| Womblife | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | August 12, 1997 | |||
| Recorded | 1996 | |||
| Genre | Experimental, avant-garde | |||
| Length | 45:29 | |||
| Label | Table of the Elements | |||
| Producer | Jim O'Rourke, John Fahey | |||
| John Fahey chronology | ||||
| ||||
Womblife is an album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey, released in 1997. It was one of three releases by Fahey that year.
Womblife continues John Fahey's career resurgence, again bearing minimal resemblance to his earliest work. It incorporates sound collages and experimental music.
Working with Jim O’Rourke, Fahey taped Womblife in the younger musician’s bedroom. O'Rourke has been long associated with the experimental and improv scene, frequently citing Fahey as an influence on his work. Echo, loops and samples along with guitar are used in musique concrète, a style Fahey used as far back as 1968's Requia . [1] O'Rourke plays guitar on "Juana". [2]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [3] |
| Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [4] |
| The Great Folk Discography | 7/10 [5] |
Womblife was one of three releases by John Fahey in 1997. All three (including the album City of Refuge and the EP The Mill Pond ) were experimental and avant-garde and were unexpected by his long-time fan base. Music critic Brian Olewnick of Allmusic highly recommended the release, started his review with "This is not your father's John Fahey.", calling it "...one of the more overtly experimental albums in the Fahey catalog and also one of the most fascinatingly beautiful." [3] Steve Taylor of Hollow Ear said of it, "This is one of the most dangerous sounding acoustic guitar recordings you are likely to encounter" and "the sound of it is cold, dark and hellish.", "raw and unpleasantly intoxicating". [6] Both critics cite "Juana" as a more conventional track.
Richard Gehr referred to it as "echoing", an ".. innovative electric album...". [7] Stewart Voegtlin of Stylus Magazine called it "... a complex record that marries musique concrete to bottleneck blues. It doesn’t always work: one often strains to hear the guitar over the invasive din." [8]
All songs by John Fahey.
Production notes:
Jim O'Rourke is an American musician and record producer. He was long associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene. Around 2000, he relocated to New York City before moving to Japan, where he currently resides. O’Rourke is best known for his numerous solo and collaborative projects, many of which are entirely instrumental, and for his tenure as a member of Sonic Youth from 1999 to 2005. He has released albums across varied genres, including singer-songwriter music, post-rock, ambient, noise music, and tape experiments.
SYR3: Invito al ĉielo is an album by American alternative rock band Sonic Youth. It was released on March 2, 1998, and was the third in a series of experimental releases issued on the band's own SYR label. SYR3 marked the beginning of the band's collaborations with producer and musician Jim O'Rourke; his continuing work with the group after SYR3 resulted in O'Rourke becoming an official member of Sonic Youth by 2002's Murray Street.
Gastr del Sol was an American, Chicago-based band, consisting for most of their career, of David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke. Between 1993 and 1998 they released seven albums ranging in genre from post-rock to musique concrète.
Bad Timing is the first conventional song-craft album by American musician Jim O'Rourke. Although O'Rourke releases experimental music nearly every year, this album marked the beginning of his series on Drag City Records which focuses on standard song structures. It is an instrumental album, consisting largely of Jim O'Rourke's acoustic guitar playing, sometimes with additional instrumentation.
Insignificance is a 2001 studio album by Jim O'Rourke, originally released on Drag City. It is named after the Nicolas Roeg film of the same name. It peaked at number 35 on the UK Independent Albums Chart.
American primitive guitar is a fingerstyle guitar music genre, developed by the American guitarist John Fahey in the late 1950s. While the term "American primitivism" has been used as a name for the genre, American primitive guitar is distinct from the primitivism art movement.
I Am the Resurrection: A Tribute to John Fahey is a tribute album to guitarist John Fahey released in 2006. The album's title is taken from the title of the third track of his album The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death.
Loren Mazzacane Connors is an American experimental musician who has recorded and performed under several different names: Guitar Roberts, Loren Mazzacane, Loren Mattei, and currently Loren Connors. He has worked with Alan Licht, Jim O'Rourke, bassist Darin Gray, Thurston Moore, John Fahey, Keiji Haino, Jandek, Suzanne Langille, poet Steve Dalachinsky, Chan Marshall, Margarida Garcia, Kath Bloom and Robert Crotty.
John Aloysius Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who played the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been enormously influential and has been described as the foundation of the genre of American primitive guitar, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of the music and its minimalist style. Fahey borrowed from the folk and blues traditions in American roots music, having compiled many forgotten early recordings in these genres. He would later incorporate 20th-century classical, Portuguese, Brazilian, and Indian influences into his work.
Pink is the tenth album by Japanese experimental music band Boris. It was originally released in 2005 through Diwphalanx Records in Japan and subsequently reissued in 2006 by American label Southern Lord Records. The album received favorable reviews, particularly for incorporating more melody into the band's abrasive sound.
SYR8: Andre Sider af Sonic Youth is a live album by Sonic Youth with Mats Gustafsson and Merzbow. It was the eighth release in the SYR series. It was released on July 28, 2008. The album was recorded on July 1, 2005 at the Roskilde Festival. The album title is in Danish and means "Other sides of Sonic Youth".
The Yellow Princess is the ninth album by American folk musician John Fahey. Released in 1968, it was his second and last release on the Vanguard label.
Days Have Gone By is an album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey, released in 1967. The cover labels the album Volume 6 while it was preceded in 1966 by The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party which is labeled Guitar Vol. 4.
Requia is the eighth album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey. Released in November 1967, it was the first of Fahey's two releases on the Vanguard label.
The Best of John Fahey 1959–1977 is a compilation album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey, released in 1977. The songs are collected from four of Fahey's dozen or so releases up to that point.
City of Refuge is an album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey, released in 1997. It was his first original release in over five years and helped start his career resurgence.
Railroad is an album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey, released in 1983. It was originally released as Railroad 1 by mistake. The Shanachie Records reissue is correctly labeled as Railroad. It was his last principal recording for Takoma Records, the label he founded in 1959.
Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts and Other Contemporary Dance Favorites is a live album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey, released in 1998. It was the second and last live album he recorded and released during his lifetime.
Sea Changes & Coelacanths: A Young Person's Guide to John Fahey is a compilation album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey, released in 2006.
Flying Basket is a collaborative studio album by the Japanese free jazz saxophonist Akira Sakata, American experimental guitarist Jim O'Rourke, improv duo Chikamorachi, and Japanese noise musician Merzbow.
