O’Rourke, Jim

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Jim ORourke

Guitarist, composer, producer

Respect for Influences

Composed Works for First Releases

Won Recognition with Gastr Del Sol

Selected discography

Sources

In 2000, Jim ORourke seemed to be everywhere and able to do anything. Though on the scene since the 1990s and applauded by an enthusiastic and growing group of fans who knew him as a member of groups such as Gastr Del Sol, Brise Glace, and Illusion of Safety, his album Eureka introduced him to a broader audience. He was a star producer, working with groups like Sonic Youth, and was performing with the worlds leading musicians, from Eugene Chadbourne to Derek Bailey and John Fahey. ORourke was also commissioned to compose works for the Kronos Quartet and the ROVA Saxophone Quartet.

ORourke has emerged as one of Americas most respected and revered players based on the scope and inventiveness of his work, Richard Martin wrote in Willamette Week. The range of ORourkes work includes early experiments with manipulation of acoustic instruments on tape, rock bands, musique concrète, new improvised music, and work as both singer and songwriter. ORourke has also been a critical success at just about every kind of music he has attempted, and as a result, has created new connections. His work has found equal truck with experimental jazz and noise fanatics, chill room denizens, and bedroom experimentalists, and has had the resultant effect of cross-pollinating many otherwise isolated compositional communities, wrote Sean Cooper of All Music Guide.

ORourke started playing guitar as a six year old, but switched to bass in high school because the band already had a guitarist. While growing up, he actively sought out music that was new and different, especially modern classical music. In fact, when he enrolled in the music department at Chicagos DePaul University, his familiarity with contemporary composers far outstripped that of his professors. ORourke felt that his teachers didnt really care about music; it was just the raw material of their professional careers. They dont have to deal with taste at all, they were just trying to mold you into becoming professors, ORourke told Brian Duguid in an interview available at the Hyperreal website. His experiences with academic musicians in part would later drive ORourke to make his first recordings for noise labels such as Extreme and Staalplaat.

Respect for Influences

ORourke continues to closely follow work being done by contemporary composers, citing John Oswald, Bernard Günter, Gerhard Schtebler, Helmut Lachemann, and Salvatore Sciarrino as modern composers he finds particularly exciting. Among the most important influences on his music, however, he counts such diverse figures as Miles Davis, songwriter Van Dykes Parks, pianist Cecil Taylor, composer Morton Feldman, and the rock band Red Krayola. Despite his own success, ORourke still feels nerves occasionally around the musicians he admires. Just three months ago, I had a piece premiered the same night as a piece by Luc Ferrari, he told Duguid. This guys a complete hero to me. I cant tell you how much I absolutely worship, kiss the ground, anything! Hes the greatest living composer on earth! If it wasnt for him, I dont know what Id be doing.

Like most college students, during his first years at DePaul University, ORourke felt pressure to acquire a marketable skill. When I was starting school, my parents knocked into my head that I had to do something so that I could get a job. So I was like, Okay, Id better be a classical bass player, because I can get a job, he explained to Aaron Burgess of Hit It or Quit It online. And, more and more, I saw that [my fellow students] did not give a f*** about what they were playing at all. About half the people who were in orchestra went to music school because they could, or played violin in orchestra because they can. I couldnt relate to thatand, slowly but surely, it sent me on a path of constantly questioning why people do things.

ORourkes constant questions apparently led to frequent disagreements with his professors. Despite his unpleasant take on academic music, ORourke acknowledges that he profited from some of his courses. ORourke taught some classes in electronic music himself while at college as well as giving private guitar lessons. In 1991, he graduated from DePaul University with a bachelors degree in music composition.

For the Record

Born in 1969 in Chicago, IL. Education: Bachelor of arts degree in music composition, DePaul University, 1991.

Formed Elvis Messiahs, 1987; joined Illusion of Safety, 1988; released Tamper, 1995; joined Gastr Del Sol, 1994; left Gastr Del Sol, 1997; member of Brise Glace, 1993-97; released Eureka, 1999; produced Sonic Youths NYC Ghosts and Flowers, 2000.

Addresses: Record company Drag City, P.O. Box 476867, Chicago, IL 60647, (312) 455-1015. Booking Flower Booking, 4237 N. St. Louis, Suite 2R, Chicago, IL 60618.

Composed Works for First Releases

Following graduation, ORourke assembled the works that would later become his first record releases, reconstructions on tape of the sounds of acoustic instruments. I wanted to try to make acoustic instrumental pieces, but by mixing and miking it in such a way that the definitions of the instruments would be gone, ORourke explained to Duguid. The pieces were composed at an eight-track tape machine at DePaul. Much of the composition, according to ORourke, was achieved by the way he placed each instrument in the stereo mix. Otherwise they are normal scored pieces, he told Browbeat online.

The mechanical process of composition was a seat-of-the-pants operation. No one else at school was interested in doing tape music, so the school was mine all the time, ORourke told Duguid. Tamper was recorded on 20-year-old tape because I couldnt afford to buy tape. My friends dad was in The Flock, the original band before Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears, and he gave me all these old rehearsal tapes, which I recorded Tamper over. ORourke didnt have enough musicians that he trusted to perform the piece, so he overdubbed each part in individually, a process that was time consuming and exhausting. The result, though, in the words of Andrew OConnor at the CKMS-FM website, is an album of beautiful electro-acoustic compositions.

