KOOL THINGS The Sonic Youth Listening Club. FINAL THOUGHTS start at post 2431

:eyes::eyes::eyes:

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I don’t think you can really tell the original sample in there tbh

The properties say it was made in May 2009 but I feel like it might be a bit older than that

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i’m going to listen to this tomorrow because this is now the official first track of this record

Anagrama is the only SYR release I own. Not played it in probably 15 years though.

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I think having gotten into Jim O’Rourke in a big way this year, I’m really looking forward to his SYR collaboration. The only other one I own other than Anagrama is the one they put out just after they broke up (can’t remember which number but it’s fantastic amd absolutely dicks on the Eternal)

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four normal albums in a row is too many, frankly

SYR1: Anagrama

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right then noise nerds, what’s the story with these SYR ones? is it another “creative outlet” of some kind? don’t think I’ve ever listened to them but they’ve got lovely cover art if nothing else

weirdly, good old sonicyouth.com doesn’t seem to have much on it. this is from allmusic.com:

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I guess they always seemed canny enough to understand they had some level of mainstream appeal and that was separate from their more avant garde stuff. I imagine once they signed with Geffen they found the label were asking that they give them marketable albums and that doing this was the way they’d get to keep doing the weirder stuff without impacting continuing to have enough of that mainstream success to keep their contract and the revenue etc.

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Beck had a deal with Geffen in the 90s where he was allowed to record and release more uncommercial records (like One Foot in the Grave) on other smaller labels outside of his Geffen contract.

That is until they gave him permission to release Mutations on another label, then heard it and reneged on the deal and insisting on releasing it themselves.

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Yeah, would definitely make sense if SY had that sort of deal. I don’t know if the SYR stuff is actually still via Geffen though. It’s also a bit like authors openly using a different name for different types of books so it’s clear to their readers what they’ll be getting.

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Looks like it was their own label

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Tbh i was kinda dreading Thousand Laves as i think ive tried to kisten to that album in one sitting 5 or 6 times and always bail

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Can’t believe I subjected my youngest to ‘A Thousand Leaves’ yesterday in the car and we’re not even discussing it today. She wasn’t happy.

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What they didnt like Contre Le Sexisme?

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I feel like I’m going to be going on the defence of this album when we cover it

HOARFROST

KAREN KOLTRANE!

SUNDAAAAYYYY-UH

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There are a lot of very good career defining songs on that album

and a lot of bad songs

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SYR1

Its fine. Will never go back to it so consider this review my one and done opinion

Have fuck all to say about it. Drums sound nice and lots of space

6/10

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more blurb on the SYR 1 Bandcamp page:

Sonic Youth’s summer instrumental EP, Perspectives Musicales is, at first glance, a full-blown tribute to the 20th century French avant guard. From the EP’s title, to the exquisitely, tottering pretentious song titles – “Anagrama,” “Improvisation Ajoutee,” “Tremens,” and " Mieux: De Corrosion." The connections don’t stop there, the vinyl is Coke can red, adding a whiff of both socialism and aesthetics (the best and most effective red-vinyl release I’ve seen since J. Geils’ 70’s album, Bloodshot.

But the connections do stop with the music. While the French avant-guard, from Celine to Sartre to Foucoult, focus on the Absurd and are always tinged with a hint of nihilism, all four of the tracks on Perspectives Musicales are melodious, if not always harmonious, celebrations, and instead of a reign of disorder, Sonic Youth creates beautiful, often exquisite order out of what seems like thin-air.

This first release since 1995’s not entirely satisfying Washing Machine is a wonderful example of what Sonic Youth does best. While cutting apart and putting back together beautiful, even poppy melodies, Moore, Gordon, Shelley and Ranaldo never sound as if they’re lost in some sort of psychedelic jam; in every step along the journey, there’s tremendous lyricism and harmony…which seem contradictory for a band whose trademarks include the meticulous musical dissection of harmonies. At their best, like on Washing Machine’s “Diamond Sea,” the results are glorious. And Perspectives Musicales, an all-instrumental effort in which all energy is focused on music and none of lyrics, is glorious. Perhaps only Genet could have appreciated music this celebratory.

The EP’s opener, the nine-minute plus “Anagrama,” sets the tone for what’s to come. Moore and Ranaldo weave around each other gently, slowing building to a peak; sometimes aggressively, sometimes downright prettily, they build droning melodies up to huge peaks and come back down again. Gordon and Shelley are working both as a rhythm section and also operate on their own level; on every song, Gordon’s bass-lines and Shelley’s drumming do as much to establish the melodic and harmonic structure of the song, and behind Renaldo and Moore, no strangers to melody themselves, that’s no small feat.

Perspectives Musicales is the first in a series of EPs Manhattan’s coolest hipsters are planning to release, according to Ranaldo. If they’re all as good as this, it’ll be a nice year indeed for Sonic Youth fans. Seth Mnoonkin MTV News

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“Being in French”

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