From the Vaults Friday Jim ORourke Eureka 1999

The Year: 1999
The Album: Jim O'Rourke, Eureka
Who it Influenced: Wilco, The Dodos, Sufjan Stevens, Dirty Projectors, AU, Sandro Perri

In the mid-to-late-90's, Jim O'Rourke felt, in some ways, omnipresent. Long before the internet made every musician feel omnipresent, made those connections between bands public and banal, O'Rourke's name was like a key, a clue, for those sound enthusiasts carefully poring over liner notes, production credits, and thanks lists; for those into the burgeoning revelation of reissue culture, and the secret, lost history of experimental music and forgotten longplaying casualties.

He was a solo artist and studio engineer, an experimentalist with a pop music jones, and a musician who both learned from tradition and mocked convention. His album-credit-list omnipresence was due to his seemingly-tireless work ethic: largely from a list of unending production/arrangement jobs for the then-vital Chicago scene, but also via a furious rate of solo recordings.

Early on, these were often arch-academic affairs, extremes of avant-gardery made as a sideline to O'Rourke's main band, Gastr del Sol (whom he split with David Grubbs). But 1997's Bad Timing changed that: a suite of long instrumental pieces steeped in John Fahey-inspired bluegrass banjo-plucking, minimalist repetition, and post-rock rise/swell; but delivered with a sly, quizzical, ever-shifting approach to production.

Bad Timing marked the first of O'Rourke's 'pop' albums; each named for a film by British auteur Nicholas Roeg. It was followed by 1999's magnificent Eureka, which captured O'Rourke's particular new working way brilliantly: bluegrass guitars, bubbling electronics, Bacharach/David arrangments slyly, and a hushed voice singing dryly-comic lyrics. There's no simple emotions here —save for the artist's obvious joy in his craft— but plentiful intellectual rigour, admirable composition, and lyrical in-jokes for those listening closely.

Eventually, O'Rourke would go weirdly 'overground': becoming a fully-fledged member of Sonic Youth and the producer who turned Wilco from alt-country bar-band into sonic explorers. He'd stop making his own pop records, move to Tokyo, and fade slowly away from omnipresence.

• Full review: Jim O'Rourke, Eureka