Gastr Del Sol Crookt Crack Or Fly Rar
Hercules Montero
Dunno why the hell I woke up thinking about this band today. Think I picked up on them originally when I was looking for something that sounded a bit like Slint, and they do share a certain mysterious ominousness in their sound, but these guys didn't really deliver quite the same punch at all. Instead they turned out to be this strange gateway band for me, signposts leading off to Morton Feldman and Tropicalia and John Fahey and all sorts of things, maybe like a weird brother to Tortoise. Hard to love until their last couple of albums perhaps but I think I own all their stuff, though never feel like playing any of it. Anyone else?
Oh I like Camofleur, that had some pretty songs on it, it's an obvious forerunner to the song orientated JO'R albums. Upgrade & Afterlife was probably my favourite, I don't have such a clear memory of how Mirror Repair sounded tbh.
had a dream last night where i was in a waiting room and recognized jim o'rourke and we made eye contact so i couldn't say nothing so i was just like, "i've been listening to your records since 1991!" and he replied, "goodness!"
both gastr and j.o. must be two of the most misused generic comparisons in the world of press blurbs - i've yet to hear a record "recommended for fans of gastr del sol" that had any claim to such a statement, besides maybe some superficial similarity in instrumentation
i think early gastr had to do with free improv vs. song form but as to subsequent j.o. pop works, eureka at least seems much more of an attempt to reconcile tape music with pop - like making a pop record out of these different bits that are structured in a cinema pour oreille style... maybe camoufleur has some of that thing going too. insignificance & threeway ep seem to be more concerned with relationships between music and lyrics, i don't hear much free improv there.
no free improv. maybe a couple of gene coleman / m. gustaffson squonks along the way, but they were most definitely within some po-faced parameters, however "out" they might seem.
these records mean a lot to me but i figured upsilon acrux did the twangle better, & if i wanted to listen to hafler trio / fahey / feldman / derek bailey / slapp happy / van dyke parks etc then they're better from the horses mouth as much as the gastr Lps bristled with enthusiasm.
not sure o'rourke has found a voice yet - still very much the chameleon. grubbs sadly never followed through on his vince guaraldi promise.
13th assembly tickle me where i have that itch now
i think it's a bit inaccurate to say JO hasn't "found a voice" but that's another discussion - also if you look at the actual records and leave aside the improv stuff i think there is a very consistent thread going through there
Gastr came along for me at a time in which I was starting to get into Fahey, jazz, and artier post-punk (like This Heat), so I was a fan back then. They sounded pretty out there to me at the time, especially the aggressive ways they used acoustic guitars from time to time. And the bass clarinet stuff. I never feel the urge to hear them these days and the only one I have left is Crookt, Crackt or Fly. I remember liking Mirror Repair the best. Upgrade always left me cold, seeming to me as dull and sterile as much of the other post-rock from Chicago.
We Have Dozens of Titles, rekindling the slow-burning incendiaries of Gastr del Sol, arrives on May 24, 2024 (available on 3xLP/2xCD/digital). Now is the time to discover a further set of reinventions from a group who continues to change the way we hear music!
David Grubbs also mentioned on Twitter that new pressings of Upgrade & Afterlife and Camoufleur are coming soon too, and when someone asked about The Serpentine Similar he responded with, "Eventually?".
My guess is O'Rourke on guitar, Grubbs hopping around from organ to piano, and McEntire on synth (since the synth patch/sound is v similar IIRC to what pops up at times on Tortoise's TNT and Stereolab's Emperor Tomato Ketchup)
...which added 24 channels via a mock-console surface for those who were steeped in analog recording processes (fader panels, monitors, transport) plus in/out MIDI ports, whereas prior to that you were just dealing with:
This Andreyev/O'Rourke Pt. 2 interview might've been shared on another thread but I don't see it posted above, so:
=xV3ZmQ0kLRs
(Since this was conducted before this release/press junket, the newest related release O'Rourke raves about and gives some insight into the making of is the great Rafael Toral album from earlier this year, for which the former reactivated Moikai to put out)