Jim O'Rourke

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."

that doesn't seem like his style. he was pretty contemptuous of people who "placed" themselves in a tradition, like george flynn and his timeline, much less a bin. heh.

well right, I know .. but they had to get there somehow right? that's why it seemed funny to me. I've never heard that disc, btw ... I always regret not picking it up that time, I don't think i've seen it since.

"scend" is really great, when i find it i'll up it for you in exchange for that paul rutherford.

Stormy - I worked at the Clark St. Tower the first year it was open and I remember Dan and Rian coming in occasionally with at least some Drag City items for consignment - I remember singles specifically, but odds are that one of them suggested to file the O'Rourke in the classical room where it sold like wildfire no doubt.

"Please Note Our Failure" is a pretty interesting exercise in plunderphonic tape editing. But it's an ep, so probably isn't worth inclusion above. The best part is the Al Green sample.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

avant jim gets no love

when is he gonna get another album like the top 4 here?

Wire Magazine just tweeted that he has a new album coming out on Drag City on August 31. Songs? Laptop experimentation? Which is it to be? That's what I'd like to know.

!

Cool!

Excellent news.

"The Visitor" it's called, but i haven't played it yet. mostly because it asks that it be played loud on speakers and i haven't been in front of my stereo long enough to make that happen.

Wire Magazine just tweeted

Ugh.

Oh, I'm not on Twitter and I don't read Wire. Someone told me about it.

Phew, escaped the net.

I guess The Visitor being a euphemism for The Man Who Fell to Earth. Sorta glad he went that route.

i thought he quit music. anyway this is intriguing news.

i guess around the time he was finishing this news stories started coming out about how it was a misunderstanding that he quit music, rumors of death greatly exaggerated, that he's been working on music the entire time, etc. makes sense since o'rourke never made a statement about it, it's just been coming from other people's mouths that he was more interested in films now and by extension not working on music anymore

Where does this 'he's quit' thing even come from? He released an album with Loren Conners just this year (Two Nice Catholic Boys). Plus he released three (!) albums last year, one of them being a double album.

Anyway, so psyched for this! I hope it's following up 'Insignificance'.

the "he quit" thing came out around the time he stopped playing with Sonic Youth, but seemed sort of like BS ... But I can understand wanting to take a break -- he had a pretty much nonstop 10 years or so there. But I'm glad there's a new record coming out! Will be interesting to see what direction he's taking.

all the other recent o'rourke output has been archival, including the connors, with the excellent touch 7" being the only exception i can think of

i have a vague memory of O'Rourke saying he hadn't made a proper solo record in so long because his conception for it would be too pricey to actually record -- don't know if this record is what he had in mind, but it would be cool if someone kicked in the cash!

I guess The Visitor being a euphemism for The Man Who Fell to Earth.

No, I think he just really, really loved the Richard Jenkins movie. I'm expecting djembe on at least half the tracks.

you think it's going to have the same cover as the prop used for the lp in the movie?

i think that joke went over jaymc's head...

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