HALFWAY TO A THREEWAY (1999)

NINE YEARS AFTER THE RELEASE OF THIS RECORD IT HAD REACHED A CULT STATUS IN WHICH IT COULD BE TRUSTED TO RAISE A SMILE AT ITS MENTION IN LYRICS BY THE WRY ELECTRO POPSTER MAX TUNDRA:

I found the girl on eBay
She was bidding on "Halfway To A Threeway"
I wrote the words "a grain of sand" upon a grain of rice
She baked a pie of very shy laboratory mice

AND WITH GOOD REASON BECAUSE .5->3-WAY IS A GREAT LITTLE USE OF THE EXTENDED PLAY FORMAT AND I AM GOING TO MAKE A BOLD CLAIM HERE AND SAY AS EPS GO THIS IS PROBABLY UP THERE WITH SLATES AND ADMONISHING THE BISHOPS AND WATERY DOMESTIC AND IN A BEAUTIFUL PLACE OUT IN THE COUNTRY.

THIS IS FROM JIM'S SMALL RANGE OF 'RELEASES THAT UNCUT MAGAZINE COULD TUG OFF TO', BRINGING GENTLE FOLK AND EXPLORATORY AMERICANA TO THE FOREFRONT WITH NO TECHNOLOGICAL INTERVENTION. 

THE LYRICS ARE SMART AND CUTTING, SOME MIGHT SAY MEAN, BUT THEY DO AT LEAST TRY AND DO SOMETHING OTHER THAN TURN THESE INTO EMPTY SENTIMENTS OF THE KIND JIM DOESN'T REALLY CARE FOR. THE MUSIC DOES THE SENTIMENTAL LIFTING, TO BE FAIR.

I LIKE ALL FOUR SONGS HERE AND I WOULD SAY TO ANYONE LOOKING TO GET INTO JIM TO START HERE. THERE'S ABSOLUTELY NO GUARANTEE IT WOULD GET YOU LISTENING TO HAPPY DAYS OR LONG NIGHT OR FENN O'BERG, BUT PLAY THE PERCENTAGES AND REAP THE REWARDS.

CERTIFIED: GOOD.

TO MAGNETIZE MONEY AND CATCH A ROVING EYE (2019)

CERTAINLY THE LONGEST JIM RELEASE THUS FAR, TRUMPING LONG NIGHT'S 2HRS 37 BY OVER 90 MORE MINUTES, AND SPREAD OVER 4 DISCS (4 FILES, SORRY), TO MAGNETIZE MONEY MIGHT NATURALLY BEG COMPARISON WITH SOMETHING LIKE WILLIAM BASINSKI'S DISINTEGRATION LOOPS BUT ARGUABLY MORE HAPPENS IN TERMS OF SHIFTS AND MODULATIONS ON THIS RELEASE IN THE FIRST 10 MINUTES THAN DOES ACROSS 5 HOURS OF BASINSKI'S LOOPS.

THE SHEER LENGTH GIVES A LOT OF SPACE FOR IDEAS TO BREATHE AND FOR ENTIRE NEW MOVEMENTS TO BE PROSODICALLY BORN OUT OF THE DECAYING MATTER OF OLD ONES. EACH DISC DOES HAVE A DIFFERENT FEEL BUT THEY'RE ALL IN THE SAME APPROXIMATE WHEELHOUSE OF BROODING, DISQUIETING, DRONING, OMINOUS, GURGLING, AMNIOTIC, ETC.

WHAT I DO LIKE ABOUT IT IS THE WAY THAT SOME SOURCE SOUNDS FEEL UNTRANSFORMED AND NOT QUITE BAKED INTO THE WHOLE SOUND - VOICES FLOATING UP AND OUT OF THE MIX, AND SOMETIMES A SYNTH SOUNDS QUITE OBVIOUSLY LIKE A SYNTH. MUSIC WHERE THE HAND OF ITS MAKER APPEALS TO ME AND SOMETIMES THAT IS LOST IN STUDIO PROJECTS. 

BIT LONG FOR ME TO SAY CERTIFIED: GOOD BUT I IMAGINE FOR SOME PEOPLE THIS WILL BE A REAL HEAD-TURNER.

SECURE ON THE LOOSE RIM (1991)

PROGRESS REPORT: OF THE ASSEMBLED AND KNOWN DISCOGRAPHY OF JIM O'ROURKE I ESTIMATE WE ARE ABOUT ONE THIRD OF THE WAY THROUGH IT IF WE DISCOUNT SINGLES AND STUFF WHERE HE WAS MOSTLY A PERFORMER (STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT I'LL DO ABOUT THE WILCO RELEASES) THOUGH I WOULD LIKE TO INCLUDE SOME OF THOSE TO FILL OUT THE SENSE OF JOURNEY.

OF COURSE THERE ARE THINGS THAT CROP UP SUCH AS HEARING O'ROURKE PLAYED ON DAVID JACKMAN'S ORGANUM RELEASES, OR THE EARLY PERFORMANCE GROUP THE ELVIS MESSIAHS. BUT THERE ARE ALSO THINGS IN THE MAIN DISCOGRAPHY THAT I CAN'T FIND JUST NOW, SO MAYBE IT WILL ALL EVEN OUT AND ROLL TO A NATURAL STOP.

SECURE TAKES US TO JIM'S COLLEGE DAYS IN 1990 AND THE CONDENSING OF TWO PERFORMANCES GIVEN IN THE JANUARY OF THAT NEW DECADE. IT'S KEYBOARD/DRONE/AMBIENT WITH A SLIGHTLY DILAPIDATED FEEL BECAUSE OF THE TRANSFER FROM CASSETTE TO DIGITAL AUDIO. I DIG IT THOUGH: SOMETHING ABOUT AMBIENT (WE WILL UNPACK THIS ONE DAY, I SWEAR) MUSIC DONE LIVE AND THEN ALSO ANALOGUE TO DIGITAL TRANSFER IS RIGHT UP MY ALLEY.

CLOSING TRACK SOMETIMES HAS A NICELY BROODING AND DISTORTED FEEL AND ROUNDS OFF A SATISFYING ALBUM (THOUGH LISTED ON DISCOGS AS A COMPILATION?) WELL. TEMPTED TO GO CERTIFIED: GOOD ON THIS. IT MIGHT NOT BE JIM'S MOST CONSIDERED OR MATURE WORK, BUT IF YOU ENJOY IT ALL THEN SURELY THAT'S THE POINT?

CERTIFIED: GOOD

STEAMROOM 47 (2020)

I READ A VERY INTERESTING INTERVIEW WITH JIM O'ROURKE YESTERDAY IN THE MUSIC NEWSLETTER TONE GLOW. THERE WAS QUITE A LOT OF MATERIAL TO LEAN ON SO I SHAN'T USE IT ALL NOW. PERHAPS IT WILL REFRAME SOME THINGS IN THE FUTURE, AND HAS CLARIFIED A FEW SUSPICIONS OF THE PAST.

HAD I HEARD STEAMROOM 47 PRIOR TO READING IT I'D HAVE BEEN POSITIVE ABOUT IT ALL THE SAME: IT'S PROBABLY MY FAVOURITE STEAMROOM SO FAR THAT WASN'T OUT AS SOMETHING ELSE ALREADY. IT PRESENTS FRACTURED PIANO PLAYING INTERMESHING WITH ELECTRONICS. THE PLAYING ITSELF IS STRANGE AND ODDLY BRITTLE - LIKE A FUMBLING ATTEMPT TO DEVELOP A BAROQUE MELODY THAT COLLAPSES (BUT INTERESTINGLY) AND RISES AND FALLS. IT IS INTERESTING STUFF.

THE INTERVIEW PROVIDES SOME INSIGHT ON HOW THIS PARTICULAR RELEASE WAS MADE. REMEMBER WHEN I SUGGESTED A LONG TIME AGO THAT PROCESS AND HOW THE SOUND WAS MADE FEELS OF PRIMARY IMPORTANCE RATHER THAN THE END PRODUCT OR HOW IT MIGHT MAKE YOU FEEL? WELL:

Well there's this whole area of research, this grouping of disciplines called MIR—music information retrieval.

I'm not familiar with it.

The results of that are those things on your phone where you can ask, “What’s that song?” and figure out what it is.

Oh, apps like SoundHound?

Yeah, so basically that world of research is called MIR. Which is a combination of other disciplines like FFT (Fast Fourier transform) analysis and delta signals and all that shit. As a sort of adjunct to my near-lifelong obsession with Roland Kayn and the idea of music based on cybernetics, I was researching various things about MIR over the past couple years—not because I'm interested in it as a technology, but because of the parts of technology that make it up.

What that album is, and the name’s sort of a clue—I’m surprised no one’s caught on, it’s not that obscure. But basically I made an FFT analysis of—

Glenn Gould?

Yeah, Glenn Gould! So I did an FFT analysis of all the Goldberg Variations. But what I did was, for each particular variation, based on the simple ideas of—and they were simple because I was just doing tests—how many modulations and blah blah blah. When you're doing FFT analysis, it's basically like a time domain analysis. Depending on the sample rate you're working at, you’re cutting up music into slices of time, almost like plastic overlays. It’s kind of like when you see those things when you make slices of the brain and you’re putting see-through, plastic pieces on top of each other for each slice.

