Customer Reviews

World of Echo

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

 

 

I don't profess to be a Musicologist, just someone who appreciates important, artistic contributions. I am a visual artist. I have always loved music, but accepted the fact that I did not have the innate skills to become a great musician - although, I developed an early appreciation of music. In terms of Arthur Russell, I am not talking about music that overtakes us and makes us 'shake our booty'! I appreciate that from time to time - no doubt - as I LOVE to dance. Arthur avoided trite commercialization. I believe that Arthur Russells's art was created with committment, humility and a profound sense of his Reality. As time goes on, his music grows into something greater than even he (possibly) originally conceived. His Echo music has powers to heal - not only the mind, but the spirit. I don't know where he found his Muse, but, he certainly followed it very diligently and with a great deal of conviction and heart. Wow, quite a journey this guy took! Gotta admire that. I just discovered his music through the video, "Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell". Yes, as is with most of us, he had feet of clay and made some mistakes, but I am greatful to have learned about him and his music. My world will never be the same...

It sounds kind of like nick drake if he had played cello instead of guitar. That's about the best thing I can say and if that means anything to you then buy this record.

3 1/2

This little known but far reaching release seems to have inspired quite a few since. An avant-garde Drake does seem an appropriate comparison, though Russell's experimental folk drifts as much into the future as it connects into the past. There are many of the artist's signature echo-drenched cello compositions which do tend to become compositionally repetitious and dwindle on a bit at times, but when the minimalist reverb works, WOE truly lives up to it's title. As well as predicting some of the textural work Radiohead would gravitate towards when they wanted to explore electronica, Russell's evocative vocals at times astoundingly parallels one of Rock's most formidable vocalists, My Morning Jacket's Jim James. Few songs sustain a focused purity found in tracks like "Being It", and on the contrast reek of awful studio pretentiousness ala "The Name Of The Next Song", but the album nonetheless convincingly renders a portrait for this important sound-scaper.

It's de rigueur to love Arthur now...you'd think people would catch on with all this posthumous stuff. Forgotten geniuses and all that. Arthur, back in the day, was appreciated by a coterie. His work was/is very special: a way of bringing a singer-songwriter sensibility into "new music". He wasn't the only one doing this, but he was probably the most affecting: ethereal mid-Western drawl, lonely, sandy cello and all. And World of Echo was the disc everyone talked about. And it's beautiful. Now it has found some kind of iconic position; I guess it was a harbinger. I liked it then; I like it now. It is a small, intimate world - it didn't change my life. Neither then nor now. Why not have an Arthur Russell revival? No reason. My cynical tone is not directed at the fragile specialness of Arthur's music, but at the ghoulish minions who search for someone to rediscover rather than doing the much harder work of appreciating quixotic, non-iconic artists in their time. Death gives a completeness, a roundedness to an oeuvre - yeah, yeah...I've read Heidegger (and have the scars to show it). But still...but still. Love World of Echo - why not? Me, I like it rather than love it, but you, love it if you want. But try not to wait around for Wire magazine to tell you what is cool 20 years after the fact.