this is the thread where I procrastinate, and avoid writing an article on Arthur Russell

x-post jess

Aggressive melancholia, eg Dinosaur played very loud?

Deep breaths, mt, deep breaths...

well, at least she knows not to fuck with my Detroit 12"s. ;)

Now the question is, what stuff of hers have you learned not to fuck with in turn?

dude, it is like almost 9pm. Why are you guys hanging around ILM?

Oddly enough, it has been recorded (but it is not about relationship advice -- I will take it under advisement).

As for why I am here, there's a chance I'll be yakking with a couple of close friends later over coffee, so until then I'm here. Tomorrow night is booked for another friend crashing over, it's the weekend, and I am not a 'I *must* go out and have fun or else I cease to exist' person.

My next release -- via Casuistry's label -- is bound to be even more remixable than the first, I'm guessing.

the chronicles is a good local paper by the way, it was the standard all other free alternatives were judged by for years for me

The first time I heard Arthur Russell was in the basement studio of an old acquaintance in the late 90's. He had recently returned from a concert performance and record expedition in New York City. That afternoon he played me a string of records; everything from the then hyper-underground dutch electro and Italio-disco of the Hague, to seminal NYC electro records, to an artist who's name would stay in my mind of years to come, but for whatever reason I never took the positive steps to acquire his recordings until years later.

The record that stuck out the most that afternoon was by a group called Loose Joints, and the best track had a hook that repeated "Is it all over my face, I've been love dancing". I do not know what it was about that particular track that snared my attention and stayed in my head for years, especially considering that I was mad for esoteric minimal techno at the time, and proto-garage was not my cup of tea. I do not know if it was the slinky bassline, the throaty vocal chant, the spooky organ riff, or the guitar that was buried in the mix and nearly eviscerated with heavy equalization, you know, all the generic hack writer attributes of an underground disco record. There was some kind of weird off sub-verbal off-kilter vibe that grabbed my attention and more importantly my long term memory. I still cannot figure out what exactly it was about that track that held me, but I can still remember where I was sitting in the room and what I was looking at. That moment was my first introduction to Arthur Russell.

It might have been the hushed-tone explanation of what was so special about this record by a serious dance record geek who really is excited that he has this particular record. This kind of hushed tone recognition has followed Russell's work for years. Through his maverick back-story, to the insane bidding war record collector prices that surrounded his work for those who did know. His mystery was that he was brilliant, but that you might as well forget about it because even if you could find it there was no way you could afford it. High collectors prices and deep rarity, combined with the legacy of New York loft-disco being overshadowed/forgotten/ignored by the dance music press during the heyday of the twin American powerhouses of Detroit and Chicago left Russell's legacy in limbo and known only to a select few.

To this day it is still very difficult to get any real information on Russell. This is what I have come across in my research: He was born in 1952 in Iowa. He was a classically trained cellist, who moved out to a Buddhist commune in San Francisco in his late teens. While in San Fran he received training in indian music under Ali Akbar Khan. Later came into contact with Alan Ginsberg and eventually followed him to New York in 1973. While in New York he came into contact with the Avant-Garde underground and worked with experimental musicians/composers like Phillip Glass, John Cage, Laurie Anderson, and Rys Chatham. Later he was involved with a prototype of the Talking Heads called The Flying Hearts with David Byrne. He later fell under the spell of loft-disco when he went to see Nicky Siano DJ at The Gallery. Drawing parallels between the experimental minimalism of the Downtown avant scene and the metronomic pulse of the queer disco underground, Russell delved headlong into dance music.

His first release was under the name Dinosaur on Sire Records, it was released in 78 and featured David Byrne of The Talking Heads. The record that sealed his reputation with the dance underground was "Is It All Over My Face" by Loose Joints. Released in 1980, this Steve D'Aquisto co-production featured a remix by Larry Levan and was the prototype of the Paradise Garage sound. After this victorious 12", he went on to form a partnership with Will Socolov called Sleeping Bag Records. Sleeping Bag would go on to release music by NYC artists like Mantronix, Konk, Joyce Simms, as well as his own material under pseudonyms like Indian Ocean and Dinosaur L. Sleeping Bag ran into the late 80s, but eventually folded.

The later part of his career is where you start to run into biographical difficulties. We know that he was down with disco and minimalism, but things start to break apart into the 80's. It is easier to lump him into scenes in the 70's, however the late 80's do not seem to offer the same journalistic luxury. Biographical information dries up, he starts releasing albums that do not fit neatly into genre categories and that are deeply idiosyncratic. He would reach into other genres and experiment, but never at the cost of his own individual musical personality. Through the cycle of albums that marked the last 10 years of his life, 1983's Tower Of Meaning, 1986's World Of Echo, and 1994's posthumous Another Thought.

