Apr 26, 2016
Sonic Youth, the monumentally influential alt-rock/noise rock/just-fucking-great-music group, is releasing an album of instrumental music that they recorded in 1986 when they were rehearsing to score the soundtrack to Ken Friedman's film Made In USA. They've also shared one of the tracks, "Theme With Noise," via Brooklyn Vegan.
Spinhead Sessions is being marketed as "Newly-Unearthed 1986 Instrumental Demo Recordings," so there's a chance it might be no more than a dusty old relic from Sonic Youth's vast archive aimed specifically at super-fans who'll probably end up being the only people that will spend money on it. Or, it could be a masterclass in atmospheric songwriting.
The band's official statement (which you can read in full on their website here) describes the music on Spinhead Sessions by saying:
"...these jams were built upon for a later full-on (and quite different) soundtrack production, but the rough sketches herein find the band taking time out to dig in and hunker down with some truly new and introspective sound worlds, taking inspiration and queues from viewings of assorted film excerpts that were in production. It was basically a brand new way of working for Sonic Youth, albeit a challenging one, under the auspices of major Hollywood film production overlords, routing their way into the world of soundtrack scoring. And it all comes at a key time and place."
Sonic Youth emerged in 1981 and called it quits in 2011 after 15 studio albums and the divorce of founding members Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore. In 2014, Moore clarified by saying "Sonic Youth is on hiatus. The band is a democracy of sorts, and as long as Kim and I are working out our situation, the band can’t really function reasonably."
Spinhead Sessions is out June 17, 2016, and you can pre-order it here.
Have a listen to "Theme With Noise" below.
Image: brooklynvegan.com