In 2014 former Chicagoan David Grubbs published a wonderful book called Records Ruin the Landscape that explores the historically conflicted relationship between experimental music and recordings of it. Grubbs, who made his name in the bands Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and Gastr del Sol in the 80s and 90s, generally had his first encounters with 1960s experimental music—New York School composers, Fluxus artists, pioneering minimalists, the improvised sound works of UK group AMM—through recordings, yet many of those artists expressed antipathy toward them, insisting on the experiential nature of their work. Recordings freeze a performance in time and make it replicable, but of course they lack the sometimes crucial environmental elements of a live concert—and no one could argue that one is a perfect simulacrum of the other.
The album’s seven tracks are instrumentals built around Grubbs’s nimble, knotty guitar playing, and they include the gorgeous, spindly acoustic excursion “Return of the Creep,” the slinking improvisational collage “Jeremiadaic,” and the tightly coiled, propulsive art-rock of “Skylight,” which recalls the earliest days of Gastr del Sol. He’s supported on a number of pieces by percussionist Eli Keszler, trumpeter Nate Wooley, and electronic experimenter Jan St. Werner (Mouse on Mars). Below you can hear the title track, a shape-shifting masterpiece that moves between stormy atmospherics and densely unwinding hard rock.Creep Mission by David Grubbs Today’s playlist:
