The late Arthur Russell's reputation still largely rests on his work as a producer of disco singles in the late 1970s and early 80s. There's nothing wrong with that. Russell rewrote disco in handwriting so fluid and personal that his stature would be assured even if that were all ever he did. But of course it wasn't. I think with time Russell's lyrical work-- one hesitates to use the phrase "singer-songwriter"-- will only grow in stature, until it stands alongside his disco records in listeners' minds. But before his famed visit to Nicky Siano's Gallery club, and just before he formed his country (not country) band the Flying Hearts, Russell was on a modern composer's track, performing his (for the sake of ease, let's call it) minimalist music at downtown New York venues like the Kitchen.
First Thought, Best Thought is the first example of Russell's instrumental work to be reissued by Audika Records, whose Steve Knutson has taken up the challenge of sorting through hundreds of hours of unreleased tapes. Like Audika's other Russell reissues, it features gorgeous sleeve design-- including a heartbreaking portrait of a forlorn-looking Russell, eyes sunken in shadow and cheeks mottled with acne scars-- and liner notes from Russell and the musicians he worked with at the time, in this case Ernie Brooks of the Modern Lovers. Unlike the other reissues, it features music that is both more and less compelling than the Russell listeners have come to know.
The first disc contains the two-part "Instrumentals", which was planned to be a 48-hour continuous performance but was only ever played live in bits and pieces. The previously unreleased "Instrumentals Volume One" is a masterpiece, up there with "In the Light of the Miracle" and World of Echo as Russell's greatest achievements. It melts the bustle of urbanity into the ebb and flow of a Midwestern lake. (Russell was obsessed with bodies of water growing up in Iowa, the way only a landlocked boy can be.) Minimalist only in its repetition, which weaves more than it cycles, "Instrumentals Volume One" is not what immediately springs to mind when you think of experimental music from the 1970s. It's beautiful, for one thing. And it sounds like it was made by someone who switched the radio on every now and again. In it, you can hear the gentle lope, twanging guitar ostinatos, and sweeping strings of 70s soul, the crosstown yearning of someone like Bobby Womack. You can also hear the ghosts of Ives, Copeland, and all the American composers who located the soul of the country in the fields, the canyons, and the frontier spaces. Russell wanted to gently dissolve the distinctions between high and low, catching hell for bringing the specter of popular music into New York's avant-garde. But he also dissolved geography. The space across 110th Street became as wide as a wheat field.
"Instrumentals Volume 1" is worth the price of First Thought, Best Thought all on its own. Nothing else on these two discs is quite so beguiling, but the other pieces continue to reveal other sides of Arthur Russell. "Instrumentals Volume 2" flows out from "Volume 1", slowly stripping away the drums until the instruments melt into each other like the wax of multi-colored candles collecting in a pool. "Reach One" is a very early composition from 1973 which plays two Fender Rhodes electric pianos off each other with meandering results. (It's not necessarily an insult to call this juvenilia.) "Tower of Meaning", on the other hand, is an orchestral work of great refinement that cycles through slow, deliberate, not unpretty chords. It's the most traditionally classical piece on First Thought, though as always with Russell words like "traditional" and "classical" are relative terms. The set is rounded out by "Sketch for the Face of Helen", a rumbling bit of oily musique concrète that features a bleating tugboat.
Audika's reissue program is an act of devoted, some might say obsessive, scholarship and curatorship that deserves every bit of acclaim it's received. Five years ago, the availability of Russell's work was limited to a handful of songs on the first Disco (Not Disco) compilation. With the unearthing of material that never left Russell's apartment and the careful repackaging of records out-of-print for years, it now encompasses a broader view of Russell's genius than even those there at the time could have known. The most amazing thing of all is that a huge iceberg of still-unreleased music lurks under the receding, placid waters of Russell's anonymity. Give Steve Knutson a knighthood or something already.
