Customer Reviews

Upgrade & Afterlife

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is the best gastr album out. Although Camofleur is good it gets rid of the sounds and minimalism that make Upgrade and Afterlife so enjoyable. There are slow acoustic guitar marches, bizarre static interludes, some horns and organs, and all done with taste and restraint. Almost totally indescribable, but certainly worthwhile for the post-rock thrill-seeker. Also worth getting is Jim O'Rourke's solo record Bad Timing, which is absolutely gorgeous.

[....] Camofleur (which IS also incredible) is widely regarded with all the "indie rockers" as being their best album, mainly because of the more structured song composition and less experimentation, but I think Upgrade really shows O'Rourke and David Grubbs in their prime as this duo. It really shows their musique concrete and minimalist style. The music is more open ended both in structure and sound. There are great noise arrangements throughout this record and all kinds of crazy sounds in the music like the teapot in song 3. The first song "Our Exquisite Replica of Eternity" needs to be listened to on headphones at an extremely loud volume to trully experience it's grandeur. Has the same vibe as Also Sprach Zarathustra from 2001: A Space Odyssey...anyway, if you're looking into this group's music I reccomend this album to really see what they were all about.

Gastr del Sol created wonderful music for several years. Contrary to popular opinion, David Grubbs was the primary creative influence in the "group," which was a revolving door facility including full-time (usually) member John McIntyre and eventually the super-hyped persona of Jim O'Rourke. The early Gastr del Sol records are excellent and CROOKT, CRACKT, OR FLY and THE SERPENTINE SIMILAR (sans O'Rourke) are certainly accessible and lovely in exquisite ways. MIRROR REPAIR stakes its claim along with Pavement's WATERY, DOMESTIC, Bedhead's THE DARK AGES, and O'Rourke's own HALFWAY TO A THREEWAY, as one of the great modern indie EPs. CAMOUFLEUR is certainly an essential part of any respectable collection of inventive pop albums. All this said, UPGRADE AND AFTERLIFE is Gastr del Sol's masterpiece. It is a remarkable work of musical genius, the fruits of a well-planned (if a little pretentious) effort at a masterpiece. "Rebecca Sylvester" would be the crown jewel of the album, were it not that moments mattered so much in this work. The Gastr del Sol players/producers make music out of notes, looped sounds, self-generated noise, and the occasional and always perfect voice that softly proclaims meaningful or meaningless parables. With a nod to methodic minimalists Tony Conrad and Shellac, Gastr del Sol well represent the notion that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This album will be described in the future as "avant-garde" and driven by the genius of Jim O'Rourke. I disagree. Much like the music that makes it a masterpiece, the whole of the ensemble is greater than the sum of its parts. And, incidentally, recall that O'Rourke made a name for himself as a producer by mixing Melt-Banana and U.S. Maple records; those bands would tend to make any producer look like a genius. O'Rourke's associations with Sonic Youth and Wilco further lend to his aura. But if you first listen to O'Rourke's solo work, then subsequently listen to Grubbs' solo work, and then finally listen to UPGRADE AND AFTERLIFE, you will realize what the two primary writers' respective solo efforts miss the most -- the respective other. UPGRADE AND AFTERLIFE is a strange sort of pop, and well worth the time required for appreciation.

This is not Gastr's most accessible album (that would be Camofleur). U&A provides a more challenging listening experience, and if you are expecting pop songs, you might steer clear. However, I find the juxtaposition of strange amorphous drones, harsh static, and passages of beautiful melody quite interesting. There is some very lovely guitar playing: unusual, almost unidentifiable manipulations of sound: surreal bits of lyric thrown in here and there... If you have an ear for contemporary experimental music, I highly recommend Upgrade & Afterlife, and really most anything by Gastr del Sol.

I had heard about Gastr Del Sol from an avant garde friend. When I picked up the CD, I really didn't know what to expect. What I got was nothing short of a masterpiece. UPGRADE AND AFTERLIFE incorporates electronic noises, delicate piano, and acoustic guitar, plus a plethora of unidentifiable sounds. The seven tracks are unique and wonderful. "Our exqusite Replica of 'Eternity'" begins with a delicate piano, veers off into noise hell, and ends quietly. "Rebecca Sylvester" uses vocals, acoustic guitar, and some drone to create a beautiful song. "The Sea Incertain" is an instrumental track which incorporates some steam noises. "Hello Spiral" begins with a butchered sound collage, then starts off on a piano. "The Relay" and "Crappie Tactics" both use eerie piano and synths. The final song, "Dry Bones....", is a wonderful and trancey cover. If you like avant garde experimental music, buy this Gastr album. You can't go wrong.

...Of course, that's an understatement and a crack at one of the previous reviewers' "lack of ideas" comment. Every Gastr release is a different sort of experiment, deconstructing and reconstructing influences and standards. And, like much good art lambasted as "pretentious," it and they don't care if you don't get it, because some folks will, and they are the audience. This is not pop music: it is not supposed to appeal to mainstream tastes.

