Arc

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  • Artist: Neil Young
  • Rating: StarStarHalf Star
  • Release Date: 1991 10
  • Total Time: 34:58
  • Type: Live
  • Genre: Rock

Review

A 35-minute "compilation compositor" by Neil Young, Arc consists of a series of excerpts from 1991 concerts by Young & Crazy Horse strung together. Young has taken the tune-ups and outros, the guitar feedback, and random playing and singing from various songs and shows, and constructed a nearly atonal sound collage. Now and then, he is heard singing a verse or two from "Like a Hurricane" or another song, but for the most part, Arc sounds like a band preparing to play a song that never actually begins or trying to end one that has not been heard. As such, the album ranks with such studies in noise as Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. [Initially, Arc was released in a 25,000-copy limited edition called Arc Weld (Reprise 26746) containing the two discs making up the live album Weld.] ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi

Previous:Arc (1978 Album by Arc)
Next:Arc (1993 Album by Jimmy Haslip)
  • Genres: Electronica

Biography

One of several guises under which Savvas Ysatis and Taylor Deupree recorded during the 1990s in New York, which also included the more significant work as SETI and Futique. ~ Jason Birchmeier, Rovi
Top
Arc
Live album by Neil Young
Released 1991
Recorded 1991 North American tour
Genre Noise rock
Computer music
Electronic music
Length 35:00
Label Reprise/Warner Bros. Records
26769
Producer Neil Young
Neil Young chronology
Weld
(1991)
Arc
(1991)
Harvest Moon
(1992)
Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic 2/5 stars [1]

Arc is a composition of feedback, guitar noise, and vocal fragments that was realized from various shows on the 1991 Neil Young and Crazy Horse US tour, which was originally released with Weld in a special-edition 3-CD set called Arc-Weld. Arc bears no small resemblance to the music of Sonic Youth, which was one of the support acts on the tour.

According to an interview with Steve Martin of Agnostic Front that appeared in the December 1991 issue of Pulse! magazine, Arc had its genesis in a film that Neil made called "Muddy Track" (referred to in an interview with David Fricke in the November 28, 1991, issue of Rolling Stone), which consisted of beginnings and endings of various songs from his 1987 European Tour. Neil placed a video camera on his amplifier during the 1987 tour and recorded the beginnings and endings of various songs, that were later edited down into the film's soundtrack. "It was the sound of the entire band being sucked into this little limiter, being compressed and fuckin' distorted to hell," Neil said to Martin, referring to the soundtrack of "Muddy Track". Young showed the video to Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, a noted figure in New York's avant-garde music scene, who suggested that he record an entire album in a similar manner. However, Arc was not recorded through video camera microphones, as was the case with "Muddy Track", but instead was compiled from various professional multi-track recordings made throughout the tour.

Track listing

  1. "Arc (A Compilation Composition)" – 35:00

A compilation composition by Neil Young

Personnel

References

  1. ^ Ruhlmann, William. Arc (album) at Allmusic

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