ANDRE SIDER AF SONIC YOUTH

SONIC YOUTH ETC.: SENSATIONAL FIX: OPENING JUNE 17

An opening event to celebrate the museum exhibition SONIC YOUTH ETC. will be held at LiFE, St. Nazaire, France on June 17 at 8pm. The exhibition focuses on the multidisciplinary activities of Sonic Youth since the band's formation in 1981. It features the band's collaborations with visual artists, filmmakers, designers and musicians, as well as a choice of other works selected by the band. Through the multidisciplinary output of Sonic Youth and related works by other artists in the exhibition, an alternative history of contemporary culture is being uncovered in which the division between 'high art' and 'low art' is being called into question, while issues are explored such as teenage rebellion, adolescent wanderlust, gender, fame, fashion, sexuality, and religion. The exhibition is initiated and curated by freelance curator Roland Groenenboom in collaboration with the band and will be presented at LiFE, (from 17 June to 7 September 2008), MUSEION , Bolzano, Italy (from 10 October 2008 to 4 January 2009), and Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Germany (31 January to 26 April 2009). Further venues are currently in discussion, in Europe, the US and Asia. A complete description of the show can be found at http://www.sonicyouth.com.


HITS ARE FOR SQUARES

Sonic Youth will release 'Hits Are For Squares' on Starbucks Music on June 10th. This exclusive compilation album features Sonic Youth songs chosen by friends of the band from the worlds of music, film and literature. Each contributor also offers a personal testimonial for their own selection from a unique and influential body of work spanning from 1981 to present. Amongst the selectors are Beck, Dave Eggers, Chloe Sevigny, Eddie Vedder, and Gus Van Sant. The compilation also includes an exclusive track from Sonic Youth, 'Slow Revolution' recorded with producer John Agnello.

The album will be sold exclusively at select Starbucks stores in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia and DC. It is available online at http://www.hearmusic.com.


SYR 8 'ANDRE SIDER AF SONIC YOUTH'

This installment of Sonic Youth's series of experimental + mostly instrumental releases will be available July 28 2008 in a CD-only edition self-released on the band's own SYR label.

This disk presents the complete 'Other Sides of Sonic Youth' improvised live performance from the 2005 Roskilde Festival in Denmark, featuring Sonic Youth (with Jim O'Rourke) and guests Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, and Japanese sound artist Masami Akita (aka Merzbow). The single piece performed was a structured improvisation which for 60 minutes added and subtracted musicians one by one until only Masami was left onstage. Black Sabbath followed. Available from http://www.sonicyouth.com/store.

SUMMER SHOWS

Sonic Youth will perform a free concert in Battery Park in Manhattan July 4 with the Feelies. Later in the Summer, SY will take time off from working on a new record to play a select few shows in Europe, finishing with a performance at the Les Escales Festival in conjunction with the nearby "Sensational Fix" show at LiFE:

July 4 New York, NY Battery Park August 4 Leucate (next to Perpignan), France Les Mediterraneennes Festival August 5 Lokeren, Belgium Lokerse Feesten August 7 Oslo, Norway Oya Festival August 8 Goteborg, Sweden Way Out West Festival August 9 St. Nazaire, France Les Escales Festival

VISIT THE SY.COM STORE

Visit http://sonicyouth.com/store for an ever-changing selection of Sonic Youth merchandise including the SYR 7 12" and SYR 8 on CD.

12:58 PM - 4 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Sonic Youth - Summer 2006
Current mood: ecstatic

Friendz, family, petz and alienz --- we, Sonic Youth, are hitting the heavy
highwayz of America starting promptly June 13th.

So believe this: RATHER RIPPED is OUT!!!! that day as well. We are
celebrating at an already jammed out CBGB. We will then
commence to crank the raunch non-stop. Itinerary is on this page, check it.
The record is easily found on CD. If you look deep enuff (try our
webstore at sonicyouth.com) you can find RR on vinyl LP with completely
different cover art. We've also released a 7" of tunes we
didn't put on record which are RRAAWW. 1st week of dates are with nashville
teenster dynamite Be Your OWN Pet and the rest of tour is mostly with
Brooklyn goodtime groovsters Awesome Color. West Coast we're jamming on the
Pearl Jam stage, doing some shows with Flaming Lipz and ending it all in a
Brooklyn pool with Yeah Yeah Yeahs. We'll be doing some righteous TV
destruction along the way, LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN (this friday june 16th), and extra face shred with Conan on NBC and Kimmel on ABC.
Bust out the Tivo, momma!

