![]() ![]() Once the groove picks up, the music ends. Russell then deadpans childlike phrases like "What country are you swimming to?" and "I'm banging on your door in the clear-blue sky" into a muffled whisper. ![]() "Let's Go Swimming" eschews the fidgety Miami electro-funk of the Walter Gibbons mix for a cubistic moment where reverb-polluted drones and squeals give way to flickering chords. "Lucky Cloud" makes better use of the synthesizer as its tweaked swiggles and bare-boned tones fittingly offset growling strings. The same restlessness drives "Place I Know - Kid like You" as Russell drenches his Hendrixian riffs in hydrochloric distortion, as he also does on the backward-looped shimmering of his bluesy space-out, "Wax the Van." That song's textures vaguely would resemble the garage-sold Americana of Sonic Youth's Sister if it wasn't for some tacky synth bloops. "Answers Me" is an afterthought of "Soon" as Russell yelps in the same key, "I'm going where the islands are going," while his cello shakes its head with scrapes and mumbling harmonics. ![]() As Russell seemingly daydreams of escape from the urban din, he shades and trickles melodies instead of fully playing them. The nine-minute trance of "Soon to Be Innocent Fun - Let's See" drifts through waters that mirror the moonless sky. The following, three-part "Tower of Meaning - Rabbit's Ears - Home" is a gently narcotic ballad as he hums perfectly in-tune with his tapestry-weaving chords, uttering odd lines like "I'm watching out of my ear" and letting his vocal tones overpower all semantics. Russell huffs alliterations while his cello ransacks a room to chase after a ringing UFO noise. The opener, "Tone Bone Kone", is a baffler. Whatever lyrics can be understood are stream-of-conscious blurts that exhibit pinhole views of his soul. However, the instrument startlingly duets with his voice, as it breathes along with him and clears its throat during his awkward moments. His improvisations mine every conceivable sound from his bow and cello's amplified body: hollow thuds, window-washing brushes, chipped strings, knuckled knacks, and the boom of a floor peg dropping on concrete. His onomatopoeias and string-work are uncannily percussive and seem to be faintly picked up by radio satellite. On these tracks, Russell creates beatless dance music that travels through outer space, making the journey his destination. It's just his folksy, muppet tenor, cello, and scant electronic microtones- all lathered with echo, distortion, and reverb. It's also Russell's most personal and radical statement: Here, he isn't cloaked in any congas and hi-hats, shouting divas, or ring-a-ding-ding Latin keyboards. Recorded between 19- the year in which the collection was originally released- this material still sounds timeless. Audika now thankfully reissues World of Echo- a collection of almost deconstructed, "rough draft" versions of his singles- in a limited-edition package with a few b-sides and a DVD of music videos and concert footage. Soul Jazz's definitive primer, The World of Arthur Russell, and Audika's studio vault dump Calling out of Context both garnered this very obtuse man some retro dignity, for good or ill. Nonetheless, he could still hypnotize dancefloors with dozens of anxious ideas that in the 1980s- after 1979's white flight from disco- could only have stemmed from the NYC underground. Russell's various projects- including Dinosaur L, Indian Ocean, and Loose Joints- got feted as textbook examples of "mutant disco." His disco was pure clay- bending, scraping, and glazing its rhythms, harmonies, and vocal arrangements into permanently incomplete sculptures for DJs to puzzle over. This year's mass rediscovery and mythologization of the late Russell- an Iowan who seemed to be swinging on a tire over the Mississippi, even when in downtown Manhattan- was remarkable. ![]()
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