Jim O'Rourke

• Background — person • Name — Jim O'Rourke • Born — 18 January 1969 • Birthplace — Chicago, Illinois, U.S • Occupation — * Musician • instrumentalist • composer • singer-songwriter • record producer • Instrument — * Guitar • synthesizer • piano • bass guitar • hurdy-gurdy • vocals • Years Active — 1989–present • Label — * Domino • Drag City • Tzadik • Past Member Of — * Brise-Glace • Fenn O'Berg • Gastr del Sol • Loose Fur • Sonic Youth

O'Rourke was born on January 18, 1969, in Chicago, Illinois. He is an alumnus of DePaul University.[4] O'Rourke has collaborated with Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Kim Gordon, Steve Shelley, Derek Bailey, Mats Gustafsson, Mayo Thompson, Brigitte Fontaine, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Merzbow, Nurse with Wound, Phill Niblock, Fennesz, Organum, Phew, Henry Kaiser and Flying Saucer Attack. He has produced and instrumentally contributed to albums by artists such as Sonic Youth, Wilco, Stereolab, Superchunk, Kahimi Karie, Quruli, John Fahey, Smog, Faust, Tony Conrad, Red Krayola, Bobby Conn, Beth Orton, and U.S. Maple. He mixed and produced Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album and produced their 2004 album, A Ghost Is Born, for which he won a Grammy Award for "Best Alternative Album". Parallel to the recording of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, O'Rourke collaborated with Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche under the name Loose Fur. Their self-titled debut was released in 2003 with a follow-up in 2006 entitled Born Again in the USA. He also mixed the unfinished recordings that made up a planned third album by the late American singer-songwriter Judee Sill, recorded in 1974 and mixed by O'Rourke for a 2005 release. In 2006, O'Rourke mixed Joanna Newsom's album Ys, and in 2009, he also mixed several tracks on Newsom's follow up Have One On Me. O'Rourke has previously been a member of Illusion of Safety, Brise-Glace with Darin Gray and Dylan Posa, Gastr del Sol with David Grubbs,[5] Fenn O'Berg with Christian Fennesz and Peter Rehberg,[6] and Sonic Youth. Beginning in 1999 he played bass guitar, guitar and synthesizer with Sonic Youth, in addition to recording and mixing duties with the group. He withdrew as a full member in late 2005, but continued to play with them in some of their side projects. O'Rourke has also released many albums under his own name on a variety of labels, exploring a range of electronic and avant-garde styles.[7] His most well-known works may be his series of releases on Drag City, which focus on more traditional song craft: Bad Timing (1997), Eureka (1999), Insignificance (2001), The Visitor (2009) and Simple Songs (2015). The titles of the first four albums all refer to films by the British director Nicolas Roeg; the first three by direct reference to film titles, the fourth being titled after a fictional album within Roeg's film The Man Who Fell to Earth. • Illustration — O'Rourke performing in Minneapolis, 2003 With music director Takehisa Kosugi, he played for the Merce Cunningham dance company for four years. He was a guitarist for the 1999 premiere of Cunningham's ballet Biped with Gavin Bryars in Berkeley, California. With Loren Connors, O'Rourke has released two collaborative albums: In Bern (1999)[8] and Two Nice Catholic Boys (2009).[9] With Oren Ambarchi, O'Rourke has released three collaborative albums: Indeed (2011),[10] Behold (2015),[11] and Hence (2018).[12] In 2016, he released a collaborative album with Christian Fennesz, titled It's Hard for Me to Say I'm Sorry.[13] O'Rourke is currently in a relationship with Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi, with whom he frequently collaborates.[14] The two met when Ishibashi played flute on an album of Burt Bacharach covers that O'Rourke was producing. They live and work closely together, but "keep a professional distance, sending each other data files to work on rather than jamming."[15] In 2025, they released a collaborative album, Pareidolia.[16] In 2024, O'Rourke contributed to the soundtrack of AS Velasca, a Gesamtkunstwerk football club created by Wolfgang Natlacen by composing the Theme for it. Since May 2020, O'Rourke has worked with the Roland Kayn estate releasing a restored and mastered Kayn cybernetic music recording every month on the digital distribution platform Bandcamp. At the current rate, they estimate that it will take 20 years for Kayn's complete catalog to be released.[17][18]

• Some Kind of Pagan (Sound of Pig, 1989) • It Takes Time to Do Nothing (Audiofile Tapes, 1990) • Secure on the Loose Rim (Sound of Pig, 1991) • The Ground Below Above Our Heads (Entenpfuhl, 1991) • Tamper (Extreme Records, 1991) • Disengage (Staalplaat, 1992) • Scend (Divided Records, 1992) • Remove the Need (Extreme Records, 1993) • Rules of Reduction (Metamkine, 1993) • When in Vanitas... (Skin Graft, 1994) • Terminal Pharmacy (Tzadik Records, 1995) • Happy Days (Revenant Records, 1997) • Bad Timing (Drag City, 1997) • Eureka (Drag City, 1999) • Halfway to a Threeway EP (Drag City, 1999) • Insignificance (Drag City, 2001) • I'm Happy and I'm Singing and a 1, 2, 3, 4 (Mego, 2001) • Mizu No Nai Umi (vector7/HEADZ54, 2005) • Corona / Tokyo Realization (Columbia Music Entertainment, 2006) – Japan only release. Dedicated to Tōru Takemitsu • The Visitor (Drag City, 2009) – Dedicated to Derek Bailey. • All Kinds of People ~ Love Burt Bacharach (AWDR, 2010) • Old News #5 (Mego, 2011)[22] • Old News #6 (Mego, Aug 2011) • Old News #7 (Mego, Feb 2012) • Old News #8 (Mego, Sep 2012) • Old News #9 (Mego, Oct 2012) • Simple Songs (Drag City, 2015) • Sleep Like It's Winter (Newhere Music, 2018) • To Magnetize Money and Catch a Roving Eye (Sonoris, 2019) • Shutting Down Here (Portraits GRM, 2020) • Too Compliment (DDS, 2021) • Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2023)[23]

• In Bern (with Loren Connors; Family Vineyard, 1999) • Two Nice Catholic Boys (with Loren Connors; Family Vineyard, 2009) • Indeed (with Oren Ambarchi; Editions Mego, 2011) • Behold (with Oren Ambarchi; Editions Mego, 2015) • Flying Basket (with Akira Sakata, Chikaramochi, and Merzbow; Family Vineyard, 2015) • It's Hard for Me to Say I'm Sorry (with Christian Fennesz; Editions Mego, 2016) • Hence (with Oren Ambarchi; Editions Mego, 2018) • Pareidolia (with Eiko Ishibashi; Drag City, 2025)