They were one of the world’s most impressive live groups, and now Sonic Youth have begun releasing recordings of old shows at part of an ongoing live archival program. Last year marked the 30th anniversary of Sonic Youth’s seminal 1988 album, Daydream Nation. Released via Nugs, the archive so far features six recordings, dating from 1988 to one of their final shows back in 2011.
“Through the years and as the times changed we recorded our live shows as often as we could, on cassettes, DATs, CD-Rs and later on multi-track recorders,” explained Sonic Youth drummer Steven Shelley. “We collected fan-generated audience tapes, shady bootlegs and anything we could get our hands on. We now maintain an archive of hundreds of hours of Sonic Youth…
…concerts and we’d like to share some of our favorites.” “Sonic Youth’s music has influenced innumerable artists across many different genres, past, present, and will continue to do so into the future.” “For fans this is an incredible opportunity to revisit what they delivered as a live band touring the planet for three decades.”
While only half a dozen audio recordings have been released so far (and one video recording), plenty more recordings are set to be uploaded to Nugs in the near future, meaning fans will be able to have an incredibly healthy catalogue of live Sonic Youth material in no time.
01. Intro
02. Having Never Written a Note for Percussion
03. Voice Piece for Soprano (Part 1 Against the Wind)
04. Six
05. Voice Piece for Soprano (Part 2 Against the Wall)
06. Treatise
07. Voice Piece for Soprano (Part 3 Against the Sky)
08. Clapping Music
09. Four6
10. Side2side
11. She is Not Alone
12. NYC Ghosts and Flowers