Drag City have announced the release of a new Gastr del Sol box set. We Have Dozens of Titles arrives on May 24, 2024, and to mark the announcement, they have shared “The Seasons Reverse”, recorded at Gastr del Sol’s final show in 1997.
Gastr del Sol’s last album was Camoufleur, a subdued affair noted for its beauty and a meditative blend of folk, jazz, and avant-garde. It marked the end of a short but fruitful run of sonic adventures (1993–1998) for David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke, which forever changed the musical landscape.
For We Have Dozens of Titles, Grubbs and O’Rourke have assembled nearly an hour of previously unreleased live recordings — including their final performance together — with another near-hour of studio recordings culled from long-lost singles, EPs, and compilations. The result is a career-defining 3xLP box set of the band that changed the game immeasurably in the mid-90s, one whose influence continues to ripple through the space-time of modern music.
David Grubbs formed Gastr del Sol after Bastro’s musical direction began to shift. From a power trio to a droning, acoustic-based band, Grubbs, along with John McEntire and Bundy K. Brown, released their debut EP, The Serpentine Similar, in 1993.
The following album, Crookt, Crackt, or Fly (1994), saw a change in personnel as McEntire and Brown left to focus on a new project that came to be known as Tortoise and Jim O’Rourke arrived, forming what would be a formidable partnership that gave us two more LPs (1996’s Upgrade & Afterlife, and 1998’s Camoufleur) and a pair of EPs. With its short, just-over-a-minute-long Wedding in the Park opener and Grubbs’s impossible-to-forget lo-fi piano and voice, Parenthetically, this was a very different offering from their previous release, something that became a norm. Predictable? Hell no, if you were to listen to their albums back-to-back, you would be very aware of their constant state of flux and reinvention – it’s remarkable, with frequent unexpected moments such as on their 1996 follow-up Upgrade & Afterlife–Interspersed with moments of havoc and cryptic lyrics make the finale, O’Rourke’s beautiful rendition of John Fahey‘s “Dry Bones in the Valley“, the most surprising element.
As mentioned above, accompanying the album boxset announcement is a rare cut – “The Seasons Reverse”, recorded at their final show at the 1997 Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, found in the CBC archive. Drag City:
With a laptop in tow, the two performed “The Seasons Reverse” on-stage using digital multitracks from the epochal pop music of their not-yet-finished fifth and final studio album, Camoufleur. Within the song’s final mix, layers of vivid textural detail unravel in true Beach Boys Stack-o-Tracks fashion to form a take on an old favourite that crystalizes the ebullience and improbability found in Gastr’s live performances.
Pre-order / Stream “The Seasons Reverse” (live): http://lnk.to/wehavedozensoftitles