Jim O'Rourke - Some Kind of Pagan (1989)

Some Kind of Pagan by Jim O'Rourke

Jim O'Rourke recorded "Milena Dravic." track 10 on The Miracle of Levitation. By 1995, O'Rourke was already well established as a leading figure of improvised noise in Chicago. He first began releasing tapes with Elvis Messiahs in the late eighties. He released his debut solo tape Some Kind of Pagan in 1989 on the Sound of Pig label.

While listening to Some Kind of Pagan, you have to occasionally look at the cassette art to remind yourself that everything you hear is "solo guitar." The second track "Bound Up with Memory" is the rawest version of this, just Jim delicately manipulating the feedback interplay between his guitar and amp. The amplitudes of this feedback is further textured with the amplified sounds of prominent plucks, fingers leaving frets and sliding along strings. "Solving Problems Until They All Disappear" is similarly unadorned though with more layering and some effects, juxtaposing harmonics with deeper tones. The emanating sounds only just retain the strains of the guitar but also begin to fool you into thinking they couldn't possibly come from a guitar: instead, perhaps, it's the inner workings of a clock...or at least multiple instruments approximating the inner workings of a clock.

The remaining songs further build on the experimentation through more layering and with more tape and digital manipulation. It's still guitar but it becomes much harder to discern the sounds as such. "Hold These Goddamn Chickens" contrasts tiny, almost atomic, flowing bits with the gargantuan toll of "bells." Across the whole tape, the strings, when they're still recognizable, can sound rapid and miniature or enlarged, thickened, stretched out as if across a warehouse, capturing both the sound of the instrument and the reverberation within the room even if the room is only simulated.

All of these explorations lead up to the final track "Heaven Is No Longer Paved in Gold." Everything tried before is tried again: every effect and idea. The guitar is itself and everything else. It's close and far away, amplified and pure, incredibly small and incredibly large. At the dawn of his musical career, Jim O'Rourke is already working out his own kind of string theory.

Here is the discography surrounding Jim O'Rourke's debut tape:

EE (1988 tape as Elvis Messiahs)

Dead (1989 tape as The Messiahs)

Some Kind of Pagan

Pass the Headphones!!

Old Lady Drivers - Old Lady Drivers (1988)

"Wisdom Lost" by Old Lady Drivers

James Plotkin's "Event Horizon" is track 7 on The Miracle of Levitation. By 1995, Plotkin had established himself as an ambient/experimental musician, but he started recording as a member of the parodic grindcore band Regurgitation that then became Old Lady Drivers. Old Lady Drivers released their debut album Old Lady Drivers in 1988 on Earache Records. (It seems like these underground noise outfits found better audiences via international record labels—the UK in this case.)

Old Lady Drivers sound as the name implies. Perhaps Alan Dubin's harsh vocals had been compared to raging elderly motorists so often that the concept of writing songs from that perspective was too good a fit to pass up. Early on, Dubin and Plotnick seemed to rely on the perspective of characters to craft songs. Their signature song as Regurgitation "Bathrooms Rule"—which also made it onto the O.L.D. debut—comes from a ridiculous high schooler describing the disgusting opportunities a bathroom can entertain. "Supermarket Monstrosity" takes the perspective of a child at the grocery store horrified by another customer in the frozen food aisle. The pitched-up vocals and syncopation feel like a proto-South Park gag. "Wisdom Lost" is the most notable song from the point of view of an old lady (driver.) The song is darkly funny and unsettling in its portrayal of senile citizens. It's just as much a caricature of the antiquated and helpless as a fear of what future they portend.

Having a whole album, let alone a band, dedicated to this one concept of performance wears thin after a few songs even for the band members themselves. Although the characters might have provided lyrical fodder and humor to lampoon their chosen musical genre, the band members seem to find a more rewarding creative outlet in experimenting with song structures and the mixing of other eighties sounds into the hardcore palette (a turn that has come into style lately.) The result is a jarring combination that pokes fun at efforts of pretension and indulges crudity in a fashion where form meets function.

Here is the discography surrounding Old Lady Drivers's debut album:

Organic Backwash (1986 demo as Regurgitation)

Bathrooms Rule (1987 demo as Regurgitation)

Total Hag Demo (1988 demo)

Old Lady Drivers

Bathrooms Rule! (2000 compilation as Regurgitation)

Complete Recordings 1986/1987 (2016 compilation as Regurgitation)

"Supermarket Monstrosity" by Old Lady Drivers

"Bathrooms Rule" by Old Lady Drivers

Pass the Headphones!!