# Jim O'Rourke (musician)

Jim O'Rourke (born January 18, 1969) is an American musician, instrumentalist, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer. He is best known for his numerous solo and collaborative music projects, many of which are instrumental, and has been acclaimed for his music that spans varied genres, including avant-garde styles such as ambient, noise and minimalism, and styles of rock like indie rock and post-rock. He has been associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene, as well as with New York City when he relocated there in 2000 for his tenure as a member of American indie rock band Sonic Youth. He subsequently moved to Japan and has since been a Japanese resident.

## Biography

O'Rourke was born on January 18, 1969, in Chicago, Illinois. He is an alumnus of DePaul University.
O'Rourke has collaborated with Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Kim Gordon, Steve Shelley, Derek Bailey, Mats Gustafsson, Mayo Thompson, Brigitte Fontaine, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Merzbow, Nurse with Wound, Phill Niblock, Fennesz, Organum, Phew, Henry Kaiser and Flying Saucer Attack. He has produced and instrumentally contributed to albums by artists such as Sonic Youth, Wilco, Stereolab, Superchunk, Kahimi Karie, Quruli, John Fahey, Smog, Faust, Tony Conrad, The Red Krayola, Bobby Conn, Beth Orton, and U.S. Maple. He mixed Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album and produced their 2004 album, A Ghost Is Born, for which he won a Grammy Award for "Best Alternative Album". During the recording of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, O'Rourke collaborated with Wilco member Jeff Tweedy and pre-Wilco Glenn Kotche under the name Loose Fur. Their self-titled debut was released in 2003 with a follow-up in 2006 entitled Born Again in the USA. He also mixed the unfinished recordings that made up a planned third album by the late American singer-songwriter Judee Sill, recorded in 1974 and mixed by O'Rourke for a 2005 release. In 2006, O'Rourke mixed Joanna Newsom's album Ys, and in 2009, he also mixed several tracks on Newsom's follow up Have One On Me.
O'Rourke has previously been a member of Illusion of Safety, Brise-Glace with Darin Gray and Dylan Posa, Gastr Del Sol with David Grubbs and Sonic Youth. Beginning in 1999 he played bass guitar, guitar and synthesizer with Sonic Youth, in addition to recording and mixing duties with the group. He withdrew as a full member in late 2005, but continued to play with them in some of their side projects.
O'Rourke has also released many albums under his own name on a variety of labels, exploring a range of electronic and avant-garde styles. His most well-known works may be his series of releases on Drag City, which focus on more traditional songcraft: Bad Timing (1997), Eureka (1999), Insignificance (2001), The Visitor (2009) and Simple Songs (2015). The titles of the first four albums all refer to films by the British director Nicolas Roeg; the first three by direct reference to film titles, the fourth being titled after a fictional album within Roeg's film The Man Who Fell To Earth.
With music director Takehisa Kosugi, he played for the Merce Cunningham dance company for four years. He was a guitarist for the 1999 premiere of Cunningham's ballet Biped with Gavin Bryars in Berkeley, California.
O'Rourke received a 2001 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.
Since 2013, O'Rourke has used his Steamroom Bandcamp page to release reissues of rare and older material, as well as original newer pieces.
O'Rourke is currently in a relationship with Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi, with whom he frequently collaborates. The two met when Ishibashi played flute on an album of Burt Bacharach covers that O'Rourke was producing. They live and work closely together, but "keep a professional distance, sending each other data files to work on rather than jamming."
In 2024, O'Rourke contributed to the soundtrack of A.S. Velasca (football club and total work of art created by Wolfgang Natlacen) by composing the Theme.

## Work in films

* O'Rourke worked as a music consultant for the 2003 film School of Rock, in which he taught the child actors in the movie how to play the songs. He was supposed to have a cameo role in the film as well, but couldn't do it as he was on tour with Sonic Youth.
* The song "Happy Days" was featured in the Harmony Korine film Julien Donkey-Boy.
* He scored the 2002 film Love Liza, directed by Todd Louiso.
* He scored the 2004 video installation "Fireball" and did the sound design on the documentary "Red Orchestra" by Stefan Roloff.
* He has also scored films by Werner Herzog, Olivier Assayas, Shinji Aoyama, Kōji Wakamatsu and others.
* His own short films have been part of the 2004 and 2006 Whitney Biennial and the 2005 Rotterdam Film Festival.
* His first three full-length albums for Drag City are named after three successive films by director Nicolas Roeg: Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession, Eureka, and Insignificance. His fourth Drag City album, The Visitor, is named for an album that appears within Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, recorded by the film's protagonist Thomas Jerome Newton.
* He scored Kōji Wakamatsu's film United Red Army in 2007.
* He scored Kyle Armstrong's 2012 documentary film Magnetic Reconnection (narrated by Will Oldham).
* He scored the 2014 British film The Creeping Garden.
* He produced and played on the soundtrack for Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car, composed by Eiko Ishibashi.
* He mixed, mastered and played guitar on the soundtrack for Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exist, composed by Eiko Ishibashi.

## Drag City discography

* Bad Timing (1997)
* Eureka (1999)
* Halfway to a Threeway EP (1999)
* Insignificance (2001)
* The Visitor (2009)
* Simple Songs (2015)
* Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2023)

## Partial solo discography

* Some Kind of Pagan (Sound of Pig, 1989)
* It Takes Time To Do Nothing (Audiofile Tapes, 1990)
* Secure on the Loose Rim (Sound of Pig, 1991)
* The Ground Below Above Our Heads (Entenpfuhl, 1991)
* Tamper (Extreme Records, 1991)
* Disengage (Staalplaat, 1992)
* Scend (Divided Records, 1992)
* Remove the Need (Extreme Records, 1993)
* Rules of Reduction (Metamkine, 1993)
* When in Vanitas... (Skin Graft, 1994)
* Terminal Pharmacy (Tzadik Records, 1995)
* Happy Days (Revenant Records, 1997)
* Bad Timing (Drag City, 1997)
* Eureka (Drag City, 1999)
* Halfway to a Threeway EP (Drag City, 1999)
* Insignificance (Drag City, 2001)
* I'm Happy and I'm Singing and a 1, 2, 3, 4 (Mego, 2001)
* Mizu No Nai Umi (vector7/HEADZ54, 2005)
* Corona / Tokyo Realization (Columbia Music Entertainment, 2006) – Japan only release. Dedicated to Tōru Takemitsu
* The Visitor (Drag City, 2009) – Dedicated to Derek Bailey.
* All Kinds of People ~ Love Burt Bacharach (AWDR, 2010)
* Old News #5 (Mego, 2011)
* Old News #6 (Mego, Aug 2011)
* Old News #7 (Mego, Feb 2012)
* Old News #8 (Mego, Sep 2012)
* Old News #9 (Mego, Oct 2012)
* Simple Songs (Drag City, 2015)
* Flying Basket (Family Vineyard, 2015)
* Sleep Like It's Winter (Newhere Music, 2018)
* To Magnetize Money and Catch a Roving Eye (Sonoris, 2019)
* Shutting Down Here (Portraits GRM, 2020)
* Too Compliment (DDS, 2021)