The great off-kilter music auteur Jim O'Rourke moved to Japan after his time in Sonic Youth ended, and he's been over there ever since. For many years, he's been working with Eiko Ishibashi, the Japanese composer who scored
Ryusuke Hamaguchi's films Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist. (O'Rourke played on both of those scores.) Recently, O'Rourke and Ishibashi formed a group called Kafka’s Ibiki with third member Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, and they released their album Shiminkai last year. A few months ago, Ishibashi released her own album Antigone, with O'Rourke as part of her band. Now, O'Rourke and Ishibashi are announcing a new collaborative LP.
Next month, Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O'Rourke will release Pareidolia. I just looked up the title, and it means "the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern." The two musicians played a series of shows together across Europe in 2023, and the LP uses music recorded at those performances, presenting it in remixed and edited form. Their new track "Pareidolia (Single Edit)" is presumably just a brief excerpt of the LP. Judging by the tracklist, the whole thing will run together as one piece of music. In any case, that edit is a lovely, gentle piece of ambient music; check it out below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Par"
02 "ei"
03 "do"
04 "lia"
05 "Pareidolia (Single Edit)"
Pareidolia is out 8/29 on Drag City.
