Sonic Youth - Spinhead Sessions - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Digitally remastered and expanded edition. Sonic Youth's eponymous debut 12-inch was recorded in late 1981 at Radio City Music Hall in NYC and originally released on composer Glenn Branca's Neutral tag. The album is loosely based on compositions the newly formed group had performed at that year's week-long Noise fest event (and remains the only recorded document of an early line-up featuring actor Richard Edson on drums). Back in print on CD, the Goofin' Records edition also features extra live material from a 1981 gig and an outtake from a early studio session. InchWe wanted it to sound like PIL who we were into. It didn't but we were lucky it came out sounding like a record. We did it in two eight-hour sessions at a studio at Radio City Music Hall called Plaza Sound. The janitor let US in the back door.Inch

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 tag 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 's deletion, and the band and Smith parting ways after Daydream.InchIn 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 the band had a full fledged stage crew to prepare guitars). The first two sides of Walls are massive, cavernous, with newly-drafted drummer Steve Shelley. SY tear it up especially on one trash-fi excerpt of 'Blood On Brighton Beach' (actually 'Making The Nature Scene') from a legendary outdoor gig November 8th where [Thurston] Moore, [Kim] Gordon and [Lee] Ranaldo's guitars treble

Reissue. One of Sonic Youth's most beloved albums, 1987's Sister incorporated the dissonance of their earlier releases into more traditional song structures. It's an innovative and thrilling work assuredly delivered by a band at the peak of their powers. Sonic Youth formed in 1981 in New York. Founding members Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass guitar, vocals, guitar) and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) remained together for the entire history of the band, while Steve Shelley (drums) followed a series of short-term drummers in 1985, and rounded out the core line-up. In their early career Sonic Youth were associated with the no wave art and music scene in New York City. Part of the first wave of American noise rock groups, the band carried out their interpretation of the hardcore punk ethos throughout the evolving American underground that focused more on the DIY ethic of the genre rather than its specific sound.