Lee Ranaldo & Leah Singer will present “Sight/Unseen,” a large scale “sound+vision” installation, as part of the City of Toronto’s “Nuit Blanche” festival, which takes place on from 7pm on Saturday October 2 until 7am on Sunday October 3. Old City Hall, 60 Queen Street West, Toronto. Large projection screens, a quadraphonic PA system, and live performance elements throughout the 12 hour duration. One of dozens of public works by artists for this one-night only event. Expect hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets of Toronto until all hours of the wee morning! INFO: here.
Sonic Youth will join Pavement and No Age for a very special Hollywood Bowl concert September 30, 2010 in Los Angeles, CA. Tickets are still available.
Mirror/Dash will join Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono band at the Orpheum Theatre in LA on October 2. Mike Watt and the RZA will also be amongst the featured guests. Tickets.
Sonic Youth will join Pavement, Guided by Voices, Belle and Sebastian, Yo La Tengo, Cat Power, and more at Matador Records’ 21st Birthday party in Las Vegas at the Palms this October. Tickets have already sold out. Sonic Youth will perform on Friday October 1st.
more news at: Matablog
Lanore Hahn was anticipating a relatively uneventful return journey back to her house in Wisconsin when fate intervened in the form of a tiny piglet now named Kim Gordon. Lanore and her boyfriend were driving down a backcountry road in Mitchell, South Dakota when they spotted Kim running around in the middle of the street all by her lonesome. With no farms or other people nearby, Lanore stopped the car and with a little determination, managed to catch the little pig and place her in the vehicle.
More.
Lee has a bunch of things coming up in the coming month or so, as follows: Text of Light (Lee/Alan Licht/Ulrich Krieger) will be playing 2 shows in early SEptember: in NYC at Le Poisson Rouge on Sept 2 (info here) and at the ATP Catskills festival on Sept 4 (same day that SY play, info here). Text of Light will also perform at the LOLA festival in London, Ontario, Canada on Sept 19 (info here).
Lee also has some international events coming up: He will perform solo and also do a workshop/lecture at the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival in County Cork, Ireland on 16/17 September (info here). He will also do a solo at the Rifflandia festival in Victoria, B.C., Canada on Sept 23 (info here). Also in association with Artlandia, the festivals ‘arts arm’, and White Hot magazine, Lee will be having a solo show of his visual artworks in Victoria as well. The opening event is on Sept 22, Gallery 16 1/2 (info here).
We now have 3 pairs of ticket winners for our La Zona Rosa show in Austin, TX this
Saturday October 9 – thanks to eveyone who participated!
see you in austin, texas!
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When was the first Sonic Youth concert in Austin?
Answer : 8/27/85
Who were the opening bands at Sonic Youth’s first ever Austin, TX concert?
Answer: Scratch Acid and Vertibeads
What rare sonic youth song was performed at the band’s first ever Austin, TX concert?
Answer : Kat in the Hat
Sonic Youth will perform twice at this year’s Austin City Limits Festival. On Oct. 8 SY are at the festival itself, and on Sat. the 9th at an afterparty at La Zona Rosa. Afterparty ticketing info here.
Sonic Youth will perform at the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival at Kutsher’s Country Club, Monticello this year on September 4th. The Festival runs from Friday 3rd September – Sunday 5th September. Some other notable performances: Iggy + the Stooges performing Raw Power, Sleep performing Holy Mountain, Mudhoney performing Superfuzz Bigmuff + Early Singles, The Scientists performing Blood Red River (first ever U.S. Show) + more. More info here.
