Jim O'Rourke – Happy Days

Amongst the most elegant tonal miasmas I've ever had the good fortune to stick my head inside. CD sounds great, all those deep purrs and burrs all clean and pure. The Fahey-Conrad comment is bob on. Get it.

Nothing less than the ideal algebraic collision of Fahey and Conrad.

HERO'S NEVER DIE. The first 10 minutes Jim plays Fahey inspired acoustic guitar at a very minimal rate (he's been collaborating with Tony Conrad and "the man" himself recently). The next 37+ minutes are an avant-garde shard-dinning scree that buries deep a vortextual sound underlying an orchestral dissonance you must "involve" yourself - submerge - to hear it pulse, build and rise. I don't know if these sounds are acoustic (bows dragged on a string looped infinite reproducing one long note) or synthesized (the liner notes describes "a lone acoustic guitar against a phalanx of hurdy-gurdies"). The outcome is both delirious and invigorating. A cacophony of brainwaves transformed into a symphony of colors and imagery. A music of the spheres.

Jim's solo recordings are always a treat. Less of an orchestration than "Terminal Pharmacy," this is low level stuff. There is transitory mood in everything - if you know what to look for - if you know how to find it - but most importantly - if you know how to represent it. O'Rourke can do all this and more. Charting the uncharted and mapping the way for others like others before him.