Drag City present an awesome new vinyl pressing of Gastr del Sol’s‘Upgrade & Afterlife’, just in time for its 29th anniversary.  Way back when, ‘Upgrade & Afterlife’ was the umpteenth releasefrom the individual and collective forces of David Grubbs (known thenfor Bastro, The Red Krayola, Codeine, Squirrel Bait) and JimO’Rourke, whose further history has since numbered at least anotherumpteen or so essential listens.

As part of its time-traveling function, ‘Upgrade & Afterlife’ is a return toroots, but not always necessarily Gastr’s. They were more than happyto stand on branches up above other folks in order to see any nextthing worth leaping for.

Opening at their most incandescently impressionistic, ‘Our ExquisiteReplica of “Eternity”’ has no precedent in the Gastrlog, and few inmost others, either. ‘Rebecca Sylvester’ uses vocal harmonies tosharpen their singular, gamelan tone poem song form into somethingresembling a pop reverie at the finish. With undeniable (albeitoblique) comedy, ‘The Sea Incertain’ comments upon Crookt, Crackt,or Fly’s ‘The C in Cake’, with the presence of cracked electronicshere and elsewhere taking a more forward position.

The stentorian chamber piano sound introduced on ‘Mirror Repair’ isstill in full effect throughout ‘Upgrade & Afterlife’, but the bluesyrattling of finger style acoustic has the last word, with a tranced-outreading of John Fahey’s version of ‘Dry Bones In The Valley’,weaving guitar, piano and Tony Conrad’s trademark droning violintogether to close the proceedings with an ingenious, slow-actingbang. 

 In addition to Tony Conrad, Gastr del Sol drew upon a memorablespectrum of players for the sounds of ‘Upgrade & Afterlife’, includingAnthony Burr, Steve Braack, Gene Coleman, Mats Gustafsson, TerriKapsalis, John McEntire, Günter Müller, Jerry Ruthrauff, RalfWehowsky and Sue Wolf. When issued, this combination of players,parts and play - packaged in an impressively broad tip-on Stoughtongatefold sleeve emblazoned with Roman Signer’s instantly iconic‘Wasserstiefel’ image - became the fastest-moving Gastr del Solrecord to date.

A delightful result, to our way of thinking, of the band’s ability to pushat the far boundaries of their music while consolidating upon pleasurepoints within sounds and songs. Gastr used these polarities tocompulsively draw the listener intimately close with sudden injectionsof g-force and an uncanny interpolation of space.