After final release in 1994, his profile was virtually forgotten and and his work dropped off the face of the earth. He only survived through the whispered memory of the dance record fanatics who clutched those obscure records with a devout passion. His legacy would only be revived a decade later when the NYC post-punk underground of 1978-1982 was pillaged by the reissue movement. All of a sudden these forgotten records started reappearing, you had New York Noise, the Ze Records reissues of Mutant Disco and No New York, Soul Jazz reissued the ESG singles, Grand Royal's currently out of print Liquid Liquid reissue and most importantly for Russell, Strut records released the Disco Not Disco comp in 2000 which brought 1983's Tell You Today by Loose Joints, 1978's Kiss Me Again by Dinosaur, and 1986's School Bell/Treehouse by Indian Ocean together on a single cd comp that you could by at a chain record store. While this is an excellent comp over-all, Russell's work absolutely stole the show and introduced him to a whole new generation of fans.

2004 would see Soul-Jazz Records devote an entire compilation to Russell's work as a dance producer with the World Of Arthur Russell. 2004 would also see Audika Records release the first new material to see the light of day in a decade with Calling Out Of Context. Audika has signed an exclusive agreement with Russell's Lover and has plans for reissues of World Of Echo and Tower Of Meaning. Russell is finally getting his due after a decade, and I can think of few who are more deserving.

The album that speaks to me the most deeply is World Of Echo. This album was a collection of four-track demo's that Russell used to flesh out the ideas for his songs before he would take them into the studio to be transformed into dance classics. The methodology as far as I can tell was a vocal track, potentially two tracks of cello, and perhaps percussion of a few of the tracks, and nothing else. He would record his vocal and cello takes on separate tracks and then dub them out during the mix down. This allowed him to create these swimming watery sound worlds which his mantra-like vocals would drift though. He would bang on the cello with a bow and an echo effect for these angular column like echoes that imposed order underneath the drifting string motifs. He would process his cello with distortion and reverb to sound like the elephant guitars on My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless", or the crisp wafer thin distortion of the first marychain album. It is like audio-zen, redbook standard Buddhism. The methods he used in the studio are secondary to his vocal and cello performances, which were sublime. He had this voice which would rise and fall and snake around like water in a pipe, his instrumental runs would glide and shimmer and arch in beautiful angles. His genius comes through when you understand that he was able to communicate his soul with such a limited sonic vocabulary. He comes though these simple bedroom recordings, his spirit is with you in the room when you listen.

I wish I knew more about the man; what he was like, who his lovers were, what did he like to eat for lunch, where his head was at during the last five years of his life, and how he coped with the knowledge that his bright career would be cut cruelly short and that he would die in relative obscurity. There is a whole inner world that is only vaguely reflected through the few released recordings he left behind, and the vast personal archives that have never been released to the public. His genius was that he reached across musical boundaries and imposed his own peculiar personality on the work he left behind. He died as an also-ran dance music washout, who was too peculiar and too head strong to be a major success in the record industry. He did not die in a flash, he had six years to watch his health slide away from him, to perform in experimental outfits in spite of his declining health, to fall further away from the dance scene that he had made his mark in nearly a decade earlier, to know that his later albums were greeted with public indifference despite rave reviews, to finally be too weak to finish his last projects and express himself as his body wasted away due to AIDS in 1992. Perhaps the saddest fate is that he had no idea that his work would be lauded over a decade after he left the world.

I just wish I could go back and personally thank him. My life is uncertain at the moment, but his recordings bring me a great deal of comfort. I wrote this article because I felt like I owed it to him, it seems strange to me, records generally do not evolve into personal relationships for me. For whatever reason he managed to cross over from being a person who created a store of musical ideas an a plastic disc to one who actually has an emotional presence in my life. Others have written about him earlier and more eloquently than I ever could, but I am all right with that. I am paying my respect because I consider him a genius and a true individual, and he deserves to be the pop star that he never had the chance to be when he was still with us. He brought some genuine beauty to this world, he deserves your attention.

This is the first things I have sat down and written in literally years. Please pull out the knives and lay into it; I don't want warm fuzzies, I want hard OTM criticism. Don't spare my feelings, I will not take it personally.

did you know norman cook (i know i know) called indian ocean/treehouse the first techno record? (not that i'm backing his claim...i always found it quite strange)

My only criticism is that it may require a little more attentio span than the average idiot would devote to it outside of a specialty magazine.

I am waiting for the World of Echos release. Is Calling out of Context as good?