Thurston and Lee, each in duet with longtime friend from Marseilles, guitarist Jean-Marc Montera. Thurston and JMM recorded 1997 in NYC, Lee and JMM recorded 2010 in Marseilles. info here.
Lee will perform solo suspended guitar phenomena to accompany Buster Keaton’s classic film “COPS” at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts, in Urbana-Champagne, Illinois on Sept 9, on a bill alongside Marc Ribot. info here.
both Lee and Kim have works in a show curated by Dead C. guitarist Michael Morley currently on view 11-27 August at Auckland, NZ’s rice and beans gallery. go here for gallery info, here for Michael’s blog catalog.
A special broadcast this Saturday at 10am on Durham, NC’s WXDU 88.7 will feature the complete box set of ‘Not the spaces You Know, But Between Them’. In addition to broadcasting the full box set, we will also air interviews and play the bonus material that accompanies some versions of the set.
NPR’s blog All Things Considered is streaming Sonic Youth’s song ‘Out & In’ from the soon-to-be released four-vinyl-LP box set compilation Not the Spaces You Know, But Between Them on Three Lobed Recordings.
Sonic Youth have an LP side on ‘Not the Spaces You Know, But the Spaces Between Them’, a 4x LP box set from Three Lobed Records. The side features two cuts: ‘In & Out’ was recorded in Pomona, CA in early 2010. ‘Out & In’ is an unheard 13-minute shredding studio jam from 2000 with Jim O’Rourke on bass.
The other artists with sides are: Sun City Girls, Steve Gunn, Mouthus, Comets on Fire, Charles Speer & The Helix/Wooden Wand, Eternal Tapestry, and Bardo Pond.
Only a few boxsets still available and can be ordered from Three Lobed .
Watch for a few more box sets to become available here.
On August 20th at 9:00PM ET/PT and again on the 27th at 1:00AM ET/PT you can catch the Sonic Youth episode of Innovators in Music on the Documentary Channel. If you don’t have access to the channel request it here .
Thurston was interviewed and performed live for Le Blogoteque.
‘Demolished Thoughts’ cd/lp/digital is now available everywhere and here iTunes. Limited edition of BLUE VINYL is available via indies/direct. ‘Demolished Thoughts’ is streaming in it’s entirety at NPR and also via the Guardian. The Benediction video is here.
The song ‘Circulation’ can now be heard at Matador’s Matablog or by clicking ‘like’ on the facebook for Thurston Moore’s ‘Demolished Thoughts’ album. ‘Benediction’ also from Thurston’s solo record can be heard at npr.org and here at Matador’s site.
On May 24 Matador released ‘Demolished Thoughts’, the 4th solo album from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore (5th if you count 1998′s ‘Root’) and the first to be produced by Beck Hansen. Recorded in Los Angeles and Northampton, MA this past autumn & winter, with a title culled from The Faith’s “It’s Time”, ‘Demolished Thoughts’ is an equally beautiful and brooding work ; while there’s more than a few tonal similarities to some of your favorite Moore compositions from years past, the execution this time around is nothing short of staggering. No disrespect to 1995′s ‘Psychic Hearts’ or 2007′s ‘Trees Outside The Academy’ is intended on our part when we promise ‘Demolished Thoughts’ burnishes Thurston’s rep as a classic songwriter in ways we never anticipated when this album was first being talked about last year.
In addition to Moore’s guitars and vocals, other players include violinist Samara Lubelski (she of prior Moore recordings and touring, her own solo works, Metal Mountains, Hall Of Fame, Tower Recordings, Metabolismus, etc.), harpist Mary Lattimore (also heard on Kurt Vile’s latest), bassist Bram Inscore, drummer Joey Waronker and Beck.
Ben Estes Kim Gordon Rick Myers
Flying Object, Hadley, MA.
