Jim O'Rourke

First instalment in this new o series providing a long overdue and much needed vinyl-only glimpse into Jim O'rourke's electronic/synth music archive* 'Old News No.5' introduces a "nearly regular series of vinyl albums documenting analog synth and tape works (both studio and live) from the depths of Jim O'Rourke's archive, spanning a near quarter of a century in the field." Side A 'Pedal & Pedal' features 15 minutes recorded at Super Deluxe, Tokyo, 2010. It unfurls a series of tender pastoral drones and scuttling modular squiggles organised with a deceptively natural evolution, leading to one dense thicket of discombobulating chaos and a lush resolution. Side B 'Detain The Man To Whom' scrolls back to the Steamroom, Chicago, '92 and a labyrinthine 20-minute tangle of metallic tones and abyssal, earthquaking drones highly liable to disorientate, while ethereal melodies emerge from the murk only to be diffused back into the this vastly complex and abstract structure. We're returned to the present with 'It's Not His Room Anymore' recorded in Tokyo, 2010. It's a suggestively quiet and unnerving expanse of studio experimentation sounding like the dialogue of two modems speaking in tongues in the creaking hull of an ancient space station, and is backed with 'Mother & Who', an alternative version of what would become O'Rourke's live set at the Ae-curated 2003 All Tomorrows Parties Festival. This album will only be available on vinyl and is very highly recommended to fans of Keith Fullerton Whitman, Bee Mask or indeed the sprawling catalogue of the mighty Jim O'Rourke himself. Very highly recommended. (Boomkat)