Got home to a copy of 'Iowa Dream' in the mailbox--so excited for more Arthur. If this turns out to be even half as good as 'Love Is Overtaking Me' I'll be thrilled.
― Soundslike, Friday, 15 November 2019 01:31 (four years ago) link
Mine should arrive tomorrow. Excited.
― stirmonster, Friday, 15 November 2019 02:24 (four years ago) link
it sounds good:https://daily.bandcamp.com/2019/11/15/arthur-russell-iowa-dream-review/
― walking towards the sun since 2007 (alex in mainhattan), Friday, 15 November 2019 16:03 (four years ago) link
Some of it is startling. Just when you think maybe you're acquainted with the length and breadth of his output, more amazing things appear.
― Maresn3st, Friday, 15 November 2019 16:10 (four years ago) link
Yeah, whole thing is now on bandcamp (I pre-ordered CD, ain't sorry)https://arthurrussell.bandcamp.com/album/iowa-dream
― dow, Friday, 15 November 2019 17:38 (four years ago) link
this is lovely. jeez how much more could there be?
― maffew12, Friday, 15 November 2019 19:32 (four years ago) link
this is unbelievable. absolutely enthralled by it.
― ripersnifle, Saturday, 16 November 2019 18:24 (four years ago) link
agreed. is there anything this guy couldn't do? title track is just joyous, bursting with life
― Book Doula (sleeve), Sunday, 17 November 2019 03:01 (four years ago) link
this is nuts. I don't know anything about the state of the archives, but how is this stuff just coming out now? For me this is much better than Love Is Overtaking Me. Just wow. Gorgeous.
― maffew12, Sunday, 17 November 2019 20:50 (four years ago) link
It's fascinating to see where his head was at before punk/disco and all the rest.
― Maresn3st, Sunday, 17 November 2019 21:01 (four years ago) link
This is $10.99 on CD at Deep Discount, FYI (deepdiscount.com) vs. $14.98 on Amazon (I'm not a shill, I swear!). This is one of those select releases where I'm resisting the temptation to listen on streaming before I can hear it for the first time on non-lossy media.
― ernestp, Monday, 18 November 2019 10:05 (four years ago) link
How fresh and 'of now' can recordings of thirty odd years sound. Genius.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Tuesday, 19 November 2019 23:12 (four years ago) link
words of love is my favourite after one listen through
― -_- (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, 19 November 2019 23:26 (four years ago) link
Moderator request to pls change the thread title to Ok . MORE Arthur Russell (It's all Great)
― willem, Wednesday, 20 November 2019 09:26 (four years ago) link
"She's walking to the train, I think I hear it, she's walking to the train, I think I hear it." Word--so much quiet momentum here, so much in it, so far I can only listen in maybe 15-20 minute segments: a kind of miniature box set effect, unique in my experience (whole thing is timed at 62:04 by my veteran Sony boombox)listening also on plain ol' Koss UR-40 headphones). Re lossy, meant to do comparative listening w stream, but haven't yet---bandcamp should be fine, though, as it usually is (for my Koss, anyway).re jeez how much more could there be?, a friend of mine was a neighbor of his, and often saw him walking around with big studio headphones plugged into his Walkman, and my friend refrained from saying hello or even nodding, because Arthur always looked like he was in or past the middle of something, really really coming to a big decision---though this went on for years, and we now know that he would frequently end up doing yet another mix, or starting over with the recording, and/or putting the material away and going on to something else---in between walking around and around New York, listening---and driving his label crazy. So there could be a lot more.
― dow, Thursday, 21 November 2019 19:00 (four years ago) link
Beautiful post dow <3
I can just picture him running around, seemingly always on an Important Mission.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Thursday, 21 November 2019 21:26 (four years ago) link
80% still unheard http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/778
― britain's secret sauce (seandalai), Thursday, 21 November 2019 23:32 (four years ago) link
evidently he was always on an Important Mission
― maffew12, Friday, 22 November 2019 03:14 (four years ago) link
I'm going to have to give this another shot, my first listen I couldn't do it; there just didn't seem to be much of a spark there.