15th July – 14th August 2011
The fibers of the page became pronounced. Lit another cigarette, crossed my legs, and settled back. Shadows cast by its pages became as prominent as the words. Bravo, another wall collapsed… all the loving attention I’d need. How about we all undog this hatch and get the hell outta here. The sun threw no shadow at its feet, near the edge of the motionless flat water, where at the same spot the same small wave welled up and broke. 94 minutes of total astonishment. A dislocating picture; similar to a white background cut into innumerable little rectangles, or a rising fog that begins to mix with the slow dissipation of gun smoke. According to its most favorable calculations, it brims with bracing humor and ravishing romance – but there are also haunting shadows, luxuries no longer expensive… that alone makes it a keeper. If you pretend to understand, you will find yourself among its ambiguities – liberated from all rigid structures… Like some great rusted amulet fallen from the belt of a demi-god picking cigarette butts up off the ground. A miracle. Pitch perfect. Much beauty found most difficult. At low tide it remains extremely modest, strewed like the leather sides of trunks and briefcases, wet and shining in an electric glare in the naked mud. Kids no doubt have better games to play. An attack upon action, glancingly funny. Genuinely graceful, looking like the yellow of that longest lasting rose. It becomes difficult to determine whether you are turning its pages towards or away from you, the body, a giant gray spot on the concrete road. A sad creature. Offered it a job. Our very life probed. It has only happened once, but once is enough… If you get bushwhacked on this don’t come cryin’, and I’ll try not to tell you I told you so. Victory emerged. An early death, a group example that then included nature barely slanting backwards, a blackish surface of pretended gentleness, spoken without anger between extremities like a crushed corpse. Only at the end of its cycle could a few sounds, distorted by the distance, be heard again, served up for us to look upon. Take thought tonight… A boy about 10 years old, wearing a yellow turtleneck sweater and tight blue denim pants, turned his face upward and to the right. Diffuse yet powerful in its mystery, with no allusions to a moral order. A good-time universal anxiety. Inks absorption into the page becomes evident, reads like a detective story or a thriller, except that there was no reason for it to stop. The next step is to find a way to project this as a sensual stream of energy. You couldn’t be a true woman if you didn’t fear such things. Oh to live the exquisite life! An adventure of comedic proportions unseen since I was six years old. Once it gave itself a name it seemed impossible to kill it. Do not be deceived… The letters dislocate themselves from each other and from the page. Like pretend virginity, it tortures a little, then cascades forth – unsentimentally gushing about with purposeful abandonment after the first half calculates discipline and restraint.
Smalltown Superjazzz is proud to to rerelase the debut album by Diskaholics Anonymous Trio. The album was released 10 years ago on the now defunct Crazy Wisdom/Universal label, and the album has been unavailable since then.
Thurston Moore – guitar
Jim O`Rourke – synth, computer
Mats Gustafsson – tubax, tenor sax, french flageolet
The album features three long improvisational tracks: “Three Collectors of Bird Note”, “Totally Gump (Gump Completist)”, & “Yellow Label Silence”.
Lee and Leah are in Lecce Italy for a few weeks, in residence as part of the SoundRes program there. Leah will lead a workshop for children on Aug 5 in the seaside town of Specchiulla. On Aug 6 Lee will hold a ‘workshop/demonstration’ at 6 pm and at around 8pm he will perform another SoundRes artist, Phill Niblock’s piece “Guitar too, for four” which also includes Thurston Moore and Alan Licht on tape. On Aug 7 Leah and Lee will present a special expanded version of their piece “sight unseen” in the Palazzo dei Celestini at 9 pm. More info on all this, here. soundres.org
Kim is part of a group show called ‘On Shuffle’ at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery at 540 W26th in New York. The other artists in the show are Billy Childish, Kalup Linzy, Ryan McNamara, Tony Oursler, Dave Muller, Dario Robleto and Stephen Vitiello. According to the gallery: “On Shuffle presents works by these interdisciplinary underground cult figures in various mediums, which use and reference music, including sound, performance, painting, mixed media and video.” The show runs July 6-August 19.
