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Calling Out of Context

by

Arthur Russell

 
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Calling Out of Context
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Avg: 4.5 (30 ratings)

One of the key players of '80s downtown NYC gets a beautiful memorial.

  • We Say...

    Review by Andy Battaglia

    A forgotten luminary who had been all but lost to history, Arthur Russell was a strange, ethereal artist who haunted downtown New York from the late '70s until his death from AIDS in 1992. His recent critical resurrection was ignited for his experimental disco, but Calling Out of Context shows him in a mellow mode somewhere between his dance music and his avant-garde cello work. Most artists would have a hard time making sense of such disparate callings, but Russell's beautiful music always sounds guided by something a little different than usual. "The Platform on the Ocean" features little more than drum machine and some simple guitar static, but Russell's ghostly voice makes it sound epic as he drifts out in a sea of echo. The would-be pop hits "Arm Around You" and "Make 1,2" trade in drum and synth sounds that smack of the '80s, while weirder highlights like "You Can Make Me Feel Bad" and the title track sound closer to timeless. The thrills here prove more soft and subtle than they do in his disco, but like all of Russell's music, Context sounds so intimate and ceremonial that it's both exhilarating and a little eerie.

  • They Say...

    Review by Andy Kellman, All Music Guide

    Like Another Thought, released ten years prior, Calling out of Context stitches together an hour's worth of songs left behind by the late, increasingly known -- and therefore unceasingly beloved -- Arthur Russell. According to liner notes from Audika's Steve Knutson, the content here pulls from a finished 1985 album that never made it past the test-pressing phase, along with an unfinished LP that was recorded and toyed with throughout the latter half of the '80s and the dawn of the '90s. Despite the multiple sources, the consistency of the tracks -- which all carry a hazy, memories-of-events-that-never-happened feel -- and the sympathetic sequencing make the disc seem more like a proper album than a vault-clearing compilation. If you're familiar with the sound that Russell and his accomplices made on singles like "Let's Go Swimming" and Indian Ocean's "School Bell/Treehouse," you'll be familiar with the sound here. On these recordings, Russell (who plays cello, guitar, keyboards, and percussion) is joined primarily by Mustafa Ahmed and Peter Zummo, and the three of them produce an abstract cross between pop and R&B, constructed with drum machines and more organic instrumentation on top. None of these songs woo a crowd of dancers as so many of Russell's short-lived aliases did before; instead, they're more rooted in song-based pop. This goes for the structure of the tracks, and it also goes for the subject matter of the lyrics. One of the greatest joys of listening to these songs is the regular presence of Russell's gentle, somewhat timid voice, which delivers one heartwarming line after another. If you're thinking this might possibly resemble a shoestring-budget, avant-garde version of Jam & Lewis, you're not too far off. With the many hats Russell wore, Calling out of Context should hammer home the fact that he was also a dynamite writer of heart-on-sleeve love songs -- not just a formidable cellist and innovative disco producer.

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