Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth

Walls Have Ears

Goofin'

“Culled from three 1985 gigs in the UK during a transitional and transcendent time in the band’s story, Sonic Youth’s The Walls Have Ears appeared / disappeared as a 2LP set in 1986, not just a live album but an artful tapestry full of live experimentation with songs, between-song tape segues, darkness, humor and audio verité. It’s now issued for the first time officially under the band’s auspices. “The ’85 shows were the second time the band appeared on UK soil, Brits now getting juiced to the mythos of the emerging guitar-slinging American independent underground; an art / punk band from NYC sporting casual attitudes and tees sporting Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and Prince made some good press copy on top of their bludgeoning stage appearance. Paul Smith of the newly-founded Blast First label acted as an overseas diplomatic envoy for Sonic Youth through their SST years as well as issuing their classic 1988 Daydream Nation outside the USA. However the Smith-produced ‘bootleg’ of their ’85 UK gigs surfaced much to everyone’s surprise, just before EVOL was to be released. It turned out to be a marker of the group’s dissatisfaction that ultimately led to the release’s deletion, and the band and Smith parting ways after Daydream. “In this 2LP set brimming with primitive classics like ‘The Burning Spear,’ ‘Death Valley 69,’ and ‘I’m Insane’ (uncredited on sleeve), segues and live guitar changes ooze together threaded by Madonna tapes and vocal loops off the board (somewhat a necessity for distraction until...

Sonic Youth

Live In Brooklyn 2011

Silver Current

The final U.S. show, a triumphant and blistering bookend to the storied career of one of the most influential bands in rock music, featuring a unique and expansive eighty-five minute set list that spans Sonic Youth’s nearly three decade catalog. Mixed from multitrack by longtime live engineer Aaron Mullan and mastered and cut by Carl Saff.

Sonic Youth

Columbiahalle October 21, 2009 Berlin De

NUGS.net

This Sonic Youth concert recorded at Berlin's Columbiahalle in 2009 and presented from the band's live archive.Originally available only via Nugs.net.Recorded and mixed by Aaron Mullan.TracklistingMain Set:

Sonic Youth

Confusion Is Sex

Goofin'

BACK IN STOCK ON VINYL! Note price increase.  Originally slated to be a seven-inch single to follow up their self-titled debut, Sonic Youth ’s Confusion Is Sex blossomed into the band’s first album:  a brain-bludgeoning, completely fried endeavor of dissonance and disarray, a perfect soundtrack for running from a chain-wielding gang near the SIN Club. This was the sound of 1983 New York City: nothing like London where punks were starting to scrub their faces and sounds to get on Top of the Pops , and nothing like the jangly roots of college radio rock starting to formulate in Athens, Georgia. It sounded like no one else on Earth, for that matter. The raw, Wharton Tiers  8-track production is dark, the Kim Gordon-scrawled cover figure art of Thurston Moore  is dark, Lee Ranaldo ’s back cover photo-collage and Catherine Ceresole ’s crumpled-xeroxed images that adorned the inside are dark. It’s an album that moves Sonic Youth forward from their first EP almost by devolving backwards into true ugly, lo-fi primitivity. The bareboned arsenal of junkpile guitars and implementation of alternate tunings was growing, and so were the songs that matched the individual attributes of each instrument: certain ones groan and growl a specific way that the band started to realize itself could become the compositional germ of a song. Herein is the threshold of a new explosion of the band’s creativity , replacing the comparatively cleaner buzz of the Sonic Youth EP with guitars that  spew fractured,...

Sonic Youth

Spinhead Sessions

Goofin'

The slow-burn sounds of Sonic Youth’s 1986 rehearsals to score Ken Friedman’s spooky highway film Made In USA are yet another mile marker in the band’s long and varied existence, now being issued as Spinhead Sessions (named for the North Hollywood studio used by SST label acts like Black Flag and Painted Willie). These jams were later built upon for a full-on (and quite different) soundtrack production, but the rough sketches here find the band taking time with truly new and introspective sound worlds. It was basically a brand new way of working for Sonic Youth, albeit a challenging one, under the auspices of major Hollywood film production overlords, routing their way into the world of soundtrack scoring. And it all comes at a key time and place.It’s no secret that 1986 was a transformative year for the band in many ways. The gravitation to the beloved SST stable, in addition to Steve Shelley, now drumming, certainly gave Sonic Youth a renewed vigor and vocabulary. They were already an international touring machine, and gaining considerable steam with critics (even spinning the heads of detractors who had dismissed their arty downtown boho sensibilities prior to ’86’s EVOL). Their cultdom with fans had concrete roots by this point, and the influences that were swarming in the band’s orbit marked an exciting time, where almost any trajectory seemed possible, and they were going for it.Friedman’s film worked on a relatively darker frame for a mainstream Hollywood flick; characters played by stars Chris Penn...

