Photo by Jim Newberry. Used with kind permission.

In A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway wrote about the notion of deleting a story’s narrative climax after it was written, to see if what came before and after the moment-of-truth would be powerful enough to suggest what had been taken out. It’s an idea that would seem to apply to Jim O’Rourke, who throughout his career has made music that is pointedly suggestive without being overt. His sounds always play with ideas that run both in concert with and tangential to their musicality. More than anybody else working these days, he could rightfully be called a sort of sonic semiotician. But as a theorist, he would rather play at shaping coal than marvel at the diamond it would one day become.

While his tireless theorising provides a certain type of hook, O’Rourke’s records display an unquantifiable musical talent that modesty prevents him from truly acknowledging. O’Rourke is an academic composer, even in his traditional song-based work, but the emphasis there should fall on "composer." He’s also a rare creature who is as articulate talking about his art as he is creating it.

The following interview was conducted in New York, Spring 1999, following the release of his then-new album Eureka (Drag City). He wore a frumpy green sweater and smoked countless cigarettes. True to form, he was absolutely thrilled to be talking about music. And even more than usual, he was at the top of his game.

Q: You’ve taken on many different roles in and around music – composer, songwriter, session player, producer, engineer, remixer and archivist. Do those roles mean different things to you?

O’Rourke: I don’t think they’re different at all. It’s all just necessary. I guess it’s because I don’t really think of myself as a musician. Being a musician just seems so self-reflexive. It’s like turning a mirror back on yourself, and that doesn’t appeal to me very much. So, actually playing music is probably what I do the least.

Q: When you approach traditional song form like you did on Eureka, do you keep what could be called a composerly distance to it?

O’Rourke: I don’t feel like anything is done until it seems like I didn’t make it. Obviously it will reflect the things I’m interested in, but I’m not looking to scream, "Hey look, it’s me." Eureka is the closest I’ve ever gotten to that, though. The record has the appearance of being cheerful in that way, but it’s fairly misanthropic underneath the surface.

Q: How do you feel about the reaction to the album? It’s a relatively straightforward song-oriented record, but a lot of the reaction has been focused on questions of avant-garde music vs. pop music and the differences between the two. Do you think there should there be any?

O’Rourke: Well, that’s the thing. Why do they have to be different? I don’t understand this obsession with genre. I’m interested in people doing certain things with music, not people who are working in certain genres. When I’m into someone’s music it’s because they’re someone who has decided they’re going to hold off on doing what comes naturally, to see if there is some other way they don’t know about yet. That’s what I’m looking for. That’s why Autechre is as interesting as Derek Bailey to me. They are people who made that decision, whether it’s an overt political decision, like with Bailey, or just a result of being smart, articulate people like the guys in Autechre.

Q: But you play with ideas of genre, too.

O’Rourke: I’m interested in people who play with genre, like John Oswald, where genre becomes the subject itself and you’re dealing with certain cultural baggage that comes along with it. But to be interested in music just because it’s a certain kind of music? You would end up listening to a lot of crap music then. You end up lowering your standards.

Q: Does this idea of genre apply to your song selection? Take the Burt Bachrach song on Eureka. On one hand a Bachrach song is just a beautiful piece of music, but on the other there is a lot of baggage that comes along with a song like that.

O’Rourke: The funny thing is the Bachrach song is probably the oldest thing recorded on the record. I just thought the lyrics made for a perfect meeting place between the two lyrical aspects on the record, which are hardcore misanthropy and cheerful misanthropy. (Laughs) But then all this Bachrach shit happened and I realised that nobody is ever going to hear it that way. So it kind of failed in that way, but that’s okay.

Q: So it wasn’t a conscious compositional choice then?

O’Rourke: Well, it works that way whether I want it to or not. But that wasn’t the intention. Musically, it breaks up the record at a certain point. Also I thought it would be amusing. I thought people would be confused. But I really chose it for the lyrics. It’s a good song, of course.

