Jim O'Rourke

Jim O'Rourke was a beacon of avant-garde music throughout the 1990s, both rock and otherwise, although his experimentation did not always yield results of great artistic significance. His Renaissance-like genius was expressed also (and perhaps especially) through countless collaborations.

A composition graduate, he debuted very young (born 1969), recording within a few years dozens of avant-garde works inspired as much by John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen as by Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey. As a rock musician, his career began with the Elvis Messiahs, who released two cassettes: The Messiahs Dead (Sound of Pig, 1989) and The Elvis Messiahs EE (Sound of Pig, 1988). Then began his long tenure with Illusion Of Safety, which lasted until 1994, encompassing four cassettes and five albums.

Finally credited solely to O'Rourke, the cassette Remove the Need (Complacency, 1989) and the CD Remove the Need (Extreme, 1993) contain live improvisations for "prepared guitar" (the equivalent of Cage’s "prepared piano"). The two recordings share the same title but contain different material.

The cassettes Some Kind Of Pagan (Sound Of Pig, 1989), It Takes Time To Do Nothing (Audiophile, 1990), and Secure On The Loose Rim (Sound Of Pig, 1991) are mainly notable as examples of how O’Rourke tests his audience’s patience. On these tapes, he experiments exclusively with guitar sounds, occasionally mixing in found noises and sounds from nature.

His vinyl debut, The Ground Below Above Our Heads (Entenpfuhl, 1991), consists of only two sides of ambient/industrial sounds/noises.

The subsequent Tamper (Extreme, 1991 – Drag City, 2008) collects three electroacoustic works for violins, cellos, clarinets, and electronically manipulated percussion (Spirits Never Forgive, He Felt The Potent Memory, Ascend Through Unspoken Shadow).

The double album Disengage (Staalplaat, 1992) was his most monumental work. It contained two lengthy multi-part compositions: Mere and the 51-minute A Young Person's Guide To Drowning. The former's first movement is a simple drone that begins below the audible frequency and, while it is maturing, it morphs into an elegant cascade of angelic tones only to decay again into a thin filament of metallic chiming. The second movement documents another metamorphosis of a drone, approaching absolute silence in its last ten minutes. The third movement is more than a metabolizing drone: it sounds like a maimed orchestral melody. As a composer of droning minimalism, O'Rourke is a bit naive and certainly not too original. A Young Person's Guide To Drowning is a lot more interesting because the drone not only evolves but it also breaks down into a digital pulsing tone that rapidly spins out of control. This musique concrete Its second part boasts the bleakest drone of the album, and it undergoes a disturbing process of decomposition, something like the crackling of a rotting corpse or a rodent scavenging in a dump, while a solemn cello line rises over the wasteland like a sun.

Tomorrow Knows Where You Live (Victo, 1992) and Acoustics (Victo, 1994) are collections of duets with the other avant-garde guitarist, Henry Kaiser.

The cassette Neuro Eco Media (Nux, 1992) and New Kind Of Water (Charnel House, 1993) are improvised guitar duets with Kazuyuki Null of Zeni Geva.

Scend (Divided, 1992) consists of two long suites using methods of "musique concrčte" to create ambient music. The EP Rules Of Reduction (Metamkine, 1993) perfects this technique.

Veil Of Tears (Matchless, 1994) and Sphyx Aeroplane (Matchless, 1994) are albums with Organum.

Third Straight Day Made Public (Complacency, 1994) are duets with drummer Eddie Prevost, recorded live between 1990 and 1993.

Use (Soleilmoon, 1994) is background music, recorded so that other musicians could use it as they saw fit.

Many of these works are confused and rough, reflecting a mind in constant motion, eager to seize every opportunity to implement a new idea. Overall, the first two are where the child prodigy truly shone. The improvisations in the Bailey style may be tiresome (and somewhat anachronistic), and the musique concrčte pieces may not rank alongside the historic works of Schaeffer and Henry; yet O’Rourke today remains one of the boldest experimenters in the song form, capable of injecting the most complex and radical harmonies without hesitation.

