Drag City has been on an incredible run the last few years, issuing some of the most exciting releases we've encountered during that time. Just when you thought they couldn't do it any better, they've dropped "We Have Dozens of Titles", an astounding X3LP box set of material by Gastr Del Sol, the seminal duo of David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke. Representing the first release by the band since 1998's “Camoufleur”, it gathers a mind-altering, never before released body of broadcast quality live recordings made by Gastr in 1997, as well as the near entirety of their uncollected output that appeared across various EPs, singles, and compilations during their all too brief years of activity.

Of all the contexts of underground music to emerge from the United States during the last quarter of the 20th Century, the movement of post-rock that fermented in Chicago during the 1990s was unquestionably among the most singular, radical and unique. Impossible to define due to its diversity and vast breadth of touchstones - prog, punk / post-punk, jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, folk, kosmische, experimental music, etc. - nearly every band, despite often sharing members, that appeared within this scene - Tortoise, Sea and Cake, Brokeback, Town And Country, Pullman, The For Carnation, Storm & Stress - maintained an entirely singular sound that bore little resemblance to the others, or anything else. Among the most important and groundbreaking of these groups was Gastr Del Sol, the famed duo of David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke.

Gastr Del Sol was founded in 1991 in Chicago by David Grubbs, evolving out of the last incarnation of his band Bastro, with Bundy K. Brown and John McEntire. Following the release of the project’s first full-length, “The Serpentine Similar”, Brown and McEntire left to join Doug McCombs and John Herndon, with whom they had already been working, in Tortoise, opening the door for the band’s seminal line-up as the duo of Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke, joined by a rotating cast of collaborators.

Beginning with their first two releases as a duo, 1994’s “Mirror Repair” and “Crookt, Crackt, Or Fly”, Gastr Del Sol marked out a highly singular, experimental territory of song-craft - open, angular, intricate, spacious, and nearly impossible to anticipate, even after multiple listens - that continued to evolve and transform itself in both live contexts and two further full lengths - “Upgrade & Afterlife” (1996) and “Camoufleur” (1998) - and a handful of EPs that appeared on various labels until their dissolution toward the end of the 90s.

“We Have Dozens of Titles”, Gastr Del Sol’s first release in 26 years, comprises roughly an hour of previously unreleased live recordings, as well as collecting a similar duration of studio recordings drawn from their catalog of singles, EPs - including “The Harp Factory on Lake Street” (originally released on Table of the Elements in 1995), the untitled composition issued on the “20 Songs Less” 7” by Teenbeet in 1994, “The Japanese Room At La Pagode”, issued on a split with Tony Conrad in 1995 - and tracks, for the first time on vinyl, that only appeared on compilations like “Dead Cats in a Foghorn”, “Quietly Approaching” and “The Bells of St. Mary’s”.

The majority of the live recordings that appear interspersed across the three LPs of “We Have Dozens of Titles” were discovered in the CBC archive, and are of broadcast-quality made by the duo of Grubbs and O’Rourke at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in 1997, marking the last time they would play together as Gastr del Sol, and includes a number of pared down, revelatory early versions of songs that would later appear on “Camoufleur”, as well as a brilliant version of the track "Onion Orange” that had appeared the year prior on Grubbs’ debut solo album, “Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange”.

Tense as a wound up top in all of its restrained, minimal glories, “We Have Dozens of Titles” is an astounding immersion into the output of one of the most radically singular projects of the late 20th Century, bridging, like no other band could, forward-thinking and groundbreaking experimentalism with the idiom of rock. Ranging from space instrumental works to angular, melodic pop, each shift, turn, and evolution leaves you wondering where they’ll go next and how they arrived where they have. Perhaps even more than at the time, with more than two decades behind this material, it’s impossible not to register how ahead of their time Gastr Del Sol was. Has anyone really caught up?

Gathering an astounding body of beautifully crafted live recordings as well as more or less the entirety of their recorded output that appeared beyond “Mirror Repair” and the band’s four full lengths - the majority of which have never appeared on vinyl until now - “We Have Dozens of Titles” is a gold mine for any fan of Gastr del Sol, as well as anyone encountering them for the first time.