Sonic Youth will perform at Williamsburg Waterfront in Brooklyn, NY on August 12 , 2011. WILD FLAG and Kurt Vile will also perform.
Lee is included in the 4-person show ‘Transport: Tara Fracalossi, Thomas Lail, Leah Singer, Lee Ranaldo’ at Galeria Cypriana Majernika, Bratislava, Slovakia. July 6- Sept 4, 2011. Info is currently limited and mostly in Slovakian, but should hold more soon, here. Lee will show a music-heavy 2 channel video work w quad sound,”Endless Sleep”, featuring the San Jose, California ‘stoner-metal’ band Sleep and Parisian noisician and ‘metal turntable destroyer’ Arnaud Riviere. His audio will also be heard on Leah Singer’s video piece “sight unseen”.
Sonic Youth along w/ The Flaming Lips, LCD Soundsystem, Spoon and others will be featured on the tv program ‘Best of Austin City Limits Festival 2010’ premiering Saturday June 18 at 9pm EST on Palladia.tv. Additional airings of the show throughout June are listed here
Lee is doing 5 very differnent dates in the coming week or so—a solo gtr performance in Bordeaux at the CAPC Museum on June 17: info here, ‘sight-unseen’, a suspended gtr performance with films by Leah Singer at Cote Court Festival, just on the edge of Paris, on June 18: info here, a fully spoken word session at the Silencio Festival in Lisbon on June 19: info here, and two dates at Sled Island Festival in Calgary–June 23–suspended gtr performance w films in a beaut old church, should be pretty great: info here, and on June 24, a free-ranging workshop or talk on extended gtr techniques, tunings ,etc. Info here. AND he continues to work completing the recordings for his album continues throughout June and early July…
Sonic Youth’s soundtrack of the French film ‘Simon Werner A Disparu’ is now available – cds and lps(with download card) are available now at our webstore and the digital download is available via Midheaven.com (song samples available here) or iTunes. The album is available in France at major retailers or via iTunes.
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. The band spent the following few weeks recording music which was then shaped to fit the various scenes of the film. For this release it was decided to do more than present the abbreviated clips of music used in the film. Instead the band went back to the original tapes and re-organized the various pieces; sometimes montaging multiple tracks together, other times extending cues into new sonic realms.
SYR 9 – SIMON WERNER A DISPARU
1- Thème de Jérémie
2- Alice et Simon
3- Les Anges au piano
4- Chez Yves (Alice et Clara)
5- Jean-Baptiste à la fenêtre
6- Thème de Laetitia
7- Escapades
8- La Cabane au Zodiac
9- Dans les bois / M. Rabier
10- Jean-Baptiste et Laetitia
11- Thème de Simon
12- Au Café
13- Thème d’Alice – cd bonus track + available as download w/ vinyl.
The film ‘Simon Werner a Disparu’ is available in France on DVD with a bonus preview CD featuring Sonic Youth’s music from the film.
Track list as follows:
1. M. Rabier (aspect)
2. Jean-Baptiste à la fenêtre (aspect)
3. Alice et Clara (aspect)
4. Thème de Jérémie (aspect)
5. Thème de Simon
A trailer to the film ‘Simon Werner a Disparu’ here
Thurston Moore will appear at Wilco’s Solid sound Festival. The festival takes place June 24 + 25 + 26.
Thurston will perform twice, a solo set and with Pillow Wand, a duo with Nels Cline.
Sonic Youth gear including – a Rhythm Ace drum machine, a custom-made mixer used by Kim onstage, a glockenspiel, a xylophone that was used on daydream nation and an Ibanez Roadmaster guitar are up for charity auction today.
100% of the funds from the auctions will benefit ShelterboxUSA.org to provide immediate shelter and necessities to the homeless tsunami and earthquake victims in Japan and elsewhere.