― akm, Friday, 22 November 2019 03:16 (four years ago) link
Sadly, I'm with you akm.
― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee), Friday, 22 November 2019 08:57 (four years ago) link
I'm with most of you; this album is absolutely destroying my world. I remember reading an interview with Steve Knutson around the time Corn came out where he basically said everything from the archive worth releasing had already been released. Unbelievable, then, that in 2019 Audika drops a folk-mode Arthur Russell comp that's even better than Love Is Overtaking Me. It's also great that Come to Life finally has a proper home. I've been obsessed with that song for 10 years, probably my favorite AR track after Wild Combination. The credits also reveal who did those angelic background vox--Mihr'un' Nisa Douglass, whose only other credits appear to be singing on Van Morrison's Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (which has sent me on a tangential early-80s Van kick) and the 25th Anniversary performance of Terry Riley's In C.
― J. Sam, Friday, 22 November 2019 14:06 (four years ago) link
There's also this awesome thread of clear-headed psychedelia permeating Iowa Dream, especially on the mid-70s tracks like Everybody Everybody, Iowa Dream, Come to Life, etc.-- a kind of surreal childlike wonder + oblique, cyclical chord progressions over propulsive rhythms. It's a zone I could live in forever. And You Are My Love has brought me to tears more than once--such a sweet, direct love song that's sentimental in the best ways possible. Also Barefoot In New York is so wild and weird and hilarious. I'll stop raving now, but if you're on the fence about checking this thing out, DO IT
― J. Sam, Friday, 22 November 2019 15:50 (four years ago) link
...a kind of miniature box set effect, unique in my experience...
― dow, Thursday, November 21, 2019 2:00 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
This is OTM
― J. Sam, Friday, 22 November 2019 15:51 (four years ago) link
you speak well to the zone
― maffew12, Friday, 22 November 2019 15:56 (four years ago) link
:)
― J. Sam, Friday, 22 November 2019 16:28 (four years ago) link
re AR walking around and around, dressed as The Decider etc., and the artistic payoff still emerging, I'm especially struck by this but in Jenn Pelly's review:In “You Did It Yourself,” Russell seems to be experiencing yet another moment of endearing self-sabotage (“You did it yourself/It keeps you down”) and also reflecting on a “thrilling” film he saw “last night”: “Understood all of it very well/I didn’t like the ending though/Maybe I’m crazy but it just seemed tacked on.” The pieces of his sung critique stream by like a river. Russell was prone to the unresolvable, to the nonlinear, to atmosphere over concrete. The miracle of his catalog is how the seams mend together, stitch by stitch, a different way forward, as if creating no “endings” for himself
But also, becoming ace at envisioning daily deaths of the heart, as in the killer finale, "In Love With You For The last Time," though of course you gotta come back to life for another last time, in his cycles especially.
― dow, Friday, 22 November 2019 16:32 (four years ago) link
this *bit* in Jenn Pelly's review, which I meant to link:https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/arthur-russell-iowa-dream/
― dow, Friday, 22 November 2019 16:33 (four years ago) link
Unreleased Loose Joints instrumental and acapellas for RSD 2020
https://aboveboarddist.co.uk/rsd-2020-loose-joints-is-it-all-over-my-face-40th-anniversary-inc-masters-at-work-kon-remixes-west-end-records/
― I am using your worlds, Thursday, 5 March 2020 19:04 (four years ago) link
wish they would release "Let'd Go Play Baseball" from that insane mix linked upthread, but this is pretty cool even if it's just all versions of 1 tune
― sleeve, Thursday, 5 March 2020 19:08 (four years ago) link
still being knocked out by Iowa Dream, so great.
― tylerw, Thursday, 5 March 2020 19:16 (four years ago) link
Me too. It's just as good as Love Is Overtaking Me
― paolo, Thursday, 5 March 2020 19:26 (four years ago) link
This may be a silly question, but how is it possible for labels to still be putting out 'new' Arthur Russell material (or indeed material from other artists that was recorded decades ago)? Are there just loads of recordings sitting around that nobody's got around to releasing, or are there legal issues involved, or do they not think that there's a market for this stuff?
