Arthur Russell, in a promotional photo.
With the release of another collection of his music, the late, brilliant Arthur Russell is finding still more ears to delight.
Instrumentals, which brings two volumes of 1974 work “inspired by the photography of his Buddhist teacher, Yuko Nonomura,” is now available for online streaming at Russell’s oft-updated Bandcamp page. Of the Instrumentals pieces, Russell said, “I was awakened, or re-awakened to the bright-sound and magical qualities of the bubblegum and easy-listening currents in American popular music.” You can stream it all here:
Meanwhile, you shouldn’t miss this excellent piece from Pitchfork, called “The Buddhist Heart of Arthur Russell’s Archives,” which looks at Russell’s music and Buddhist practice in light of the recent releases and a just-opened public exhibition of his archives, called Do What I Want, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. And if you wish to go deeper still into Russell’s life and work, there’s Buddhist Bubblegum — for which, as Pitchfork says, “the scholar Matthew Marble recently used Russell’s archives […] to write an exhaustive 271-page dissertation […] centered on the artist’s spiritual practice.”
