#worldofecho

[smartfox]

TRjj - Collectivizor

[keitaimayuki]

. . SNSでFrancois K.とsacaiのコラボがバズってるねw 欲しいけど高杉晋作やわー！ って思ってたら、以前のParadise Garageのはしっかりゲットしてたw さて、今回どうする俺？？？ @sacaiofficial @francoisknyc . #paradisegarage #sacai #francoisk #worldofecho #dj #house #garage #disco #dub #club #deepspace #bodyandsoul https://www.instagram.com/p/CIX5KiNj7uQ/?igshid=17qe7k06klew2

[tizianomazzilli]

WORLD OF ECHO #worldofecho #arthurrussell #masterpiece #nowspinning #mymixtapes (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/CEvFVNkHfEV/?igshid=1wqaosawui99

[otherhousesotherhouses-blog]

Thoughts on Arthur Russell's "World of Echo"

Since his passing 21 years ago, NYC once-footnote Arthur Russell has enjoyed a long upswing in popularity and anthologization – the documentary, the posthumous albums, the indie boosts by people like Grizzly Bear and Jens Lekman. However, among the volumes of folk songs, chamber music, and weird, winsome disco he left behind, Arthur released one album in his lifetime that combines yet eludes all those things. It’s a magnum opus. Every bit of it rings true. And it sounds like unlistenable mush the first several times one hears it.

1986’s World of Echo is the only LP where our hero is the sole musician front to back, mostly consisting of voice and cello. But Arthur’s cello isn’t some baroque “Eleanor Rigby” thing; it grinds and buzzes through the record awash in echo, reverb and distortion. Much of it consists of the creator’s old disco 7-inches as Dinosaur L, Loose Joints, et al recast as disco without beat, with all rhythmic backbone removed until the given composition is a rattling, indistinct ghost of itself. Arthur’s lonesome tenor sounds slovenly here, wandering tentatively in and out of the sound, hardly finishing what it begins. Song structures are nearly naught.

It is mush sometimes, but it’s really, really great mush. This is not abstracted noise, ambient or drone; it’s the sound of a pop-and-disco-fixated mind in flux. From a primordial nothing, an utterly unique and haunting melody will unexpectedly reveal itself before disintegrating again. In “Place I Know / Kid Like You,” that moment arrives at the midpoint with the line “My friend said something that put me on fire.” Without a beat underpinning it, this version of “Wax The Van” rushes forward for two minutes in a fascinating tangle. With all borders removed, what once belonged in the discotheque is allowed to spill out into the ether. 

Frustratingly not included on the original LP but as a bonus track on the CD is easily Arthur Russell’s greatest song, “Our Last Night Together.” With no typical sad-guy bloodletting, it’s a perfect meditation on loss delivered over Arthur’s most spectral and beautiful melody. Even as a fan of the man's work, I rejected World of Echo at first. But as I finally began to delve into it, this particular song, Arthur’s tragic passing from AIDS, and the cryptic impulses and decisions he made throughout his life (touched upon in the great documentary Wild Combination) began to crowd into my daily thoughts. In the right amount of inebriation or sleep deprivation, I tend to think of World of Echo as Arthur's disembodied spirit making music for outer space or perhaps heaven, his presence spinning forward into an endless celestial drift...

[worldofechois]