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The Destroyed Room: B-Sides And Rarities Goofin' Records Goo-012 2xLP £10.99 LP from Sonic Youth that makes a necessary survey of rare and hard to locate tracks from the recent past that includes bonus tracks and out-takes from Sonic Nurse, Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star, Murray Street and the Noho Furniture Sessions as well as stray single tracks etc. The sonics here focus more on the pursuit of extended horizons that best characterises the group's live shows and it ends with a totally mesmeric unedited version of sometime showstopper "The Diamond Sea". Comes in a full-colour gatefold sleeve with tons of liners and the best ever snap of Sonic Youth on the back. |
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Trees Outside The Academy Ecstatic Peace E#91c CD £8.99 New solo album from Thurston is his best non-group effort to date, with some lucid songwriting illuminated by a killer group that features Samara Lubelski, Christina Carter (Charalambides), Steve Shelley, Gown, J.Mascis, John Moloney (Sunburned Hand Of The Man) and Leslie Keffer. The duets with Christina are particularly unearthly while the inclusion of some early homemade sound poetry, old letters to Creem and classy pics of Thurston as a kid chilling to Metal Machine Music and Horses are just so much gravy. It still kinda bums me out that alla the square mainstream reviews are championing this album for its "lack of skronk" - I mean, if you're not into skronk, why the fuck do you listen to rock music in the first place? - but regardless of the kind of flags that dopes might wanna plant in its ass, this is a great record that has been getting a ton of spins at VT HQ of late. |
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Split Krayon Recordings No Cat 7” £5.99 Split 7” featuring a single electro-acoustic drone work from Campbell Kneale of Birchville Cat Motel’s new project - the kind of fluffy bell-tone/metal levitation previously the domain of Matthew Bower’s Sunroof! - while the flip features Thurston Moore and Andrew MacGregor (aka Gown) power-thinking their way through heavy feedback/rock moves. |
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The Voloptulist Hospital Productions HOS-144 CD £8.99 Dream-team hook-up between a trio of the most important free-noise theorists of the modern age, the UK's New Blockaders and Thurston and Jim of Sonic Youth et al. Hard to work out who is doing exactly what here - though the presence of drummer Chris Corsano on the second track is pretty unmistakable - but the overall feel is of one of TNB's early Symphonie X works populated by thin strings of feedback, the crackle of electronic jack-to-jack friction and a subtle ring of bone. Beautifully eerie and a little more pro-drone than the bulk of TNB's work. Second track is just unbelievable, with a slow hiss of feedback torn apart by Corsano's triumphal, spirit/energy scattershots, marching a legion of ghosts all the way over the horizon. Highly recommended. |
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American Mercury Ecstatic Peace E#99c CD £8.99 Brand new album from a primarily-instrumental avant garage group led by outrÇ illustrator, cultural polemicist and high-energy rocker Mr JD King. Back in the darkest pre-Sonic Youth years of the underground, Thurston Moore was a member of The Coachmen and on Failure To Thrive (issued by New Alliance somewhence back in time) they cut tough Neon Boys-style punk slouch with electric Modern Lovers moves and all the under-the-counter-culture brains of Television. A buncha years later and the group may have lost Thurston but they have remained faithful to a particularly suburban punk/Creem magazine take on avant rock modes. And it still sounds *Right*. |
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Total Joke Era Important Records Imprec-127 CD £6.99 Debut CD from this new guitar duo featuring Thurston Moore and Andrew from Gown. Tracks slowly spool from small sounds generated by the furthest reaches of the instrument - the crackle of jack sockets, strings clipped against pick-ups - through to the kind of slowly modulating chord barbs that launched a bunch of Sonic Youth songs circa Daydream Nation. Cover art by Bill Nace of Vampire Belt et al. |
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LP Important Records Imprec-128 LP £10.99 Limited edition of 1000 LP, already sold out at source, from the new duo of Thurston Moore and Andrew from Gown. Featuring completely different material from the Total Joke Era CD, this sees them joined by Pete Nolan (Magik Markers/Vanishing Voice/Spectre Folk et al) on drums on Side B. Three heavy guitar madrigals scored for feedback and crunch. |
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s/t Ecstatic Peace E#21e CD £9.99 Torrential three way free jazz/rock pile-up that tracks all the way back to Thurston’s epochal Barefoot In The Head date with Sauter and Dietrich while instant-visioning the future via minimal, psychedelic interventions, classic Sonic Youth-sounding guitar clank and explosive sax/string bulldozing. Some of the playing here is straight-up gorgeous, with the way the group build luminous form from a bed of hovering guitars and Flaherty’s bold tenor sax form sounding like a classic late-Coltrane take on devotional hymn forms. Bill Nace (Vampire Belt/Northampton Wools et al) and Thurston’s guitars are often indistinguishable, with Nace’s up-close modified guitar style pulling Thurston into gravities of microtonal detail and subtle textural invention while Flaherty takes the lead and just bleeds all over the goddamn room. A fantastic set, way more than a mere jam, and one that feels sourced from deep inside the classic free jazz tradition. Recommended. |
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Monolith: Jupiter Music Fellowship MF-39 One-Sided Pic Disc LP + CD £14.99 Wild pairing of two improvised/destructo units – Bark Haze (aka Andrew MacGregor of Gown and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth) and Traum (Ben Hall of Graveyards and Zac Davis of Lambsbread). The deal is that both groups contribute a bunch of tracks without hearing what the other has done and then both recordings are cut onto the same side of an LP on top of each other. With each group hard-panned to the left and right channels you have the option of either listening to one of the performances by adjusting your stereo panning or leaving it right in the middle and hearing both groups simultaneously. The Bark Haze tracks – including a title, “Lou Reed Is A Creep”, lifted straight from The Dictators – are some of their most minimal drone-based moves, with thrumming electric guitar submerged in feedback and low-end violence. The Traum pieces are more spacious post Bailey/Oxley styled improvisations that veer into the more barbarous early Royal Trux style. Played together it makes for the kind of delirious headclash of Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz recording, with players seemingly responding to each other across time and space and the whole thing building to a beautifully confusing knot. Excellent. Bonus CD makes for a handy way of checking out the individual tracks for when you’re too wasted to pan. Edition of 500 copies, one-time only pressing. |
