Recorded at INA GRM and Steamroom, covering a period of thirty years, the gap between the two visits Jim O'Rourke made to the GRM, featuring Eiko Ishibashi on piano, Atsuko Hatano on violin and viola and Eivind Lonning on trumpet, Shutting Down Here is considered by O'Rourke himself as his “most meaningful” release.
Shutting Down Here is a special work. Symbolically, it covers a period of thirty years, between two visits by Jim O'Rourke to the GRM, the first, as a young man fascinated by the institution and his repertoire, the second, as an accomplished musician, influential and imbued with an aura of mystery. Shutting Down Here is a piece shaped like an universe, a heterogeneous world in which collides the multiple musical facets of Jim O'Rourke: instrumental writing, field recordings, electronic textures and cybernetic becomings, dynamic spaces, harmonic spaces, silent spans . This variety of approach, strangely, does not in any way weaken the coherence of the whole and this is the talent of Jim O'Rourke, a talent, properly speaking, of composition, where all the sound elements compete and participate to stakes that exceed them and of a common destiny, that is to say of an apparition.
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Perpetrating the fertile collaboration initiated in 2012 with Recollection GRM, INA GRM and
Editions Mego offer the Portraits GRM complementary series, no longer focused on the "classic" GRM repertoire but towards recent creations commissioned by the GRM to artists from all horizons. Under the aegis of
François J. Bonnet, the Portraits GRM series focuses on important and emerging figures of the experimental music scene and highlights the notion of work rather than album. By reaffirming the concept of musical work, the Portraits GRM series seeks to renew with the pioneering work that the GRM Collection series but also the Philips Prospective 21e Siècle collection had achieved so admirably: offer a panorama of current musical experimentations and embrace a more durable scope with works that manage to extract themselves from an increasingly tyrannical and increasingly hazardous present-time. At a time when nothing knows how to "leave a mark", this series aims to address both current listeners, and explorers of the future. Many releases in the collection are contemporary works by two different musicians, each piece taking up the space of one side. Longer works however, fill an entire record.
The GRM Portraits series program is continued as part of the
Shelter Press label catalog beginning in 2022.
Musician, composer, improviser and producer, Jim O'Rourke (born in 1969 in Chicago, lives and works in Tokyo) is an essential figure of the American independent rock and post-rock scene (his solo records released on Drag City or in groups with Gastr Del Sol and
Sonic Youth have all become classics of the 1990s and 2000s) as well as experimental and electroacoustic music. His collaborations are countless: Illusion Of Safety,
Christoph Heemann,
David Grubbs,
Loren Connors, Wilco, Henry Kaiser, K.K. Null, Günter Müller, Voice Crack,
Evan Parker,
Phill Niblock, Mats Gustafsson,
Tony Conrad, Faust, Space Streakings, Loose Fur,
Fennesz, Diskaholics Anonymous Trio, Carlos Giffoni,
Keiji Haino,
Masami Akita, Masaya Nakahara,
Takehisa Kosugi, Fire!, Akira Sakata,
Oren Ambarchi,
Stephen O'Malley,
Kassel Jaeger,
Anthony Burr, John Fahey, Tortoise, Stereolab, Red Crayola, Guided By Voices,
Merzbow...