Q: So would say you approach this "baggage" objectively?

O’Rourke: In that case, yeah, but there are certain songs on the record that mix genres to draw attention to the fact that they are just signifiers of genre. Like Ken Vandermark’s sax solo on "Through the Night Softly." If you take that out of context, you’re going to be wondering, "What is that?"

Q: It’s funny you mentioned that, because that’s the moment I’m leading up to. When I hear that solo it sounds like the ending credits on "Saturday Night Live."

O’Rourke: (Ecstatic) Exactly! That’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. That’s brilliant. Fantastic. That’s 100 percent what I was going for. I remember recording it and saying "No, Ken, stupider…stupider." He kept saying, "Aw Jim, come on." But what most people have heard is Pink Floyd’s "The Great Gig in the Sky" from Dark Side of the Moon, which I can understand because the drumming was purposefully supposed to sound like Nick Mason. That’s why I used a different drummer on that song. But it is supposed to feel like "Saturday Night Live." That interests me partially because it’s a cultural reference taken out of its context but also because it’s just stupid. I like stupid stuff. I have to admit it’s also slightly a parody of a Gastr del Sol song for me. The cliched poignant piano on that song is just ridiculous. What is so poignant about a piano humping out a bunch of chords, you know? So that tune is mostly made up of jokes. But it had to work musically of course.

Q: When I listen to that I hear a really funny moment, but also just a great solo, too. It really works within the song. But it also reminds me of a Luc Ferrari collage element.

O’Rourke: Yeah. I think this record is a lot more like my older records than "Bad Timing" was because all the ideas came from doing tape music. It’s like Luc Ferrari, but instead of using the sound of a car door slamming, I’m using pop elements. And that’s the challenge: how can you make the sax solo work in the different conflicting ways you want it to? How can you make it work musically and make sense that way? Then, how can you also make it funny and make it come across as this cultural reference, this stupid ending to this stupid show? That’s the idea, and the challenge is figuring out how you can make it work, because it really shouldn’t. Those three ideas simultaneously shouldn’t work. I don’t know if it does, but I try.

Q: It works for me. But I wonder why it does. I wonder how much of it has to do with notions that surround a Jim O’Rourke record and how much just comes from the actually musical moment itself.

O’Rourke: That’s another thing. I had to come to the realisation that people have this idea of who I am. Making records is loaded already, so when it’s my new record people have certain expectations and ideas for how to approach it. But it’s just another thing I can play with. I get very awkward thinking about myself, so for a long time I just wouldn’t acknowledge that. But it’s true. So if it is, what am I going to do about it? I can’t ignore it.

Q: What about Eureka’s first track? That’s a loaded line you’re singing there ["Women of the world, take over. If you don’t the world will come to an end, and it won’t take long"]. And the repetition works both to drive home the meaning and, by the end, just make the line an abstraction, just a wash of sound.

O’Rourke: Well, I appreciate that. I feel like someone’s finally listened to the record. There are two things about that song: one I knew beforehand and the other I didn’t figure out until recently. I’m really into songs like "Slowride" by Foghat. What’s interesting about that song – and it only works because of its length – is that through the constant reiteration of the words "slow ride" the words go from its obvious sexual connotation to just absolutely nothing. Because it’s being reiterated so much it just becomes another instrument. But when you take it over the long haul like that, what happens is the song actually starts singing about itself. It’s actually confirming its own existence in its own time. And because it’s such a banal statement – "slow ride, take it easy" – it works that way. So I thought it would be interesting to do that with a statement that was so loaded that it would actually resist that. Saying "women of the world take over" isn’t exactly banal. So it interested me what would happen if I reiterated this perplexing statement over and over again like that. Hopefully there would be this conflict between its desire to become this kind of mantra and something you don’t hear anymore.

Q: It almost works like a Steve Reich phase, falling in and out of meaning and abstraction.