Update: Thurston will perform a solo set Sunday at 1:45pm. As previously announced, both Text of Light (featuring Lee) and Hallogallo 210 (featuring Steve + Michael Rother of Neu!) have been added to the bill. Here’s what the ATP site has to say:
ATP celebrate 10 years with a birthday party on Saturday 4th September hosting a day of past ATP curators, ATP Recordings artists and friends. To complete the line-up for this day our new additions are headed up byHALLOGALLO 2010, a very special new project headed by Michael Rother and featuring Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Aaron Mullan (Tall Firs) and Ben Curtis (Secret Machines, School of Seven Bells). Hallogallo will perform the music of Rother’s 1970s Krautrock legends Neu! – their recent debut show in Barcelona was rapturously received. Also confirmed are cult heros SHELLAC who appear as ATP’s House Band, FURSAXA, SIAN ALICE GROUP and TEXT OF LIGHT (featuring Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo). Steve Albini of Shellac is also confirmed to host his Card Games Room over the weekend.
Kim and Thurston were interviewed by Ian Svenonius for his Soft Focus program at ATP UK.
You can catch the episode here.
Hallogallo 2010 7″-Blinkgürtel/Drone Schlager
The debut record by Michael Rother (Neu!, Kraftwerk, Harmonia), Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) and Aaron Mullan (Tall Firs, Glass Rock) is also the premier release on Steve’s new Vampire Blues record label. The single features two exclusive new instrumentals recorded at SY’s Hoboken, NJ studio in September 2008.
7″s are Edition of 1000 in hand silkscreened covers and come with a download card., is available for mail-order at the sy webstore
Visit vampire blues twitter page or at the related blog.
Lee has a new DVD of his Drift collaboration with Leah Singer.
According to tapingpolicies.be: DRIFT HASSELT is a live DVD by Leah Singer and Lee Ranaldo performing DRIFT at Kunstencentrum BELGIE on November 24th 2006 in Hasselt, Belgium.
DRIFT is a multimedia project in which Leah Singer uses 16mm analytical film projectors performing live while Lee Ranaldo responds with guitar, tapes, loops and texts to create an immersive surrounding.
This DVD focuses on the performance side of DRIFT, where the actions by both artists are edited together with the sounds and images much like a live concert registration. Captured with 4 camera’s and recorded on 2-track, the video shows a new perspective to an already impressive project.
DRIFT HASSELT was assembled in 2008 to be part of the traveling exposition Sensational Fix by Sonic Youth.
Sonic Youth have contributed a live version of the song ‘No Way’ as performed at the Apple store a while back to the iTunes comp ‘Elysium: A Benefit for The Art of Elysium’, curated by Elijah Wood. The charity “encourages working actors, artists and musicians to voluntarily dedicate their time and talent to children who are battling serious medical conditions.” More info.
Kim is part of a group show called ‘Held Up By Columns’ at the Renwick gallery, 45 Renwick st. NY, NY. According to the gallery:
The Newspaper is a ticker tape of the stock of our societies. It cascades the events of the cities into the country. It cascades the events of their countries into our city. It is held up by columns. Circulation, the essential technique of today, is the old method of the newspaper. Yet few documents so inspired become so obsolete, so quick, so cyclical as the newspaper. They are witness of the day, yesterday always by their nature. They age in the sun, like those who write them and those for whom and about whom they are written. The nature of the material itself is meant to be left behind, it is frail, and bleeds copy onto the hands of its beholder. It folds everything into itself.
Held Up By Columns is an exhibition of artworks which utilize the newspaper. This utilization occurs across a broad range of techniques; from it’s material presence in collages and paintings; to its surfacing as imagery in photographs, prints and other media; to its functions, structures, and formats serving as a model for how an artwork is created and exhibited. The newspaper’s widespread availability and the supposed ubiquity of its coverage ensure it as a form of Everymaterial. It’s appearance as the thread for an exhibition is not exactly an exaltation nor an epitaph of the medium, but just a herald of its usage.
