Jim O'Rourke

this guy is unfuckwitable

gets the chicks

i'm including "halfway to a threeway" just for the hell of it

or because it's probably in my top twenty albums of all time

make me happy

Quit apologizing for liking Jim O'Rourke. He's great.

out of the ones i've heard -- Bad Timing, Eureka, Halfway..., Insignificance, 1234 -- i would give the nod to Eureka for some of the better orchestral flourishes i've heard on record. i could really do without Bad Timing and 1234, but the middle three are essential for me, all strong songwriting etc., but the production on Eureka wins out.

but then I'm one of those people who actually likes all the stuff most people find annoying about 90s Chicago indie.

i vote 'eureka'

Man, this is tough.

tamper's really underrated, imo, but i have to go with a "i'm happy and singing" followed shortly by "halfway to a threeway". listen to roberto cacciapaglia if you're into the "i'm happy record", it's basically the same sound. arturo stalteri for the bad timing record.

o'rourke gets a lot of extra props for having the best name dropping in the biz for sure. so many good recommendations to be had by looking through his interviews.

Why won't he make a new album??? =(

Oh, and I'm listening to "Sonic Nurse" right now 'cuz of the other thread and it's really just making my evening

I've only got the first five on the list (i.e. the most recent ones), but they're all great. I'm not sure I could pick an out and out favourite, given how different Eureeka, say, is from I'm Happy...

'Insignificance' is a solid classic.

I love how dignified AMG's bio blurb sounds:

American post-classical composer Jim O'Rourke has been a key component in the increasing overlap of the American and European experimental music avant-garde, working in everything from jazz and rock to ambient and electro-acoustic and building many a bridge in between

Wow. Spooky etc. I was listening to Insignificance this morning for the first time in ages. I vote Eureka, because of Prelude...

Eureka for me too. Haven't heard all of these, though I hope to soon...

Can someone give a VERY brief precis (like a sentence) on each of the albums re; what style / genre it is?

Like...

I’m Happy and I’m Singing and a 1, 2, 3, 4 = improvised melodic electronica
Insignificance = guitars and singing, post-rock-ish but with songs
Halfway to a Threeway = as below, but less ornate
Eureka = strings, songs, lush, odd, pop
Bad Timing = strung-out guitar-led instrumentals

Francois Couture at AMG describes Scend really well. It's good and it's the only album I've heard on this list! I love Tomorrow Knows Where You Live, his collaboration with Henry Kaiser.

Couture:

First released on CD by Divided in 1992 and reissued on vinyl 11 years later by Three Poplars, Scend is a beautiful piece of field recordings, very different from Jim O'Rourke's other albums (which already display a wide variety of styles and approaches). Field recordings of various nature are combined into a loose narrative. It sounds simple, but giving sense to the construction is where the art resides, and O'Rourke nails it with impressive results. In the first half of the piece you mostly hear water sounds and bowed metal. An accordion lets out a lone winding note, answered by the passing siren of an ambulance. Traffic noise is replaced by falling water drops in the very end of the first part. This assemblage runs smoothly and seamlessly, retaining the feel of field recording throughout (i.e., if electroacoustic transformations are involved, it doesn't show). The first half could be described as cold or devoid of human presence (save for the traffic sounds) compared to the second half. It begins with a playground recording. A passing airplane buries the children's laughter, soon abruptly cut by something (crate? door?) shut close. This sudden move introduces a section of electronic sounds, startling at first considering what came before but interesting and pertinent nonetheless, adding more human presence as the hand of the composer is felt for the first time. Church bells seep in for the finale. Recommended. [The LP edition is pressed on clear vinyl.]

Eureka!

(O'Rourke has an alb. titled Remove The Ned?? Oi shame on you, Jim!)