The SY photo page has been updated recently and can be seen here. We’ll continue to add more photos from our archive. The SY pictures are also on flickr where anyone can upload photos, look for the user thesonicyouth.
Lee is gonna sing “History Lesson Pt.II” and “Jesus and Tequila” backed by Delicate Steve at this event. In addition TuNe-YaRdS and Callers will be playing SY songs. More info at pitchfork.
Our Concert Could Be Your Life
On March 8, music journalist Michael Azerrad and concert promoter Tiger Mountain Presents announced Our Concert Could Be Your Life, a very special evening of music to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Azerrad’s classic history of the ’80s indie underground, Our Band Could Be Your Life. The show, featuring some of the best bands in contemporary indie music each taking their turn performing songs by each of the 13 bands featured in the book, sold out the Bowery Ballroom instantly.
Nat Baldwin, David Longstreth and Brian McOmber (of Dirty Projectors) play Black Flag
Delicate Steve plays the Minutemen (with Lee Ranaldo and Tim Harrington)
Citay plays Mission of Burma
Ted Leo plays Minor Threat
Grooms plays Husker Du
Titus Andronicus plays the Replacements
Tune-Yards plays Sonic Youth
Callers plays Sonic Youth
Dan Deacon plays the Butthole Surfers
St. Vincent plays Big Black
Wye Oak plays Dinosaur Jr
Buke and Gass plays Fugazi
White Hills plays Mudhoney
Yellow Ostrich plays Beat Happening
Very special guests Janeane Garofalo and Eugene Mirman will co-host the event.
Date: Sunday May 22nd, 2011
Venue: Bowery Ballroom
Doors at 7:30 pm, show at 8:00 pm
Tickets: $25 (sold out)
Tickets for Thurston’s May 20th Music Hall of Williamsburg concert in Brooklyn. NY and early copies of ‘Demolished Thoughts’ on CD or colored vinyl LP are now available.
To mark the release of his new solo full-length, ‘Demolished Thoughts‘, Thurston Moore is playing Brooklyn’s Williamsburg Hall of Music on May 20, with tickets on sale now via Ticketmaster .
In addition to the full-priced ticket option ($20), you’ll have your choice of ticket(s) + ‘Demolished Thoughts’ bundles ;
a) one ticket + a copy of “Demolished Thoughts” on CD ($30)
b) one ticket + a copy of “Demolished Thoughts” on LP (colored vinyl, with download code) ($35)
The CD or limited edition colored vinyl copies of ‘Demolished Thoughts’ can be collected at the merch table on the night of the show – four days before the official release date of May 24,
Lee is performing in London w Bang On A Can Allstars, playing his piece which was written for them, “How Deep Are Rivers? (A Map Is A Good Piece of Paper). It’s part of a festival in tribute to Steve Reich. The shows in Spain are all poetry festivals of one sort or another–Lee will be doing spoken word poems as well as suspended gtr phenomena and some films. In France it’s the same w/o the poems!
Dates and info:
May 7 London The Barbican performing with The Bang On A Can All Stars
May 8 Paris Point Ephemere
May 10 Nantes, France Le Lieu Unique
May 13 Palma de Mallorca, Spain Alternatilla Festival – Teatro Lloseta
May 14 Seville, Spain Caracter Liquido- Centro de las Artes (CAs)
May 15 Barcelona International Poetry Festival – Palau de la Virreina <http://www.bcn.cat/cultura/barcelonapoesia>
Lee will perform with Michael Morley (Dead C) for the first time in over a decade at the Numina Lente festival Thursday, April 14. Also performing that night: Andrew Lampert with Flower-Corsano Duo, Lubomyr Melnyk, ILITCH, and Tamio Shiraishi.
From Howling Hex: “NUMINA lente is a three-day music + performance festival which aims to explore the speed of perception + the experience of other. Assembling an international array of artists operating outside conventionally accepted or defined genres, these shows will offer New York audiences a unique opportunity to glimpse into unseen worlds.” More info.
