Description
Gastr Del Sol emerged from the remains of Bastro in 1992 with the brooding, mostly drumless album, The Serpentine Similar. This represented an unlikely evolution from the fury of Bastro, but evolution was only getting started and unlikely was one of the ongoing principles in Gastr Del Sols approach. Before the sessions for the second album, Bundy Brown left the group and David Grubbs asked Jim ORourke to come play. 1994s Crookt, Crackt Or Fly tangled the clean lines of the original band in the writing, playing and editing of the music. This was all very fascinating, but it wasnt until the five songs of Mirror Repair that the compelling space of Gastr Del Sol could be fully perceived.
Mirror Repair was rife with guitar interplay, but Gastr coloured the palette with piano, drums and a sudden and rattling variety of woodwinds, all evoking the obsessive pull of a deep-seeded conviction, an insistent image that one cannot forget in a dense atmosphere with riffs patterning over each other and fading into landscape. The quieting of Gastr Del Sol had been dialling down since the start; here the silences were as essential a part of the sound as the sound was. In a fast five song mini album, length and depth were impossibly extended as part of the many moods of Gastr Del Sol. Albert Oehlens cover art provided a perfect counterpart to the sounds within, providing also a shout out to The Red Krayola, where David and Albert met during their mutual involvement with Mayo Thompson.
The best in this vein was yet to come but with Mirror Repair, Gastr had made something definitive. Now, the bold sounds of nearly twenty years ago are back in the groove, freshly cut for 21st ears to hear. You need Mirror Repair.
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