Gastr del Sol

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Gastr del Sol was a U.S. band consisting, for the majority of their career, of David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke. Between 1993 and 1998 they put out six records ranging in genre from post rock (the scene they were most associated with) to avant-garde jazz and Musique concrète.

Grubbs, a former member of Squirrel Bait and Bastro, formed the band in Chicago in 1991, and they released their first album The Serpentine Similar in 1993. This early line up saw Grubbs joined by Bundy K. Brown and John McEntire, both members of Bastro's final incarnation, on bass guitar and drums, respectively. Though John McEntire continued to contribute drums and percussion to Gastr Del Sol recordings for their entire career, this album is the only one in which McEntire is credited as a full member of the group. In 1994 Brown and McEntire left to join Tortoise and Grubbs was joined by the guitarist, composer and producer Jim O'Rourke. It is at this point Gastr del Sol became mainly a collaboration between Grubbs and O'Rourke.

The bulk of this line-up's catalogue was released by Chicago's Drag City Records, beginning with 1994's acoustic guitar-based Crookt, Crackt, or Fly. "Work From Smoke", the centerpiece of this album, fused Grubbs and O'Rourke's penchant for atonal guitar interplay with bass clarinet and Grubbs's increasingly surreal lyrics.

Crookt, Crackt, or Fly was quickly followed by a pair of releases in 1995. The Mirror Repair EP added elements of electronic music, and The Harp Factory on Lake Street, released on the experimental Table of the Elements label, was a piece for chamber orchestra, with sparse appearances from Grubbs's voice and piano.

1996's Upgrade & Afterlife included a would-be film score by O'Rourke, "Our Exquisite Replica of 'Eternity'", and an extended interpretation of the John Fahey piece "Dry Bones in the Valley".

With the release of Camoufleur in 1998, Gastr del Sol veered further into the realm of conventional melodies and chamber pop, creating their most accessible and popular album. In its intuitive chord patterns and melodies, and its flugelhorn and string-heavy arrangements, it prefigures some of O'Rourke's future solo releases.

After Camofleur the band split up. Grubbs and O'Rourke both continued producing music as solo musicians, Grubbs with 1996's Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange and O'Rourke (who had also released many solo and collaborative albums prior to and during his time in Gastr del Sol) with Eureka.