SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Silver Session for Jason Knuth (1998).
This record came about for two reasons. One was the suicide of longtime Sonic Youth fan (whom the band didn’t know) Jason Knuth. And the second was because when they tried to record vocal tracks for One Thousand Leaves, the band upstairs was so loud, it kept interfering with their recording.
So, SY turned all of their amps all the way up, put all of their guitars and basses against said amps, turned on a boombox for feedback fun and then left the room. They say it was so loud that even with hands pressed against their ears it was still too physically oppressive to be in the room.
The band recorded it all (of course) but rather than releasing it all like some kind of Metal Machine Music, they cut the tracks down into small chunks (“Silver Shirt” is 7 minutes long but most are about 4, with “Silver Son” and “Silver Breeze” being under 2). They also somehow turned what sounds like a noisy disturbing mess into rather pretty ambient pieces. (In honesty, I have to believe that the band was in the room with for some pieces, since some of “Silver Flower” seems to have strumming on it). And “Silver Son” actually has a beat of sorts to it.
As with the other disc in the SYR series, these aren’t really songs. They’re not even what you think of as Sonic Youth, but they are interesting experiments (some are actually quite nice). Not for everyone (heck, hardly for anyone) but if you’re intrigued, its worth checking out.
[READ: August 23, 2009] Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
This volume mixes things up a bit for the series. The cover is a wicked reflective style, and there are even 8 color pages at the beginning of the story (that work as a sort of catch up device). I didn’t really like the color pages all that much to be honest. While it was nice to see that Ramona’s hair is blue, for the most part the color pages felt a bit more mechanical than the regular pages (the edges were crisper, which I didn’t really care for). But whatever, don’t complain about a free addition.
As for the story itself, it seems to up the ante in intensity. (more…)
It took me going to Seattle to learn about 
ten. For reasons known only to my head, I was convinced that Sasha was a black woman. Little did I realize that he is not. And that he was in a band that I have a CD of called Ui. He is an excellent resource for all things music, whether I like the artist he’s talking about or not. Some entries are 
SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-SYR 3: Invito Al Ĉielo (1998).
This SYR release adds Jim O’Rourke to the mix (O’Rourke played with with them on A Thousand Leaves too). I’ve always been aware of O’Rourke but I’ve never really listened to any of the bands that he’s been associated with (and there’s a lot). So, I’m not sure what his actual contributions are, but he seems to be pushing the SY members into a much more noisy/abstract direction. (A few samples of Gastr Del Sol shows them to be pretty out there, so perhaps pushing SY in a direction that was not too far from where they’d go on their own. And, I rather liked the Gastr stuff, too).
SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Made in USA (1986 released in 1995).
The liner notes explain a lot of what was behind this disc. The then largely unknown Sonic Youth was asked to score a cool indie film, which later became a less cool more mainstream film and ultimately went straight to video.
Colin Meloy is the lead singer and songwriter for the Decemberists. This is a recording of Meloy’s solo acoustic tour from 2006. The recording is from several venues on the tour, although it is mixed as if it were one concert.
SOUNDTRACK: DEPECHE MODE-Black Celebration (1986).
Since the previous entry was all about The Smiths, I include Depeche Mode in this entry as the other big album that influenced my appreciation for college rock (or just British music, apparently).
SOUNDTRACK: LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III-Career Moves (1993).
I Just Read About That... 