In under four years after graduating from DePaul, ORourke had released ten albums and had played on numerous others. He formed his first performing group in 1987 while still at DePaul. It was called the Elvis Messiahs, a loud, flashy band that played free improv. The Elvis Messiahs lasted about a year before ORourke disbanded them and joined Illusion of Safety, a post-industrial beat combo founded by Dan Burke. ORourke played on various recordings by the band, most notably Probe and Historical.

ORourke has also performed frequently with the worlds most respected improvisers, such as guitarists Derek Bailey and Henry Kaiser, drummer Eddie Prévost, saxophonist Mats Gustafson, and the group Organum. Some of his work with K.K. Null took place, in good post-modern fashionby mail. Null sent tapes of his guitar playing to ORourke, who taped his own playing on top. Does he prefer collaborations?Yeah, cause then I dont hate [the results]. If its my thing, I hate it. If its someone elses, then I can live with it, ORourke told Browbeat.

ORourke has done work he is satisfied with, however. One example is the Rules of Reduction EP released in 1993. The record was constructed over a period of six months from tapes ORourke made while in France. To me whats important about Rules of Reduction is that recording carries with it certain information besides just aural information. What does it mean for a car to be there with a group of saxophones? he explained to Duguid. Its not just about liking the sounds, because I dont like the sounds of a lot of these things. Theyre there because of what they mean in the context of the other sounds, not because I like them. The cutting and splicing gives the record a natural affinity to filmORourke claims to be even more interested in film than musicand he believes it works like a film, that is it possesses narrative flow, because of the way he edited the record. Another ORourke record, Bad Timing, is rooted even more explicitly in the world of the movies. Bad Timing takes its title and inspiration from a controversial film by Nicholas Roeg, a director ORourke admires. He spent a year working out the material for the album, letting it mature before recording anything. I dont make records that reflect my interest, he told Martin, until I really feel like Ive found a place thats really me, not just imitating someone else.

Won Recognition with Gastr Del Sol

ORourke won his first real recognition as a member of the band Gastr Del Sol. Martin called the groups 1996 release Camafleur, an album of art-pop songs riddled with unorthodox instrumentation, mind-boggling song constructions and repetitive vocal phrasings worthy of a Gertrude Stein novel. It was also the first record on which ORourke sang the song Mouth Canyon. The piece was not intended for releaseaccording to ORourke it was to have been just a demo to help another singer learn the song.

ORourke must have found singing a little sympatico at least, because he sings throughout his 1999 hit Eureka. He did it partly, he later said, for the challenge. But he was satisfied with the results, which have reminded some listeners of the songwriting-recording of the middle and late 1960s, in particular Brian Wilson and Van Dykes Park. It was really tough, because you can be a real idiot when you write lyrics, he told Burgess. I need to wait until Im doing something thats an honest statement from me to the people who are going to be kind enough to pick up the record because theyre trusting me, and I dont want to be dishonest to them.

ORourke is one of the hardest working people in music, touring constantly, teaming up with other musicians for albums and concerts, and producing more and more records for other artists. But ORourkes interests go well beyond music; he is an active filmmaker and painter. Ive made films, but Im not one of these people who thinks that because people like my music theyll like my films, he told Duguid. Ive made about ten films over the past ten years, and I do paintings and everything, but I would never show them to anybody until I think Ive done something thats me, in that medium.

When ORourke does finally exhibit his other creative efforts, however, expect them to resemble his music in some important respects. He will strive to undermine established traditions and upset his audiences expectations.

Selected discography

Some Kind of Pagan, Complacency/S, 1989.

It Takes Time to Do Nothing, audiofile, 1990.

The Ground Below Above Our Heads, Entenpfuhl, 1991.

Secure on the Loose Rim, Sound of Pig, 1991.

Disengage, Staalplaat, 1992.

Frontieres?, La Legend Des, 1992.

Rules of Reduction (EP), Metamkine, 1993.

Third Straight Day Made Public (EP), Complacency, 1993.

Remove the Need, Extreme, 1994.

Use, Soleilmoon, 1994.

Tamper, Extreme, 1995.

Terminal Pharmacy, Tzadik, 1995.

Happy Days, Revenant, 1997.

Bad Timing, Drag City, 1997.

Clouds, Victo, 1998.

Weighting, For 4 Ears, 1998.

Invito Al Cielo (EP), SYR, 1998.

Eureka, Drag City, 1999.

In Bern (live), Hat Hut, 1999.

Halfway to a Threeway, Drag City, 2000.

Sources

Periodicals

Willamette Week, May 20, 1998.

Online

All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (October 1, 2000).

Browbeat #1, http://www.browbeat.com/browbeat01/orourke.htm (October 1, 2000).

Hit It or Quit It, http://www.antburg.tripod.com/o_rourke.htm (October 1, 2000).

Jim ORourke, CKMS-FM website, http://www.watserv1.uwaterloo.ca/~ckmsinfo (October 1, 2000).

Jim ORourke Interview, http://www.hyperreal.org/intersection/zines/intervs/orourke.html (October 1, 2000).

Gerald E. Brennan

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