[whorefrost]

Jim O'Rourke
“6 Oscillators '87”
[2006]

A friend puts it in the most complimentary of ways: “Fuck Jim O’Rourke.” During the past 20 years, the soft-spoken O’Rourke has rifled through every fringe he could find and managed to make innumerable contributions to experimental music: He is or has been half of Gastr del Sol, a Derek Bailey collaborator, a minimalist composer, a laptop guru, a stunning songwriter, a Loren Connors digital transfer expert, a Wilco producer, a Sonic Youth member and the person partially responsible for the release of the only Dream Syndicate material commercially available. And now this? C’mon.
O’Rourke recorded this six-oscillator side of noise in 1987, when he was an 18-year-old at DePaul. Tones are penetrating but careful, microtonal spurns clipping and crawling and slinking alongside one another, pings, loops and shards of white bouncing upward from a matrix of metal spheres grinding in glacial motion, sparks popping all white and red and yellow. It shows the compositional patience and real-time thought that relative neophytes like Wolf Eyes are just now understanding. They bit first on ultra-anglo hooks like shock value, but not O’Rourke. Instead, over 23 minutes of proto-American harsh noise, O’Rourke wades through complex themes with protracted patience. Yep, 18 years before your "new" noise idea.

Posted by Grayson Currin in noise on Tue: 09-19-06: 04:00 AM CDT | Permalink

[atari 2600]

Thanks for the news.

It probably sounds like some of my early tapes.

I like that "relative neophytes" line...a lot.

How did I once phrase it? Oh yeah...

The new shamans are charlatans.

I've softened that position a bit since then though.

[Santa's Monkey]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

Thanks for the news.

It probably sounds like some of my early tapes.

I like that "relative neophytes" line...a lot.

How did I once phrase it? Oh yeah...

The new shamans are charlatans.

I've softened that position a bit since then though.

If your early tapes sound like this record (which is real nice), then I would like to hear your early tapes (and anything inbetween) cause it's real good stuff. And if you were truly starting in the same place then it'd be interesting to see where you've ended up vs 'Insignificnance.'

ps am I right? Since Insignificance/1,2,3 has any contemporary O'Rourke been released? Seems to have been archive stuff. I was guessing that one track Gizzly Man soundtrack is the closest to post-2001 solo O'R composition readily available. I still have to console myself with the glorious cover of Visions of Adolf.