Sonic Youth

Sister

Goofin'

***NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE!!!  “Let’s get something straight. There is no album in the entire corpus of indie rock—not Loveless, not Surfer Rosa, not Psychocandy—that reaches the heights of invention, joy, and magic of Sonic Youth’s sublime fifth album.... The haunted reveries of Sister remain with you for years, even if you only hear them once” — Stereogum. 1987’s Sister was another notch in the band's move away from No Wave, yet still maintained their experimental approach. Gordon, Moore, Ranaldo and Shelley were coming into their own at this point, combining elements of noise, punk and pop. They had also become better songwriters since their previous album, providing better context for their noisier elements and incorporating the dissonance of their earlier releases into more traditional song structures. To quote Stereogum once again, “Sister is the sonic manifestation of refracted light. It’s a record that changes you.”

Sonic Youth

Evol

Goofin'

***NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE!!!  Released in May 1986 on SST Records and Blast First! in the UK, EVOL was the third studio album by Sonic Youth and showed the first signs of the band transforming their No Wave past into a greater alt-rock sensibility.  “EVOL … mark[s] the true departure point of Sonic Youth’s musical evolution,” noted Pitchfork, “In measured increments, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo … bring form to the formless, tune to the tuneless, and with the help of Steve Shelley’s drums…, [impose] melody and composition on their trademark dissonance.” "If Daydream Nation is Sonic Youth’s opus, EVOL was crucial research. There’s a directness that makes everything feel close. It is pure tension with little release. The entire record is a shadow." Stereogum likewise praised the album as one, “full of suspense…, the cornerstone [of] the Sonic Youth sound…, ground zero for the combination of chiming guitars and atonal skronk… muggy delirium…. the virile ‘Tom Violence’ sounds less written than coaxed from a cauldron, the sort of song that fogs windows. The off-kilter ‘Starpower’ … is sung in a frosty [Nico-evoking] monotone [by Kim Gordon]. ‘In The Kingdom #19,’ featuring Mike Watt on bass and … vocals...

Sonic Youth

Bad Moon Rising

Goofin'

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork.  Sonic Youth’s second full-length LP Bad Moon Rising was originally released on Homestead and Blast First in 1985. The album is a fascinating examination of “the junction where hippie idealism [meets] the cold hard world,” says guitarist Lee Ranaldo, “where Woodstock [meets] Altamont—Death Valley, Charles Manson, Brian Wilson, musicians, murderers, heroes and villains.” Its original eight-song tapestry of droning guitar feedback, distant clattering percussion, and sullen vocals, all held together with interstitial noise loops and shadowy haze, ambles through a long, dark night before the feverish “Death Valley ’69,” driven by runaway guitar riffs and a frantic Thurston Moore / Lydia Lunch vocal duet, pounds the capstone into place. Sonic Youth’s big leap forward from Confusion Is Sex and Kill Yr Idols “reflects the spirit of the time,” to quote All Music Guide. Bad Moon Rising views “American gothic through the glassy eyes of willful moonlit paranoia.” Back in print on Goofin’ Records, this reissue includes bonus tracks “Flower” and “Halloween,” both from a 12- inch single of the same era. The sound collage morsels “Sa- tan Is Boring” and “Echo Canyon” are your cue to begin moving toward the exit and get out while you can.

Sonic Youth

s/t

Goofin'

***Sonic Youth’s eponymous debut 12-inch was recorded in late 1981 at Plaza Sound at Radio City Music Hall in NYC and originally released on composer Glenn Branca’s Neutral label. This remastered and expanded double vinyl and CD reissue includes the self-titled debut record plus live material from '81 and a track from a previously unheard studio session (and remains the only recorded document of an early line-up featuring actor Richard Edson on drums). Includes liner notes by original Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson, Glenn Branca and Byron Coley. 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/somnabulant 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...

