David Grubbs
David Grubbs, guitarist, pianist, and vocalist, was a founding member of Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and Gastr del Sol. David Grubbs has had an astonishingly wide-ranging career: Squirrel Bait, Bastro, Bitch Magnet (fleetingly), the Red Krayola, Gastr del Sol, Palace, Boxhead Ensemble, & a series of solo recordings & collaborations. The common aspect among these performances is contigent on itself, as it is primarily identified by Grubbs' own commitment & growth as both instrumentalist & composer, constantly pursuing forms & structures that challenge both musician & listener.
David Grubbs, guitarist, pianist, and vocalist, was a founding member of Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and Gastr del Sol. David Grubbs has had an astonishingly wide-ranging career: Squirrel Bait, Bastro, Bitch Magnet (fleetingly), the Red Krayola, Gastr del Sol, Palace, Boxhead Ensemble, & a series of solo recordings & collaborations. The common aspect among these performances is contigent on itself, as it is primarily identified by Grubbs' own commitment & growth as both instrumentalist & composer, constantly pursuing forms & structures that challenge both musician & listener.
Lacrau
The first duo performance between David Grubbs and Manuel Mota, the mysterious Portguese guitar legend; a real-time, documentary feel in which athematic, non-repeating musical gestures are rendered with an extreme sensitivity to microscopic soundworlds brought about by fingertips, strings, and tube amplifiers."Smoky seance of barely there strums and possible psychokinesis, ideal for fans of Loren Connors..." Boomkat
Failed Celestial Creatures
Empty Editions is pleased to present Failed Celestial Creatures, the unanticipated debut collaboration between composer and writer David Grubbs and musician and sound engineer Taku Unami. Recorded at the Kyoto underground performance space Soto, the album takes inspiration from a reading list which Grubbs refers to as something like an “assignment” exchanged in emails between the two artists before the recording sessions.Primarily recorded in Kyoto, the album takes inspiration from the duo’s sha…
Creep Mission
Avant-indie/post-rock hero and writer David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, Red Krayola, Codeine) gets to the core of his sound with the lyrically instrumental insight and poetic enigma of Creep Mission. Issued just over a year and a summer since his Prismrose [2016] LP, Creep Mission locates cult guitarist reprising a fruitful working relationship with in-demand drummer Eli Keszler, who provides percussion alongside electronic input from Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars) and Nate Wooley’s trumpet, all help…
The Wired Salutation 3 of 3
Live recording from the performance of The Wired Salutation at Hebbel am Ufer Theater, August 18, 2013, Berlin. Interested in systems of rules and ordering principles that structure social behavior, Angela Bulloch creates multidisciplinary installations that explore creative connections between modern aesthetic and digitalism through various combinations of light, video, text, sound and different objects. Her functional works provoke the viewer’s way of interpretation of a different type of info…
Dust & Mirrors
Dust & Mirrors’ is the second full-length album by the trio of Andrea Belfi (drums, percussion, electronics), David Grubbs (electric guitar, piano, voice), and Stefano Pilia (electric guitar). It follows 2010’s ‘Onrushing Cloud’ LP and finds the trio confidently taking stabs in a number of opposed directions. It dramatically widens the terrain in which the group operates. Between albums, the three musicians worked together on David Grubbs’s 2013 album ‘The Plain Where The Palace Stood’, and took…
Borough of Broken Umbrellas
David's debut on vinyl as a solo guitar improviser. Unhurried probing through spare themes for electric guitar and nylon-string acoustic. "Strange to say, but Borough of Broken Umbrellas is David Grubbs's first record of solo guitar improvisations, a profoundly unhurried probing (sometimes worrying, like a tongue and a tooth) of a handful of gorgeously spare themes. It divides its sides between two long (c. 12') tracks for electric guitar and nylon-string guitar. Comparisons are unnecessary…
United States of America Triptych (III)
Voices by David Grubbs, Magorzata Penkalla and Pete Simonelli, guitars by David Grubbs and Miron Grzegorkiewicz, organ and violin by David Maranha, Text excerpted from Vanishing Point: How to Disappear in America without a Trace Music by David Grubbs, Miron Grzegorkiewicz, David Maranha, Gosia Penkalla, Pete Simonelli
Three takes on America - three journeys and three documents. Written and recorded.Year 1939, John A. Lomax and Ruby T. Lomax in their Plymouth - going South. 6502 miles, tons of …
United States of America Triptych (II)
Voice by Pete Simonelli, guitar by David Grubbs, organ by David Maranha, percussion by Andrea Belfi. Selection of texts follows that of Harry Partch's „Eleven Intrusions” Texts by Ella Young, Ella Young and Lao Tzu, Tsurayuki, Willard Motley, George Leite, Giuseppe Ungaretti
The Plain Where The Palace Stood