So with the Fourier transform, you're taking time slices and you're reading the energy levels of the frequencies as sine waves—sinusoidal—for each slice. Then to recreate it, these slices and the sine waves and particular amplitudes are recreated in the same time domain. But what I was doing was changing the time domain as well as resynthesizing it—not with sine waves, but with a wave table of a hundred and fifty different wave forms that were dependent upon both the frequency and the amplitude in regards to something particular about that Goldberg variation.

So I was recreating those performances of the Goldberg Variations with this kind of skewered, nutso, FFT resynthesis. And then what I did (laughs) was once I resynthesized those—which is that kind of crazy, squelchy, noisy part—I ran that through a program which tries to read musical material out of the audio. And that made a new score that was played on the

SO THE PIECE ENDS UP BEING THIS TWICE REMOVED GOLDBERG VARIATION THAT PERHAPS TRUMPS THE IDEA OF ALGORITHMS WRITING OUR FUTURE MASTERPIECES BY DOING THE THING HUMANS DO BEST AND TWISTING IT AWAY FROM OBVIOUS LEVELS OF INTENT.  

THE THING IS THOUGH IT SOUNDS REALLY GOOD. AS STATED - I AM NOT A PROCESS GUY. I LIKE EXPRESSION AND RESULT. FORTUNATELY JIM'S GOALS AND MINE ALIGN HERE FOR AN EASY CERTIFIED: GOOD!

BAD TIMING (1997)

WE HAVE MENTIONED IN THE COURSE OF THIS BLOG, ON A NUMBER OF OCCASIONS, THE WORD 'AMERICANA' WITHOUT REALLY INTERROGATING THE CONCEPT (INDEED THERE ARE A BUNCH OF WORDS I COULD STAND TO GO DEEPER IN ON AND I PLAN TO) IN DEPTH.

AMERICANA ON THE BASIC LEVEL SUGGESTS 'THINGS TO DO WITH AMERICA' BUT WHEN YOU STRIP AWAY ALL THE CRASS FLAG-WAVING MILITARY AND DEEP MEDIA STUFF THAT AMERICA PROJECTS TO THE WORLD YOU ARE ACTUALLY LEFT WITH A RIOT OF DIFFERENCE; OF GENERATIONS EMBEDDED AND OF THE SWEEP OF MIGRATION; OF DIFFERENT CLIMATES, GEOGRAPHIES, AND TOPOLOGIES; OF RADICALLY DIFFERENT CULTURAL TRADITIONS; BOTH COLONISERS AND COLONISED.

NOT TO MENTION THAT WHEN YOU BRING IT TO SPECIFIC MUSICAL FORMS YOU GET REALLY INTELLIGENT AND INSIGHTFUL PEOPLE LIKE ALAN LOMAX WHO CAN TAKE SOMETHING THAT SEEMS HYPER-PARTICULAR IE. A BLUES FORM ONLY IN A SMALL VALLEY IN MISSISSIPPI, A TYPE OF GOSPEL SONG ONLY ON THAT VIRGINIAN MOUNTAIN AND SHOW HOW IT EVOLVES FROM ONE COUNTRY'S PEOPLE AND THEIR JOURNEY TO THE NEW WORLD. HOW EVERYTHING IS PRONE TO SHIFT AND CHANGE AND UPROOTING AND BEING SOMEWHERE ELSE. MAYBE CULTURE IS SIMPLY WHAT SURVIVES OF US.

CULTURAL EXPRESSION CAN BE BOTH AUTHENTIC (A TRUE EXPRESSION OF A PERSONHOOD) AND COMPLETELY FALSE (BORROWED, NOT ORIGINATING THROUGH A STRICT PATRIMONIAL COURSE) IN ONE FELL SWOOP: I THINK THAT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING PROVIDING YOU TAKE THE COARSENING EFFECTS OF MONEY AND SOCIAL STATUS AWAY FROM THINGS. I SUPPOSE WHAT I AM TRYING TO SAY IS ARGUMENTS ABOUT CULTURAL APPROPRIATION ONLY GO SO FAR WITH ME. NOT TO SAY THERE AREN'T RACISTS AND CYNICS IN THE WORLD. FAR FROM IT!

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH BAD TIMING BY JIM O'ROURKE? WELL, A LOT, IN THAT IT IS A RECORD THAT CLEARLY BRINGS TO BEAR JIM'S BURGEONING OBSESSION WITH THE AMERICAN PRIMITIVE GUITAR STYLINGS AND THE WORK OF JOHN FAHEY. IT IS MUSIC THAT BEARS THE HALLMARKS OF THE AMERICAN PAST; ACUTELY STUDDED WITH A SENSE OF TRADITIONS IN AMERICAN FOLK AND BLUES, THE JOURNEY OF CONTINENTS, WHILE JIM IS THIS ALOOF ACADEMIC GUY WHO HAS SPENT 8 YEARS MAKING MUSIC FOR WESTERN INTELLIGENTSIA.