O’Rourke: That’s the second thing. When I was in England recently the original recording of Gavin Bryars’ "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet" was reissued. It’s an old piece of his where he uses a tape loop of a homeless man. At first it sounds like he’s just muttering. Then one instrument comes in, then another, and you start to notice he’s actually singing. And then you notice he’s in tune. Then you realise he is singing really beautifully. By the end – it’s a half-hour or so – there is a full orchestra playing, horns, strings, guitars, everything. And it’s gorgeous. I think it’s great because you can never hear it that first way again. When you go back to the beginning, you can hear the melody all the way through. That was the recording that shaped my mind into that way of thinking. I’d always known I wanted to figure out a way to mix minimalism and pop music, like Paul McCartney’s "Let Em In." "Somebody’s knocking at the door, somebody’s ringing the bell." That song is an underacknowledged minimalist masterpiece. It’s fucking awesome. Just brilliant. McCartney’s a genius. So that’s where it came from.

It’s a great thing to find out things about yourself from working through them. You know certain things about yourself, but hopefully if you put these roadblocks in the way of doing things the way that comes naturally, there are these phantom-y areas around where you only sort of know what you want to do. That’s where you find out who you are in the first place. Especially since music is not a verbal thing, so you don’t know how to articulate to yourself what you’re looking for.

Q: You mentioned merging minimalism with pop music. The new record draws from all sorts of musical approaches. How similar do you think avant-garde music - "music for music’s sake" - and pop music really are? Surely their aims are different, but do they end up hitting different targets?

O’Rourke: The thing is the aim, I guess. I’ve never programmatically resisted any certain types of music, and I’m not programmatically trying to mix genres. It’s just that I’m a sum of all this stuff, so why can’t the music I make be too? I don’t think I have found a way to do it yet. Everything in the past has been focusing on certain aspects and concentrating on those one at a time. But as I’ve become more interested in this, I can try to focus on how do all of these things meet in my head. Why is it that they all have this equal value? To figure that out, I just decided not to leave anything out. The whole record isn’t made up of pop songs, though.

Q: Definitely not. But with your history, they might as well be. I’m just interested in your thoughts on academic music and music mindful of pop appeal because I can’t approach a John Cage tape edit any differently than I do a great Haircut 100 song.

O’Rourke: It bugs me that a lot of people don’t think that way. They’re equally valid for what they’re trying to do. You can’t expect Cage to do what Haircut 100 did, but they’re equally valid. People freak out when they find out I listen to Led Zeppelin every day. Why is that? They fucking rule. "Presence" is one of the greatest albums ever made.

Q: Do you ever wonder if you’re spreading yourself too thin working in so many different capacities?

O’Rourke: No, because it’s all the same thing. It’s all part of the same learning process. If I didn’t do all of these different things, I’d be stuck.

Q: Are you able to listen objectively to your different kinds of work? Can you recognise an aesthetic that runs through it all?

O’Rourke: I don’t usually listen to my stuff. I have plenty of other records to hear. But when I hear my stuff I can always tell it’s me. I don’t know exactly why. I guess it’s that is all so inquisitive. Maybe that’s it. Hopefully none of it takes things for granted. It doesn’t use tricks, like someone using a minor chord because it’s supposed to sound sad. Well, that sound doesn’t mean sad. That’s all baggage. There’s nothing indigenous in it.

Q: Couldn’t there be, though? I wonder about that. Don’t you think there could be things inherent in certain sounds, even if you pull it out of its context?

O’Rourke: I don’t think so, not at this point. Maybe on a fundamental level, but music is so incredibly loaded now that it is commerce. All the loading is much stronger than anything indigenous in it. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It interests me. But that baggage is much stronger than any natural response a certain chord might have once called for. To me, it’s interesting to go that extra step to figure out why it is we view it that way. When you start to wonder why, that’s when you’re going to learn something about it. And when you have learned that, you go somewhere else with it. It’s not a hierarchical thing. You don’t move up, you just move on.