Sonic Youth - S/T plus Early Live

The first Sonic Youth EP - originally released on Glenn Branca's Neutral imprint - sits alongside the Sonic Death cassette and the Kill Yr Idols LP as some of the group's most evocatively blasted work. Listened to with modern ears it's immediately remarkable just how fully-formed the Sonic Youth sound was, even as early as their first quartet gig - included here in its entirety on disc two. The complex interlocking webs of dissonant guitars are as distinctive as ever - even when rendered via conventional tuning - and the automatic/somnabulant delivery of the lyrics is every bit as zoned as on later tracks from Evol and Bad Moon Rising. There's still a fair bit of new wave damage in the way the bass works melodic runs around the guitars and even a hint of Velvets-via-Television in the locked combinations of chords but it's really impossible to mistake this for anyone else, even at this, supposedly nascent, stage. This great upgraded edition includes the whole of the debut LP (originally released March 1982) as well as the first gig from September 1981, a studio outtake, a gatefold sleeve with lots of great early snaps and fliers and killer sleeve notes from Byron Coley and first drummer Richard Edson who recalls leaving Sonic Youth for, uh, the "Funky-groovelectric-Afro-Latin dance and party band" Konk. They thought Sonic Youth were "squares". Doh! -David Keenan

Recorded in late 1981 at Radio City Music Hall and originally released on Glenn Branca's Neutral label, this remastered and expanded vinyl reissue includes the self-titled debut record plus live material from '81 and a track from a previously unheard studio session. Includes liner notes by original Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson, Glenn Branca and Byron Coley.

Song list for 'Sonic Youth' is:
The Original Record
Side A
1. Burning Spear
2. I Dreamed I Dream
3. She Is Not Alone
Side B
4. I Don't Want To Push It
5. The Good and the Bad
Early Live (September 18, 1981):
Side C
6. Hard Work
7. Where The Red Fern Grows
8. Burning spear
9. Cosmopolitan Girl
10. Loud and Soft
Side D
11. Destroyer
12. She Is Not Alone
Early Studio (October, 1981):
13. Where the Red Fern Grows

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