A secret hero of the dancefloor, the avant garde producer and musician Arthur Russell occupies a strange and silvery slot in the annals of music. He was a low-key cult figure in his lifetime, but one who has been increasingly celebrated. His prodigious output and his refusal to have that work pinned down has, in the decades since his death from Aids-related illness in 1992, birthed a small cottage industry of admiration and exegesis: compilations, reissues, covers albums, biographies and even a film. The Barbican in London has given over a night in May to celebrate Russell’s often confounding, genre-spanning work – and the publication of this latest account.
Russell first became a minor legend among clubland cognoscenti thanks to a handful of woozy bangers he put out under names such as Dinosaur L (Go Bang!) and Loose Joints (Pop Your Funk) in the early 1980s – discs spun compulsively at hallowed New York clubs such as the Paradise Garage, before percolating out to Chicago, Ibiza and beyond. Unexpectedly, Kanye West sampled Russell’s tune Answers Me on his 2016 track, 30 Hours – but it wasn’t one of his dancefloor hits. Answers Me is almost gestural, a dub composition for cello, percussion and voice taken from World of Echo, Russell’s 1986 album, a record widely met with bafflement upon release that now occasionally crops up on best-albums-of-all-time lists.
