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 & Yamatsuka Eye

TV Shit

Sonic Youth Records

***This strange release between legendary NYC art-rockers SONIC YOUTH and BOREDOMS head wacko YAMATSUKA EYE is finally available again. A symphony mix version of YOUTH BRIGADE's legendary "No Song 11" in four takes. Long rumored to have backing vocals from MARK ARM and J. MASCIS, this is one of the weirdest and most extreme SONIC YOUTH releases ever.

Sonic Youth With Mats Gustafsson And Merzbow

Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth Records

This installment of Sonic Youth's series of experimental and mostly instrumental releases is available in a CD-only edition on the band's own SYR label.  Andre Sider af Sonic Youth 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 (a.k.a. Merzbow). The single piece performed was a structured improvisation which for 60 minutes added and subtracted musicians one by one until only Akita was left onstage. Black Sabbath followed.

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

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. -

Gordon, Kim / Mori, Ikue / Dj Olive

Syr 05

Sonic Youth Records

***Taking a breather from the Free Kitten snazz (while Miss Julie births Alice and teaches inner city high school, Yoshimi lives about 10,000 miles away and Mark Ibold is aswamp in the madness that is Pavement), Sonic Youth's femme-mystere Kim Gordon has created a distinctly new trio of spontaneous composition and prose. Since reclaiming the electric guitar (her original instrument with the Sonic Youth) and developing a newfound post-Patty Waters free-vox technique, she has enjoined her vision with the improvisational meta-talents of IKUE MORI (ex-drummer of no wave legends DNA, currently in a class by herself with other-world sampling) and DJ Olive (of the wizardly We, coiner of the ill term "illbient" and regarded by those in the heavy underground of postbeat turntable/drum'n'whatever as "the heaviest"). Together the trio hit the local boards throughout 1999 and created a unified concept of sound/energy dynamix. They recorded with engineer Wharton Tiers and mixmaster Jim O'Rourke for the first recording on SYR not by Sonic Youth proper (a situation which will be, possibly, expanded upon). The results, which also feature the magic fingers of Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda on a track, are at once sensuous, elegant and completely blistering. This is truly the new illprovisation rising up from ground zero

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 W/ Jim O' Rourke

Invito Al Cielo

Sonic Youth Records

Why not Jim O'Rourke, and for that matter, why not Sonic Youth? The third in SYR's series of EP's brings the patented O'Rourke touch of calm to Sonic Youth's well-known rock El Nino, with three tracks of blackened experimental sound. Kim kinda gurgles a bit during some of it. All text written in Esperanto. Eye-fucking cover art.

Sonic Youth

Anagrama

Sonic Youth Records

Sonic Youth's summer instrumental EP, Perspectives Musicales is, at first glance, a full-blown tribute to the 20th century French avant guard. From the EP's title, to the exquisitely, tottering pretentious song titles -- "Anagrama," "Improvisation Ajoutee," "Tremens," and " Mieux: De Corrosion." The connections don't stop there, the vinyl is Coke can red, adding a whiff of both socialism and aesthetics (the best and most effective red-vinyl release I've seen since J. Geils' 70's album, Bloodshot.But the connections do stop with the music. While the French avant-guard, from Celine to Sartre to Foucoult, focus on the Absurd and are always tinged with a hint of nihilism, all four of the tracks on Perspectives Musicales are melodious, if not always harmonious, celebrations, and instead of a reign of disorder, Sonic Youth creates beautiful, often exquisite order out of what seems like thin-air.This first release since 1995's not entirely satisfying Washing Machine is a wonderful example of what Sonic Youth does best. While cutting apart and putting back together beautiful, even poppy melodies, Moore, Gordon, Shelley and Ranaldo never sound as if they're lost in some sort of psychedelic jam; in every step along the journey, there's tremendous lyricism and harmony...which seem contradictory for a band whose...

Sonic Youth

Slaapkamers Met Slagroom

Sonic Youth Records

The second in a set of self-released instrumental EPs, SYR 2 follows through on the promise of SYR 1 while exploring new territory. A noisier record than its predecessor, SYR 2 nevertheless shares the same modus operandi -- namely, it's purely improvised music that gleefully wanders into uncharted territory. Even at its noisiest, the EP reveals that Sonic Youth has remarkable interplay. Each member can sense where the other will go, and that's what's so fascinating about the EPs -- there are no clear-cut themes, structures, or leaders, it's simply Sonic Youth without a harness. Toward the end of the record, the band ventures into quieter territory, immediately making clear their influence on such post-rock bands as Tortoise. Although SYR 2 is slightly less rewarding than SYR 1, its unpredictable, continually shifting sonics make for an endlessly intriguing listen.  - Stephen Thomas Erlewine AllMusic

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.