ust about every review or article about Arthur Russell mentions his beginnings in music, the stuff that preceded his best-known disco music. That is, his start as a classically trained cellist who studied Indian music with Ali Akbar Khan and, after his move to New York, his work with minimal composers such as Philip Glass and Rhys Chatham. Until First Thought Best Thought however, his experimental composition has been the hardest of his released music to actually hear. Even the similarly titled Another Thought consisted of vox and cello songs, despite being released on Philip Glass’ label, Point.

The first CD of this double disc set contains two untitled volumes of Instrumentals. The second volume was previously released by Les Disques Du Crepuscle in 1984 and is, to many, the least favoured of his recorded work put out during his lifetime. Part of the blame for that must rest with the fact that side two of the LP was mastered at half speed—an egregious fuck-up by any standard. Recorded live at New York performance space The Kitchen in 1978, sparse cello, trombone, and clarinet lines hang in space like dust motes in winter light. The majority of the volume is conspicuously drum and percussion free, perhaps because the previous year Russell, under the name Dinosaur, had recorded his first disco track, the vertiginous and rhythmically intense “Kiss Me Again.” This volume of Instrumentals is uneventful in a fashion that is equally hard to get involved with or alienated by, like the constant sound of traffic outside a window which the ear soon learns to filter out. In his notes from the original release, Russell writes that it hints at “the popular radio sound of the future.” I have not one clue what he could have meant by this.

The earlier, 1975, recordings that make up the first volume of Instrumentals were supposed to form a part of the same record but remained unreleased until now, which is unfortunate as they are the superior set—much more harmonically active and with a greater range of tone-colour. Beefed up with flute, bass, guitar, and synth, this is purposeful music that has a point, a destination. The electric piano and sly, catchy percussion makes the biggest difference, pitching the sound somewhere between Moondog and some of Miles Davis’ seventies recordings. At its most stripped back and processional it resembles Dolly Collins arrangements for her sister Shirley’s Love, Death and the Lady.

Tower of Meaning which takes up the bulk of the second CD was recorded in 1981 and originally released in 1983 in an edition of only 320 copies. Horn lines develop like cello strokes, swinging back and forth like a bow drawn slowly across strings. Sections of the compositions begin and end so abruptly that you might think there was a fault with the tape machine that recorded the performance if the sleeve notes didn’t reassure that “abrupt beginnings, endings and edits… are intentional.” Sounds pass by like a drowsy view from the window of a moving car.

In a 1987 interview with Frank Owen published in Melody Maker, Russell talked about wanting to “have brass bands and orchestras playing outdoors in parks with those band-stands that project echo. I also want to have Casio keyboards on sailboats. Have you ever been on a sailboat? It's so quiet; all you hear is wind and sea." The last, unreleased, track here, “Sketch for the Face of Helen” incorporates some of these ideas in incunabular form. A cheap keyboard drifts like a boat at sea over a field recording of a tugboat journey (another echo of Moondog who released recordings of himself playing along with the lonely howl of tugboat horns.). Unlike the other music on this compilation, it doesn’t sound worked on: What should just be a slight ten minutes of ambient drift has a beauty that keeps me returning for more.