Skip to content
Premieres

Stream Jim O’Rourke’s Droning, Little-Heard ‘Steamroom 1’ Album

jim o'rourke, steamroom, bandcamp

Experimental music sage Jim O’Rourke just unearthed a wealth of rare material, uploading eight (!!) full albums onto his brand new Bandcamp page. As Tiny Mix Tapes points out, the LPs belong to a series dubbed Steamroom and each is currently available for a purchase price of $7. The longtime Sonic Youth associate has detailed each of the records’ origins with pithy descriptions such as, “Recorded 2012. Originally released as a tour cd for the Christoph Heemann / Will Long / Jim O’Rourke 2013 Japan Tour,” which applies to Steamroom 1.

All of the full-lengths are split into just one or two tracks, and many were recorded in Tokyo over the course of the last four years or so. Streamroom 5 and Streamroom 8 are the oldest pieces O’Rourke has collected — both date back to 1990. Steamroom 7, meanwhile, was originally crafted as the soundtrack to the Makino Takashi film The World.

Find all of the albums at O’Rourke’s Bandcamp. For a preview of what to expect from the drone king, scroll down to stream the meandering Steamroom 1, which features the tracks “Falling Wall” and “Previous Wall.”