This particular experiment is the Surrealist/Dadaist chance meanings/cut-and-paste piece, a la William S. Burroughs, Byron Gysin, and Surrealist "exquisite corpse" drawings. Doubt it? How about that cover art...and Grubbs' extremely visual lyrics ("The Relay" is my favorite: "Cooked corn in formaldehyde/popcorn in an airtight jar/cornflakes under glass," conjuring Dali, Damien Hirst, Max Ernst, Rene Magritte)...and the combination of found sounds and naked influences (Cage, Fahey, Conrad). The album is spacious, a hypnotic but minimal soundscape that functions more like a single composition than a collection of songs (that's the next album). Found musique-concrete noises burst through moments of percussionless piano, acoustic guitar, droning noise. "Hello Spiral" is the track that best encompasses the album's goals and provides a dramatic, compressed early climax, and "The Sea Incertain" combines piano with some lovely O'Rourkian tape-loop treatments, but it all coalesces to the Fahey cover at the close. This cd is not a minute too long and is precisely sequenced and arranged, contributing to the "entire composition" feel. Like most exciting and interesting art, it will keep rewarding you if you let it intrigue you.

Gastr del Sol's fractured soundscapes are the perfect complement to the morning urban commute experience. I was listening to Upgrade & Afterlife yesterday morning on the way in to work, and it took me an hour to claw my way out of the dream-like haze.

The compositions are detached, yet oddly empathetic; they wreak of a sort of post-apocalyptic solitude, propelled forward by deliberate, sparse piano/acoustic guitar explorations and punctuated on occasion by bursts of electric static. As I listened and looked around, I saw a landscape where we were all out of phase with one another and our surroundings. We co-existed temporarily in the same space - the subway, the street - but as voyeurs, passive additions, adding nothing to the whole. Eyes bored straight ahead or skimmed over the scenery, and eyes never met other eyes. Everything was gray. And the electro-acoustic interplay enhanced the feeling that there was something both deeply human and strangely inhuman going on.

En este disco, Gastr del sol se pasea musicalmente por distintos tipos de angustia y neurosis. Esto está logrado mediante una extensión considerable de las canciones, el uso intensivo de ruidos bastante molestos y agresivos, el brusco quiebre de ambientes más bien meditativos, letras herméticas e inconexas y mucha disonancia y melodías bastante ilógicas. Pero esto no significa que haya un espíritu parejo en el disco, pues hay muchas variaciones: desde canciones con pura guitarra y voz, que incluyen trozos bastante tranquilos, hasta otras más llenas de sonidos, que crean un efecto casi orquestal, pudiendo percibirse, además, distintas influencias, tanto del folk, el rock, la música contemporánea, etc. Pero lo que prima aquí es el minimalismo (en el sentido que los elementos mencionados no sufren variaciones durante un largo tiempo), que profundiza toda la tensión mencionada hasta el límite, al dar una sensación de que estas canciones no tienen salida. Ayudados además por ilustres invitados (como Mats Gustafsson, John McEntire, Tony Conrad, etc.), el trabajo de este grupo es muy coherente a la hora de transmitir musicalmente todas estas ideas, y realmente se valora toda la búsqueda que han llevado a cabo, tanto en esta grabación como en todas las demás de su discografía.

Pleasant but unexceptional experimental meanderings from Messrs. Grubbs and O'Rourke. Too much of the album is taken up by Grubbs' attempts to re-write "Dedicated to You But You Weren't Listening" from Soft Machine's 2nd LP - abstract and distracted acoustic guitar ballads, unfortunately Grubbs is no Robert Wyatt and his feeble, characterless vocals conspire to make these tracks seem even more insipid than they are (which is pretty insipid to start with). Best things here are the opening and closing tracks. "Our Exquisite Replica of Eternity", despite its arch title, is excellent, a low organ drone ripped asunder by shards of shrieking electronics before, entirely unexpectedly, giving way to a lovely filmic coda. "Dry Bones In the Valley" brings together two great American musical mavericks, John Fahey (who wrote it) and Tony Conrad (who plays on it). Opening with exqusitely played (by O'Rourke one assumes) acoustic guitar, in Fahey's signature style, gradually subsumed by the equally siganture drone of Conrad's violin(s) - Fahey and Conrad sound like they belong together! All in all, then a pleasant album, but not especially essential.

Gastr's Jim O'Rourke is the poster boy for musical omnivores. Love him or hate him, the man works hard and walks the walk (unlike most of his envious fanboy naysayers). Gastr founder David Grubbs, while less prolific than his [now former] bandmate (and who ISN'T, barring Keiji Haino and Masami "Merzbow" Akita [who are more specialized than 'ol Jimbo anyhow]?), is no avantclopedic slouch himself. So it comes as no surprise that on this, the duo's best album, a wealth of obvious influences are on display to compliment Gastr's always intriguing meta-math rock. Roll Call! -John Fahey, Morton Feldman, Slint, Derek Bailey, Luc Ferrari, Ennio Morricone, Bernhard Gunter...sounds like a mess? Well, no, actually O'Rourke and Grubbs are talented composers, and, having collaborated with many on that list, understand the inner workings of their disparate approaches. This music is tasteful, restrained (when it needs to be), and utterly haunting. Not "scary" haunting, but evocative, moody, subtle, jarring, expansive, in short, ART. Not ELP/prog-rock/late Dali rococo rubbish, but art as in Rothko, Tarkovsky, Bill Viola, with a little Cage/Satie wink-nudge for envious fanboys like me. just listen to this wonderful album, and if you don't get what I'm saying, you can go back to the roller rink with the rest of the indie mod fashion victims ;)