What does "gastr del sol" mean?

xpost

"Explain the name, for our less erudite readers..."

"There's no erudition involved. Gato Del Sol was a horse that won the Kentucky Derby, and I was in a group called Bastro, so there was some sort of associative blending of the two."

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?

Such quintessential 90s Wire magazine music.

Mirror Repair EP was an IMMENSE deal for me, a perfect little record. I'll still take it over any of the Tortoise and Slint stuff.

The album before it and the album after it are both mostly great too. Camofleur p much lost me. And neither Grubbs nor JO'R ever quite alchemized for me solo the way they did together.

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.

upgrade & afterlife is a great record, proper cinematic tension, mb the fahey cover is a bit heavy-handed. mirror repair is so breezy... love this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQawJIcAfV4

^ The best (though it doesn't really say "breezy" to me).

Always thought they would have been unbeatable with a better singer.

breezy as in that sort of amiable, casual gentleness... like he's just singing to himself. grubbs' solo stuff is much heavier

Listening to Mirror Repair right now with big fat drops of rain falling out of the darkness and onto my window, I say this is a fine fucking pleasure.

Dictionary of Handwriting is very much like a Beefheart instrumental isn't it? Lovely warmth to some of those guitar sounds but it's got some teeth on it too.

Good call, like those odd solo pieces on Lick My Decals Off.

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!"

in truth i have probably been listening to them since 1996

'and boy are my arms tired!!!'

september reverses and the equinoxes flip, winter slides into fall!

otm

"i'm sorry i only speak english"

camofleur is my fave - the weird little markus popp gracenotes throughout that bubble just under the surface, throwing things off balance

like how the earlier albs try to reconcile classic free improv w/ songform - coming at the same problem in a totally diff way from the dead c

try to reconcile classic free improv w/ songform

this kind of marks o'rourke's entire career, at least the poppier half of it.

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've got one of their albums... or is it two? Can't remember anything about them!

Grubbs' new one is really great if you're hankering for gastr. Maybe my favorite of his. Lotta heavy guitar textures and long, unhurried droney bits. Really good.

Also, I love Mirror Repair and Upgrade & Afterlife (my favorite - best Fahey cover ever), but can't say I connect with the others - before or after - at all. Not sure why.

also

Upgrade & Afterlife (best Fahey cover ever)

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

new Grubbs sounded good, i like some of his stuff (A Guess At The Riddle), but he's coming from a totally different place than O'Rourke, which is probably why Gastr didn't work out in the long run

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.

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xta1/t31.0-8/12646731_10153485106419506_8250808022415477761_o.jpg

hey, that's cool. for some reason i thought they had a big falling out? might be misremembering.

grubbs posted this on his fb page earlier today (he's visiting japan) - took it as a sign that things were now more cordial between them, tho' i don't suppose they'll ever record together again

what if they get an offer to headline coachella though

can't imagine anyone having a falling out w/ David Grubbs...unless it was like "stop being so damn nice." hrmm

did not realize how much jim o'rourke resembles a gentle giant album cover

https://www.dragcity.com/uploads/stories/2091/large_DC836_Gastr_del_Sol_-_We_Have_Dozens_of_Titles_MINI.jpg

WE HAVE DOZENS OF TITLES

BEHOLD: The first release from Gastr del Sol in over 25 years is nigh! Like a bolt echoing back from the blue, We Have Dozens of Titles (out May 24 via Drag City) restrikes the iron of Gastr del Sol, plunging us back into the maelstrom of David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke’s all too brief (but ultimately, long enough to change everything incisively) run together between 1993–1998. For We Have Dozens of Titles, Jim and David reconnected to assemble nearly an hour of previously unreleased live recordings — including their final performance together — with another near-hour of studio recordings culled from long lost singles, EPs, and compilations. The result is a career-defining 3xLP box set of the band that changed the game immeasurably in the mid-90s, one whose influence continues to ripple through the space-time of modern music.

Gastr del Sol’s sound was of the transformative variety. David Grubbs formed Gastr from the final lineup of Bastro; on the debut Gastr album, The Serpentine Similar, Grubbs, Bundy K. Brown and John McEntire downshifted from a thrashing electric outfit into a droning, acoustic-based one. Following this, the lineup shifted again, decisively. When Brown and McEntire departed to focus on the project to be known as Tortoise, Jim O’Rourke arrived, pairing with Grubbs to make a sequence of unpredictable leaps across genre and practical approach alike, over the course of three LPs (1994’s Crookt, Crackt, or Fly, 1996’s Upgrade & Afterlife, and 1998’s Camoufleur) and a pair of EPs that threatened the passage of musical time as we knew it.

Today, in celebration of the announcement of We Have Dozens of Titles, we share “The Seasons Reverse (live)”, a stunning, broadcast-quality live capture from Gastr del Sol's final show at the 1997 Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, miraculously found in the CBC archive. With a laptop in tow, the two performed "The Seasons Reverse" on-stage using digital multitracks from the epochal pop music of their not-yet finished fifth and final studio album, Camoufleur. Within the song’s final mix, layers of vivid textural detail unravel in true Beach Boys Stack-o-Tracks fashion to form a take on an old favorite that crystalizes the ebullience and improbability found in Gastr’s live performances.

