Lee Ranaldo - The System - Auqa - VINYL LP

A quick scan of the world's favorite crowdsourced discography reveals that Sonic Youth co-founder Lee Ranaldo was not a total stranger to crackling electric experimentation in the years following his songwriting turns of the 20-teens. Yet The System, ingeniously culled and sequenced from Ranaldo's soundtrack work for Dutch filmmaker Joris Postema's Incheco-docInch of the same name nonetheless feels like a reawakening. Quietly released in a vastly different (and much more InchfilmicInch) form by Doxy Music/ Riva Media Records in 2025, this LP reimagines and reconfigures the initial , including unreleased material (written and recorded for the film) to lend it new stature as both a return to drone-improv form and a reunion with introspective Downtown angst.Given the state of the world, it's not surprising that the film Ranaldo scores - a documentary on three climate activists bruising their fists on the black iron prison of techno-fascist deathkultur - is a study in despair and futility. But rather than wallowing in navel-gazing doom and gloom, the film documents the unstoppable spirit that has animated human resistance since the time of the Pharaohs. As it turns out, the gorgeous scope of Lee Ranaldo's guitar palette is a perfect manifestation of the hope and despair that animates the film. But like other high-water marks in the guitar-centric soundtrack canon - the high plains raga of Bruce Langhorne's Hired Hand, Neil Young's sparse and ghostly solo transmissions on Dead Man, or the monolithic mantras of Popol Vuh's Nosferatu - it's devotion to spectral gestures and meditative song forms launches it firmly outside of the OST orbit into a universe fully it's own.It might seem like a long journey from the Lower Manhattan rhythmic grime of the album's opener InchTajikistan (Nice to Meet You)Inch (reminiscent of guitar opuses like Robert Quine and Jody Harris's Escape)