Sonic Youth

Daydream Nation

Goofin'

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Daydream Nation was Sonic Youth’s sixth full-length, their first double-LP, and their last for an indie label before signing with Geffen.  Widely considered to be their watershed moment, the album catapulted them into the mainstream and proved that indie bands could enjoy wider commercial success without compromising their artistic vision.  More recently, Daydream Nation has been recognized as a classic of its era: Pitchfork ranked it #1 on their “100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s”; Spin listed it at #13 on their “125 Best Albums of 1985-2010”. Daydream Nation was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry in 2006 and it was voted "One of the Greatest Albums of All Time" by Rolling Stone.  This edition of Daydream Nation (CD/2xLP) is released on SY’s own Goofin’ Records and has been remastered under the band’s supervision.

Sonic Youth

Smart Bar Chicago 1985

Goofin'

In the fall of 1985, Sonic Youth were touring the States following the release of their Bad Moon Rising LP. This show at Chicago’s Smart Bar was recorded on 4-track cassette and consists of live versions of most of the songs from that album, early performances of “Secret Girl” and “Expressway to Yr Skull” (later to be released on Evol) and a rare, never-before-released live rendition of “Kat ’n’ Hat.” Mixed and mastered by the band from the original tape source, this single-CD / double-LP edition includes liner notes by Gerard Cosloy and Sonic Youth engineer Aaron Mullan, plus unpublished photos by Pat Blashill and Steven Koress.   “The ideal archival offering would meet a list of criteria: it should be an unreleased and sonically compelling recording of an amazing performance, which not only sheds some light on the known Sonic Youth catalog for the serious aficionado, but also captures the attention of the general fan. It’s a pretty tall order, but I think this tape from Chicago 1985 fits the bill…. [I]t’s the earliest live multitrack of a Sonic Youth show known to exist. “Having now listened to this tape maybe 100 times, I can say this: it’s a killer show. The material was mostly released on the studio album Bad Moon Rising. The album is brilliant, but the material is also so visceral and improvisatory that it greatly benefits from the additional perspective offered by a live recording. Kim’s vocals, more detached on the album, are fierce here....

Sonic Youth

Simon Werner a Disparu

Sonic Youth Records

***BACK IN STOCK!!! In Spring 2010, Sonic Youth gathered at their Echo Canyon West studio in Hoboken, New Jersey, to watch the rushes of a new film, Simon Werner a Disparu, by French director Fabrice Gobert. They spent the following few weeks recording music which was then shaped as needed to fit the various scenes. For this release, rather than present the small clips of music as used in the film, the band went back in the autumn to the original tapes and re-organized the various pieces for this original soundtrack release, sometimes montaging multiple tracks together, other times extending cues into new sonic realms. The film premiered at Cannes in May 2010 and opened nationwide in France.

Sonic Youth

Silver Session

Sonic Youth Records

***"We didn't really know Jason Knuth--it's possible we had met him, or had been in the same room as him, but we didn't recall... We heard about his passing on the internet--a flurry of grievous and surprised reactions. People were asking us if we were aware of how much he identified and championed our music. As program director for KUSF, he seemingly used Sonic Youth as a standard for playlisting--indeed, at his memorial his friends played 'The Diamond Sea' in acknowledgment of his enthusiasm toward us. He was affectionately referred to as 'Sonic Knuth.' Here in NYC, so far from the San Francisco community, we were touched and more than intrigued. We learned Jason was a vibrant, well-loved guy on the music scene with a completely genuine exuberance toward art and music. His demeanor obviously shrouded a complex inner life which led to suicide. What Jason's feelings were toward his own human existence we may never know, but we do know he will be missed by many as a companion. Sonic Youth wanted to make some gesture toward him as well as focus on suicide prevention. A portion of the proceeds from this CD goes to local charities in NYC, SF, and beyond, and in the past have included www.sfsuicide.org. "A note on the music: Silver Sessions was taken from an evening when Sonic Youth had to do vocal overdubs for A Thousand Leaves--a band upstairs was hammering out some funky metal overdrive and we couldn't 'sing' properly. We decided...

Sonic Youth

Death Valley '69

Smells Like Records

2009 REMASTERED VERSION!!! Death Valley '69 was originally released on a 1984 7" backed with Brave Men Run. Both songs were demo versions recorded in July '84. Death Valley is slightly slower than the Bad Moon Rising version released later. There also isn't as much lyrical interplay between Lydia and Thurston.