The exhibition features the work of Becca Albee, Eric Anglès, Julieta Aranda, Kerstin Brätsch, Sarah Charlesworth, Jacob Dyrenforth, Nikolas Gambaroff, Robert Gober, Kim Gordon, Joseph Grigely, Karl Haendel, Patrick Hill, Christian Holstad, Matt Keegan, Michael Krebber, Jason Loebs, Dave McKenzie, Ulrike Müller and Carola Dertnig, Florian Morlat, Matt Mullican, Murad Khan Mumtaz, Martha Rosler, Al Ruppersberg, Kate Shepherd, Paul Sietsema, Al Taylor, Wolfgang Tillmans, Paul Thek, Gabriel Vormstein, Kelley Walker, Jordan Wolfson and Amy Yao.
Thurston and Tortoise popped by to hang out with Beck and cover “Keys to Imagination” from Yanni’s ‘Live at the Acropolis’ LP.
Record Club: Yanni “Keys To Imagination” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.
The High Confessions (Steve Shelley, Chris Connelly, Jeremy Lemos + Sanford Parker) will celebrate the release of their debut album “Turning Lead Into Gold With The High Confessions” on Relapse Records with a DJ set and record release party at The Burlington in Chicago, IL. Monday July 19 at 10pm. More info here at the Facebook event page for the party. Steve, Jeremy + Sanford will all spin DJ sets at the party while Chris will host a boogaloo dance contest and marathon.
Lee will do a rare acoustic set, playing SY songs and more, at the Midi Festival on the French Riviera, alongside The Vivian Girls, Memory Tapes and other acts. Festival site info (in French) is here, further info (in English) here. Festival is July 23-25, Lee performs on July 23rd at 9pm. He will also be signing copies of his recent book+CD (with Leah Singer) “Water Days” which was published in April in Paris by Dis Voir press. The book exists in both English and French editions.
Sonic Youth will perform a free concert at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NY on July 31 as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn series: Talk Normal and Grass Widow open. Gates open at 6:00 and the show starts at 7:00. Word is that there are good sight lines outside of the gates as well, so even if the concert reaces capacity there are plenty of good spots.
Aug 1 Sonic Youth will be in Montreal at the Osheaga Music & Arts Festival.
Lee has four performances set for the Whitney Museum in NYC as part of the Christian Marclay: Festival exhibit. Two performances with Text of LIght (Alan Licht, Ulrich Krieger) happened (!) July 2 & 3. Lee will play solo with Christian’s “music box guitar’ at 1pm on Thursday July 15, and a quartet with Alan Licht, Ned Rothenberg and John Butcher will perform Christian’s “Screen Play” composition at 1pm on Saturday July 17th. Info: here.
Lee will perform with Leah Singer on a bill with Nick Zinner at the New Museum in NYC on July 30 as part of the Museum’s ‘Get Weird’ series of “of performances featuring experimental and freaky jams.” More from the New Museum site:
“In honor of the exhibition “Brion Gysin: Dream Machine,” at the New Museum through October 3, members of Sonic Youth and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs offer multimedia tributes to the Dreamachine.
Guitarist Lee Ranaldo is a founding member of Sonic Youth. Artist Leah Singer works with video and photography to create improvised, pensive visual effects. Long-time artistic collaborators, Ranaldo and Singer present an audiovisual exploration into the flicker effect, the force that powers the Dreamachine. The duo has produced countless live performances, a DVD titled Drift, and a series of books, including Moroccan journal: Jajouka excerpt, which follows the travels of William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Ornette Coleman through Jajouka. For their New Museum performance, Ranaldo and Singer will combine live music, projections, and a Dreamachine, conjuring spirits in both sound and vision.
Nick Zinner is best known as the guitarist of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Zinner revealed his dedication to the work of Brion Gysin in the 2008 film Flicker, describing the tranquil fields that the Dreamachine revealed to him. For his first-ever solo performance, Zinner will channel these visions into a hazy, brilliant audio experience.”
Pretty sick lineup at Glasslands, Brooklyn on Sat. July 24: Bill Orcutt (Harry Pussy), Thurston Moore, Family Battle Snake + No Fun DJ’s.
Elsewhere in Brooklyn, Steve will join Pete Nolan and Peter Meehan of Spectre Folk at Shea Stadium for a record release party for MV + EE.