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!

https://dragcity.s3.amazonaws.com/products/3153/tracks/9021/preview/01_Gastr_del_Sol_-_The_Seasons_Reverse__Live_.mp3

a nice surprise — should be killer

Bummed the box should have been called "I ONLY SPEAK ENGLISH, SORRY"

more details (the bonus disk tracklist?):

The Seasons Reverse (Live) 7:49

Quietly Approaching 6:41

Ursus Arctos Wonderfilis (Live) 5:03

At Night and at Night 5:24

Dead Cats in a Foghorn 8:36

The Japanese Room at La Pagode 2:34

The Bells of St. Mary's 4:04

Blues Subtitled No Sense of Wonder (Live) 11:00

20 Songs Less 6:51

Dictionary of Handwriting (Live) 9:37

The Harp Factory on Lake Street 17:12

Onion Orange (Live) 18:17

Very nice. Hopefully it includes a version of 'The Wrong Soundings' where that ending jam extends itself into infinity as was clearly always the intention.

Oooh! Looking forward to this.

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?".

amazing news, I cannot wait to hear this

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/20/arts/music/gastr-del-sol-we-have-dozens-of-titles.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tk0.GCXs.krAcP6XYEecz&smid=url-share

the equinoxes flip!

If you blow up that first pic from the article you can see ME! (as well as Brian McMahan, Franklin Bruno, and many of the staffs of KXLU, No Life and Aron's).

Good article. I put eureka on the other day and damn if that last track isn't a punch to the back of Grubb's head. Glad they reconciled

*2nd last track.... *3rd last on my Japanese import

Ugh their partnership was so good. I actually love Grubbs lyrics. Listening to camoufleur again today and "I have dozens of titles" is just a great punch-line.

I like the anecdotes of them sharing music in the article :)

I think Tone Glow interviewed them together, should show up at anytime

New comp still not showing up on Tidal, frustrating.

I mean the comp is there but all but two of the tracks are grayed out still.

Its on both Spotify and Qobuz so I'm sure it will be up soon. Hoping my CD comes tomorrow (wasnt paying £90 for the 3xLP)

haha no way they called it "we have dozens of titles"

loving this live version of "the seasons reverse". What a beautiful song.

Bout time i figured it out on guitar

Anybody have an idea of who's on guitar and keys respectively on this "The Seasons Reverse" live version?

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)

(scratch that, more Dot and Loops-y? xp)

Answering my own q in case anyone else is/was curious (c&p'd from a recent Quietus piece):

JO’R: This is really based off of David’s guitar figure. Around then I’d just gotten a sampler. This was the first Gastr record where a computer was involved, all others were recorded to tape. All the drums were samples of John playing and the other noises were from Marcus Popp (Oval). Pro Tools didn’t exist yet, there was a programme called Deck. The craziest thing was there was no soundcard, you got the sound out from the headphone jack – it’s amazing the record doesn’t sound like garbage.

Quietus interview confirms that this song is a total Sun City Girls homage (including "found" cover of a Kim Sinh song):

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

Now that I think about it, that song does sound like nerdy-dorks trying to rip-off sun city. And I mean that in the nicest way possible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH8ZUYfB8dA

Omg that's so sick.

nothing in that quietus piece suggests "black horse" is an SCG homage. idgi.
pentatonic SE Asia has existed outside the bishop bros for eternity

ProTools definitely existed at the time bc John McEntire used on both Stereolab's Dots and Loops (1997) and Tortoise's TNT (1998)

Yeah no, I meant more an homage to SCG's process of covering obscuro ~oriental~ pieces culled from exotic comps and presenting it as their own (v. often w/ no credit/context).

And to jaymc's point, ProTools first launched in 1991 (Beach Boys' 1992 "Summer In Paradise" anyone?) but I *think* Jim is referring to the ProControl OX surface:

https://i.imgur.com/LKG3sX1.jpeg

...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:

https://i.imgur.com/q2bZ9am.gif

lots of press/media:

https://www.instagram.com/indie_heads/p/C7o5v4UOXhh/
https://archive.ph/EdyBB
and the Tone Glow interview should be coming up any day now

Thanks for un-paywalling that WaPo write-up, fpsa!

This Andreyev/O'Rourke Pt. 2 interview might've been shared on another thread but I don't see it posted above, so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=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)

thanks for sharing! fun/dorky convo and that rafael toral is indeed AWESOME

There is an AMA on reddit later (8pm EDT/5pm PDT/9am JST) on r/indieheads...

https://www.reddit.com/r/indieheads/comments/1d7jgcm/gastr_del_sol_ama_they_said_it_couldnt_happen/

I'd missed this til now, but David and Jim are both interviewed together for the Kreative Kontrol podcast:
http://vishkhanna.com/2024/06/13/ep-877-gastr-del-sol/