"Why won't he make a new album??? =("

one reason (that he told me a while back) is that he got pretty frustrated with working so hard on the production when most people these days just listen to things in MP3 anyway.

he's currently living in Tokyo and much more focused on breaking into the Japanese film industry (as a filmmaker, not a musician), his Japanese is supposedly superb.

and a lot of people watch movies on DVD, or on their iphone/ipod/laptop. i find it hard to believe that he'd give up and blame it on other people's lack of appreciation sincerely. i'm sure he knows he has plenty of adoring fans with proper hi-fi's

hey, I'm just passing it on. he is still playing the occasional improv show there, in different combos with Otomo Yoshihide and Kahimi Karie usually (and he's on quite a bit of the recent Otomo soundtrack disc "Prisoner", which I have copies of for sale in the US), but I don't think he's too interested in music anymore, and that's one of the reasons, like I said.

Bad Timing. 94 the Long Way is one of my favorite pieces of music ever.

The best concert I've ever attended was O'Rourke at the Empty Bottle just before Eureka came out circa 1998. He played one song: "Women of the World." For 50 minutes. Just him, a guitar and a drum machine. The same riff, the same vocal lines, repeated over and over and over. It was the most sublime musical experience I've ever had.

I'm a huge fan and would love for him to continue with music, but I understand that sometimes you have to move on for a while.

Wow! I wish I could've been there, that sounds, well, sublime indeed.

I thought this thread was gonna descend into p-rock / p-fork snarkiness. Glad it didn't.

heh i just blubbed abt my love for Bad Timing on a ILE thread, probably still my favourite of his solo albs (esp for the ompa-pa-pa horn explosion at the end)

yeah, halfway to a threeway is prob the best 'song'-based disc he made, but I also have a fondness for Remove the Need (treated guitar) and Happy Days (hurdy gurdy noise drone). also think Jess is being v. harsh on Gastr Del Sol - I don't really see that much resemblance to Faust, more an attempt to marry indie-alt rock songwriting tropes with free improv/post-classical sound-styles/methods - no other rec sounds quite like 'Crookt, Crackt or Fly', imho

the recent Merzbow/Giffoni/O'Rourke noize summit released on No Fun sounds awesome, dude's still got it

'Get a Room' manages to be simultaneously one of the funniest and bleakest song I know.

yeah that last half of 'insignificance' is pretty dark and funny.

i was too hard on gastr up there. i still really love 'upgrade and afterlife' and 'camofleur' although it's been forever since i've listened to them, so the faust comparison was probably off the mark. still need to hear crookt, crackt, or fly.

and for the record i am not jess. should have chosen a less confusing login name!

oh im so confused...have you posted under another name on ilx?

fauxhemian -> struggin -> strgn. i mostly lurk.

I sure do love "Halfway to a Threeway." It even has the best cover art!

"Halfway to a threeway" & "Bad Timing" are total classic, as is the newest collaboration with Merzbow & Carlos Giffoni "Electric Dress" - a live dismantling of analog synths. I still find the sampling of "Expecting to fly" by Neil Young profoundly touching on "Return of Fenn O' Berg".

Also, the while it is a group effort, the brise-glace album to the thread. Holy fuck. What an album that one is.... If you haven't heard it, track it down. Pummeling rock band with O'Rourke on guitar, recorded by Albini and then cut up, reedited and mixed down by O'Rourke.

Bad Timing >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> everything else I've heard by him. The guitar-playing is PHENOMENAL, and it doesn't even get boring, even though the songs are all like ten minutes long!

There was a period in maybe 2002 or 2003 when I listened to either Bad Timing or Dylan's Nashville Skyline every morning as I roamed about my crap apartment in Eugene making coffee and breakfast and what have you. Whenever it occurs to me now to play Bad Timing in the early AM I get this nice nostalgic "This is gonna be a good day!" feeling, even though those years in Eugene were just like the worst years of my life easy.

So, then, Bad Timing.

the ompa-pa-pa horn explosion at the end

This always reminds me of John Fahey's Old Fashioned Love record, which also busts out the horns toward the end, though not mid-song like on Bad Timing. I know he was into Fahey, but does anyone know if this thing on Bad Timing was inspired by that thing specifically?

The jazz band absolutely comes in mid-song on the title track of Old Fashioned Love, don't know if Happy Trails is a copy tho. I want to stick up for Gastr del Sol too, probably prefer those records to most of the solo O'Rourke that I've heard.

