Arthur Russell: World Of Echo
Valuable, high-quality 2021 reissue of the seminal & radical, avantgarde masterpiece (remastered, revised w/ insert)
- A1 Tone Bone Kone
- A2 Soon-To-Be Innocent Fun / Let’s See
- A3 Answers Me
- A4 Being It
- B1 Place I Know / Kid Like You
- B2 She’s The Star / I Take This Time
- B3 Tree House
- B4 See-Through
- B5 Hiding Your Present From You
- C1 Wax The Van
- C2 All-Boy All-Girl
- C3 Lucky Cloud
- C4 Tower Of Meaning / Rabbit's Ear / Home Away From Home
- C5 Let’s Go Swimming
- D1 The Name Of The Next Song
- D2 Happy Ending
- D3 Canvas Home
- D4 Our Last Night Together
As I considered echo in various meanings, as acoustic reverberation or electronically as a single delay, it seemed that in it, concepts of time and space were expressed sonically, and the later case projected dynamically into a theoretical "world", with a more practical application: using currently available echo/delay guitar boxes to provide an independently generated world of time to move through, like a PA system that can process any input, introducing a concept of interchangeability of materials.
However, the idiomatic style i ended up using is not immediately reference-able, and use of any echo matrix, whether simple delay or layered computer devices, bears only incident reflection on the idiomatic sensibilities of listeners, apparently the ultimate focus of attention.
After listening to tapes of "World Of Echo" as well as foreign language singing. I've enjoyed the musical effect of words as sounds, but where the meaning is not totally withdrawn. As the intention is not determined by genre, nor meaning by dialect, thesholds of musical understanding can occupy any threshold defined within a style and musical structure, or outside of it. Breakthroughs can occur at any point in the chain.
When i have written songs, the functions of verse and chorus seem to be reversed for same unknown reason. It was my hope, through the various possibilities of a "World Of Echo" PA system, to redefine "songs" from the point of view of instrumental music, in the hopes of liquefying a raw material where concert music and popular song can criss cross.
Arthur Russell 1986