Customer Reviews

Happy Days

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4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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

One of my favorite minimal pieces and the best music i've heard from Jim O'Rourke.
Tony Conrad is historically important but in my opinion this record is 2000 thousand light years ahead of it.
Wonderful music, if you are interested in avant garde and minimalism don't doubt.

Wow! For the first ten minutes Big Jim idly twangs a couple of strings on his geetar. For the remaining 38 minutes, or actually for as long as you can stand it before frantically scrabbling the cd out of the player and hurling it across the room, Jim holds down a chord on a harmonium or a hurdy-gurdy or something. Who cares? How about a double album next time Jim? You might waste a couple of hours but, goddam, it would be worth it.

News just in: To be fair to Jim, "eureka" and "Insignificance" are tuneful, well arranged and memorable. Worthy of your cash. Skip, "Bad Timing" though; just get "America" by John Fahey instead.