Later,

thurston/sonic youth

ps. for up-to-date sy news and still-to-be confirmed tour dates visit us at sonicyouth.com

11:13 PM - 59 Comments - 60 Kudos - Add Comment

Sonic Youth s/t 2xLP by David Keenan

Sonic Youth
s/t 2xLP
Goofin Records Goo-08

The first Sonic Youth EP – originally released on
Glenn Branca's Neutral imprint – sits alongside the
Sonic Death cassette and the Kill Yr Idols LP as some
of the group's most evocatively blasted work. Listened
to with modern ears it's immediately remarkable just
how fully-formed the Sonic Youth sound was, even as
early as their first quartet gig – included here in
its entirety on disc two. The complex interlocking
webs of dissonant guitars are as distinctive as ever –
even when rendered via conventional tuning – and the
automatic/somnambulant delivery of the lyrics is every
bit as zoned as on later tracks from Evol and Bad Moon
Rising. There's still a fair bit of new wave damage in
the way the bass works melodic runs around the guitars
and even a hint of Velvets-via-Television in the
locked combinations of chords but it's really
impossible to mistake this for anyone else, even at
this, supposedly nascent, stage. This great upgraded
edition includes the whole of the debut LP (originally
released March 1982) as well as the first gig from
September 1981, a studio outtake, a gatefold sleeve
with lots of great early snaps and fliers and killer
sleeve notes from Byron Coley and first drummer
Richard Edson who recalls leaving Sonic Youth for, uh,
the "Funky-groovelectric-Afro-Latin dance and party
band" Konk. They thought Sonic Youth were "squares".
Doh!

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SYR6 - From David Keenan's Volcanic Tongue site

Sonic Youth su Tim Barnes
Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui
SYR Records ..6
CD

Long-awaited sixth volume in Sonic Youth’s
privately-pressed series documenting their furthest
orbits of the map. Koncertas Stan Brakhage
Prisiminimui consists of a live recording from a
benefit show held at New York’s Anthology Film
Archives on April 12 2003 where the quintet line-up
was bolstered by the addition of percussionist Tim
Barnes (Tower Recordings et al). The performance is
one of their most fully-dilated navigations of zoned
free improvisation, with extended breaths of silence
cut up with explosive string action and clusters of
magnetic silhouette. Last track is one of the most
ferociously locomotive slow-burners of their entire
career, with an almost Charalambides level of heavy
gravity cut up with tortuous peaks of Evol-style grime
while Shelley and Barnes harvest huge snowballs of
rhythm. Best SYR outing to date and highly
recommended.

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Noise Trip: memoriez of noise fest

Noise Trip : memoriez of Noise Fest
by Thurston Moore

We had just changed our name to Sonic Youth. Before that it was the Arcadians, named after the ancient Greeks or whatever who communicated through song. And before that we were called Red Milk. Not sure where that came from. Did a few gigs at Arleen Schloss' A-Space on Broome St between Chrystie and Bowery. The Arcadians did a couple of sorta exciting gigs at CBGB, once on the bill with a group led by an ex-girlfriend of Robert Fripp's. That was pretty heavy (not). And a gig at Great Gildersleeves a predominantly heavy metal hangout that hosted an evening as presented by The Kitchen. We went on first before Glen Branca and some ensemble led by Bill Obrecht and others. We were trying to get gigs at other joints most notably Hurrahs as that was the hot joint to go to then. Big room, loud DJing by the kid brother of Ed Bahlman from 99 Records - the only record store that had the sides we dug and a great alternative to the 70s punk bloat of Bleeker Blobs, hot mix of people. Saw some amazing gigs there. Young Marble Giants, Y-Pants, The Slits, Pop Group, Bush Tetras when they were for a while there the best band on the planet. It became even tougher to get gigs when Hurrah closed which made no sense. The owner issued a statement in Soho Weekly News that there weren't any good bands in the city they all just seemed to make a lot of noise. What the fuck. As if that was such a bad thing.