MV + EE, Kuupuu + Herbcraft will all play.
Sonic Youth will perform on Austin City Limits the television program on Oct. 7 to be aired sometime later.
We will announce the air date as soon as we can.
A book and audio CD, Water Days documents an exchange of pictures, texts, sounds and voices between multimedia artist Leah Singer and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo. The book is released by French publisher Dis Voir, in both English and French editions, and contains a CD of an audio piece made for French radio. Info here.
During their 2007 and 2008 residencies at the Centre national de l’estampe et de l’art imprimé (CNEAI) in Chatou, near Paris, Singer and Ranaldo created a body of printworks in the museum’s etching atelier, as well as field recordings made in the studio, on their houseboat and in the community at large. Water Days began as two texts inspired by the conflict between wanderlust and the desire for home. When invited to do a radio piece for Atelier de Création Radiophonique de France Culture, the sound recordings made in Chatou were combined with recordings of electric guitar, as well as pre-recorded voices including those of artist Robert Smithson and writer Carson McCullers. The current volume attempts to create a filmic sequence of photographs to augment and accompany the recording.
Steve will visit DJ Hallogallo at East Village Radio July 22 at 3pm to discuss his upcoming shows with Michael Rother and hallogallo 2010, recording with the high confessions and spectre folk.
The Original Recordings Group, which specializes in hi-fi vinyl reissues, is set to release the SY albums Confusion is Sex, Bad Moon Rising, Evol, and Sister later this year. The albums are remastered from the original analog tapes and pressed at RTI, the USA’s premiere LP plant. More info.
An exhibit in conjunction with the publication of Kim’s book ‘Performing/Guzzling’ (more info here) will take place at KS Art in New York. UPDATE: The exhibition has now been extended a week to June 19.
KIM GORDON
Performing / Guzzling
May 7 – June 19, 2010
opening / performance / book party: Friday, May 7, 6 – 8 pm
performance by: Bad Adult “The Promise of Originality”
KS ART
73 Leonard Street
New York, NY 10013
212-219-9918
The links section of sonicyouth.com has had some new sites added, and the dead links removed. Check out some classics and some newbies alike.
convening in the hot and sticky summer of 2009, members of the chicago groups the disappears, white/light and steve shelley recorded improvised song sessions at chicago’s Semaphore Recording studio. the first release from these d-w/l-ss sessions is a split 7″ single on the sixgunlover label w/ austin group JBe on the flipside. numbered + limited to 600 copies – a few copies available this weekend at the sy webstore.
Lee has a cameo in this film by cool brother-directors Josh and Benny Safdie, which stars Ronald Bronstein and co-stars his boys Sage and Frey and wife Leah Singer. check it out!
NYTIMES REVIEW here AND FEATURE here. More info on the film at the redbucketfilms site.
The trio of Michael Rother (NEU!, Harmonia)/Steve Shelley/Aaron Mullan(Tall Firs) will perform at 8pm May 28 at the Bad Bonn Kilbi Festival in Düdingen, Switzerland and at 7pm May 29 at Primavera Sound in Barcelona. The three musicians gathered for some (so far unreleased) recording sessions in late 2008 which channeled some early 70’s energy. Michael Rother recently released a NEU! vinyl box set in Europe this May- to be released in the US this July. With Rother currently in the NEU! mindset, it seems likely this trio will present some strait-ahead, rush-forward-into-the-sun style jams.
Lee Ranaldo will also be appearing at Bad Bonn Kilbi for his own set May 29th.
Steve’s May 17th set at dailysession.com is archived and streaming here.
Steve’s set from earlier this Spring is archived here.