Drag City drops the sixth and latest David Grubbs pop album, The Plain Where the Palace Stood, which finds David once again twining together the diverse strands of his vast interests. Working with Andrea Belfi (drums, electronics) and Stefano Pilia (guitar) - plus Attila Faravelli on electronics - creates a sympathetic groupthink that David expects more and greater from in the years to come. The welcome return of his distinctive overdriven guitar tone is a highlight of the record. And C. S…
Frolic Architecture
*Dense drones embedded with stuttering, spitted fragments of poetry. very abstract and oblique but engaging.* "The third collaboration from poet Howe and musician Grubbs. A soundworld that germinates wildly from this most multiple and heterogenous of Howe's poems. Real-performance of the fragment-strewn text is subject to Grubbs' further deformations, scattering and layerings."Frolic Architecture is the third collaboration from poet Susan Howe and musician David Grubbs. It follows Souls of the …
Onrushing Cloud
Although Onrushing Cloud is the first recording by this trio, Andrea Belfi (drums, percussion, electronics), David Grubbs (electric guitar, voice, piano) and Stefano Pilia (electric guitar) share a common bond in that they’ve all released solo works via the Swedish label, Hapna. On this album Grubbs and Pilia combine instrumental forces while Belfi sets out a backdrop of highly sensitive percussion and electronics. The outcome is a single, half-hour, flowing body of work thatâÂÂ…
The Seven Storey Mountain
'The Seven Storey Mountain is a trans-generation group of highly recognized figures in modern music. Paul Lytton, for instance, has been playing drums with Evan Parker since 1969. David Grubbs is recognized for his work with Jim O'Rourke in Gastr Del Sol, Bastro, Squirrel Bait & extensive solo work. Nate Wooley is one of the most exciting young trumpet players currently working and he's collaborated with Taylor Ho Bynum, Peter Evans, Mary Halvorson & many others. WOOLEY is a member of Blue Colla…
Primordial Lift
Originally released on the Table of the Elements label and long out of print, this Pauline Oliveros's version of the recording contains an additional 30 minutes of material not included on the original release. Recorded live on March 20, 1998 at Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY. Primordial/Lift is based on information concerning the shift in the resonant frequency of the earth from 7.8hz to 13hz given in Awakening to the Zero Point by Gregg Braden, Radio Bookstore Press (1997). According to Braden, the re…
Thirty Minute Raven
An uninterupted half hour of statement, restatement, and versioning of this track from A Spectrum Between that takes as its point of departure a thumping instrumental with the dream group of David Grubbs, Noël Akchotè, John McEntire, Quentin Rollet, & Charlie O.
The Thicket
David Grubbs' first pop proper solo LP. There's a proud equilibrium to The Thicket. The arrangements are consistent (and consistently colorful) throughout the record. When you first hear a banjo or a trumpet or a Tony Conrad, you can bet your bottom dollar that you'll hear it again. Thus, the record is purged of exoticisms. The Thicket is many things, and elusive is not among them. It's a straight-40-to-the-head album of pop sonic lucidity.
The Spectrum Between
Six months in the making, The Spectrum Between reflects the changes brought on by David's relocation from Chicago, a home of ten years, to Crooklyn. No longer able to easily draw upon the musical associations built up over years spent in the midwest, David progressed slowly with the new material. Eventually, a worldwide pool of collaborators were drawn into the project -- including Noel Akchote, and others from the Rectangle records collective, Swedish reed sensation Mats Gustafsson, and the omn…
An Optimist Notes The Dusk
Blow UP record of the month "A step into the void' is how David Grubbs describes An Optimist Notes The Dusk, his first solo album since 2004's A Guess At The Riddle. Much the same way that each of Gastr del Sol's albums sought to avoid precedent and to model a world in which nothing should be taken for granted, An Optimist Notes The Dusk steps into the void. Nothing necessitates -- it's all built from the ground up, and at each step of the way it could have been built differently. David Grubbs' …
Souls Of The Labadie Tract
Recorded between December 2005 and June 2006 Black Faurest and at Wombat Recording Company, Brooklyn. Mastered at Micro-Moose. Total time 38:01.
Apertura
Duets for harmonium and whateveraphone. These pieces are starkly out of character for both individuals, but no less excellent.
Two soundtracks for Angela Bulloch
David Grubbs (Bastro, Gastr Del Sol) has a longstanding history of collaboration and interest in contemporary visual arts. Many of his solo albums, for instance, feature covers by artists such as Doug Aitken, Marcel Broodthaers, Cosima von Bonin, Stephen Prina or Albert Oehlen. This new mini-album features two compositions commissioned by Angela Bulloch for two of her installation pieces. British artist Angela Bulloch has been making installations since the early 90s, while starting to use the i…