Kim Gordon, a beautiful artist girl who had relocated from L.A. to NYC, and I started hanging out. We began Sonic Youth from the loose jamming I had going on with Ann Demarinis who was living with Vito Acconci. We rehearsed at Vito's in Brooklyn. Kim was working at Anina Nosei Gallery, had curated a show there. White Columns had started up as a gallery owned by Josh Baer, son of white canvas painter Jo Baer. Not sure how Kim met him or why she became involved with his new White Columns scene but she did and curated a show there called the Record Cover show where artists displayed record covers. Around this time (this is all 1979-81 period I'd hazard to guess) she mentioned to me that Josh would like to do a music event at the space and would I like to pick the bands. Yes I would. Especially in light of the Hurrahs dude thinking there was nothing happening. I knew there was. There was a lot of weird experimental avant activity coming out of A-Space alone. There was the whole Mofungo gang of lower east side hepsters referencing Beefheart before Lamont Young (Lamony was more Rhys Chatham territory and to a more remote extent Branca). There was the whole conflux of Soho-ites involved with the Chatham/Branca guitar plexus axis: Rudolph Grey, Jules Baptiste, Lee Ranaldo (who wasn't in SY yet - he came in the band pretty much immediately after Noise Fest - in fact our first rehearsal as such with Lee was at White Columns in preparation for some weird gig at a Just Above Midtown/Downtown Gallery opening - Barbara Ess played bongos w/ us for that gig(!)).

I called the event Noise Fest in reaction to what the Hurrah jerko had said and to reclaim the term noise from its derisive status. I made a short list of bands. Branca was of advice leading me to people like John Rehberger and Mark Cunningham, who was mythological to us as he was in the group Mars, probably the most notoriously "out" no wave group of the 70s. All the musicians and bands responded and were ready to play. A lot of them knew of each other but not everyone had really ever cohabitated so much together and, as such, Noise Fest was a watermark event in that a community of disparate yet contemporary avant garde post no wave punk experimentalists got to hang out, meet each other, and feel connected. It was great. Bands started calling me to be involved. Just about anyone who did call I said yes to. The fest grew from a one to two to four to five to six to nine day event. Insane. Some band from Georgia called Vietnam strode in because they heard about this thing brewing and asked to play. Sure, why not. The female drum machinist was a young Sue Garner who stayed in NYC and has continued creating fantastic music. Kim curated the attendant wall art show which had its own opening I believe. A lot of this is fuzzy I tell ya. I remember one afternoon during some kind of soundcheck when John Belushi and some pals walked in to see what was happening. Belushi's hang out was this 2nd story party jont in a building on Spring and Varick, a block or two away. He was chomping on a cigar and looked bemused, but not fully sold. When Lee Ranaldo and David Linton played as Avoidance Behavior there music was so harsh and shattering that the entire audience sat on the floor with their fingers in their ears. A woman who lived up the street came over in her bare feet, shaking, and complained about the din. She was incredulous as to how this was happening unregulated on her block. In tears she pointed to the ear plugged audience watching Lee and David kill. "What the hell is this?" - she was so confused. Elliot Sharp called me to play and I said sure though I had not known of Elliot at that point. He was more part of whatever free improv scene existed along with a young John Zorn and others. This was a group not represented only because of my not being too aware of it. But I granted Elliot a gig on the night Branca was to play. Glen had put together his evening pretty much and wasn't into the intrusion of someone he hadn't chosen being stuck in he middle of it. So I had to call Elliot and say it wasn't going to happen. Highly unprofessional, but what did I know? The etiquette of booking was not exactly something I had experience with. Certainly Elliot was bummed by such crapola and in retrospect it's a damn shame he wasn't there - or Zorn, or any number of avant loft jazz improv cats. Whatever, it was loose, and it all just happened. Me, Kim, Ann, Josh and Barbara Ess sat around White Columns daily and had fun just coming up with ideas. Barbara did a t-shirt design, flyers were made, sometimes in editions of one. There was a main poster which went through two permutations as the roster was adjusted. Some staple zine catalogue of the art show which I don't even recall (Lee says he has one). I tried to get some of the new first generation hardcore bands but they were so young they couldn't seem to dial the phone. I liked the Beastie Boys who had done a couple of gigs around the art world but they were way scattered. But their friends the Primitives responded and they became the representatives of that scene. They were amazing in their very unschooled attack. The 14 year old lead singer with a mohawk had a lot to say about Ronald Reagan. Innocent times.

Lester Bangs called me from a phone booth and said he wanted to write about Noise Fest because if there was one thing he knew about it was noise. I invited him down, not only to see the bands, but for himself to play. I told him he could do anything he wanted. He was billed on the last night, on the makeshift marquee outside, as The Lester Bangs Explosion. He showed up after we had locked the doors of the gallery and were strolling east on Spring St., really young and lost in the glory of what went down the entire time. I recognized him as he came galomping down the street, he had a record under his arm. "Lester! it's over! Yr too late!" all smiles. He seemed a little inebriated but certainly not fall down drunk. He was real happy about the record he had just got: A Taste of DNA. He loved DNA. I was impressed, we walked together towards somewhere, Lester split to god knows where.

