Sep 23, 2008. A long-shelved Jim O'Rourke remix/re-edit of Red Krayola's 1999 album Fingerpainting finally sees the light of day. The Red Crayola - Three Songs on a Trip to the United States CD (Drag City) The Red Crayola - Malefactor, Ade CD (Drag City) The Red Krayola - s/t CD (Drag City) The Red Krayola - Amor & Language CD (Drag City) The Red Krayola - Hazel CD (Drag City) The Red Krayola - Fingerpainting CD (Drag City) The Red.
Like a great CEO, Mayo Thompson identifies his blind spots and surrounds himself with talented people. When Red Krayola's avant-garde sparkle wore off in the mid-1970s, Thompson began a series of collaborations: with the Art & Language collective in the 70s, with the Raincoats and Pere Ubu in the 80s, and with Chicago's post-rock scene in the 90s. Fingerpainting, the 1999 Red Krayola album that resulted from Thompson's work with David Grubbs, Stephen Prina, et al. Vocaloid 4 Fe Download. Has been widely decried as one of the worst of Thompson's career, but it's redressed here as Fingerpointing, Jim O'Rourke's edit of the Fingerpainting sessions. It's a wholly odd revision, tightening the original album's turgid 'jams' and tidying up its songcraft, but, in doing so, trading one set of indulgences for another. Avant-garde artists are often forgiven their worst sins-- the world has turned a blind eye to Faust's post-1990 material, for example-- but it's unlikely anyone is going to absolve the Red Krayola for releasing a 40-minute 'remix' nearly a decade after the fact, much less so telling fans that the remix, the original album, and the Red Krayola debut Parable of Arable Land can be played simultaneously, Zaireeka-style, despite three different run-times and Parable having been recorded nearly 30 years prior to Fingerpainting with a separate group of musicians. (Here, let me save you some trouble: the rhythmic sync-up isn't quite as hellacious as you might think, but it otherwise sounds very much like you would expect two-and-a-half distinct Red Krayola albums to sound when played simultaneously.) Adding insult to.insult, Fingerpointing's modest improvements on Fingerpainting come packaged as one continuous track, wagering that O'Rourke's pruning and primping are worth the loss of self-editing.
Fingerpointing's presentation is silliness and arrogance on a grand scale, but O'Rourke does improve on Fingerpainting, and in doing so encourages a rethinking of the album's maligned status. O'Rourke wisely pares down noisiest, wordless bits, converting bullshit improvisations with names like 'The Greed of a Clarinet That Is Puffy From Crying Gets Tossed in Butter and Spread by Notes' into tolerable interludes (and re-tabbing them, in the style of Parable, as 'Freeform Freakout' volumes). Thompson's approximations of 'proper' songs benefit most from the remastering, lifting his plain, familiar voice above his band's bookish clatter. Mayo's guitar is rough and gray and predictable, like a sidewalk, but its crude interplay with the electronic boil-- presumably provided mostly by the Chicago folks-- is pleasantly reminiscent of a time when 'guitars + electronics' was not manifest destiny for every young rock band with Fruity Loops and an Aphex Twin album.