 to '66 and while great, sometimes they don't match up well with the images. The 16-minute video and soundtrack get better and more frenetic as it goes along, but ends too quickly. The extras include photos and audio-only recitations of typical Sun Ra ramblings from around the same period. This is only 30 minutes, including the extras, and is either for die hard fans or a video ingredient in multimedia performances. (MVD, www.musicvideodistributors.com)