Ann Demarinis taped everything, or at least almost everything (John Rehberger's music was performed off a boat just down the street on the Hudson River). Josh had a connection with Rosetta Brooks at ZG Magazine, a new UK contempo-art essay zine and ZG agreed to release the tapes as a cassette. When Branca started up Neutral Records, Sonic youth were his first release. Plus I got asked to work there calling distributors and stores to see if they'd carry our records. I was replaced by a UK refugee from Rough Trade called Peter Wright who had a much better handle on such biz. I just wanted to rock. one of the last things I did at Neutral was distribute the Noise Fest cassette. I remember we had them all in a big garbage bag. I would haul the bag from record store to record store - there weren't that many - maybe ten stores at the most - some of them took one or two on consignment. The rest I gave to the artists and to whoever wanted one. I kept one for myself which I lost for years but finally found. I think I have the Barbara Ess t-shirt buried somewhere though it's been ages since I've peeped it. If the Noise Fest did anything it brought noise home to the artist punks who utilized it. The downtown art/music scene was activated and energized by it and a certain collective camaraderie was established. A lot of us still maintain good friends and memories from it. There was one weird band from Brooklyn called Fakir who had this really messed up sounding 7" which they brought in and asked if they could play. They were kind of young and hippiesh and how they came to find me in White Columns I'll never know. I said they could play and they were awesome, odd and sensual, as opposed to some of the mostly stringent angularities being projected by the Soho heavy squad (tho Glen B and yeh Kim G had complete boner popping stylez). I wonder whatever happened to those kids. Anyone know?

thurston moore 2005

9:34 PM - 36 Comments - 27 Kudos - Add Comment

Compiling Goo Deluxe

Here are some notes SY engineer Aaron Mullan wrote about compiling goo...
We started compiling the ‘Goo’ deluxe edition as soon ‘Dirty’ deluxe was out of our hands. To start, Steve made a draft of a track list which we would spend the next two years or so revising. Before it was over I had searched and re-searched the Echo Canyon tape vault, the 100-plus page printout of the SY holdings at the Universal vault, and hundreds of cassettes, and even after that we found more tapes sitting at Wharton Tiers’ studio.

Remastering the original album was the first step (we wanted to make sure the remastered audio would also be available for the ‘Corporate Ghost’ DVD.) I understand some people think that ‘re-mastered’ is some bogus sales gimmick, and maybe I won’t convince anyone otherwise who thinks so. But to my mind, the late-70’s to mid-90’s are sort of a dark period of album mastering. That’s when everything started to go digital- even LP cutting. There are tons of hypotheses about why records from this time sound the way they do- one of my favorites is that excessive cocaine use had ruined the engineers’ ability to hear treble frequencies. Maybe true, but the biggest difference is that over time people have learned how to build and operate better digital equipment. So it was time to re-master.

Obviously not every remastering job is an improvement. We must have listened to at least five fully mastered versions of the album until the band was satisfied that the original analog tapes were being properly represented. Hearing the album this way is pretty freaking cool: the drums and guitars have been sort of de-clouded (better-clocked and better-converted, technically) and this leaves more room for bass, returning the correct balance of the mix.

While reference CD’s of the new mastering were being made, listened to, and commented on, we were sorting out bonus tracks. The demo version of the complete album which had been previously bootlegged, and which many people have long preferred to the album proper, was an obvious thing to include. The sound of the released versions of the demos had always been a bummer. Thurston pointed out that the bootleg disks of the demos sounded better than the band’s own version which they released through the (now-defunct) Sonic Death Fan Club. So we dug out the original mix DAT and checked that out. It was better than the Fan Club CD. Then we dug out the 1/2” multitracks, and were totally blown away by the sounds Jim Waters had captured on the original tape. Stripped of a crappy mastering job and a hasty mix, the raw tracks sounded amazing and were emotionally intense. So Jim, Steve, and Lee got together and gave the demos (and ‘I Know There’s an Answer’ which was recorded at the same time) the proper mix they deserved.

The song Lee ..2, which had been included as an instrumental in the demos, also had been recorded during the album sessions and had been mixed along with the rest of the album, but had never been released. Two choice mixes existed, an ‘electric’ mix and an ‘acoustic’ mix. Listening to both of those mixes, neither seemed satisfying. Neither one really found the identity of the song. So we requested the multitracks from the Universal vault. When they arrived I understood the confusion better. Almost all 48 tracks available had been utilized. Not only was there a full electric band, and a full acoustic version overdubbed on that, but there were multiple spoken word tracks by Lee and Jad Fair, backing vocals by J Mascis, and multiple takes of each guitar.

