Arthur Russell’s Calling Out Of Context and Instrumentals reissued
April 25, 2022
Rough Trade continues its expanded licensing partnership with Portland, Ore based Audika Records, the label and home to Arthur Russell’s vast musical archive. Currently only available in North America, Arthur’s Audika titles are now be available in the UK and Europe via Rough Trade.
In the second in of a series of releases, Arthur Russell’s acclaimed albums Calling Out Of Context and Instrumentals will be released on vinyl and CD on 13 May in the UK and Europe.
Buy both records now
CALLING OUT OF CONTEXT
“A nomad with an absolute commitment to freedom, whose natural element was music itself”
– Olivia Laing
“…a man crooning to himself out in the Iowa sunfields, killer whale deep in the ocean, drifting through the submarine city night and cobalt space”
– David Toop/The Wire
The now classic album that started the renaissance, available via Rough Trade on double vinyl with four page insert. Calling Out Of Context features 12 previously unreleased tracks of Buddhist Bubblegum Disco Electro Pop including the anthemic That’s Us/Wild Combination, The Platform On The Ocean, Make 1, 2 and Arm Around You, all recorded during Arthur’s prime years 1985-90.
Collaborators include Mustafa Ahmed, Walter Gibbons, Steven Hall, Jennifer Warnes, and Peter Zummo.
30 years have passed since Arthur Russell left us, in relative obscurity, from AIDS complications in 1992. Yet his work – as composer, songwriter and dance music innovator – is better known now than ever before. Since Audika Records and Arthur’s partner Tom Lee began excavating and curating Arthur’s vast archive beginning in 2003, critics worldwide have hailed Russell as a visionary. Countless younger artists cite him as an influence. There has been an internationally acclaimed documentary film (Matt Wolf’s Wild Combination) and biography (Tim Lawrence’s Hold onto Your Dreams), a critical study (Matt Marble’s Buddhist Bubblegum) along with various tribute albums, concerts and events. In 2016 Arthur Russell’s archive was acquired by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center as part of their American Music Collection.
If Arthur Russell isn’t quite the pop star he imagined he would be, he is at least widely considered one of the most significant figures in late 20th century American music.
The majority of the material selected for Calling Out Of Context comes from two sources. The first was a completed album which dates from 1985, entitled Corn of which three very different test pressings remain (complied and reissued in 2015). The second source was material earmarked for Rough Trade recorded between 1986 -1990.
Both Make 1,2 and Hop On Down (originally titled Hop On Down To Petland) are two songs that Arthur wrote specifically with the plan of releasing as singles. Sadly, Arthur was faced with an unsympathetic market which viewed his material as uncommercial or too eccentric. In the case of the abandoned Rough Trade recordings, Arthur had become ill due to complications from HIV. He simply could not let go of his material. Nonetheless, he worked and reworked songs into an infinite labyrinth of possibilities, working incessantly with confidence and optimism until the last years of his life.
As a cellist, songwriter, composer, and disco visionary Arthur Russell consistently blurred the lines of our expectations of what pop music could be. Contrary by nature, Arthur’s spontaneous reaction to and altered perception of his environment produced music that remains challenging and contemporary. Arthur’s open hearted attitude to music was far ahead of its time, and now that time is ours. Track listing:
The Deer In The Forest Part One
The Platform On The Ocean
You And Me Both
Calling Out Of Context
Arm Around You
That’s Us/Wild Combination
Make 1,2
Hop On Down
Get Around To It
I Like You
You Can Make Me Feel Bad
Calling All Kids
(remixed with love by Walter Gibbons)
INSTRUMENTALS
Remastered double LP with 12 page booklet including liner notes by Tim Lawrence, Ernie Brooks and Arthur Russell.
Before Disco, and before the transcendent echoes, Arthur studied to be a composer.
His journey began in 1972, running away from his home in Oskaloosa, Iowa.
Heading west to Northern California, Arthur studied Indian classical composition at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music followed by western orchestral music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, before ending two years later in New York at the Manhattan School of Music.
Traversing the popular and the serious, Arthur composed Instrumentals in 1974, inspired by the photography of his Buddhist teacher, Yuko Nonomura, as Arthur described: “I was awakened, or re-awakened to the bright-sound and magical qualities of the bubblegum and easy-listening currents in American popular music.”
Initially intended to be performed in one 48 hour cycle, Instrumentals was in fact only performed a handful of times as a work in progress.
The legendary performances captured live in New York at The Kitchen (1975 and 1978) and Franklin St. Arts Center (1977) feature the cream of that eras downtown new music scene including Ernie Brooks, Rhys Chatham, Julius Eastman, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Garrett List, Andy Paley, Bill Ruyle, Dave Van Tieghem, and Peter Zummo.
Pitchfork lauded Instrumentals Vol. 1 as a masterpiece and one of Arthur’s “greatest achievements.” Americana touching on Copeland, Ives, and maybe even Brian Wilson. Instrumentals Vol. 2 is a moving, deeply pastoral work performed by the CETA Orchestra and conducted by Julius Eastman. Also included are two of Arthur’s most elusive compositions, Reach One, and Sketch For ‘Face Of Helen’. Recorded live in 1975 at Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation, ‘Reach One’ is a minimal, hypnotic ambient soundscape written and performed for two Fender Rhodes pianos. Sketch For ‘Face Of Helen’ was inspired by Arthur’s work with friend and composer Arnold Dreyblatt, recorded with an electronic tone generator, keyboard and ambient recordings of a rumbling tugboat from the Hudson River. Track listing:
Instrumentals Vol. 1
Instrumentals Vol. 2
Sketch for ‘Face Of Helen’
Reach One