Jim O'Rourke
Jim O'Rourke, born in Chicago in 1969, is one of the most important figures in music today in many different roles. He has produced records for Smog, John Fahey, U.S. Maple and Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, remixed Merzbow, played in Gastr del Sol with David Grubbs, in Loose Fur and in Sonic Youth from 1999 to 2005, and made solo albums on Drag City, Bad Timing and Eureka among them, that mix Fahey, Bacharach and the Chicago underground. First known as a guitarist, he has been just as active in improvisation, with Mats Gustafsson and many others, and in electroacoustic composition.
Jim O'Rourke, born in Chicago in 1969, is one of the most important figures in music today in many different roles. He has produced records for Smog, John Fahey, U.S. Maple and Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, remixed Merzbow, played in Gastr del Sol with David Grubbs, in Loose Fur and in Sonic Youth from 1999 to 2005, and made solo albums on Drag City, Bad Timing and Eureka among them, that mix Fahey, Bacharach and the Chicago underground. First known as a guitarist, he has been just as active in improvisation, with Mats Gustafsson and many others, and in electroacoustic composition.
Member of: Bonjintan
L’Oreille Voleuse
On L’oreille Voleuse, Brunhild Ferrari opens her archive of “ear memories” to Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke, who treat her magnetic-tape recollections as a living landscape, improvising a drifting, prismatic electroacoustic Hörspiel about time, listening, and theft as tender attention.
Cooked
On Cooked, Oren Ambarchi folds his all‑star studio jam aesthetic into something gloriously unhinged. Two side‑long epics twist piano ripples, synthetic “voices,” mutant trumpet tones, electric Miles haze and digital pyrotechnics into a foot‑tapping, brain‑scrambling, joyously cuckoo ride that still feels meticulously shaped.
Halfway to a Threeway
It seems like it was only a few months ago that Jim O’Rourke changed everything with the release of the incredible Eureka. And if you actually think that, then by George, you’re the Rip van Winkle of 90s rock! It hasn’t even been a few months since Jim’s twin comebacks The Visitor and Simple Songs, his most recent albums in the mold of his classic “pop music” trilogy of Bad Timing, Eureka, and Insignificance. Those two are thirteen and seven years behind us already! O’Rourke freak or not, if you…
Albumin
Tip! Jim O'Rourke and Jos Smolders teamed up again after their first collaboration, Additive Inverse from 2021. Over a period of three years, both artists worked in sessions of a day, each in their own studio.The result is sometimes like a warm cloud of sounds, suddenly breaking up into a rhythmic, irregular pattern, after which it dives into introverted mindsets. The music is in constant flux. The project followed the same workflow, but this time Jim took the lead and kicked off with a salvo of…
RVE
The experimental combo Illusion Of Safety's RVE is a boundary-pushing release that fuses unsettling soundscapes with raw electronic textures. Reissued on the esteemed independent cassette label Tribe Tapes, RVE stands as a bold statement in noise and experimental music.
The Bottle Tapes
Selections from the Empty Bottle Jazz and Improvised Music Series (1996-2005) is a six-CD anthology that captures the vibrant, unpredictable pulse of Chicago’s improvisational scene. Meticulously compiled from over 500 performances curated by John Corbett and Ken Vandermark, this box set chronicles a crucial era with recordings from nearly 100 international artists, immersing listeners in the fearless experimentation that defined the Empty Bottle’s celebrated Wednesday nights.
Ideal Secret Circle (11CD Bundle)
Mega tip! *80 copies limited edition bundle.* Ideal Secret Circle It's an 11 CD limited-edition set of albums packaged in digi packs designed by Philip Marshall. The series is curated by Joachim Nordwall.1. Sins For Beginners - We Don’T Need No Music (For Pita)2. Susana Santos Silva - The Fabrication Of Time 3. Merzbow - Gareki No Niwa4. Jim O’Rourke - Subtracted5. Spykes - Memoirs Of Pogonophores Vol. 2.6. A. Bolus - Evil Moisture Plays Music In The Style Of Organ Of Corti7. Eternities - Foreve…
Pareidolia
Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O'Rourke's fifth collaboration remixes live material from their 2023 European tour. Pareidolia weaves improvised performances from France, Switzerland, Italy & Ireland into a dynamic sound collage, blending computer-generated textures with flute & harmonica. A meditation on perception & randomness.
