Triple LP Box
New old or old new Gastr del Sol recordings picked and unpacked from the archive for this mammoth three disc set that, taken alone outside of their official studio albums, tells a story of a remarkably prolific and inventive outfit. Mapping work made for just a five year period between 1993-1998, We Have Dozens of Titles is no unfounded claim, though volume is hardly the point here, even if that too is impressively substantial. What David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke were working at somehow feels at its most radical when presented like this - the collection of eccentric and exploratory studio recordings that had yet to find a place elsewhere alongside selected live performances that stretched the limits of a composition proves a somewhat overwhelming experience. Because of timing and location, Gastr Del Sol were generally classified as a 'post-rock' outfit, but such an understanding, in its every day parlance anyhow, doesn't get us too close to working out what's going on here. Institutionalised conceptions of the avant garde don't traditionally account for what people in the margins of a post-hardcore Chicago music scene were up to, but I can't really think of a better way of assessing music that brazenly brings together the vanguard approaches of both Cage and Conrad, the European minimalism Cramps Records, and a kind of iconoclastic desire for the new. In essence, it's not unlike the Music From Mills comp condensed into one single entity. No wonder such roots would summon forth so many titles.
