User:P4k/Arthur Russell draft

Charles Arthur Russell Jr. (1952 – April 4, 1992) was an American cellist, composer, singer, and disco artist. While he found the most success as a dance music artist, Russell's career bridged New York's downtown, rock, and dance music scenes; his collaborators ranged from Philip Glass to David Byrne to Nicky Siano. Relatively unknown during his life,  a series of reissues and posthumous releases has raised his profile in recent years.

Russell was born and raised in Oskaloosa, Iowa, where he later studied the cello and began to write his own music. The son of an ex-naval office, Russell developed an obsession with the ocean that was later reflected in his music. In 1968, at the age of 18, he left Oskaloosa to live on a Buddhist commune in San Francisco. In San Francisco Russell studied North Indian music at the Ali Akbar College of Music and met Allen Ginsberg, with whom he began to work, accompanying him on the cello while Ginsberg sang or read his poetry.

In 1973, Arthur Russell moved to New York and began study at the Manhattan School of Music, also working as The Kitchen's musical director. He formed a band from 1975–1979, The Flying Hearts, recorded by John Hammond, which consisted of Arthur (keyboards, vocals), ex-Modern Lovers member Ernie Brooks (bass, vocals), Larry Saltzman (guitar), and David Van Tieghem (drums, vocals), with a later incarnation in the 1980s that included Joyce Bowden (vocals) and Jesse Chamberlin (drums). He contributed to The Flying Hearts in studio work and, occasionally, in performance with David Byrne, Rhys Chatham, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Jerry Harrison, Garret List, Andy Paley, Leni Pickett and Peter Zummo. From 1975 to 1979 this ensemble, together with Glenn Iamaro, Bill Ruyle and Jon Sholle, performed and recorded the orchestral composition of Instrumentals (Disques du Crepescule, 1984, Belgium)

In 1979, Arthur produced 'Kiss Me Again,' working with Nicky Siano, David Byrne, and others under the name Dinosaur. It was the first disco single to be released by Sire Records, and a fairly large club hit. In 1980 Loose Joints was formed out of Russell, DJ Steve D'Aquisto, three singers found on The Loft's dancefloor, and various studio musicianas. The group recorded hours of music but only released three songs, "Is It All Over My Face," "Pop Your Funk," and "Tell You Today." In 1981, Arthur Russell and the entrepeneur William Socolov founded Sleeping Bag Records and their first release was his 24-24 Music. "Go Bang," originally released on this album but recorded in 1979 by an ensemble that included Peter Zummo, Peter Gordon, Julius Eastman, Wilbur Bascomb, and John and Jimmy Ingram, was remixed as a 12" single by Francois Kevorkian. These songs were all frequently played at Larry Levan's Paradise Garage; in particular, Levan's remix of "Is It All Over My Face" (one of his earliest remixes, recorded on stolen studio time ) has been recognized as a prototype of garage music.

In 1983, the album "Tower of Meaning" (Chatham Square) was released. This compelling and meditative recording, conducted by Julius Eastman, represents just a fragment of a much larger composition, which includes voices along with its instrumentation.

At the same time, Arthur continued to release dance singles such as 'Tell You Today' (4th and Broadway, 1983) an upbeat dance groove featuring the vocals of Joyce Bowden. Additional dance tunes included Wax the Van (Jump Street, 1985) with vocals by Lola Blank, wife of the notorious Bob, 'Treehouse/Schoolbell' (Sleeping Bag, 1986) and 'Let's Go Swimming' (Upside/Rough Trade, 1986).

During the mid 1980s, Arthur Russell gave many performances, either accompanying himself on cello with a myriad of effects, or working with a small ensemble consisting of Mustafa Ahmed, Steven Hall, Elodie Lauten and Peter Zummo.

1986 saw the release of 'World of Echo' (Upside/Rough Trade, 1986), which incorporated many of his ideas for pop, dance and classical music for both solo and cello format. The album was well-reviewed in Britain and included in Melody Maker's "Top Thirty Releases of 1986."

Arthur also collaborated with a number of choreographers, including John Bernd, Diane Madden, Alison Salzinger and Stephanie Woodard.

Arthur Russell died of AIDS on April 4, 1992, at the age of 40. In an April 28 column, Kyle Gann of The Village Voice wrote: "His recent performances had been so infrequent due to illness, his songs were so personal, that it seems as though he simply vanished into his music."

