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NOT IN STOCK
1-2 Weeks
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ARTIST
TITLE
Camoufleur
FORMAT
LP
LABEL
CATALOG #
DC 133LP
DC 133LP
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
3/2/1998
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2025 repress. "2024's retrospective box We Have Dozens of Titles brought the revelatory 1993-'98 output of Gastr del Sol back into the world of physical objects, following a decade in which most of their music was mostly available online. Now comes the vinyl reissue series of the Gastrlog at the end of the line, with their 'art-pop masterpiece' Camoufleur. Gastr del Sol released Camoufleur in February of 1998. It was a ringing down of the curtain on an extraordinary five years of music making (and unmaking) with one of the best albums of that era. The backstory: Gastr first appeared out of the ashes of David Grubbs' postpunk band Bastro, whose final lineup -- a furious electric triad of Grubbs, John McEntire and Bundy K. Brown -- evolved into Gastr del Sol with The Serpentine Similar, an album of songs and singing that turned away from the loud and into the acoustic. Brown and McEntire then departed, to focus on the newly-founded Tortoise, just as improviser/tape manipulator/musical polyglot/total freak Jim O'Rourke joined. Picking up on Gastr's acoustic fascination, Grubbs and O'Rourke twisted in oblique strains of modern classical, avant garde, tape music, world music and space, launching on an entirely transformative tear with the Crookt, Crackt, or Fly LP, 'Mirror Repair' EP, and Upgrade & Afterlife 2LP. Nothing prepared one for the inquests of each successive record, and yet, Camoufleur managed to top them all, by presenting their (so-called) avant explorations as pop music. Released on LP and CD, Camoufleur had a prescient quality: like something that existed beyond such simple formats as LP and CD, or even the designations of 'record' and 'album.' It was the nascence era of the burnt CD, unmarked or attributed in any fashion. Compelled by an intense provocative love of the non-sequitur, they drafted in contributions from a diverse lineup that flowed through the songs with an equal weight of improbability and appeal. This was a startling set of sing-along tunes -- or you could whistle along with the music, or keen along with the sound you couldn't identify, however you liked. Once out in the world, Camoufleur went over like gangbusters. Listening in today, it still does -- time has only burnished its unique superpowers. Upon release, of course, and with the same sense of enigma in which they'd issued their music, Gastr del Sol abruptly vanished, leaving all that stuff to time."
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