When in Vanitas...

Jim O’Rourke was enormously prolific in the ‘90s, constructing intricate long-form electro-acoustic music, helping to pioneer new forms of avant-garde pop with Gastr del Sol and solo releases like Eureka, and producing records for U.S. Maple, Smog and others. But he had still other aesthetic imperatives to fulfill, one of which took shape here, on an album that combined spiky, primal industrial-meets-post-punk rock with abstract sound collage in a way that strongly recalled late ‘70s / early ‘80s London intergenre experimentalists This Heat. Performed by a crew of heavyweight players — including Cheer-Accident members Thymme Jones and Dylan Posa, and Dazzling Killmen bassist Darin Gray — and spliced and reassembled after the fact by O’Rourke (credited with razor blade, among other implements), the album played out as brilliantly unnerving ear candy, with volatile climaxes erupting out of spare atmospherics, and an overall sense of a soundworld constantly at risk of fracturing or collapsing altogether.