IS THIS JUST AN EXERCISE OR IS IT AUTHENTIC? WELL, IT IS BOTH. AND FURTHERMORE IT IS SUCCESSFUL. IT RENDERS A CONVINCING PORTRAIT OF THE LEGACY OF FAHEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN CLASSICAL MUSIC. AND IT ALSO FEELS *FELT*. LIKE HE CARES. LIKE THIS IS NOT A CLINICAL EXERCISE. THAT THERE IS SOME ATTEMPT TO GRAB THE LISTENER BY THEIR EMOTIONAL SENSES.

BAD TIMING IS A VERY GOOD RECORD AND FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT JIM SOLO UP TO 1997 ON THIS BLOG, HIS BEST RECORD TO DATE. YOU CAN'T CALL IT A VOLTE-FACE IF YOU THINK ABOUT HOW THIS OBSESSION HAD BEEN COMING OUT IN WORKS LIKE HAPPY DAYS AND UPGRADE & AFTERLIFE. MY FAVOURITE TRACK IS THE TITLE TRACK BUT THERE ISN'T A BAD ONE HERE. 

CERTIFIED: GOOD.

STEAMROOM 19 (2015)

A RECORD SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE VARIOUS INTERSECTIONS OF TAPE MUSIC, DRONE, AMBIENT, MUSIQUE CONCRETE, AND SOUND ART. ONE TRACK OVER 42 MINUTES THAT GOES THROUGH SEVERAL IDENTIFIABLE SECTIONS, EACH UNIFIED BY SHARPENED METALLIC TONES AND AN UNMISTAKABLE ATMOSPHERE AKIN TO WHEN A FRIDGE HUMS ANNOYINGLY.

THERE IS A SENSE OF AN ACTIVE HAND THROUGHOUT AS WE HEAR INTERLOCUTIONS FROM UNIDENTIFIABLE PERCUSSIVE SOUNDS (LIKE STONES GRINDING TOGETHER) AND THE SUBTLE RAISING AND DECAYING OF ATTACK AND VOLUME THAT COMES FROM THE ANCIENT ART OF 'KNOB-TWIDDLING'. 

ULTIMATELY THIS FEELS BEST AS SOUND ART IN THE BACKGROUND OF AN INSTALLATION RATHER THAN AS MUSIC, IN WHICH IT DOESN'T YIELD ENOUGH OF ANYTHING TO BE REMARKABLE.

MIZO NO NAI UMI (2005) aka STEAMROOM 11

RECORDED IN 1990 AND THEN LEFT IN A BOX FOR 13 YEARS, UNTOUCHED, UNLOVED, FORGOTTEN. AND THEN RECOVERED, REVIVED, AND RELOVED. PERFORMED LIVE. AND THEN INCLUDED IN THE WHITNEY BIENNIAL. AND ALL INCLUDED HERE.

THE LIVE VERSION AND THE STUDIO VERSION ARE MOSTLY SIMILAR, WITH SOME INSTRUMENTATION ADDED TO THE LIVE VERSION THAT IS MOSTLY UNOBSTRUSTIVE AND ALLOWS THE ORIGINAL BEATIFIC DRONES TO COME THROUGH. THIS IS DRONE MUSIC FOR A NEAR EARTH COLONY, A NEW START, A LABORATORY ON VENUS. IT SHIMMERS AND RADIATES A CALM ENERGY. 

THE STEAMROOM RELEASE ADDS A TRACK RECORDED AT THE SAME TIME AND INCLUDED ON A COMPILATION ALONGSIDE PIECES BY RALF WEHOWSKY AND TONY CONRAD, WHICH DOUBTLESS MADE JIM PLEASED. IT IS OF A SIMILAR PIECE AS MIZO NO NAI UMI, THOUGH MORE UNSETTLED. 

A SOLID RELEASE FOR DRONE FANS.

STEAMROOM 42 (2018)

A BROODING DRONE RECORD THAT VEERS MORE TOWARD SOUND ART AND ATMOSPHERICS (IE. DEMANDING YOUR EAR) RATHER THAN AMBIENT (CONSTRUCTED IGNORABILITY, ON SOME LEVEL). 38 MINUTES OF DENSE WOODS, STEAM RISING IN THE FEW CLEARINGS, HUMIDITY SOAKING YOU.

I AM SURE JIM HAS A HIGHER PURPOSE FOR THIS MUSIC BUT I THINK IT WOULD SOUND GREAT IN A FILM OR A BIG EXHIBITION ABOUT MEDIEVAL JAPAN OR DINOSAURS. IT CONJURES UP QUITE THE SOUND WORLD AND FEELS MORE OVERLY RELATED TO 'IMAGE' THAN SOME OF THE MORE INSCRUTABLE PIECES OFFERED UP IN THE DRONE MODE.