Gastr del Sol - The Serpentine Similar (2025 Reissue)

At the time, this album was largely heard within an underground whose boundaries were clearly defined - but if today’s sound-pool of ‘commercial’ music is deeper and wider than it was back then, it is without a doubt due to the cracking open of certain doors of perception by Gastr del Sol, alongside their esteemed others.

The year was 1992. After a bruising run of tour dates the year before, the final lineup of Bastro, a power-trio of David Grubbs, Ken (Bundy) Brown and John McEntire, retired, exhausted. Shortly thereafter, they were rebirthed, sans drums, via a new set of ideas composed in the cut-down configuration of Grubbs on guitars, keyboards and vocals and Brown on bass.

Playing in duo format opened up sound and intention, leaving the need for speed (and the stock in rock) out, while letting in an expanse of brooding, droning acoustic space that highlighted the songs’ serpentine shapes. This was something so radically different as to require a new calling card: henceforth, Gastr del Sol. Signing to Teen Beat, Gastr del Sol completed ‘The Serpentine Similar’ in late 1992 for release the following year (the Drag City reissue came in 1997).

In the final rendering, ‘The Serpentine Similar’’s roof-rent, white-sky execution was attenuated with several percussion appearances from the prodigal John McEntire. Over the next five years, his cameo presence was a constant in Gastr del Sol’s steadily-evolving tradition of significant breaks from tradition at every turn. There would be an even more significant tradition-breaker onboard for all this; following the release of ‘The Serpentine Similar’, Jim O’Rourke joined Grubbs in Gastr as Brown exited (to focus on Tortoise, with McEntire et al).

For the new Gastr duo, a world of new directions in music awaited, the future became the past, and the music of Gastr del Sol emerged from the thin air, then returned there.