Is 90s nostalgia underway yet?

If not, this reissue may be just the thing to get it started. In 1994, Chicago is the fountainhead

for a bona-fide Scene, in which bands are giving timbre and texture priority over riffs and power chords. To the chagrin of many,
the press will label it all "post-rock." It's the definitive movement of the decade, and front and center are Gastr del Sol, comprised
of David Grubbs (previously: Squirrel Bait, Bastro) and Jim O'Rourke (subsequently: Wilco, Sonic Youth). Some of their city-mates
may shift more units; Gastr, with a relentless drive for reinvention, shift the boundaries of where a band can go. Avant punk,
atonal song-styling, musique concrète, delicate piano-guitar interplay, raw electronics and modernist chamber music — all are
fair terrain, traversed with subtlety and finesse. Behind the obligatory horn-rims, Grubbs and O'Rourke have vision.
A dozen years later, this overdue reissue of 1994's The Harp Factory on Lake Street EP provides the missing piece in Gastr's
otherwise available discography. To hear it again is a treat. It's their notorious "big band" record, and the ten-piece ensemble is a
veritable All-Star team of mid-90s Chicagoans, including members of Tortoise, Sea and Cake, Shellac, Dazzling Killmen, Brise
Glace and the Vandermark 5; through studio maneuvering courtesy O'Rourke and engineer John McEntire, they blossom into a
small-sized orchestra. Remarkably confident in the use of space and dissonance, Harp Factory also emphasizes the conceptual
"scrape", the friction between nuance and noise, that plays such a prominent role in Gastr's subsequent Upgrade and Afterlife LP.
Familiar signposts are still in sight — O'Rourke's compositional skills, Grubbs' associative, absurdist musings — but this is
definitely their boldest outing. It's a record full of blissful confoundment, one that aptly vivifies the spirit of an era. Gastr del Sol
may have lasted a brief five years, but they are to the 1990s what the Magic Band, This Heat and Sonic Youth were to their
respective decades: intrepid trailblazers through the backwoods of sound.

"Hyperactives David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke break further out with an entertaining coup d'etat on the rock group

format. Uproarious orchestral massifs level out into a Nick Drake-style interlude of lyricism knocked cleverly and
chromatically askew from its harmonic center; the baroque and introspective middle section for guitar and piano
hangs together as beautifully as a well-crafted mobile. This is ample testament to the growing critical belief that in
[Gastr's] case, you can never have too much of a good thing."

THE WIRE

"Gastr del Sol's musical universe is filled with juxtapositions; for years Grubbs and O'Rourke have constantly futzed

with the musical boundaries of the hybrid genre of 'innovation,' one they seem to spontaneously reinvent."

ARTFORUM

"Never the same thing twice, Gastr del Sol radiates new sounds steadily as a breaking dawn."

TOWER PULSE

K

39.102

19

Potassium

NEW RELEASE

ON

TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS

FORMAT: CD
RELEASE DATE: February 2006
FILE UNDER: Rock
CATALOG NO: SWC-CD-19
UPC: 600401019221