Sonic Youth

Star Power (Acoustic 09 Version)

Goofin'

An acoustic version of the Sonic Youth classic 'Star Power'. This version was recorded over the summer in Portland, Oregon between tour dates and was featured in the television program Gossip Girl on October 12.

Sonic Youth

J’accuse Ted Hughes

Sonic Youth Records

The seventh installment in Sonic Youth's series of experimental and sometimes instrumental releases on the band's own SYR label features on the A-side a previously unreleased 22-minute drone piece recorded at the All Tomorrows Parties festival in the UK in April of 2001. At ATP, the band previewed instrumental and early versions of songs from the then soon-to-be recorded NYC Ghosts & Flowers album, and this exclusive performance was the premiere of "J'Accuse Ted Hughes."  The B-side is a soundtrack-style piece recorded at the band's Murray Street Studio in 2003 for a never-realized collaboration with French clothing designer Agnes B. The 18-minute-long song was recorded by a five-piece version of the band--the four members of Sonic Youth plus Jim O'Rourke, who also mixed "Agnes B Musique."  This LP will be soon followed by a CD-only release of the band's Another Side of Sonic Youth Roskilde Festival performance, where the five-piece Sonic Youth line-up was joined by saxophonist/reed player Mats Gustaffson and electronic noise legend Merzbow for an hour of improvised music.

Sonic Youth

Master-dik

Goofin'

A slight hiccup in our production? This is the infamous EP that Blast First label head Paul Smith begged us not to release. It has long been reviled or misunderstood by many! The song itself, Master-Dik – possibly a play on words related to Masterdisk, where we mastered our albums in those days – first saw light of day in a different version as a bonus track on the Sister CD when it came out. That was the ‘non-beatbox version’ (meaning Steve was playing the drums). The version on this EP has full beatbox in effect. J Mascis even puts in an appearance on lead guitar! In essence, although this track was recorded during and associated with the Sister era, it actual looked ahead to the making of the Ciccone Youth Whitey Album about 18 months later. It was the first appearance by the Royal Tuff Titty, who at one point even declares “We’re Ciccone!” Following Beat on the Brat, Side 2 journeys thru a sonic wonderland of 14 selections (or is it 15? 13?), beginning with an except from a live Radio Suisse broadcast as we goofed around with Beatles and George Benson covers (you kinda had to be there)...

Sonic Youth

Destroyed Room: B-sides And Rarities

Goofin'

Choice collection of B-sides, rarities, alternate takes and previously unreleased tracks dating back to 1993 including the side-long extended version of The Diamond Sea and a cover of Alice Cooper’s Is It My Body? Originally released  December 12, 2006.  The Destroyed Room: B-Sides And Rarities, a collection of near-hidden Sonic Youth gems hand-picked by the band, brings together songs from throughout the band’s tenure at Geffen Records.  Focusing on tracks previously available only on limited-edition compilations, vinyl-only releases, or as B-Sides or international singles, The Destroyed Room also features material that has never before been released as selected by Sonic Youth. This deluxe, double-vinyl LP edition is being released on the band’s own Goofin Records imprint with a CD version available via Geffen.

Sonic Youth

Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui

Sonic Youth Records

The sixth edition of the SYR series is a live recording of the April 12, 2003 benefit concert held at and for The Anthology Film Archives, the international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of avant-garde and independent cinema. In addition to screening films for the public, AFA houses a film museum, research library and art gallery. The event, which raised money for the Archives and celebrated the life and work of avant-garde film maker Stan Brakhage, featured Sonic Youth providing an improvised instrumental collaboration with silent Brakhage’s films. The band performed with drummer/percussionist Tim Barnes (Essex Green, Jukeboxer, Silver Jews). Part of the proceeds of this CD will again benefit the Anthology Film Archives. -

Sonic Youth

Live in Venlo, Holland 1983

Sonic Youth Records

"This Sonic Youth live set was captured in November 1983 at the Dutch town of Venlo, and it features some monumentally raw versions of early SY classics from Confusion Is Sex and Kill Yr Idols, including hair-raising outings of 'Brother James' (featuring some slightly scary, grunted vocals from Kim Gordon), 'She's In A Bad Mood' and 'Confusion Is Next'. The soupy, very rhythmic sound of the set brings to mind the dissonant pounding of a particularly venomous Swans performance, and as a live album this has to stand as one of the band's more visceral documents."--Boomkat

