Newish interview with Jim O'Rourke.

The composer, musician and producer Jim O'Rourke has given his first interview in at least a couple of years. It's on the Web site of something called monk mink pink punk, as a feature of its July 2008 edition.

In the 80s and throughout the 90s, O'Rourke's presence in Chicago coincided with that of a cadre of other talented musicians. I'm not going to go through his C.V., which you can do elsewhere without much trouble. It shall suffice to say that he produced a staggering amount of work during this period and that much of it -- with and without collaborators -- is inspiring. (In my opinion.)

O'Rourke then moved to New York City for a couple of years, collaborating with Sonic Youth on a string of great records, before moving to Tokyo and sort of disappearing. Apparently, O'Rourke has not, as rumors had indicated, been making films or studying film. The interviewer Josh Ronsen receives an unambiguous response when he asks O'Rourke to clarify this matter of film and O'Rourke's involvement with film:

Q: Is film work more important than music right now, or are you looking into the relationship between film and music?

well all of that is some internet creation. i think lee [renaldo] or somebody said something, and it’s sort of blown up from there. i didn’t move here to make movies, study movies or whatever. but that seems to be what people think, so, that’s fine i guess. i spent the last 2 years studying japanese and working towards getting my visa, that was really 90% of my time. but back to the question, the relation between music and film has rarely, if ever interested me. i’ve always preferred film over music, and i still do.

O'Rourke goes on to offer a comment about new structural challenges with which musicians and composers are faced when creating a recorded work. I take solace in the knowledge that he's still thinking and stuff, even if he's not releasing new records at the moment:

Q: Another technology question: when you release a limited edition CDr like the Old News series (and where is volume 3?) in an edition of 30 or 40, are you upset when they become available for download on SoulSeek or other file sharing site?

hahaha, oh boy, that's a can of worms. i am happy people even know about them, and want to hear them. so, that aspect, no i have no problems. but the overall aesthetic problem i have is the inability to actually use the context as part of what you are trying to do. it's a big subject, the whole aesthetic of the internet, which i, haha of course, have a lot of opinions about. the “download vs not” discussion isn't so interesting to me, if at all, as the whole way the use of context has become vaguer and vaguer.

Both this and the previous quotation remind me of something I've thought about before: one thing that has always seemed to distinguish O'Rourke's music is that it isn't about music; it's about context and expectations and stuff like that. We should talk more about this. Maybe after the presidential election? Thoughts?....

Full interview.