I always tend to like his duo recordings the best. I've always felt that Jim just shines in a duo setting, maybe better than any other player I can think of. 'Slow Motion' with Müller. 'New Kind of Water' with Null. (I attended that 1992 show at Lounge Ax where the live portion was recorded.) 'Third Straight Day Made Public' with Prevost. that Kaiser disc that Sundar mentioned. even his hated 'Indicate' record with Hampson. These were some of the most thrilling records of the 90s for me. And hey, if Gastr counts as a duo them too for 'Upgrade and Afterlife' alone, which totally ruled.

This thread just cost me £7 on Brise-Glace.

Yeah. That is a good disc too.

but of the *solo* stuff that comprises the poll ... i'm actually sorta ignorant of large chunks of it. I heard all the early Extreme label stuff back when it came out, and then 'Bad Timing' (great) and the Tzadik disc, and that's about it. always more to discover with him.

oh wait, shit, and 'Happy Days' of course, I have that one. Might even vote for that!

brise-glace is fantastic, i still listen to that pretty often (on cd, sold the vinyl like an idiot - apparently skin graft had a warehouse find of the lp a few weeks ago but they're all gone).

the two Müller/O'Rourke duos are excellent. so are the Prévost, Null, Kaiser. two favorites were O'Rourke/Mats Gustafsson's Xylophonen Virtuosen(2000) - lots of fun, that one - and the O'Rourke/Loren MazzaCane-Connors In Bern on Hat Noir, which gets a bad rap but i like it. Müller/O'Rourke/Voice Crack is another great one. ahead of its time.

Brise-Glace seemed a lot less impressive after hearing the This Heat and Luc Ferrari. still sounds good, just not all that original in its execution.

who hates Indicate?

Terminal Pharmacy is a dud. Jim's big, formal 'i am a composer. take me seriously' statement, and it fell flat. heavyhanded and way too serious. even the experimental guitar albums - Tamper, Remove the Need, Disengage - are leavened with some humor.

what's Use?

how is The Ground Above Below Our Heads? i know Jim all but disowned his recorded debut. but if i really like his concrète pieces, a la Scend, is it worth a listen?

voting for... Bad Timing, i think. yeah.

I know he was into Fahey, but does anyone know if this thing on Bad Timing was inspired by that thing specifically?

For some reason, I was under the impression that it was a Charles Ives homage, although I don't remember how or where I read that.

jim always referred to b-g as being an homage to this heat, sometimes even as a "cover band," so originality isn't really the point.

Well then I must hear Brise-Glace, and soon.

who hates Indicate?

Jim, apparently! I recall someone telling me that he "disowned" it.

Brise-Glace definitely a bit of a This Heat tribute. but hey, why not. don't forget to seek out the Brice-Glace track from the AC/DC tribute on Skin Graft! Jim goes wild with a razor blade and reels of AC/DC lps .. awesome.

Jim's big, formal 'i am a composer. take me seriously' statement

I remember browsing the classical section at the Tower in Chicago on Clark in the early 90s, and bumping into copies of Scend that were marked as consignment. I found that kind of funny, the mental image of Jim walking in there clutching a bunch of the CD and sort of going "These belong in your classical section."

the NTS radio shows are great

checked the latest one, could not believe that costin mireanu track.

Incredible interview on the Noisextra podcast last week:
https://www.noisextra.com/2022/08/10/in-conversation-with-jim-orourke-fenn-oberg-sonic-youth-gastr-del-sol/

Also a very good interview in Libération (FR) a week or so back.

bzzzzz brhmmmmmzzzz

A free download on his Bandcamp page, not sure how long it will be available.

Happy Birthday,Jim🎂🎉👏⚡️ pic.twitter.com/8o00L8eriC

— eikoishibashi (@Eiko_Ishibashi) January 18, 2023

https://www.spin.com/2023/08/jim-o-rourke-sonic-youth-steamroom-interview/

Jack’s score for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — it’s obvious I’ve ripped that off my entire life (laughs).