Sonic Youth

Anagrama

Sonic Youth Records

BACK IN PRINT ON VINYL!  While 1995's Washing Machine LP moniker was a thinly-veiled jab at the corporate aesthetic ("no, you cannot turn Sonic Youth into a household appliance brand", the band even considered changing its name to Washing Machine but settled on the album title instead), their major label relationship was indeed a curious buzzpoint of talk on the street after their intake to DGC in 1990. It wouldn't be fair to say that this state of existence propelled the band to reinforce its independent mindset by releasing a series of opaque-looking, French-language-dipping, highbrow-looking releases on their own that focused on the more abstract improv/compositional side of the band; in all truths they had been heavily steeped in self-releasing spillover material prior to that. But after a pressure pot of the early 90's indoctrination into a new operational mode for the band and its visibility, and the forces around it attempting to shape their direction, it seemed like a good time to create a strong show of radical concept.The Anagrama EP became the first in a series of the SYR label's Perspective Musicales releases seemingly cementing Sonic Youth's connectivity to an increasing public awareness in experimental composers of the 20th century (French or otherwise). The irony was that many of those original avant composers being rediscovered by the indie audience (Partch, Neuhaus, Reich, Messaien) often found themselves on major labels anyway! So, perhaps this...

Sonic Youth

Slaapkamers Met Slagroom

Sonic Youth Records

Unfettered by studio time limitations with their own home base of Echo Canyon, SYR 2 shows Sonic Youth chasing the shadows of predecessor SYR 1 and the series' distinct aesthetic: total exploration of freedom and further discovery. While the cover art evokes European contempo classical releases of yore, Sonic Youth distinctively reinvent their own personal output potential the way those kinds of records revolutionized a previously defined genre. Their ethos of utilizing the roots of the Ramones, Television, VU, Stooges, and No Wave to shape their first decade now find the band in later years bullet-pointing fascination in AMM, MEV, improvised music, free jazz and other outer-limit/organic refractions of traditional rock. While Sonic Youth's spontaneous-creation moments had long been showcased in their recordings, Peel Sessions, and live, SYR 2 sums up the band's state in 1997: rolling lots of tape, fine-tuning ideas and presenting great moments of exciting new directions, allowing deep-listener type fans to gain better insight into their sound process. Add to that the alchemy of Jim O'Rourke's gradual entry into the core band which would soon be fully on display for SYR 3, and this series is an X-ray of evolution, dissection and reconstruction.

Sonic Youth

Goodbye 20th Century

Sonic Youth Records

***SONIC YOUTH wrap up the millennium with an adventurous new album of performances of works by some of the twentieth-century's greatest composers. Joined by an all-star cast of musicians—WILLIAM WINANT, JIM O'ROURKE, TAKEHISA KOSUGI, CHRISTIAN WOLFF, COCO HAYLEY GORDON MOORE, CHRISTIAN MARCLAY and WHARTON TIERS—they take on the compositions of JOHN CAGE, YOKO ONO, CORNELIUS CARDEW, STEVE REICH, TAKEHISA KOSUGI, NICOLAS SLONIMSKY, GEORGE MACIUNAS, JAMES TENNEY, PAULINE OLIVEROS and CHRISTIAN WOLFF.

Sonic Youth

Cotton Crown / Pch

Sonic Death

"Originally released as a 7" in 1993, these tracks were recorded live at London's Town & Country back in 1987. 'Cotton Crown' stars off with a sprightly old orchestral recording being played back, only for a few shards of discordant guitar to crowd into the mix, making way for a great slice of plodding SY pop-sludge that erupts into a superior noise workout about two-thirds of the way in. 'PCH' is markedly more abrasive from the outset, full of nerve-jangling chords and a howling Kim G vocal line. At one point the track stabilises into a sweet slow jam, making like a noise-rock 'Freebird'."--Boomkat

Sonic Youth

Live At The Continental Club, Texas 1986

Sonic Death

This was the first live show of the songs from EVOL, at the Continental Club in Austin, Texas. The next day we would sputter through a set for New Music America in Houston, outdoors like a sideshow act on some sort of weird float, our music vanishing amongst the tall ugly bldgs downtown, in broad daylight. This night, however, things felt pretty good, despite borrowed amps+ drums (thanks to Furniture) and a set of (almost) all new songs-untried, stepping off the cliff. Our future soundman Terry Pearson was part owner of the Continental at the time, and he did the house sound for this and hundreds of other gigs there. The original cassette recording was made by Austin film-maker Bill Daniels; Wharton Tiers transferred it to digital.