Place is the space: The man behind Loose Joints, Dinosaur L, Indian Ocean, and more photo: Tom Lee/Audika Records LLC Arthur Russell World of Echo Audika more music most popular most commented The Return of Mr. Black Dirty Blonde by Annie Fischer Rap's 2008, Beyond Lil Wayne by CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN The Watson Twins' Fire Songs by WERNER TRIESCHMANN Gilberto Gil Bleats Like a Seal by Mike Powell Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson's Empire of Dirt by Reed Fischer Trash Talking With Harvey Weinstein by Tony Ortega Coming and Then Licking It Up. Is This a Gay Thing? Savage Love by Dan Savage At Home With Competitive Swallowers Crazy Legs and Eater X by Andy Kropa Gene Simmons and the Whores He Admires La Dolce Musto by Michael Musto Columbia's Knotty Noose Problem by Graham Rayman The 'W.' Stands for 'War Criminal' (17) Nat Hentoff Scientology's Crushing Defeat (14) Tony Ortega Runnin' Scared: From Brooklyn, a Rap Campaign Against Tight Clothes (9) Runnin' Scared: Arcynta Ali Childs Runnin' Scared: The City Pitted Kids Against Artists in the East Village (6) Runnin' Scared: Chloé A. Hilliard Savage Love: My Boyfriend Almost Fathered a Lesbian Couple's Baby?!? (5) Savage Love: Dan Savage

Familiar dance tracks get clarified to reveal the tone-poem koans beneath: "All-boy, all-girl," Arthur murmurs coyly, his voice amorphous, androgynous, bobbing between such worldly distinctions. As Russell's mumbles jumble fragmented filaments into blurry medleys, his affected cello enunciates with fuzzy fricatives and slippery sibilants. Sighing subtly, elsewhere growling, it shadows the fragile, reflective songs, buoying them in near beatless dub space; the loopy mantras are articulated even as they refract.

Two videos by composer Phill Niblock accompany the aural beatitude, with extreme close-ups of arm-hair shadows, fingertips at play, chin stubble, and eyes that even in darkness shine with the mylar light of a miracle. Arthur's in some imaginary faraway-type place—maybe the locus he hints at on "Hiding Your Present From You" where "you know where it is, but don't know where it is"? Where better to conceal this gift than in the ever unwrapping present?