One of his most convincing appearances was with Brise-Glace, alongside Dylan Posa (guitarist of the Flying Luttenbachers), Thymme Jones (drummer of Illusion Of Safety), Darin Gray (bassist of Dazzling Killmen), and Kevin Drumm. Jams like Restrained and One Syntactical Unit (twenty minutes), on the album When In Vanitas (Skin Graft, 1994), reflect the collaborators’ jazz background, but in Neither Yield Nor Reap and especially in the terrifying finale of One Syntactical Unit, it is still O’Rourke’s subtle cacophonous alchemy that dominates. This is perhaps the work where O’Rourke best conveys his sonic philosophy at the intersection of jazz, rock, industrial, and ambient. Simultaneously, a single credited to the same Brise-Glace lineup was released: In Sisters All And Felony / Angels on the Installment Plan (Skin Graft, 1994).

Since 1994, O’Rourke has also been part of the rock group Gastr Del Sol. He has also collaborated with Mimir alongside Ka-Spel of the Legendary Pink Dots.

The two suites of Terminal Pharmacy (Tzadik, 1995) are among his most radical compositions: Cede, for trombone, clarinet, bass, and samples, is a daring thirty-minute collage of barely audible chords, orchestras, accordion, and “found” noises (Cage, Stockhausen, Coltrane, Mnemonists, Negativland); Terminal Pharmacy (eight minutes) is a chaotic and cacophonous accumulation of atonal “calls” from cellos, violins, accordions, and flutes.

Slow Motion (For 4 Ears, 1995), Table Chair and Hatstand (For 4 Ears, 1997), and Weighting (For 4 Ears, 1998) are still improvisations, this time in partnership with jazz percussionist Guenter Mueller.

The project Yona-Kit (Skin Graft, 1995) continues the work of Brise-Glace (Jones, Gray, plus Null on vocals), but with a less adventurous and, on the whole, banal style. The supposed highlight of the album is the twenty-three-minute “jam” Slice of Life, which is really just the ad lib repetition of a simple riff.

Whelm (Touch, 1995), credited to Indicate, i.e., O’Rourke and Robert Hampson (of Main).

While more erudite and unsettling than his Californian counterpart Boyd Rice, O’Rourke often repeats the same faults.

O'Rourke briefly followed Thompson (Red Krayola) in his pilgrimage. His guitar work can be admired on two Red Krayola's albums: Amor and Language (Drag City, 1995) and Hazel (Drag City, 1996).

Happy Days (Revenant, 1997) is a 49-minute guitar solo dedicated to John Fahey and Tony Conrad, and represents another peak of his inconsistent career. It begins with ticking guitar tones that slowly mutate into a delicate blues melody. The background hissing gets louder and louder, whirling and twisting until it becomes a deafening drone in a harsher frequency. The noise keeps increasing, as if several drones were superimposed. The soothing ambience of the beginning is completely turned upside down by a colossal cacophony. Suddenly the noise subsides, and the bluesy melody returns as if nothing had happened: it was buried under the noise all the time.

Bad Timing (Drag City, 1997) is another delighful tribute to John Fahey's "primitive guitar music": four suites for acoustic guitars and chamber ensemble that test the territory laid out by Fahey's epic albums of the early 1970s, stradling the line between country music and Indian trance.
There's Hell In Hello opens with a breezy, sunny guitar theme, all rustic fingerpicking and tuneful strumming a` la Leo Kottke. Then, suddenly, all that is left of it is a dark subsonic rumble of the bass. Slowly, a braid of soft piano notes and organ drones envelops reality like a magic mist.
Again, 94 The Long Way opens with calm folkish chords, then melts in languid acid-rock jamming. Suddenly, this turns into an exuberant crescendo, as an entire band joins him (piano, accordion, french horn, trombone, trumpet), all instruments repeating the same simple melody.
We're back to square one with the beginning of Bad Timing, as the guitar is content to strum a simple theme, but soon the theme is slowed down and repeated in a minimalistic manner, and the guitar is joined by more instruments, notably an accordion and an organ whose timbres now make it sound like a Christmas carol, and then everything erupts in a mellow orchestral coda a` la Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells.
Finally, Happy Trails turns the pattern upside down: it begins with a noisy drone and then endorses country picking and then, suddenly, mutates into an upbeat Dixieland fanfare with Hawaian guitar.
This album is a miracle of sort: a complex, bold artistic statement that is amusing and enjoyable. In the tradition of John Fahey, precisely.
Most likely, Bad Timing will remain O'Rourke's masterpiece. It turned out that this album also marked the end of a phase (and perhaps of an era), as O'Rourke will soon turn to more conventional music.

