Saturday, October 17, 2009

for n-one

Kim Gordon: bass, vocals;
Thurston Moore: guitar, vocals;
Richard Edson: drums;
Lee Renaldo: guitar.

The 80's may have begun blandly, and gotten progressively blander still, but there was still proof positive under the swab that not everyone hankered to collaborate with Trevor Horn's bloated vision of a new era. A choreographed jackboot dance of all singing extras juggling day-glo fish, tied off with ribbon and lipglossed pouts.

I may have slipped into a coma for a while as all around me struggled to strike a coquettish pose, but Sonic Youth fashioned a dark fairytale on their debut EP which kissed me awake with the sleep of the dead grafted on one eye.

Borrowing from influences as remote as Joy Division and engineered by Don Hünerberg, who helped shape the Voidoids' "Blank Generation", this is the sound of cancer in remission. The disinterred rumblings of a runaway train.

Written, produced and arranged by Sonic Youth.
Engineered by Don Hünerberg.

Recorded and mixed at Radio City Music Hall (New York, NY, USA)
between December 1981 and January 1982.
Made in New York City.


SONIC YOUTH: I DREAM I DREAMED from "Sonic Youth" 12" EP (Neutral Records) 1982 (US)

3 comments:

Brushback said...

I, like a lot of useless old twits, loved the early Sonic Youth better and think they they lost it after their Homestead records.

Of course, I grew up listening to the earlier stuff, so maybe that's why it makes more sense to me.

ib said...

"useless old twit" quite adequately sums me up. Just add 'dithering', and water.

Good to hear from you. I have been unpardonably negligent in my online commentaries recently. Senility and physical exhaustion is an ever looming obstacle.

I am sometimes quite fond of more recent and more sparse Sonic Youth recordings with Thurston to the fore, but, as with you, their earlier stuff remains more comfortable territory.

Brushback said...

By the way, I really liked that Pink Fairies song, too. "It's rock n roll, and the message is do it!" cool shit