In the eighties there were Bastro, Squirrel Bait and Bitch Magnet and with them David Grubbs, musician (guitarist) pivotal of the alternative music of that decade; and Grubbs himself, with bassist Bundy Brown, was founder and protagonist of Gastr del Sol in the nineties.
The debut of the Gastro del Sol was the seminal EP, "The Serpentine Similar"(Dexter's Cigar, 1993), record that saw the presence of John McEntire (also in Bastro but especially in Tortoise - which we talked about in the last article). “The Serpentine Similar” is a work steeped in experimentation based almost exclusively on the guitar and bass that take on de-constructed, suspended and unresolved forms.
At the opening, the nine minutes of "In Watery Kentucky", The meeting point between slowcore and acid psychedelia, in its harmonic dissonances, outlines fragmented speeches that result in the short, unanswered and Barrettian" Easy Company ". The solo piano of "A Jar of Fat”Remembers echoes of Monk-style jazz that converge in the panpottaggi and Takoma guitars of“ Ursus Arctos Wonderfilis ”. In "Eye Street”Returns to the jazz piano that turns to blues and in which Monk is added Herbie Hancock and Carter's altered “All Blues” dynamics.
Self "For Soren Mueller"Is shaken by the drums,"Even The Odd Orbit”Is a free piano and forte of acoustic guitar and bass. What remains, as a sum of the whole, "Serpentine Orbit" and its absence. It was certainly necessary to talk about "The Serpentine Similar", but the writer cannot deny his love for "Camouflage"And for the splendor enclosed in the twelve and more minutes of the couple who gives the opening to the disc"The Seasons Reverse"/"Blues Subtitled no sense of Wonder”, Perhaps also thanks to the stable contribution of Jim O'Rourke.