I did work on a record with him (Will Oldham) once, but it wasn’t ‘with’ him. It was an EP he did with Rian Murphy called All Most Here, which originally was going to be songs Will wrote, Rian produced, and they’d send off to people like Polly Jean Harvey to sing. Rian asked me to do the arrangements, which I think were added to by Archer Prewitt. In the end, Will ended up singing all the songs himself. He’s still an enigma to me.

There's a Mojo podcast and it looks like half the episodes have only just become available?
Anyway, Big Jim is a guest: https://planetradio.co.uk/podcasts/the-mojo-record-club/id-2176269/

Some interesting guests elsewhere too: Thurston, Barry Adamson, Robert Forster.

For those outside of the UK, you need a VPN.

It's on Spotify in the US.

he's still doing his monthly nts show. always an embarrassment of riches, not exactly sentimental listening of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxX1vo966ks

I am listening to all the Steamrooms in order to find the diamonds. I'm making notes! So far Steamroom 3 is a real keeper, it's incredible, micropolyphonic dissolving via Shepard tones into monolithic moments of diatonic calm, it's like what every composer dreams of achieving. Steamroom 8 is early, from 1990, a static ambient shiny drone film score, it makes for a very relaxing and compelling hour

Cool!
Looking forward to updates...

they've managed to drag him out here for an 'electronic special octophonic concert' and i think i would go except the venue doesn't have seating and i know i hate sitting on the floor there for two hours

saw him play last night with eiko ishibashi, beautiful sounds in a stunning venue & I got to sit down

Seeing him play in 7 minutes. Excited

<3

checking songkick and for some reason i think this tour date is probably the wrong guy lol

Saturday 18 May 2019

Jim O'Rourke
with Dolly Trolly and DJ Nigel

Will's Pub, Orlando, FL, US

I am listening to all the Steamrooms in order to find the diamonds. I'm making notes! So far Steamroom 3 is a real keeper, it's incredible, micropolyphonic dissolving via Shepard tones into monolithic moments of diatonic calm, it's like what every composer dreams of achieving.

I started following the Steamrooms around #40 and haven't explored the earlier ones too much, but I just listened to #3 based on your rec, and you were so right--it is SUBLIME. Thanks fgti! Would love to read your thoughts on any other standouts in the series.

waiting so much for the Toneglow interview with Jim and David for the Gast reissue :(

Dolly Trolly definitely sounds like a Drag City all-star side project

Jim's piece was great last night. Beautiful piano number at the end (which I couldn't help thinking would make a phenomenal jandek backing track lol).

Keiji Haino absolutely tore it up afterwards tho. Very funny, very large, many many many majestic screaming guitar solos

Did not like being in a sit down crowd for Haino. I wanted to be up on my feet and moving with the screaming guitar

Haven't seen the latest issue of Personal Best, but apparently it has some Jim O'Rourke coverage. Smalltown Supersound released a Jim collab but under Eivind Lønning's name earlier this year (nice cover too).

New album (!) on Drag City (!!) with Eiko (!!!)... edits/remixes of their live improv shows in europe in 2023.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW0kcSl1tR4

comes out on 8/29/25

sweeeet, love that video and clip

Hyped. I listen to “Shutting Down Here” at least twice a month, they’re a brilliant duo

I still need to finish my Steamroom cheat sheet! I got halfway through but I don’t have time these days and I am gonna have to do a second listen-through to make sure I got it all right

i slept on the Ishibashi/O’Rourke collabs but 4 live recordings (2016-2022) dropped last week and they are stunning
https://eikoishibashijimorourke.bandcamp.com/

nice thanks for posting that, i've been craving more of their thing.

O'Rouke-adjacent, but Rob Mazurek (cornet on Eureka and Halfway) did the score for The Mastermind. It's pretty straight-ahead compared to Chicago Underground Duo et al.

Is it too late to ask where to start with this duo after listening to 4 hours of live recordings?

Ishibashi and O’Rourke I mean, not Chicago Underground

i've only listened to pareidolia. it's good but i sorta think the single edit is all i need. i feel like they basically bring both of what they do as solo artists to the table and it's roughly a 50-50 merge. so depending on which halves you like you may want to go back into one's solo catalog or the other's or both.

the steamrooms for instance are full of free tonality electronic weirdness and musique concrete. ishibashi i'm not nearly as familiar with but i think it's fair to say she's a little more organic and tonal probably, no less weird though.