Russell was prolific, but was also notorious for leaving songs unfinished and continually revising his music. Ernie Brooks said that Russell "never arrived at a completed version of anything," while Peter Gordon stated, "his quest wasn't really to do a finished product but more to do with exploring his different ways of working musically." He left behind more than 1,000 tapes when he died, 40 of them different mixes of one song.

In 2007, This Is How We Walk On The Moon, a song which appears on the 1994 album "Another Thought", was used in a UK television commercial for T-Mobile. Also, work has begun on a new documentary on Arthur, by filmaker Matt Wolf. It is scheduled to be completed in late 2008.

Singles

 * Dinosaur: "Kiss Me Again" (1979). Sire Records.
 * Loose Joints: "Is It All Over My Face" / "Pop Your Funk" (1980). West End Records.
 * Loose Joints: "Is It All Over My Face (Female version)" (1980). West End Records.
 * "Go Bang" (1982), from 24-24 Music. Sleeping Bag Records. Vocals by Lola Love.
 * "Tell You Today" (1983). 4th and Broadway. Vocals by Joyce Bowden.
 * "Wax the Van" (1985). Jump Street Records. Vocals by Lola Love. Produced by Bob and Lola Blank.
 * "Treehouse/Schoolbell" (1986). Sleeping Bag (US) / 4th and Broadway (UK)
 * "Let's Go Swimming" (1986). Logarythm (US) / Rough Trade (UK).
 * "Springfield" (2006). Audika Records.  Includes a remix by The DFA.

Albums

 * 24-24 Music (1982). Sleeping Bag Records. With Will Socolov.
 * Tower of Meaning (1983). Chatham Square.
 * Instrumentals (1984). Crepsecule. Recorded with The Flying Lizards and Glenn Lamaro, Bill Ruyle, and Jon Sholle.
 * World of Echo (1986). Recorded by  Phil Niblock. Re-issued 2004 Audika Records (US)  / Rough Trade (UK).
 * Another Thought (1994). Point Music 438 891-2. Compiled with help from Mikel Rouse.
 * Calling Out of Context (2004). Audika Records.  Compiled by Steve Knutson.
 * The World of Arthur Russell (2004). Soul Jazz Records.
 * First Thought Best Thought (2006). Audika Records. [Includes Instrumentals Volume 1 & 2, Reach One, Tower of Meaning, and Sketch for the Face of Helen].
 * Springfield EP (2006). Audika Records.
 * Another Thought (Re-released 2006). Orange Mountain Music.

Singles

 * Dinosaur: "Kiss Me Again" (1979). Sire Records.
 * Loose Joints: "Is It All Over My Face" / "Pop Your Funk" (1980). West End Records.
 * Loose Joints: "Is It All Over My Face (Female version)" (1980). West End Records.
 * "Go Bang" (1982), from 24-24 Music. Sleeping Bag Records. Vocals by Lola Love.
 * "Tell You Today" (1983). 4th and Broadway. Vocals by Joyce Bowden.
 * "Wax the Van" (1985). Jump Street Records. Vocals by Lola Love. Produced by Bob and Lola Blank.
 * "Treehouse/Schoolbell" (1986). Sleeping Bag (US) / 4th and Broadway (UK)
 * "Let's Go Swimming" (1986). Logarythm (US) / Rough Trade (UK).
 * "Springfield" (2006). Audika Records.  Includes a remix by The DFA.

Albums

 * 24-24 Music (1982). Sleeping Bag Records. With Will Socolov.
 * Tower of Meaning (1983). Chatham Square.
 * Instrumentals (1984). Crepsecule. Recorded with The Flying Lizards and Glenn Lamaro, Bill Ruyle, and Jon Sholle.
 * World of Echo (1986). Recorded by  Phil Niblock. Re-issued 2004 Audika Records (US)  / Rough Trade (UK).
 * Another Thought (1994). Point Music 438 891-2. Compiled with help from Mikel Rouse.
 * Calling Out of Context (2004). Audika Records.  Compiled by Steve Knutson.
 * The World of Arthur Russell (2004). Soul Jazz Records.
 * First Thought Best Thought (2006). Audika Records. [Includes Instrumentals Volume 1 & 2, Reach One, Tower of Meaning, and Sketch for the Face of Helen].
 * Springfield EP (2006). Audika Records.
 * Another Thought (Re-released 2006). Orange Mountain Music.

influence on dance music
"Here, Russell’s totemic pure-disco productions—the loping bass lines of double entendres of “Is It All Over My Face?,” both of which are endlessly sampled by hip-hop and dance-music producers—"

