Happy Days

Jim O'Rourke | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 18, 1997)
• Original Release Date: February 12, 1997
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Revenant Records
• ASIN: B000001Z3T
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #382,946 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Happy Days

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Audibly Overwhelming, April 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Happy Days (Audio CD)

Early work by Jim O'Rourke in which he attempts to bring together diffrent elements and styes of avante-garde music into a piece whose effect is completly overwhelming. 1 track only timing in at about 40 minutes it begins with Fahey/Bull minimalist lines carefully sugesting a melody with slow drone barly audible in the background. Half way through the texture of the conrad-esque becomes the centre piece and grows completly overwhelming. Your ability to distinguish the microtonal and macrotonal changes is affected. The history of modern music from minimalist to serialist and back again. Possibly the most engaging piece of music I've ever heard.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This ain't no party music; it's better than kick drums and melodies., August 5, 2005

By 

Benjamin Myers "Hand of Doom" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Happy Days (Audio CD)

This isn't just a "drone piece", it's a meditative work involving a focus on an octave pair and related tones. If you listen there exist slight differences in times between notes. Western music infuriates me sometimes. They work in certain divisions of rhythms and tones (i.e. 8th/16th notes, 12 tone scales) and anything outside of this ("semitones") is "weird" and hard to listen to.

In other styles of music, such as Indian, the tonal systems are different than in Western music. Such is the case in O'Rourke's rhythm scheme. The variation isn't within the tones, but within the timbres and rhythms. The timbre variation is easiest to recognize once the hurdy gurdy kicks in. My heart skips a beat when it buzzes; I always think it's my speakers, but it's too perfect for that.

I first heard this song in Harmony Korine's "Julien Donkey-Boy" and haven't been able to get it out of my head since.

If you're looking for something unconventional and meditative, where you listen closely to rhythms and timbres rather than melodies, you should own this album. It's too perfect not to.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It'll scare the dogs, but..., September 25, 2000

By 

Hot Coque - See all my reviews

This review is from: Happy Days (Audio CD)

this is great concentration music - sit between your speakers with the lights out and you'll understand. Who needs drugs when simple audio frequencies can do this to you? Whoo-hooo!

That being said, I've cleared a few crowded rooms with drones like this before... ;)

I love you,

Hot Coque