After a couple of days of Lee, Steve, and me sorting through tracks during the day and Lee continuing work through the night, we got started mixing. There were so many possible mixes in those 48 tracks of stuff that we ended up doing one version using only bits not featured in the new final mix: Jad’s spoken word and a Thurston bass part. This mix ended up on the website on Mixtape ..3 to illuminate some of the possibilities that didn’t get used. Mix choices were sent to Kim and Thurston, and eventually everyone picked the version that is on the record.

Since we were mixing Goo-era stuff, we requested from the Universal vault the multitracks of an 11/03/90 show from Irvine, CA which had provided b-sides on the Dirty Boots + 5 EP. The songs which were previously released had been mixed without the band present. So Steve and I remixed the entire concert with a more sympathetic ear. In the end ‘The Bedroom’ was included on the Deluxe Edition. Two songs which had not previously been released are available online (‘Mary-Christ’ on Tower online in the USA and ‘Catholic Block’ on iTunes in the USA and HMV online in the U.K.) and the new mixes of the previously released live tracks will also be available soon on this website.

‘That’s All I Know (Right Now)’ had been an album b-side but it was another one that the band felt had suffered from a hasty mix. It was going to be left off the new disks until we got the multitracks from Wharton Tiers and Steve and I did a new mix to solve the problems, which essentially meant turning up the guitars. It turned out the same reel of tape had a version of ‘The Bedroom’ (known at that point as ‘Can Song’) which had been recorded with Wharton but forgotten about. We mixed that and liked it, too.

‘Dr. Benway’s House’ was originally recorded for William Burroughs’ ‘Dead City Radio’ album during the Goo sessions. The song had been mixed twice with Hal Willner and Joe Ferla. The band listened to the two mixes and chose the ‘more piano’ version which had not previously been released.

Another project which we had started at the studio was the organization and digital archiving of the hundreds of cassette tapes of rehearsals, gigs, and out-takes in the band’s tape library. Focusing on rehearsal tapes, we looked for ones that might be interesting for this project. Although a C-90 of the band writing ‘Dirty Boots’ is an interesting experience, there is no way to condense this drama into a compelling 5-minute chunk. More relevant to a 2-disk set are jams or songs that were never finished, and they were found. ‘Tuff Boyz’ and ‘Isaac’ were the fruits of more LR all-night computer antics.

The Goo Interview Flexi was the only thing we could not find the original source for, although Steve intermittently investigated for almost 2 years. Eventually it had to be taken from an unplayed Flexi disk and digitally scrubbed.

A couple of notes on the vinyl edition:

I pushed Steve for a while that the Flexi should be re-manufactured as a real flexi again for the LP version. The first time I mentioned it he got a very frightened look on his face like ‘Oh, man you may be right and now I have to find who can still make those.’ But once we started figuring out the side breaks, our options were pretty much to do the Flexi as a Flexi and cram everything else onto 3 LP’s, with an overall loss of fidelity, or include the interview on the vinyl sequence and have everything sound better. So we chose fidelity over novelty.

Committing to a 4-LP set gave us more flexibility on the vinyl sequence. As this was the first album the band made thinking more about CD format than vinyl, the vinyl edition had always somewhat suffered. The first side is a couple of minutes longer than the optimal LP side length. This means quieter program on the record, more surface noise, and lower-fidelity. Especially towards the end of ‘Mote’, the skull-warping is less effective because the bandwidth has become so narrow. So for this edition, the album proper was spread across three sides for true hi-fi. The side breaks are different, which is a bit weird. But it’s kind of cool to rethink that too… ‘Mote’ as a side 2 opener? Wild. ‘Mildred Pierce’ as a side 2 closer? Seems natural. And then you have a whole ‘nother side. Starting with ‘Cinderella’s Big Score.’ Wow.

So, that was the process. From hunting down the best possible source of every song, to compiling a dope track list, to ensuring that the mastering, the side breaks, and the artwork were all done right, we worked to present the album as best we could with the advantages of technology and perspective that 15 years time had brought. When I got my test pressing of the new LP’s the first thing I did was to compare ‘Mote’ on the old pressing and the new. The improvement is not subtle. After a couple years working on this project, it was very satisfying. We hope you enjoy the results as much as we do.

Aaron Mullan/Echo Canyon

4:44 PM - 12 Comments - 13 Kudos - Add Comment