{"product_id":"gastr-del-sol-upgrade-and-afterlife","title":"Gastr del Sol - Upgrade and Afterlife","description":"\u003cp\u003eDouble LP\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGastr Del Sol's third record finally back in print for the first time in nearly three decades and not before time too. Though time seems irrelevant when you're this far ahead of the curve. \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/worldofechomusic.com\/collections\/new-releases\/products\/gastr-del-sol-camoufleur?_pos=1\u0026amp;_sid=4c8ee165b\u0026amp;_ss=r\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eCamoufleur\u003c\/a\u003e is where the group got their flowers, but Upgrade and Afterlife is every part its equal. In prosaic terms, this is the definitive post-rock music. The what comes after. Rules out the window (or is it a door?) and anything goes because everything is up for grabs. Prefix notwithstanding, isn't this originally what 'rock' promised to be, some kind of non-essentialist progressive form full of new possibilities? The Culture Industry put paid to such idealism, but it's precisely that premise on which Upgrade and Afterlife seems to be positioned. if within the accelerated interior history of popular music 'rock' has become the modernist form, then this is postmodernism at its most utopian and open-ended. David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke are in perfect balance here, leaning both ways into melodicism and atonality with equal fervour, and learning and re-learning how to align all their disparate influences, be that drone-minimalism, improv, musique concrete, blues primitivism or chamber pop, and coming up sounding wholly implacable and, forgive the term, genuinely sui generis. If you were to unpick the stitches of the flag of rock and sew them back together with false memory, I'm still not sure you'd get halfway to where Gastr Del Sol ended up. But you'd at least be on the right lines. 1996's version of the future still sounds like it could be tomorrow.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFFO: Tortoise, The For Carnation, Movietone, Sun City Girls, This Heat, Jim O'Rourke\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PIAS","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55370615947641,"sku":"","price":33.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0051\/1380\/6921\/files\/GastrdelSolUpgradeandAfterlife.webp?v=1750764078","url":"https:\/\/worldofechomusic.com\/products\/gastr-del-sol-upgrade-and-afterlife","provider":"World Of Echo","version":"1.0","type":"link"}