[good]Through the 80's, Kiss Me Again, as well as his Is It All Over My Face and Go Bang, were often played at the Paradise Garage, a kind of connoisseur's disco that was the soulful downtown analog to the glitzier Studio 54. (Russell did, however, perform at Studio 54 at least once; the composer and writer Ned Sublette remembers seeing him there in 1980, singing over a backing track with his cello hanging from his neck like a guitar.) They were songs in which the ecstatic and experimental tendencies met and agreed, and they became some of the most admired records in New York's gloriously oddball dance music scene, winding their influence through the Talking Heads and by extension to a current generation of cool bands like the Rapture.

Yet this was also a guy connected to the origins of modern dance music. Russell's commercial recording debut was the first 12-inch single issued by Sire Records, home of Madonna's first major-label club hits. (Similarly, though Morrissey may not have liked it, a "This Charming Man" remix by Russell's frequent collaborator François Kevorkian was fundamental in forming the Smiths' U.S. audience.) More directly, songs by Russell sparked dance floors at the Loft and at the birthplace of house, Larry Levan's Paradise Garage. Levan's remix of "Is It All over My Face," a track Russell and Steve D'Aquisto recorded under the moniker Loose Joints, counts as one landmark of the Paradise era.

Though Russell scarcely found an audience outside of clubs while alive

While Russell's better-known dance-floor experiments with 24- and 32-bar structures – showcased in The World of Arthur Russell – are innovative

Today, those are the recordings for which Russell is remembered first; they are the ones that collectors seek out.

[Rolling]A fixture of New York's experimental-music scene in the 1970s and 1980s, he also co-founded the dance label Sleeping Bag and cut the pioneering pre-house joints "Kiss Me Again" (1979), "Go Bang!" (1982) and "Let's Go Swimming" (1986).

[Washpost]dance-floor hits like "Is It All Over My Face?" with the group Loose Joints.

[allm]a principle designer of the dubby, underground club sound that bridged the gap between the disco era and the first stirrings of house and garage music.

made his reputation as a dance music producer with Loose Joints' "Is It All Over My Face" for West End. The club mix of this single was one of the earliest efforts by Paradise Garage DJ Larry Levan and qualifies without doubt as a prototype of what came to be known as the garage sound. In 1982, under the name Dinosaur L, Russell released 24-24 Music on his own Sleeping Bag label. The 12" single from this album, a François Kevorkian remix of "Go Bang," epitomized the loose, jazzy, somewhat minimalist underground sound that would inform Chicago house. Though the record was not a huge dancefloor smash, it was an influential turntable hit, finding its way into many radio mixes and supplying the identifying sample for Todd Terry's "Bango."

[sun]His series of 12-inch disco singles remains legendary in the danceclub scene,

During the 80s Kiss Me Again, Go Bang, and Is it All Over My Face? were played frequently at the Paradise Garage. Larry Levan's remix of

water
"This music was always a dive into oceanic sounds, but the songs of Calling Out make his need to get lost all the more explicit. Whether it’s a literal dip in the water (“The Platform on the Ocean”)"

water and kisses are the two chief recurrent motifs in Calling out of Context's flow of words.

'MUSIC. . . IT'S THE OCEAN,'' the title given the latest series of concerts at the Kitchen by its music curator, Arto Lindsay, seemed particularly appropriate on Thursday night. The two performances, by Arthur Russell with his cello and Virgilio Marti with his Guaguanco ensemble, called up mental images that were insistently aquatic - Mr. Russell alone on a sailboat, singing into the wind; Mr. Marti and his Afro-Cuban percussionists overlaying waves of rhythm.

Gallery
[good]Went there first time in 1977.

Reissues
[good]"But a new stream of CD reissues, brought about by the current fascination with the early-80's dance and rock scenes, offers the chance to do what few but his closest friends have yet been able to: figure out who Russell was, all at once."

he's acquired a cult reputation over the past decade. Passages in books such as David Toop's Ocean of Sound ("Russell played the studio as an instrument.... [He] contrast[ed] dry forward sounds with the distancing effects of a huge range of echoes") and Simon Reynolds's Generation Ecstasy (which describes Russell's "Let's Go Swimming" as a "masterpiece of oceanic mysticism") herald him as a trailblazer, and the Brit-based magazine Wire has dutifully followed suit. Toop's efforts, in particular, are vital to the current Russell revival.