― paolo, Thursday, 5 March 2020 19:29 (four years ago) link
w/r/t Russell in particular, Steve Knutson has the rights to the archives and there is still a ton of unreleased material from what a friend who knows him tells me
weirdly it seems like the Loose Joints stuff and some other things are via Sleeping Bag and hav different rights situation as shown by the reissue linked in the revive
― sleeve, Thursday, 5 March 2020 19:33 (four years ago) link
Are there just loads of recordings sitting around that nobody's got around to releasing, or are there legal issues involved, or do they not think that there's a market for this stuff?i think audika doesn't want to just unload tons and tons of stuff — russell was notoriously protective of his music and they want to do it right.
― tylerw, Thursday, 5 March 2020 19:41 (four years ago) link
yeah that matches what I've heard secondhand
― sleeve, Thursday, 5 March 2020 19:45 (four years ago) link
yeah, i mean, it'd be nice to have more, but you can't argue with knutson's quality control so far.
― tylerw, Thursday, 5 March 2020 19:53 (four years ago) link
Agreed that Steve Knutson has done a great job.
― in twelve parts (lamonti), Wednesday, 11 March 2020 05:48 (four years ago) link
from Rolling Jazz 2020:https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/to-cy-lee-instrumentals-vol-1
The music of "To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1" contains naturally elegant orchestration wrapped around something visceral and primordial. Swirled inside the 11 pieces are shades of Japanese Min’yo folk, Celtic folk, the Ethio-jazz of saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya and hints of the pan-human ‘ancient music’ that sat underneath Arthur Russell’s melodies on First Thought, Best Thought. The music is filled with space, inspired, he says, by computer games and Japanese animation, particularly Joe Hisaishi’s.
this is exquisite
― calzino, Wednesday, March 11, 2020 6:26 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
nice! was just going to ask about that one--it hasn't crossed my radar at all, but Mekurya, Arthur Russell, and Castle in the Sky are all among my favorite things and I didn't expect to ever see them grouped in a music blurb
btw, I don't care where we talk about IA, but there is this thread if you missed it: International Anthem: S/D
― rob, Wednesday, March 11, 2020
― dow, Thursday, 12 March 2020 18:51 (four years ago) link
live set from 1985 — sounds amazing. also sounds like there were maybe four people there. https://roulette.org/event/arthur-russell-2/
― tylerw, Wednesday, 25 March 2020 19:00 (four years ago) link
wow, thanks!
― sleeve, Wednesday, 25 March 2020 19:28 (four years ago) link
God damn, this is beautiful, thanks so much!
― Maresn3st, Wednesday, 25 March 2020 20:10 (four years ago) link
it really is great!
― tylerw, Wednesday, 25 March 2020 20:24 (four years ago) link
It really, really is, pity I there's no download option. I loved the 20 min video from Phil Niblock's flat that surfaced years ago and this has exactly that same atmosphere.
― Maresn3st, Wednesday, 25 March 2020 20:25 (four years ago) link
right-click and "save as", worked for me!
― sleeve, Wednesday, 25 March 2020 20:35 (four years ago) link
yeah, you can "save audio as" and get the mp3
― tylerw, Wednesday, 25 March 2020 20:40 (four years ago) link
Wow, this is amazing, thanks for the heads-up--yeah, as long as I right-clicked on the timeclock, saving as mp3 worked for me
― Wallet Youth (Craig D.), Wednesday, 25 March 2020 20:45 (four years ago) link
Incredible find. I love this. Thank you for sharing here.
― Deflatormouse, Wednesday, 25 March 2020 21:42 (four years ago) link
XXXP - Thanks guys, I was clicking the wrong bit of the player it seemed, got it now, awes!
― Maresn3st, Wednesday, 25 March 2020 22:10 (four years ago) link
Oh my! What a wonderful thing; a revelation! So many of my favourite AR songs some in prototype form. I'm welling up listening to this and it was recorded on my 17th birthday which somehow makes it resonate all the more.
― stirmonster, Thursday, 26 March 2020 02:35 (four years ago) link
Yeah this is wonderful indeed.
― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee), Thursday, 26 March 2020 06:50 (four years ago) link