Drive My Car OST.

Drive My Car OST is beautiful. Will also stan for The Dream My Bones Dream and Antigone from this year.

Thanks all! xps Well, Jim O' was a huge formative influence and one of my favorite artists in high school, after Eureka... I paid close attention to his production work, saw him do improv sets, even followed his taste pretty closely (Plux Quba which he reissued is my favorite album of all time, probably), but kinda fell off after the Visitor. So like I've been curious about the Steamrooms but haven't listened to more than a few excerpts.
Ishibashi I really don't know at all.

i feel obligated to do my one steamroom plug for #40 which is easy, serene and beautiful. i believe poster fgti has extensive notes on many of them! the latest ishibashi album antigone is fantastic.

my personal fave ishibashi is still probably imitation of life, which is jazzy pop rock that's pretty different from her more ambient/improv side... but these are some great little twisty pop songs!

also, I always gotta plug jim's all-timer mego record I'm happy, I'm singing... if you haven't checked that out yet

still need to dive into those streamrooms...

I am working on my "Pocket Guide To The Steamroom Series". There's a lot of gold-- generally my overall observation is that about half of it has an "unmixed" quality, meaning that you've either got to turn it tf up and get ready for some ear-bleeding moments, or suffer inaudibility of many other sections, or listen with your finger on the volume knob. But in general it's super rewarding.

Steamrooms 1 through 8 are consistently good, and present certain litmus tests that are rewarding-- "do you like this thesis, as presented in String Quartets And Oscillators (Steamroom 5)?" I don't, personally, like that particular investigation, but I enjoyed being asked in the listening. The real early gem is Steamroom 8, I've probably mentioned it earlier. I'll type it again in bold just in case: The real early gem is Steamroom 8. It's a soundtrack to a self-directed Jim film, and I think it's his finest minimalist composition, to the extent that I've heard.

I've many-times stated that the Jim album "Shutting Down Here" (which prominently features Eiko) is my favourite of his solo records and I'm excited to investigate these live recordings, yay

i listened to a bunch of stuff. not gonna go through all of it here, but i had trouble committing to steamroom 8 fully because it feels to me like another metonymic hypertext, and that’s not what i want from an extended minimalist composition like this. wasn’t an issue with the Isibashi collabs, i felt that stuff was using its heart before its head. but steamroom 8 reminded me that i got into Tony Conrad because of Jim O initially, i tend to lose track of just how expansive his influence has been.

also, I always gotta plug jim's all-timer mego record I'm happy, I'm singing... if you haven't checked that out yet

co-sign this, adore this release

ishibashi broadly has a similar output to o'rourke, where she's handful of elaborately arranged albums of songs, while also putting out a lot of more avant ambient/electro-acoustic work, as well as film soundtracks, some of which are in line with the instrumentals from her songwriter albums. antigone from this year was excellent but my favourite is probably car and freezer.

i might be forgetting one but these are her song albums:
works for everything
drifting devil
carapace
imitation of life
car and freezer
the dream my bones dream
antigone

works for everything & drifting devil lean more towards skronky prog-pop, but carapace and onwards are more jazz-tinged chamber pop, the most recent two being a bit more downbeat

*she has a handful of

Listening to Tusk rn, it's beautiful. Sort of an electro-acoustic hybrid of JOR's prettier, Steamroom synth squall (thinking of #38, along with the mid 40s) and Ishibashi's lush, kaleidoscopic woodwind sounds... humming with subtle and amorphous textures, the lines between electronic and acoustic sounds are blurred in a lovely way. it's very full-sounding and tonal, for the most part. Thank you, Deflatormouse, for the heads up!

for mccoy is an ishibashi album that's in a similar vein to tusk if you want more like that

eiko's record with tatsuya yoshida is a treat too - they cowrite a couple of tracks & it's a delight the expected ruinsy hyperzeuhl tempered by eiko's plangent 70s AOR jazz-pop