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. Russell's various projects-- including Dinosaur L, Indian Ocean, and Loose Joints-- got feted as textbook examples of "mutant disco."...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.

[Ratliff]For much of his short professional life, the cellist-singer-composer Arthur Russell looked likely to be the next great thing, but he died of complications of AIDS in 1992 basically unrecognized.

[Washpost]"Calling Out of Context," a rich and endearing collection of Russell's '80s tunes, has been winning him a new generation of fans since its release last February.

[allm]Though World of Echo received a favorable critical reception in the U.K. music press, Russell remained relatively obscure throughout his life, which was ended by AIDS in 1992. A retrospective of previously unissued material was released in 1994 as Another Thought. Several collections have been released in the new century, including a reissue of World of Echo, Calling Out of Context, and The World of Arthur Russell, all of which appeared in 2004. First Thought Best Thought and Springfield were issued in 2006.

[sun]Over the last few years, the New York-based Audika label has been issuing and reissuing the work of the late cellist, vocalist, and composer Arthur Russell, a somewhat obscure figure in the downtown New York scene of the 1970s and '80s.

Ginsberg
[good]"He played his cello at Buddhist ceremonies and behind Allen Ginsberg's poetry. (Ginsberg helped find him an apartment in the East 12th Street building where he lived.)"

Kiss me again
[good]The song's popping bass and congas and Myriam Valle's blissed-out singing -- as well as funky rhythm guitar played by David Byrne and Russell's sawing cello -- made it clear that he wasn't playing around.

one night in 1977, a DJ saved his life. That DJ, Nicky Siano, would collaborate with Arthur the following year (in a session featuring disparate musicians like David Byrne, Fluxus member Henry Flynt, and the Ingram Brothers) under the name of Dinosaur for the first 12-inch disco single on the Sire label, the leftfield staple "Kiss Me Again". A jubilant marriage of clacking castanets and bells, horns and breathless divas, Byrne's early Afrobeat guitar scratches and Russell's infinitely funky cello, its effect on dancefloors remains iconoclastic and ecstatic, a hot disco joint with little trace of Saturday Night's fever. Unfortunately, neither that track nor the similarly rubbery "Tell You (Today)" were licensed for this compilation, although both can be found on the crucial overview of early 80s dance weirdness, Disco Not Disco (which also features a superior mix of his Indian Ocean track, "Tree House/School Bell").

Despite these painful omissions, the towering high points of Arthur's extraordinary club music are finally gathered onto one disc, in one world. The set opens with the disco favorite "Go Bang #5", as mixed by Francois Kevorkian.

unfinished
[good]But he was an unorthodox convert, performing obsessive remixes on this and other singles, treating dance music as just a particularly good area of sonic experimentation rather than a permanent home.

Calling Out of Context, just released by Audika Records, collects later works, including the songs he was working on before his death, which he seemingly couldn't finish for fear of giving up the fight to live.

He worked daily at a shared rehearsal space and stuck to a personal ritual: every full moon, whether he had new songs or not, he would get a haircut and go into the recording studio -- sometimes only for an hour, if money was short. He was really persistent in his quest, said his friend the composer and saxophonist Peter Gordon. And his quest wasn't really to do a finished product but more to do with exploring his different ways of working musically, with songs, and in studios.

Ernie Brooks put it more succinctly: He never arrived at a completed version of anything. His quest yielded more than a thousand tapes, mostly sketches but also two dozen completed songs and nearly 100 hours of live material, which are being gradually mined for later Audika releases. Knutson's essay for Calling out of Context states that – faced with illness and an "unsympathetic market" – Russell "simply would not let go of his material" during the last years of his life. When he died, he left behind an archive that included more than 1,000 tapes and 1,000 pages of lyrics.

Composer, singer, and disco producer Arthur Russell never finished anything. As described in a 2003 feature in The Wire by David Toop, Russell spent endless hours up until his death in 1992 reworking his own music in studios or his apartment. And even when something was "done," Russell would just as soon hand it to someone like legendary remixer Walter Gibbons, who'd mess with it all over again. Russell's music-- with often very little holding it to verse-chorus-verse structure to begin with-- was a series of musical elements that simply coexisted in a world of echo, elements to be pushed, prodded, subtracted, repeated, or tweaked beyond recognition.

So fans shouldn't be too worried that Audika had commissioned a DFA remix of Russell's unfinished "Springfield" on this new EP, the most recent installment in the label's Russell reissue program.

