Gastr del Sol - Biography
Gastr del Sol was one of the most inventive and daring art-rock bands of the 1990s. The group’s discography attests to a relentless sense of experimentation and a general distaste for genre distinctions. At a time when every band coming out of Chicago that slightly flirted with jazz or electronica was lazily dubbed post-rock, Gastr del Sol was busy creating a sound with very few links to any music that came before. For most of its brief five year existence the group was built around David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke. While this duo had some references points (Faust, This Heat) the music they made as Gastr del Sol stands as some of the most truly unique in the history of art-rock.
Louisville, KY native David Grubbs formed Gastr del Sol in Chicago in 1991. Formed after the split of his previous group Bastro, this new band initially included bassist Bundy K. Brown and drummer John McEntire, both ex-Bastro members. The trio formation released The Serpentine Similar in ’93 on the Teenbeat label. The record is the sound of a band needing to reinvent itself. Take Bastro’s frenetic, angular, post-hardcore guitars and jerky tempo shifts and run them through a sieve that slows down and fractures and you’re close to what the record sounds like. Cyclical structures, repetition, and minimal arrangements define these tracks. Mostly drumless, these are flickering shadows of rock songs, played with precise attention and focused on Grubbs’ surreal lyrics and rich, widescreen guitar playing. The Serpentine Similar has the dubious honor as being cited as the first post-rock record.
Grubbs met producer / guitarist / composer / electronics whizz Jim O’Rourke through mutual friends. With Bundy K. Brown joining Tortoise, Grubbs and O’Rourke decided to use Gastr del Sol as the moniker for their work as a duo (McEntire would continue to contribute drums to almost all of the duo’s records). O’Rourke’s presence deepened Grubbs’ desire to move fully away from rock music and traditional song structure as possible. Gastr del Sol really becomes something wholly original with the addition of O’Rourke. This is felt immediately on 1994’s Twenty Songs Less 7” for Teenbeat. Featuring two tracks of densely textured musique concrete, this signaled the group’s quest for new forms. ’94 also brought two more releases — the second full-length titled Crookt, Crackt, or Fly as well as the Mirror Repair EP. Both were released on Drag City, a label that would remain the band’s home until its final release.
Crookt, Crackt, or Fly melds spindly, cyclical acoustic guitar and piano with shimmering swaths of electronic drone, quick tape edits, spastic improvisation, and Grubbs’ idiosyncratic singing style. The results are wildly unique, with nods to Faust, the Art Bears, and classic musique concrete, but most of these songs are operating on their own skewed, surreal logic. Lengthy tracks like album highlight “Work from Smoke” and the closing “The Wrong Soundings” map out a bold new rock deconstructionism. Released later in 1994, Mirror Repair is brief but captures a few of Gastr del Sol’s finest moments. The nine-minute “Eight Corners” interrupts a ghostly piano ballad with bursts of horns and barely controlled tape noise, while the galloping “Dictionary of Handwriting” features angular guitar riffs and driving, polyrhythmic drumming courtesy of McEntire.
1995 brought a tour with minimalist legend Tony Conrad and two new releases for the avant-garde Table of the Elements label. Released to coincide with the tour, Gastr del Sol contributed a track called “The Japanese Room at La Pagode” to a split 7” also featuring “May” by Conrad. The duo composed a single seventeen-minute piece for The Harp Factory on Lake Street EP. Fusing chance operations and improv with precise minimalism and a strange sense of dynamics, the music here is a captivating combination of electronic ambience, deft editing, and post-classical performance. It is the furthest away from rock Gastr del Sol would get. The piece features performances by some of Chicago’s move inventive players including Gene Coleman, Jeb Bishop, Thymme Jones, Bob Weston, and McEntire.
Returning to Drag City for 1996’s Upgrade & Afterlife, the duo also return to some semblance of song structure. Arguably Gastr del Sol’s masterpiece, this album seems to effortlessly combine the duo’s many influences into a sound that can only be described at this point as Gastr del Sol. Starting with the lush, swirling electronics of “Our Exquisite Replica of ‘Eternity’” the record moves through This Heat-inspired rock deconstruction, cyclical psych-folk, minimalist drones, electroacoustic collage, and American acoustic guitar music. “Rebecca Sylvester” features a beautiful vocal from Grubbs, while hypnotic guitar patterns, glistening electronics, and driving drums make “Hello Spiral” one of the group’s best moments. “The Relay” returns to a piano driven ballad marred by electronic noise. The record closes as astonishingly as it opened, with O’Rourke’s skillful performance of acoustic guitar legend John Fahey’s “Dry Bones in the Valley (I Saw the Light Come Shining ‘Round and ‘Round).” O’Rourke’s guitar is joined by Tony Conrad’s violin drones to close the album out in quietly epic fashion. Upgrade & Afterlife stands as one of the decade’s best underground rock albums.
1997 brought the group’s final release, Camoufleur. Its easily the most overtly pop album in Gastr del Sol’s discography. But that’s a relative statement and Grubbs and O’Rourke still manage to warp structure and texture to suit their strange vision. These tracks are more anchored to meter and melody though, with songs like “The Seasons Reverse” and “Bauchredner” teeming with melodic invention. The duo worked closely with Oval’s Markus Popp on four of the seven tracks. Popp’s contribution of bubbling, clicking electronic undulations is a defining character of the record. Less immediately striking than Upgrade & Afterlife, this final release does indeed build on the duo’s quest to merge traditional song with odd structural dynamics and finely wrought texture.
O’Rourke and Grubbs parted ways in 1998. Camoufleur hinted at the song-oriented records both would make in the near future, although both continue to release daring experimental music as well. Grubbs also runs the excellent Blue Chopsticks label. O’Rourke continues to work as a producer, travel the world as an improvising musician, and was briefly a member of Sonic Youth.
