[4] New York Eye and Ear Control came about when artist, musician, and filmmaker Michael Snow received a commission from a Toronto-based organization called Ten Centuries Concerts for a film employing jazz.

[5] Snow had recently attended and enjoyed a concert by saxophonist Albert Ayler[5] (he recalled "I was completely knocked out"[6]), and had been making his studio on Chambers Street in lower Manhattan available to musicians such as Roswell Rudd, Archie Shepp, Paul Bley, and Milford Graves for rehearsals.

[7] He decided to hire Ayler and his quartet (which at the time included trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Sunny Murray, and which had recently recorded the albums Prophecy and (without Cherry) Spiritual Unity), along with trombonist Rudd and saxophonist John Tchicai, to make a recording, stating that he "wanted to buy a half an hour of music.

"[13]) Snow's film uses the motif of what he called the "Walking Woman," a silhouette based on the image of Carla Bley.

"[6] "I was hoping for an uninterrupted stream of energy against which I was going to place the almost completely static shots of the two-dimensional Walking Woman figure, either negative or positive.

John Litweiler regards it favourably in comparison because of its "free motion of tempo (often slow, usually fast); of ensemble density (players enter and depart at will); of linear movement".

[18] Ekkehard Jost places it in the same company and comments on "extraordinarily intensive give-and-take by the musicians" and "a breadth of variation and differentiation on all musical levels," calling it "one of Ayler's very best recordings.

"[19] Richard Brody wrote that the album is "superior to those performances in its freer, truly group-oriented format, with no specified soloists and accompanists," stating that "the riotous revelry joins the joy of New Orleans traditions to the urbane furies of the day.

"[20] All About Jazz reviewer Clifford Allen described New York Eye and Ear Control as "a valuable window into the music's early history as well as what might have happened outside record dates, more than one is usually privy to.

"[21] Playwright and director Richard Foreman described his reaction to the conjunction of the film and the music as follows: "Mike Snow postulates an eye that stares at surfaces with such intensity... the image itself seems to quiver, finally gives way under the pressure.

A deceptive beginning-silent: a flat white form sharply cut to the silhouette of a walking woman, for no apparent reason propped against trees, rocks seashore.