The rest of Springfield is a testament to Russell's life's-work-as-obsessive-and-endless-self-remix project.

[Rolling]When he died of AIDS in 1992, he left behind a huge cache of unreleased work,

[[allm]In 1983, Russell released a portion of a larger instrumental composition as the Tower of Meaning LP, as well as another Loose Joints single. His 1986 World of Echo was a one-man show of quietist original songs in a solo cello and vocal format that seemed designed to be overheard. World of Echo embodies the link between the two sides of Russell's output. The unusually percussive cello accompaniment evident on the album versions of "Wax the Van," "Let's Go Swimming," and "Treehouse" could be preliminary sketches for the keyboard and drum versions of those tunes that appeared on Russell produced 12" singles.

[Sun]That is how it always was for Russell: Nothing was ever truly finished,as his own fragmentary presentation of his music on these discs bears out.

Russell was known for leaving songs unfinished and continually revising his music. Ernie Brooks said that Russell "never arrived at a completed version of anything," while Peter Gordon stated, "his quest wasn't really to do a finished product but more to do with exploring his different ways of working musically." He left behind more than 1,000 tapes when he died.

clubs
[good]Still, he never became a regular clubgoer. He didn't dance. He was obsessed with rhythm tracks, and in a larger sense with sound. Tom Lee, his domestic partner during Russell's last decade, remembers that when he did venture out to a club, he went for a specific reason: To hear the sound of the records.

misc
[good]Russell's trajectory led him to an album -- not his very last work but his deepest statement -- called World of Echo, released on Rough Trade in 1987. He'd perfected the music at performance spaces around town, including Experimental Intermedia on Centre Street, where, Mr. Lee remembers, there were sometimes as few as three people in the audience. The music was made with only Russell's voice and cello; as he played and sang, he manipulated a few effects boxes to saturate the music with echo, boost the low range, turn the bouncing of his bow on the strings into a kind of quiet drum. His lyrics sound harmless on the outside but are sometimes charged with sexual suggestion: I'm hiding your present from you, She thinks of us as friends. Russell intended to make another version of the same music, for full orchestra with no echo. Mr. Lee elaborated: ''If he heard about a record, he would buy it, listen to its sound and hardly listen to it again. He wanted the freshest rhythm-track sound available. Going out to clubs was research. He would bring his test pressings in the afternoon to the Loft, to hear how it sounded in that space. Then we would return that night, hear it, and go home.''

Born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1952, Russell journeyed through different art worlds. Upon hitting 18, he moved to San Francisco, where he studied cello at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music and, in 1971, made a number of recordings with Allen Ginsberg. But New York City was where he spent most of his adult life, and his musical ties there were as disparate as the city itself. He wrote horn arrangements for early Talking Heads songs, played drums for Laurie Anderson, and found a champion in Philip Glass.

It's fitting that Russell's most sought-after release, World of Echo, will be reissued later this year.

His latest album, World of Echo, includes versions of some of the songs from his 12-inch dance-music singles, stripped down for amplified cello, voice and a diverse assortment of echo and reverb effects. At the Kitchen, this solo music was ethereal but never bland. Mr. Russell's singing was fragile, liquid, long on vowels and short on consonants, apparently casual but with superb intonation.

There was the world where his cello shadowed the beat-poet Allen Ginsburg at readings, as well as the world of The Kitchen, where he premiered his peculiar minimal compositions while also rubbing elbows with composers like John Cage, Rhys Chatham, and Philip Glass. He was in the rock world, too, nearly joining the Talking Heads and forming the short-lived Flying Hearts with ex-Modern Lover Ernie Brooks. He even briefly produced quirky tracks in the rap world, frustrating young rapper Mark Sinclair who would one day go on to make it as the meat-headed action hero Vin Diesel.

[Ratliff]studied classical and Indian music in California

[sun]In his heyday, Russell was a genrebender par excellence. He played on the first Talking Heads single, performed experimental compositions at the Kitchen, auditioned for Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond, and sessioned with Allen Ginsberg, for starters. His series of 12-inch disco singles remains legendary in the danceclub scene, while "World of Echo," a haunting solo album of his voice and cello, has become a cult classic. In all, Russell purportedly left behind 1,000 unreleased tapes of his music.

Despite the popularity of Russell's dance singles, he didn't dance or go to clubs regularly. His partner, Tom Lee, said that Russell went to clubs solely as "research," in order to "hear the sound of the records."