There was a time when the mere mention of Thurston Moore’s name would raise a very excitable ripple across our plaid shirts. Unfortunately, his involvement in music now, more often than not, merely results in something like this. This time round it’s Moore, his ex-Sonic Youth sidekick Jim O’Rourke, plus four members of avant acts such as The Thing, The Ex and Zu. It amounts to absolutely nothing of any musical value at all.
Featuring two elongated, sprawling and structureless ‘songs’ (one of which lasts for over 46 minutes!) improvised live in Italy, The First Original Silence is the product of six talented artists taking perverse pleasure in making utterly aimless music. They do rock, they do free-jazz, they do instrumentals where trumpets and guitars endlessly squeal in pitches only animals can endure, but they�do no tunes. Not one. Perhaps most shocking of all, the title is no joke: there really is more of this to come. These days, sadly, Moore’s actual silence is often more preferable than his Original one.