More distinguished collaborations destabilize O'Rourke's discography: Fear No Fall (Lowlands, 1998), with Toshinori Kondo, Zeena Parkins, David Shea, Dirk Wachtelaer; Clouds (Victo, 1998), with Lee Ranaldo, Gianni Gebbia, William Hooker; Xylophonen Virtuosen (Incus, 1999), with Mats Gustafsson.

As post-rock's grey eminence, Jim O'Rourke has played on some of the genre's most adventurous albums, including masterpieces by Gastr Del Sol and Brise-Glace. Left to himself, he has indulged in difficult works of avantgarde music that have gained him precious few fans, although at least the monumental Disengage stands out as one of post-rock's ideological manifestos. Eureka (Drag City, 1999) marks a surprising turn of events, as the enfant terrible delivers his least demanding work ever, steeped in the tradition of orchestral pop and easy listening. The baroque arrangements recall Van Dyke Parks in his prime. The manifesto of the new course is the nine-minute Prelude To 110 Or 220/Women Of The World, a cover of Ivor Cutler's gentle classic, that sounds like a Leo Kottke-ian country vignette for steel guitar coupled with a fairy-tale lullaby (sung by O'Rourke). O'Rourke plays bass, piano and synthesizer; Fred Lonberg-Holm cello, and Julie Pomerleau viola. The project frequently slips into easy-listening mode (Ghost Ship In A Storm is a soul ballad for cocktail lounges, Something Big is light bossanova for yuppy parties). The singing ruins the delicate jazz tapestry of Movie On The Way Down for chamber orchestra (Rob Mazurek on cornet, Jeb Bishop on trombone, Bob Weston on trumpet, Julie Pomerleau on violin Glenn Kotchke on drums, and O'Rourke himself on bass, piano and synthesizer) which otherwise would be a gem of abstract soundpainting. When O'Rourke shuts up, the music has more room to breathe: piano, cello, vibraphone and viola craft a chromatic soundscape in Through The Night Softly before the saxophone intones its loud melody and a bluesy rhythm propels it into a barrelhouse dance. After the vocals introduce a leitmotiv, the rest of Eureka is a funereal fanfare for horns, guitar and electronics that slowly disintegrates. The idea was bold but the results were mixed at best.

The songs on the EP Halfway To A Threeway (Drag City, 2000) sound like leftovers from the album: same style, same pros and same cons.

A 41-minute improvisation by Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt and Jim O'Rourke (the latter two both on strings and electronics) is documented on Tonic 19-01-2001 (january 2001).

Insignificance (Drag City, 2001) continues Eureka's program, albeit with less inspiration, as O'Rourke, surrounded by a gang of veterans (including Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on guitar, Chicago Underground's Rob Mazurek on cornet and Ken Vandermark on saxophone), delivers a set of mellow rock songs. Picture a collaboration between Lou Reed and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons covering Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama (All Downhill From Here), or Elton John swinging between pop and bossanova (Insignificance), or a less neurotic David Byrne toying with Brazilian rhythms (Memory Lame), or Elvis Costello butchering a Burt Bacharach aria (Get A Room). Is this significant? Well... maybe the title of the album was appropriately chosen. Especially disappointing is the fact that O'Rourke's genius for arrangements is largely untapped. From a light diversion like this, we'd expect at least some original, intriguing instrumental interplay. Instead all we get is a mellow and thin sound that hardly inspires the reviewer. That simplicity pays off in the simplest songs, the folk lullabies Good Times and Life Goes Off, that present O'Rourke in the most traditional of roles, but fails to enliven the more ambitious songs. In All Downhill From Here O'Rourke invites us to "Don't believe a word I say". The same motto seems to apply to this album's aesthetic, a work that is a confused exercise in stylistic camouflage.

I'm Happy And I'm Singing (Mego, 2001) contains three lengthy improvisations for electronic keyboards and computer. This is trivial minimalism that any fan of Terry Riley's playful repetition (1,2,3,4), Steve Reich's gradual variation (I'm Happy) and both (I'm Singing) would recognize as a clumsy imitation of something that had been going on 30 years before. O'Rourke is jumping on every possible bandwagon, hoping that naive critics will endorse his eclecticism as genius. His curiosity is genuine, but his talent is dubious. The results are certainly not revolutionary, and nothing too exciting. Like most prolific artists, O'Rourke does not have much to say. Jumping from stylistic bandwagon to stylistic bandwagon, O'Rourke is rapidly becoming a uniquely multi-faceted artistic failure.

