buttonpushing and the critique of pure reason present:
$7
7pm SHARP
On Fillmore
and
production: brendan murray (buttonpushing [at] yahoo [dot] com)
co-producer: stacie slotnick for the critique of pure reason
On Fillmore: In the Summer of 2000, Jim O’Rourke was invited to perform his songs at the Melt Down Festival in London. This required the assistance of his favorite rhythm section—longtime friend and collaborator, bassist Darin Gray, and the ambidextrous percussionist Glenn Kotche. Of course this Jim O’Rourke ensemble brought down the sold out house that evening, but what happened the following day would bring these sidemen to the front of the stage, and demonstrate their abilities as conceptualist songwriters.
Jim re-joined his first Sonic Youth tour, and Darin and Glenn started their journey back to their mid-western homes . . .
What was supposed to be a standard six hour hop back across the Atlantic, turned into a near 24 hour hell ride that left these two stranded in a Florida airport, before they were to reach their front doors. Not only did this fight for sanity galvanize Darin and Glenn’s friendship, it was in these tortured hours that they carved out their plans for their new music exploration, something they could call their own . . . .an upright bass and percussion duo that they would call On Fillmore. If it weren’t for the constant discussions of what these two loved and despised in the music they had explored, and what they felt was missing in their own musical completeness- thus figuring out what the process of On Fillmore was going to be, these guys may not have ever made it home.
With their concepts in tow, Darin and Glenn started their first traverse as On Fillmore. The duos first recording is still probably the group’s most bizarre document to date- an improvisation that sounds like it was played on instruments from the Civil War, and in fact could very well be the antique soundtrack from some forgotten battlefield. But as musician’s fate would have it, the long stretch of I-55 that divided Darin and Glenn seemed too far to justify a monogamous band relationship. In late 2000, Glenn was invited to help breath new life into Wilco, and Darin unveiled his secret affair, the electric blood streaming Grand Ulena.
Before either of these two new commitments fully consumed our two heros, On Fillmore recorded their second record for the Quakebasket label in early 2001—which was eventually released in 2002. This time around, however, the bands approach was much different. On Fillmore had completely replaced their previous improvisations with highly disciplined song structure. With Glenn adding vibes to his percussion arsenal, and Darin finally fully unleashing his “Sun Ra vs. the Melvins” roots, On Fillmore created a solar humming that reflected a new breed of elastic minimalism.
Now as the curtain comes down on the 2004 Summer. On Fillmore head out for their first tour in support of their new record, Swims With Fishes (due out September 20 on Quakebasket). Culled from over a hundred hours (perhaps years?) of collective intimacy as well as distance, On Fillmore’s third record relies only on the string and tuned metal combination, while layering beds of field recordings from the Chicago and Mississippi rivers, resulting in a pixilated paean to lullabies, location, and liberation. Darin and Glenn have successfully alchemized the brotherhoods of Thelonious Monk’s “Ugly Beauty” and the gurgling reduction of contemporary compositional musics at 16 RPM.
Keith Fullerton Whitman has recorded and released music under a number of pseudonyms, most notably Hrvatski. Hrvatski has appeared on more compilations than you can shake a stick at and criss-crossed the globe laying down breakbeat concret for the kids. He has worked at the Forced Exposure distribution center, written about music, lectured at Ivy League universities, and is a graduate of the Berklee School of Music. Whitman also runs a record label and mail order service.