For Record Store Day (April 16) Sonic Youth will reissue their 1993 Australian tour-only EP ‘Whores Moaning‘. An interesting review of this plus the Nirvana Hormoaning EP is here.
Israel Nash Gripka’s second LP ‘Barn Doors and Concrete Floors’ – co-produced by Steve Shelley, engineer Ted Young + Israel, is out now. Israel and the Fiero’s are currently touring across Europe.
Text of Light will be headed to Austin, TX (March 14) and Mexico City (March 17). The lineup of Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Ulrich Krieger, Alan Licht & Tim Barnes will perform at the Mexican American Cultural Center in Austin and the Festival de México.
Thurston will perform along with Milford Graves, Matthew Shipp, Ikue Mori + John Zorn at an additional Concert to Benefit Japan Earthquake Relief at Abrons Arts Center April 8, 2011.
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Sonic Youth participated in Concert to Benefit Japan Earthquake Relief March 27,2011 at the Miller Theatre in NYC.
More than a dozen innovative artists at the intersection of indie rock, contemporary jazz, and avant-garde performance will come together at Miller Theatre to present a benefit concert to support recovery efforts in Japan. “The tragedy and devastation is really overwhelming,” says John Zorn, who has organized and will host the evening. “I’ve always felt a strong personal connection to Japan, and I’m just glad to be able to do my part to help. It should be an amazing night.”
Lee will perform a duo with Sarah Lipstate (Noveller) at Roulette in NYC this Friday, March 11. More info here.
Bad Moon Rising, 180 gram re-mastered vinyl edition will be released Feb. 15 and is available for order now at the SY webstore. Confusion is Next, EVOL + Sister are all also currently available as 180 gram LP re-issues. The individual LPs or a bundle with all 4 vinyl re-issues – Confusion is Sex, Bad Moon Rising, EVOL + Sister are also available at the webstore.
Out now on Atavistic:
MY CAT IS AN ALIEN with RAMONA PONZINI & LEE RANALDO ‘All Is Lost In Translation’ CD / DL (ATAVISTIC, USA – ALP196CD)
“Bella Italia avant garde meets Sonic-Youth guitar guru! The Brothers Opalio return with their second collaborative album for Atavistic. This time MY CAT IS AN ALIEN have teamed up with RAMONA PONZINI (vocals/Japanese percussion, and LEE RANALDO (guitars/bells/vocals) for a 2008 session, captured live in Verona, Italy. Like the extant MCIAA tapestry of international collaborations, ‘All Is Lost In Translation’ continues their spectacular latter-day exploration of the outer reaches, and further defines their well-earned role as alchemical auteur-artists.” (label info)
Maurizio Opalio – electric guitar, percussion Roberto Opalio – wordless vocalizations, electric guitar, space toys, alientronics Ramona Ponzini – vocals, lyrics taken from Yosano Akiko’s poems, Japanese wind chimes & hand percussion Lee Ranaldo – lyrics and vocals, electric guitar, bells Cover artwork by Roberto Opalio
Sometime in February, Vin Du Select Qualitite records will release VDSQ Solo Acoustic Volume Five : Thurston Moore 12 String Meditations For Jack Rose. Solo, untreated, 12-string compositions in tribute to one of the greats. An album of instrumentals in requiem.
Live stream of Disappears (with steve shelley) performance from La Route De
Rock Festival tonight at 6:45PM CST http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/Disappears_en_direct_de_la_Route_du_Rock/
We’ve been going thru our closets and and thru hidden (and sometimes forgotten) boxes to put together this streaming Mixtape #8 – featured on the stream are a couple songs from the soon to be released SYR 9 ‘Simon Werner A Disparu’, demos from Daydream Nation and a recent recording of Star Power. The mixtape is found in the upper right corner just above the news on the front page.