The double-disc Long Night (Streamline, 2008) contains 150 minutes of drones, the ultimate experience (or torture) of "deep listening".

O'Rourke played all instruments (guitars, trombone, drums, piano, banjo, clarinet, cello, etc) on the 38-minute piece of The Visitor (Drag City, 2009), one of his artistic peaks. It borrows something from John Fahey's stream of consciousness folk for solo-guitar, something from the original dysfunctional aesthetic of post-rock, something from orchestral easy-listening music, something from solo-piano new-age music, and, last but not least, something from collage art for the disjointed way in which it is all assembled and regurgitated. Halfway into the piece O'Rourke concocts an unlikely jazz and country music simulating (by himself) a small combo of veterans. It sounds a bit amateurish and pretentious when it turns into chamber music, and O'Rourke is obviously not much of a guitar player, but the stylistic contrasts are lovely and perhaps metaphorical. All in all, a Valentyne Suite for the 2000s.

The double-disc Senso (Ecstatic Peace, 2009) documents a live collaboration with White Out and Thurston Moore of december 2004. It contains two 40-minute pieces: Fear Of Fear (Of Fear) and The Eyes The Mouth.

Two Nice Catholic Boys (Family Vineyard, 2009) and Are You Going To Stop... In Bern? (december 1997 - 2010) document collaborations between Loren Connors and Jim O'Rourke. Loren Mazzacane Connors

Bloomington Indiana/ Autumn (Streamline, 2009) contains two lengthy improvisations: Bloomington Indiana (17:56) with Lee Ranaldo and Christoph Heemann (of Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa fame) and Autumn (17:09) with Christoph Heemann alone.

All Kinds Of People (AWDR, 2010) was his tribute to the pop muzak of Burt Bacharach.

He collaborated with Swedish jazz saxophonist Mats Gustafsson several times: Parrot Fish Eye (october 1994), Xylophonen Virtuosen (september 1999), Unreleased? (2010), Shinjuku Growl (Smalltown Superjazzz, 2010), and One Bird Two Bird (Editions Mego, 2011), that also featured Masami Akita (Merzbow).

Old News #5 (2011) collects old works for synthesizer and tape: the 16-minute Pedal And Pedal, the 20-minute Detain The Man To Whom, the 19-minute studio session of It's Not His Room Anymore, and the 16-minute Mother and Who.

Indeed (2011) is a duet between Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke. Behold (Mego, 2015), recorded between 2012 and 2013, was another collaboration between Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke.

The two volumes of Plastic Palace People (2011) were collaborations with Christoph Heemann.

The live double disc And That's The Story Of Jazz (recorded in october 2008) features Akira Sakata on alto sax & vocals, Jim O'Rourke on guitar, electronics & harmonica, Darin Grey on double bass, and Chris Corsano on drums.

The double-LP Old News 6 (2011) collects the 70-minute composition All That's Cold Is New Again. Old News 7 (2012) collects Welcome To The Django Part One and Welcome To The Django Part Two, recorded in 1996-97, Natural Bonbon Killers , recorded live in Japan in april 2011, and Tacere Fas, recorded in 1993-94. The double-LP Old News 8 (2012) contains the 65-minute Mere recorded in 1991-92. Old News 9 (2013) contains the Four Endings for electronics and field recordings.

Tima Formosa (2010), In A Flash Everything Comes Together As One There Is No Need For A Subject (2011), Imikuzushi (2012), Now While It's Still Warm Let Us Pour In All The Mystery (Black Truffle, 2013) and Only Wanting To Melt Beautifully Away Is It A Lack Of Contentment That Stirs Affection For Those Things Said To Be As Of Yet Unseen (Black Truffle, 2014), that contains a 2013 concert, Tea Time For Those Determined To Completely Exhaust Every Bit of This Body They've Been Given (Black Truffle, 2014), I Wonder If You Noticed "I'm Sorry" Is Such A Lovely Sound It Keeps Things From Getting Worse (2016), This Dazzling, Genuine "Difference" Now Where Shall It Go (2017), and In The Past Only Geniuses Were Capable Of Staging The Perfect Crime (Also Known As A Revolution) Today Anybody Can Accomplish Their Aims With The Push Of The Button (2019) document jams by Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi.

