Arthur Russell - World of Echo

_{1986 | Ambient Pop, Avant-Folk, Experimental}

In general, it's difficult to say what makes this record so special. There are many things that immediately come to mind, not only about the music but also about the presentation - whether it be the story (an album pulled from obscurity largely thanks to the internet), the album art (one of my favorites!), the bizarre instrumentation, odd song structures, Arthur Russell’s eccentricity… I could continue, but the main point is that it’s strange. Entirely unique. There isn’t anything else quite like World of Echo, and there probably never will be.

At its core, World of Echo is a pop album; it definitely doesn’t feel like one - certainly not after one listen, not any more after fifty - but it is. More specifically, World of Echo is a deconstruction of popular music as a whole. Conventional song structure and rhythm is lost, as idiosyncratic rhythm choices and melodies are set as the focus instead. The music exists in its own pre-determined environment; from front to back, each song sounds like it was recorded in the same setting, on the same day (though it’s hard to imagine that someone even recorded this music in the first place). Despite the music being so odd, repeated listens construct what was previously deconstructed. What previously felt uncomfortable becomes comforting. There are a multitude of memorable moments, phrases, and passages that slowly begin to reveal themselves with every listen, as long as you're patient enough.

The main point is that while, as mentioned before, this is a pop album, it cannot be approached as pop music. World of Echo is full of contradictions like this one; it’s seemingly-rhythmless yet percussive, uncomfortable yet melodic, transient yet timeless. Each song sucks you into its unique perception of time for the entirety of its duration (whether that be five minutes, hours, days, or years, it is impossible to tell, as the record consists of homologous beings - it is you that is being perceived, rather than doing the perceiving), only to return you to normalcy once passed. And so World of Echo exists, has always existed, and will always exist, so long as music has the means to do so.