Hear “You Did It Yourself” From Upcoming Arthur Russell Album, Iowa Dream

My friend Thea‘s mother expressed to her that she’d like her body to be filled with popcorn kernels and cremated, when her time comes.  My friend Jeremy once spoke to me about the idea of his life being celebrated with a fireworks display that would explode into the shape of his face in the sky.  I’ve tossed a number of ideas around for the disposal of my own vessel over the years; most of which involve having my ashes mixed into things — most recently, it’s being planted into a tree.  But whatever is done to dispose of this awkward meat robot that I’m flailing around in at the moment, I’m slightly more settled on the idea that there would be some sort of memorial for those who might want to gather around and acknowledge that I once made sound and trouble.  And at that event, I firmly believe that there should be music.  And if there is music, if nothing else, I would definitely like there to be some Arthur Russell.

The importance of Russell for me is that he is not only greatly loved in our household — he’s one of my 8-year-old‘s favorites — but his music is often infused with a tremendous level of beauty and emotion.  My own mother, who is in her sixties, even fell in love with his music when she was visiting earlier tihs year.

After studying North Indian Classical music and composition in the Bay Area, the Iowa born cellist/composer moved to New York city in the early 1970s and went on to collaborate with an impressive list of artists ranging from beat poet, Allen Ginsberg to pioneering post-disco, club/dance, and house DJ, Larry Levin.  I’ve watched interviews with folks like David Byrne and Philip Glass where they’ve spoken about their late friend with such reverence, referring to their own experiences working with him by stating that Arthur was typically the one taking the helm in their collaborations.  In fact, Russell operated as musical director of the downtown multidisciplinary art and performance space, The Kitchen, during 1974 through ‘75.  Undeniable legends in their own right, Glass and Byrne are open about the fact that Russell‘s mind and outlook on music would often puzzle and surprise even them, at times, with his unorthodox approaches to composition that wouldn’t fully reveal themselves until the end.  For example, Arthur would claim to be pursuing the creation of pop songs, which would, ultimately, prove successful in the most remarkable ways to become something so much greater; a merger of otherwise disparate sounds resulting in something new and undefinable.  The idea to bring in artists like The Talking Heads and The Modern Lovers to perform at The Kitchen wasn’t fully embraced by other members of the notoriously avant-garde space, who didn’t all completely understand his attempts to draw parallels to what they were doing with minimalism in a more straight ahead pop context, or simply dismissed them.  He heard music in ways that were unique unto himself and, because of that, he created music that didn’t sound like anything else and has the ability to hit the listener in places that nothing else really possesses the ability to get to in quite the same way.  That’s the main reason why it has proven so enduring.  And yet, for such a unique and singular artist, he didn’t simply have great depth, but unparalleled range in his productions.  From Disco to electronica, minimalism to even new wave music — showcased in his tenure as a member of The Necessaries — Arthur hopped through genres with an unmatched fluidity, creating a sound of his own,in the process.  The only real through-line was himself. Equipped with his distinctly fragile voice, his material is infused with a quality so raw and sincere that it transcends time, space, and any preconceived limitation for what is possible in the sonic arts.

Arthur recorded under a handful of aliases, including Dinosaur L and Loose joints, to release his various different projects, and there were even a couple of limited pressings put out for instrumental performances, but he only ever released a single non-collaborative full-length studio album of tracks under his own name during his lifetime.  Aptly titled World Of Echo and released in 1986 by Upside Records and Rough Trade in the US and UK respectively, the ethereal masterpiece still sounds as if it were assembled in another universe beyond our conscious minds.  If that was all that he’d ever recorded, that would have been a tremendous accomplishment in and of itself, but Arthur actually laid an endless number of recordings to tape before his untimely demise from AIDS in 1992.  Since then, his partner, Tom Lee, has done the amazing work of extracting gems from his endless reels to present to the rest of us, beginning with 1994‘s Another Thought, with the assistance of producer, Don Christensen.  The biggest question that looms, regarding Russell‘s vault, doesn’t only pertain to what he would have wanted released, but what even constituted a finished track for him, or what may have simply been an unfinished and/or abandoned idea for the future.  There are songs that the late multi-instrumentalist worked on for years, many of which have multiple different versions.  One example that appears on Another Thought, is “This Is How We Walk On The Moon,” which later shows up in a much different and dancier form on the 2015 compilation, Corn.  One thing that we can be sure of is that Lee isn’t strictly rifling through his dead lover’s things to capitalize off of them, but rather, everything is approached with great love and a belief that this material deserves to find a life outside of a storage space.  The idea that songs like “That’s Us/Wild Combination” could have remained unheard, had it not appeared on the 2004 compilation, Calling Out Of Context, truly feels like a tragedy, even if he was never entirely satisfied with it in life, working on it over an 8 year period until his death.  The idea to present the material as is, along with with multiple versions, over different releases, while not overthinking what point of completion they may or may not have been in, just might be the best way to experience and understand who the man was as an artist.

While there have been a few different labels to put out Arthur‘s posthumous works, it is Portland-based Audika Records that has pretty much taking the reigns on this archival process over the last decade-and-a-half.  Earlier today, Audika posted a track from a brand new upcoming Arthur Russell release on their YouTube page and this news has us pretty fucking excited.

Slated for a November 15th release date, Iowa Dream will compile 19 tracks carefully unearthed from Arthur Russell‘s vault’s over the last decade by Tom Lee and Audika‘s Steve Knutson.  Accompanying the late musical genius on these recordings is an impressive range of New York musicians that includes Ernie Brooks, Rhys Chatham, Henry Flynt, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Steven Hall, Jackson Mac Low, Larry Saltzman, and David Van Tieghem.  Musician Peter Broderick was brought in to work with Audika by painstakingly performing audio restoration, additional mixes, and even going so far as to “complete” some of the “unfinished” tracks presented on this new collection.  Interestingly enough, it’s easy to surmise that a good amount of this material was intended for release by Russell, at one time or another, as a number of the tracks on Iowa Dream were originally recorded as demos — “first in 1974, with Paul Nelson of Mercury Records, and then in 1975, with the legendary John Hammond of Columbia Records” — for records deals that, ultimately, fell through for one reason or another.

Our first sample from the upcoming release is a song titled, “You Did It Yourself” and it’s about as promising as we could hope for.  The song isn’t entirely new, but it is our first exposure to the full thing, as only a brief excerpt was featured in Matt Wolf‘s tremendous and highly recommended 2008 documentary, Wild Combination: A Portrait Of Arthur Russell.  Make sure to check out “You Did It Yourself,” below.

Iowa Dream is available for pre-order now via the Audika BandCamp page.

IOWA DREAM TRACKLIST

1.Wonder Boy
2.I Never Get Lonesome
3.Everybody Everybody
4.You Did It Yourself 03:06
5.Come To Life
6.Iowa Dream
7.Words Of Love
8.I Still Love You
9.You Are My Love
10.Barefoot In New York
11.Just Regular People
12.I Wish I Had A Brother
13.I Felt
14.The Dogs Outside Are Barking
15.Sharper Eyes
16.Follow You
17.List Of Boys
18.I Kissed The Girl From Outer Space
19.In Love With You For The Last Time