3-Part In(ter)ventions (Setenv, 2012) documented a duo with turntablist and guitarist Otomo Yoshihide of Ground Zero and a trio with Yoshihide and pioneering 77-year-old Fluxus composer Yasunao Tone.

The trio of Jim O'Rourke (guitar), Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) and Lasse Marhaug (electronics) recorded the two lengthy improvised jams of The Love Robots (february 2011 - PNL, 2013).

In 2013 he started releasing Steamroom albums, mostly of lengthy droning compositions. The first Steamroom (2013) contains Falling Wall (19:40) and Previous Wall (19:22); the 2nd contains The Coast (2013); the 4th contains Another Slow Night (2013); the 5th contains the 48-minute String Quartet And Oscillators (2013); the 7th contains The World (2013); the 8th the 54-minute Not Yet (2013); ... the 42nd contains the 79-minute Flooring (2018); the 43rd contains the 77-minute Between Midnight And One (2019); etc.

Yeah (Ideal, 2014) was a collaboration with John Duncan comprising a piece recorded in 1993 and a live performance of 2013.

A live performance with the Japanese jazz duo of Masataka Fujikake (drums) and Takeharu Hayakawa (bass) is documented on EDGE x Jim O'Rourke (Fulldesign Records, 2013).

The two volumes of Two City Blues (november 2010 - Trost, 2015) document sessions by Keigi Haino (guitar, shamisen and vocals), Peter Broetzmann (tenor and alto saxes, clarinet and tarogato), and Jim O'Rourke (guitar).

It's Hard For Me To Say I'm Sorry (september 2015 - Mego, 2016) collects live improvisations by Christian Fennesz (guitar, laptop) and Jim O'Rourke (synthesizer).

Simple Songs (Drag City, 2015), O'Rourke's first "pop" album since Insignificance, is another attempt to match VanDyke Parks' eccentric orchestrations of pseudo-pop songs. The usual limitations applied: the lack of decent melodies, a small-town saloon crooning, and the monotonous repetition of the same song over and over again. The decent tunes sound like inferior imitations of the classics: That Weekend is a poor man's Elvis Costello, and Friends With Benefits recalls southern rock of the 1970s (Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Outlaws). The mellow and pensive These Hands is Cat Stevens without the melodies or Kenny Rogers without the atmosphere. Hotel Blue has a bit of Joe Cocker's blue-eyes soul crooning and a bit of languid Pink Floyd-ian swoon. The arrangements rarely help, and frequently hurt, especially the embarrassing orchestral exaggerations of End Of The Road and All Your Love.

Collaborations with Italian keyboardist and composer Giovanni Di Domenico yielded Delivery Health (Silent Water, 2015), with drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Arco (Die Schachtel, 2015), that contains a composition for electronics, guitar and a string quartet, and the double-LP Duos With Guitars (Silent Water, 2015), also featuring guitarists Norberto Lobo and Tetuzi Akiyama.

The double-LP Unidentified Again (Pica Disk, 2015) is a collaboration with PBK (Los Angeles-based electroacoustic composer Phillip Klingler) containing four lengthy pieces: The Turning Night (18:01), Myths In Translation (17:01), End Of The Landscape (17:26), Long Lain In The Stream (20:11).

The 34-minute piece of Wakes On Cerulean (2017) was a collaboration with Kassel Jaeger (French composer Francois Bonnet).

Hence (Mego, 2018), recorded between 2015 and 2016, documents the third collaboration between Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke (this time with a tabla player too), followed by the live performance of Patience Soup (Black Truffle, 2019) that also featured Japanese vocalist Phew (Hiromi Moritani).

In Demons In (Ideal, 2019) documents a collaboration between Jim O'Rourke and Swedish composer Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, recorded in 2016 and 2018.

Meanwhile, the hyper-prolif O'Rourke kept releasing "avantgarde" compositions such as: the 35-minute piece of The Creeping Garden Soundtrack (Arrow Academy, 2017), the 44-minute piece of Sleep Like It's Winter (Newhere Music, 2018), the four-hour To Magnetize Money And Catch A Roving Eye (Sonoris, 2019), etc.

Sakuraza (april 2021) documents a live collaboration between Jim O'Rourke (synthesizers and electronics) and Elliott Sharp (bass clarinet, Strandberg Boden 8-string guitarbass, electronics).

The four-disc boxset To Magnetize Money And Catch A Roving Eye (Sonoris, 2026) contains four colossal electroacoustic improvisations recorded between 2017 and 2018.