Lee will be in Rotterdam for a week as a juror for the IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam. While he’s there he’ll do 2 performances: together with Leah Singer he will present Sight/Unseen, a large scale indoor work for 3 projection screens, 4 track tape, 2 gong players and suspended gtr. This is a reprise of their work of the same name, outdoors, in Toronto last October. Performance will last 90 minutes or so (not 10 hrs this time!) and start at 9pm. Tickets are 5€, and can be bought at the IFFR box offices. LantarenVenster, Address: Otto Reuchlinweg 996, Rotterdam. There is a second, 20 min performance with some short films by Japanese director Tomonari Nishikawa (which are also being shown at the festival) on at the Festival’s Awards Ceremony on Feb 4, at: Oude Luxor Theater, Kruiskade 10, 3012 EH Rotterdam. The awards show starts at 6 pm, you need ticket but they are free and can be ordered on the IFFR web page and at the regular box office. You might find some information about this (and more on the festival) here. photos and more info here.
Lee has a photograph in this interesting show at this interesting gallery in Tribeca, NYC. Social Photography: A Benefit Exhibition of Cell Phone Photographs. Opening Reception: Saturday, January 29, 6-9 pm. Show runs Jan 19-Feb5, 2011. Carraige Trade, 62 Walker St, NYC.
Sonic Youth’s previously taped performance was aired on Austin City Limits January 22, 2011 along with Akron, OH super-duo The Black Keys. Check your local PBS listings for the actual date and time in your area. Here’s the complete show streaming at PBS.
And a preview from the show of Sonic Youth performing ‘No Way’.
Visual Artist Cameron Jamie will present his new film ‘Massage The History’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York Monday, Jan 24 at 7:00pm. The film features the Sonic Youth song of the same name. More information from MoMA below.
AN EVENING WITH CAMERON JAMIE
Monday, January 24, at 7:00 p.m.
Cameron Jamie (b. 1969, Los Angeles) presents the New York premiere of his most recent 35mm short film, Massage the History (2007–09). Featuring an original soundtrack by Sonic Youth, the film documents young adults from Alabama who dance themselves into trance states in the privacy of their living rooms. Also presented are three related videos: Kranky Klaus (2002–03), about an ancient Austrian folk tradition involving a sadistic mythical beast and the benevolent St. Nicholas; Spook House (2002–03), which follows Detroit suburbanites acting out primitive urges on Halloween; and BB (1998–2000), in which teenagers stage wrestling matches behind Los Angeles tract houses. An American artist living in Paris, Jamie experiments with and moves freely among moving image and music performance, sculptural installation, drawing, photography, and zine publishing. Following the screening, Jamie will take part in an onstage conversation with Kathy Halbreich, MoMA’s Associate Director.
Sonic Youth will perform this New Year’s Eve in London at the Hammersmith Apollo with Shellac, The Pop Group and Factory Floor. More info via the ATP site. Sonic Youth will also appear the previous night in Manchester at the Manchester Academy (this show has sold out) with The Pop Group.
Tickets for New Year’s Eve in London with Sonic Youth are on sale here.
Hallogallo 2010 7″-Blinkgürtel/Drone Schlager
The debut record by Michael Rother (Neu!, Kraftwerk, Harmonia), Steve Shelley 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 in hand silkscreened covers and come with a download card and available for mail-order at the sy webstore.
Visit the vampire blues twitter page or at the related blog.
The Thurston Moore – Samara Lubelski – Bill Nace – Mary Lattimore Quartet will be performing with readings from poets John Coletti, Stacy Szymaszek, & Karen Weiser — Friday, December 17th at 10pm at the Bowery Poetry Project.
Kim and Thurston will take part in panel discussions regarding No Wave at Issue Project Room this Thursday November 4. The discussions are part of the event “Theoretical Music: No Wave, New Music, and the New York Art Scene, 1978-1983”, which also includes film screenings and a performance by UT.