Two titans of the modern Avant-Garde. This record coincided with a 1995 series of concerts put on by Table of the Elements.
Gastr del Sol wasn't the first or only band to employ methods and techniques taken from the world of modern avant-garde composition, but few other bands sought so explicitly, at their core, to create music based in that tradition. While O'Rourke claims to cringe at the more abstract for abstracts sake aspect of those records, the fact is that they remain as some of the most singularly unique records not only of that particular time, but of the whole history of Experimental/Art rock. I was always a particular fan of David Grubbs' piano playing. His voicings and use of space at times recall the proto-minimalism of Satie or the later, sparer works of Feldman. Here we have a fragment of song that floats in and out of a haze of subtle electronics and tape manipulation that perfectly exemplifies the Gastr del Sol modus operandi.
Tony Conrad does what Tony Conrad does. Qualitative judgements can be hard to make with this sort of stuff, but perhaps this is at least an easier to digest portion for folks who find an albums worth (or a 4 cd boxsets worth) daunting. Over the years Conrad's searing violin drone has rubbed shoulders with folks like La Monte Young, the Velvet Underground, and Faust. But it's been in the last decade or so that his reputation has been rescued from obscurity and he's returned to somewhat regular performance.
The first 500 copies of this record also included a second record with an excerpted performance of a Conrad composition, Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plane, performed with Grubbs and O'Rourke.
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