You can also visit Steve at blip.fm
Lee will be playing some late May shows in Europe — in Istanbul with Matthew Ritchie’s ‘The Morning Line’ Sound-Sculpture; in the back garden of the FondationCartier in Paris-with guests; at GRIM in Marseille, with Jean-Marc Montera+films; at the VideoEx Festival in Zurich, w Gunter Mueller+films; and at the Bad Bonn Kilbi Festival in Dudingen, Switzerland, solo+films. Info follows:
LR EU MAY 10
sa 22 istanbul the morning line short performance
su 23 istanbul the morning line long performance
http://themorningline.vip.com.tr/program.php
mo 24 paris fondation cartier back garden (w guests)
http://fondation.cartier.com/?_lang=en&small=0
click on ‘nomadic nights/les soirees nomades’
we 26 marseille GRIM – w jean-marc montera+films
http://www.grim-marseille.com/grim/Actualites.html
reservations@grim-marseille.com
th 27 zurich-videoex fest -w gunter mueller+films
http://www.videoex.ch/videoex10/festival.php
sa 29 dudingen bad bon kilbi – solo+films
http://www.badbonn.ch
Sonic Youth will play with Lou Reed, Moby, The Virgins + others on May 19th at the Hiro Ballroom as a part of”Return to the Pleasure Dome”, a benefit concert event for Anthology Film Archives. The event will also feature a Life Achievement Honor for Kenneth Anger and a performance by Technicolor Skull (Kenneth Anger and Brian Butler). More information and tickets: http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/
Visit a new blog by musician Chris Lee and Steve Shelley here. Musician Howe Gelb and producer/engineer John Agnello have joined the Vampire Blues team.
Kim has an exhibition entitled : “The Noise Paintings” at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller in Manhattan April 8- May 8 2010. According to the gallery’s site: “Loosely painted words have dripping edges and bleeding contours that threaten to disrupt or annihilate the sense within. There is the feel of un-stylized urban graffiti, of the anonymous, spontaneous scrawls encountered in the profane world. The gesture, the moment of creation, with all its attendant expressiveness is paramount. And yet, as lyrics, and personal catch phrases, Gordon has produced these words before, on paper and on canvas. They are like personal mantras, surfacing repeatedly at moments of creative charge and expression. From the provocative (16 Bitch Pile Up) to the banal (Wet Hair) by way of the personally obscure (Sudden Oak) the words find a new unique form each time the artist commits them to a surface.
In partnership with Ecstatic Peace Library, JMc & GHB Editions will introduce a special edition of a new publication, Kim Gordon, The Noise Paintings. Drawn from a full edition of just 200, the special edition will comprise 26 lettered copies enclosed in a custom made cloth box with an original painting and recording laid in.”
Sonic Youth have recorded the soundtrack to the film Simon Werner a Disparu, directed by Fabrice Gobert. The film will be shown at this year’s Cannes film festival in May.
The exhibition SONIC YOUTH etc. : SENSATIONAL FIX focuses on the multidisciplinary activities of the groundbreaking experimental guitar band Sonic Youth since its formation in 1981. From day one, Sonic Youth has been exploring and mapping unknown cultural territories through their activities as a band and as four individual musicians, visual artists or cultural entrepreneurs, each member with his or her specific ties to and within the international cultural scene. The exhibition 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 unfolded, in which underground meets official culture of the last four decades, while themes 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. The show will be at the Centro dos de Mayo in Madrid Jan 29-May 2 2010. Steve and Lee will be at the Feb 2 opening event. A complete description of the show can be found here.
David Byrne has thoughtful things to say about the Sensational Fix show here. And here’s some images of the show. Keep pace with the show from curator Roland Groenenboom’s perspective via his blog. Also, a German TV spot can be seen here. Two more video documents of the show can be seen here and here.
The show’s catalog is currently being reprinted for availability in early 2010, and should be more widely available in US bookstores at that time.
From Matador: There is now a 120 gram version of the Eternal dbl LP at a lower cost.
It still looks and feels really nice; Here are the differences:
– 120 gram RTI vinyl instead of 180
– No special varnishes on the gatefold
– No sticker inside
Still has the high-quality of RTI pressings, the heavy-duty Stoughton gatefold sleeve, and the printed inners. Plus the MP3 coupon.
Also available via the sy.com store.