This song by Jim O’Rourke is everything I want to do musically and thematically with my soundtrack.

Original here:

Jim O’Rourke on the song:

Q: What about Eureka’s first track? That’s a loaded line you’re singing there ["Women of the world, take over. If you don’t the world will come to an end, and it won’t take long"]. And the repetition works both to drive home the meaning and, by the end, just make the line an abstraction, just a wash of sound.

O’Rourke: Well, I appreciate that. I feel like someone’s finally listened to the record. There are two things about that song: one I knew beforehand and the other I didn’t figure out until recently. I’m really into songs like “Slowride” by Foghat. What’s interesting about that song – and it only works because of its length – is that through the constant reiteration of the words “slow ride” the words go from its obvious sexual connotation to just absolutely nothing. Because it’s being reiterated so much it just becomes another instrument. But when you take it over the long haul like that, what happens is the song actually starts singing about itself. It’s actually confirming its own existence in its own time. And because it’s such a banal statement – “slow ride, take it easy” – it works that way. So I thought it would be interesting to do that with a statement that was so loaded that it would actually resist that. Saying “women of the world take over” isn’t exactly banal. So it interested me what would happen if I reiterated this perplexing statement over and over again like that. Hopefully there would be this conflict between its desire to become this kind of mantra and something you don’t hear anymore.

Q: It almost works like a Steve Reich phase, falling in and out of meaning and abstraction.

O’Rourke: That’s the second thing. When I was in England recently the original recording of Gavin Bryars’ “Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet” was reissued. It’s an old piece of his where he uses a tape loop of a homeless man. At first it sounds like he’s just muttering. Then one instrument comes in, then another, and you start to notice he’s actually singing. And then you notice he’s in tune. Then you realise he is singing really beautifully. By the end – it’s a half-hour or so – there is a full orchestra playing, horns, strings, guitars, everything. And it’s gorgeous. I think it’s great because you can never hear it that first way again. When you go back to the beginning, you can hear the melody all the way through. That was the recording that shaped my mind into that way of thinking. I’d always known I wanted to figure out a way to mix minimalism and pop music, like Paul McCartney’s “Let Em In.” “Somebody’s knocking at the door, somebody’s ringing the bell.” That song is an underacknowledged minimalist masterpiece. It’s fucking awesome. Just brilliant. McCartney’s a genius. So that’s where it came from.

It’s a great thing to find out things about yourself from working through them. You know certain things about yourself, but hopefully if you put these roadblocks in the way of doing things the way that comes naturally, there are these phantom-y areas around where you only sort of know what you want to do. That’s where you find out who you are in the first place. Especially since music is not a verbal thing, so you don’t know how to articulate to yourself what you’re looking for.

Posted on February 10, 2010 at 9:05 am
http://www.theamericanbookofthedead.com/2010/02/10/women-of-the-world-take-over/
Categorized under: Blog
Tags: Jim O'Rourke, Music