Darrell DeVore

 History is rarely told in straight lines, and in the hands of Darrell DeVore it bends, refracts and regenerates, folding archaic sources and radical invention into a patchwork meditation on culture’s ongoing story. A Song of Civilization Up to Now is less an album than a living archive - a collection that oscillates between primordial hum and the restless future, and that refuses nostalgia in favor of bold cross-historical montage. Known first for shaping the San Francisco psychedelic sound as a member of The Charlatans, Darrell DeVore later became an apostle for new music - building and adapting homemade instruments and navigating ensemble improvisation in projects as varied as Pygmy and Universal Music. In this rare late-career collection, he foregrounds the spirit of exploration: synthesizers and voice, clattering percussion, modular constructions and electronic pulses are stitched together with snippets of found sound and fractured field recordings. Somewhere between outsider jazz and DIY electronics, a vision of civilization emerges that is patchwork and unruly, animated by the irrepressible urge to experiment, reflect and remake. From mysterious drone to kinetic ensemble interplay, each piece on A Song of Civilization Up to Now is imbued with a sense of curious awe. Chant-like motifs and accidental harmony burst through passages of rhythmic churn, as if each track asks what it means to negotiate communal creation out of disorder and possibility. The music is broad and idiosyncratic - hocketing ensemble parts, synthetic textures, and sudden melodic gestures stand shoulder to shoulder. Tracks might veer from primitive resonance to shambolic jazz, from humorous collage to ritual incantation, refusing to settle into a consistent idiom. The recording is more than a document of musical ideas; it is a career-spanning experiment and intended as an invitation. Every new listen offers fresh connections - between the ancient and the modern, the deeply personal and the unpredictably collective. Originally released on a limited cassette edition in the early 1980s and now reissued for a new generation of seekers, A Song of Civilization Up to Now finds Darrell DeVore still asking what creativity could become when liberated from fixed genre, and what new histories we may yet write in sound.