The room › Artists › Arthur Russell
Where to start with Arthur Russell
Start with The Platform On The Ocean — Calling Out Of Context, 2000. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 17 Arthur Russell tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 14,971 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 17 Arthur Russell tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 17 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
Every track is filed under art pop; nothing here crosses into another genre.
The mood knob swings 88 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
The Platform On The Ocean — Calling Out Of Context, 2000. Of the 17 Arthur Russell tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.
If you want the melancholy end
Being It — World Of Echo, 1986. The lowest mood reading of any Arthur Russell track in the room (6 out of 100). This is as far towards melancholy as the collection goes.
If you want the euphoric end
Planted A Thought — Love Is Overtaking Me, 2004. The highest mood reading here, at 94 out of 100 — a 88-point swing across the collection towards euphoric.
Where Arthur Russell sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Arthur Russell's average coordinates and the range they cover.
| Knob | Average | Range | Low → high |
|---|---|---|---|
| mood | 67 | 6–94 | melancholy → euphoric |
| energy | 56 | 25–88 | ambient → driving |
| density | 63 | 30–95 | sparse → wall |
| head · body | 64 | 26–90 | cerebral → groove |
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Love Is Overtaking Me | 2004 | 5 |
| Iowa Dream | 2019 | 4 |
| Calling Out Of Context | 2000 | 4 |
| 12“ | 1986 | 1 |
| Single | 2015 | 1 |
| Corn | 2015 | 1 |
| World Of Echo | 1986 | 1 |
Every Arthur Russell track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Let's Go Swimming (Puppy Surf Dub) | 12“ | 1986 |
| Being It | World Of Echo | 1986 |
| Arm Around You | Calling Out Of Context | 2000 |
| Make 1,2 | Calling Out Of Context | 2000 |
| That's Us/Wild Combination | Calling Out Of Context | 2000 |
| The Platform On The Ocean | Calling Out Of Context | 2000 |
| Habit Of You | Love Is Overtaking Me | 2004 |
| Janine | Love Is Overtaking Me | 2004 |
| Planted A Thought | Love Is Overtaking Me | 2004 |
| The Letter | Love Is Overtaking Me | 2004 |
| Your Motion Says | Love Is Overtaking Me | 2004 |
| Come To Life | Iowa Dream | 2012 |
| Lucky Cloud | Corn | 2015 |
| Dinosaur L - Go Bang (Francois Kevorkian Mix) | Single | 2015 |
| I Still Love You | Iowa Dream | 2019 |
| Words of Love | Iowa Dream | 2019 |
| You Did It Yourself | Iowa Dream | 2019 |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Arthur Russell's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — qawwali, 29 tracks
- Where to start with Shiro Schwarz — vaporwave, 23 tracks
- Where to start with Noriko Sakai — city pop, 23 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Arthur Russell as a solo artist, from Oskaloosa, the United States and born in 1951. Its contributors tag the artist favoritos, oskaloosa, iowa, club and dance. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Arthur Russell tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 17, across 7 albums. 17 of them carry a date, running from 1986 to 2019. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 17 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 17 of these 17 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.