Give It To The Sky: Arthur Russell’s Tower Of Meaning Expanded

Erased Tapes

Electronic

CD ERATP161CD

£14.99 Out of stock

2×LP (Coloured Vinyl) ERATP161LE

£29.99 In stock

Tracklist

1 Tower of Meaning I

2 Tower of Meaning II

3 Tower of Meaning III

4 Tower of Meaning IV

5 Corky I / White Jet Set Smoke Trail I

6 Consideration

7 Tower of Meaning V

8 Tower of Meaning VI

9 Tower of Meaning VII

10 Tower of Meaning VIII

11 Tower Of Meaning IX/Corky II

12 Tower of Meaning X

13 Give It to the Sky

14 Tower of Meaning XI

15 Tower of Meaning XII

16 Corky III/Tower Of Meaning XIII

17 White Jet Smoke Trail II

Ensemble 0 weave in and out of Broderick’s additions. ‘Corky’, a poignant cowboy ballad that Russell never finished, appears, disappears, and reappears three times, the droning exhalations of ‘Tower of Meaning’ making it feel sweeter and sadder. Arriving just after the triumphant halfway mark, the title track is a sublime meditation on mere existence, about staring at some simple rural scene and marcelling at the miracle of being anywhere at all. It is an apt encapsulation of how this entire project feels – a glorious way to hear something that might have seemed familiar as if for the very first time.

Russell was never much for definitive versions, of course. He was constantly rethinking the possibilities of a piece, of wondering what else it could do. ‘Give it to the Sky’ is a powerful affirmation of those principles, using Tower of Meaning’s framework to build outward and upward, to shape something that functions within Russell’s wondrous, paradoxical world. And ‘Give it to the Sky’ is also not intended to be some definitive last word. Broderick and Ensemble 0 speak already of the ways it may shift on stage, of where else it might lead.