Compositions No. 10 & No. 16 (+101)
1998 release (light storage wear) ** "It has always been baffling why the work of certain contemporary composers like Anthony Braxton, whose work spans the jazz and classical genres, has not been more widely performed by musicians outside of their own immediate sphere as "standards" of modern repertoire. After all, pieces by modern composers of the generation prior to his, like Ornette Coleman or Charles Mingus, are routinely covered by performers in and outside of jazz. One would think that Bra…
X - X Section
1991 release ** Featuring: Shinjuku Thief, Peter Appleton, Paul Schütze, C-Schulz, Ian Eccles-Smith, Richard Vojlay, Tenebrae, Andrew Chalk, Muslimgauze, Christoph Heemann, Jim O'Rourke, Merzbow.
Shutting Down Here
First ever CD pressing! Cd in 6 panel digisleeve. Shutting Down Here marks a pivotal moment in the career of Jim O’Rourke, a composer celebrated for his restless innovation across experimental, electronic, and contemporary music. Originally commissioned by INA-GRM and first released in 2020, this 35-minute single-track album now returns in a long-awaited reissue, available for the first time on CD.
Described by O’Rourke himself as the “most meaningful” work of his career, Shutting Down Here weav…
Mimir
2007 release ** "Jim O'Rourke first joined Mimir for Mimyriad in 1992. It was completed and released as the first Streamline CD in 1993. In 1998, a radically remixed and re-edited version was issued as a limited edition Streamline LP. This new CD release contains a remastered version of the Mimyriad LP material and comes in a reworked and updated package. '...peering down, he tried to gauge how close he might be drifting to solid ground, but the darkness made it impossible to judge. He found him…
Antigone
Big tip! Antigone is Eiko Ishibashi’s latest musical masterwork, one rife with chilling speculations for the future calling from inside her own head. Out March 28th, it marks Eiko’s first “traditional” songcraft album — that is, with lyrics and singing — since 2018’s acclaimed The Dream My Bones Dream, arriving on the heels of her celebrated soundtracks for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s films. Within Antigone, Eiko teases out images from a dystopia not unlike the one we’ve already got. Hers is suffused wi…
Goodbye 20th Century
25th Anniversary Edition. Goodbye 20th Century is a double album of covers of Avant-garde recordings by Sonic Youth and collaborators. SYR4 features works by avant-garde classical composers such as John Cage, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich, and Christian Wolff played by Sonic Youth along with several collaborators from the modern avant-garde music scene, such as Christian Marclay, William Winant, Wharton Tiers, Takehisa Kosugi and others. The album received mixed reviews, but most critics praised the gro…
Tamper
Originally released by Extreme in 1991, Tamper holds a significant place in Jim O'Rourke's discography, as it represents one of his early ventures into the realm of electro-acoustic music
Edge x Jim O'Rourke
*2024 stock* The cliffhanger collaboration by Masataka Fujikake and Takeharu Hayakawa, which has been going on since 2007, is now complete with a live performance of the May 2011 session with Jim O'Rourke as a guest. The trio's bold arrangements are a powerful work centered on a solitary guitar sound that only Jim O'Rourke could express.
Sakuraza
Modern Obscure Music presents "Sakuraza," a live album featuring Eiko Ishibashi (flute and electronics), Jim O'Rourke (electronics), Kei Matsumaru (alto saxophone), Tatsuhisa Yamamoto (drums), and Giovanni Di Domenico (piano). Recorded at the Sakuraza jazz club in Kofu, Japan, this dynamic and sophisticated performance blends jazz, electronic music, and pop elements.Giovanni Di Domenico, a frequent visitor to Japan, organized this June 2023 concert with long-time collaborators Ishibashi, O'Rourk…
Mimidokodesuka
Face-shredding, spine-melting - these are all just clichés next to the jams found within this humble packaging. Jim O'Rourke, Darin Gray and Chris Corsano may not even exist anymore, judging from the cataclysms to be heard here.
Eureka
2025 repress; originally released in 1999. Twenty-six years after its initial release, Jim O'Rourke's Eureka remains one of experimental music's most beautifully contradictory statements - an album that somehow manages to be utterly devoid of anything resembling conventional pop music while simultaneously being magnificent in scale, pleasant to listen to, catchy, and even reminiscent of records you might have heard on The Casey Kasem Show. Now, Drag City presents a 2025 repress of this essential…
Insignificance
2024 Repress. Insignificance, Jim O'Rourke's third solo album for Drag City, reaffirms that he is not only a fine composer, arranger, and producer, but a gifted, creative songwriter as well. As with Eureka and the Halfway to a Threeway EP, O'Rourke continues to find as many possibilities in singing and songwriting as he does experiment with pure sound. However, this time O'Rourke adds a few twists to the formula he pioneered on those two efforts.
He sings on each of Insignificance's tracks, his…