Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth was a New York rock group formed in 1981 by Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo, with Steve Shelley on drums from 1985. Coming out of the no wave scene, the band built songs out of guitar noise, feedback and improvisation, and moved from small independent labels to a major label without dropping its experimental side. The band stopped playing in 2011. The first EP appeared in 1982 on Glenn Branca's Neutral Records; Ranaldo had played in Branca's guitar ensemble. EVOL and Sister came out on SST, Daydream Nation (1988) on Enigma, and Goo (1990) opened a run of albums on DGC.
Tellus: The Audio Cassette Magazine, Vol. 1
Long before streaming services, podcasts, or even the compact disc, there was Tellus - a radically ambitious publication that imagined recorded sound as an exhibition space. Founded in 1983 in downtown New York, Tellus transformed the humble audio cassette into a magazine, commissioning and publishing new works by musicians, composers, visual artists, poets, writers, choreographers, and performers who were reshaping the boundaries of contemporary art. Each issue invited listeners into a world wh…
Washing Machine
Washing Machine is the ninth studio album by the American experimental rock band Sonic Youth, released on September 26, 1995 by DGC Records. It was recorded at Easley Studios in Memphis, Tennessee and produced by the band and John Siket, who also engineered the band's previous two albums. The album features more open-ended pieces than it's predecessors and contains some of the band's longest songs, including the 20-minute ballad "The Diamond Sea", which is the lengthiest track to feature on any …
A Thousand Leaves
A Thousand Leaves was Sonic Youth's 10th studio album and the group's first major effort to be recorded at their own Echo Canyon studio in NYC. Free from the constraints of paying for costly studio time, the band was able to work at their desired pace and experiment at will. The result was an album born out of improvisation, chiefly characterized by the guitar interplay between guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. The album title was inspired by Walt Whitman as Moore explained, "The same w…
Goo
Sonic Youth's eighth album, Goo, was their first for DGC / Geffen. The album marked their major label debut, featuring arena rock staples like "Kool Thing" and "Dirty Boots" deep in its grooves.
This allowed Sonic Youth to enter the mainstream world, destroy everything in their path, and emerge victorious. They rode the Top 10 charts to sonic stardom and glory, or at least secured the opening spot on the 1991 Crazy Horse tour.
Evol (LP)
Very rare original edition on SST of SY's 1986 album, with cover by Richard Kern. With insert.
Daydream Nation (2LP)
Rare original UK edition with gatefold sleeve and original innersleeves of SY's 1988 album, with cover by Gerhard Richter.
Death Valley '69 (12"EP)
1985 compilation EP on Blast First / Homestead including 4-page insert.
Superstar / Yesterday Once More (promo 12" EP)
1994 promo EP in generic sleeve with sticker with two covers of Carpenters' songs.
The Stone, San Francisco, CA, Aug. 17, 1985. (flyer)
Very rare xeroxed flyer for a Sonic Youth show in SF in 1985.
Live at Peppermint Lounge, New York, NY, Feb. 15, 1985. (signed flyer)
Very rare xeroxed flyer for a Sonic Youth show in NY in 1985 with a short letter from Thurston Moore overleaf.
The Destroyed Room B-Sides And Rarities
2025 stock The Destroyed Room: B-sides And Rarities, a band-chosen collection of near-hidden Sonic Youth gems. The album brings together songs from throughout the band's career with Geffen, focusing on tracks previously available only on vinyl, limited-release compilations, or as b-sides to international singles. The tracks were hand picked by the band and also include material that has never before been released.
Sonic Youth
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.
Goodbye 20th Century
25th Anniversary Edition. Goodbye 20th Century is a double album of covers of Avant-garde recordings by Sonic Youth and collaborators. SYR4 features works by avant-garde classical composers such as John Cage, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich, and Christian Wolff played by Sonic Youth along with several collaborators from the modern avant-garde music scene, such as Christian Marclay, William Winant, Wharton Tiers, Takehisa Kosugi and others. The album received mixed reviews, but most critics praised the gro…
Sold Out
Hold That Tiger
Sonic Youth on Superior Viaduct!!! In October 1987, four months after the release of their critically acclaimed Sister LP, Sonic Youth showcased their latest work in a blistering set at Cabaret Metro, Chicago. The concert was introduced by Big Black's Steve Albini (who at the time was banned from the venue) and subsequently released as a semi-official bootleg under the title Hold That Tiger on writer/provocateur Byron Coley's impishly Geffen-baiting label Goofin' (years later the band would use …
A Diamond Hidden in the Mouth of a Corpse
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** A legendary compilation with contributions from no less legendary figures/bands like William S. Burroughs, Sonic Youth, Diamanda Galas, Michael Gira, Coil and many others. "Each year, Giorno and his friend William S. Burroughs put out a compilation featuring themselves and the musicians most admired among the New York loft set. This year he and Burroughs are joined by Coil’s tromping and pulsing instrumental “Neither His …
Hits Are For Squares
Hits Are for Squares is the first greatest hits album by American rock band Sonic Youth, released on June 10, 2008, by Starbucks Entertainment. The album features 15 songs spanning Sonic Youth's career since the release of their debut studio album in 1983, Confusion Is Sex. It also includes one new song: "Slow Revolution". The band intended to create a compilation album that appealed to the casual consumer. Hits Are for Squares received acclaim from critics, who noted it as a strong introduction…
Walls Have Ears
Color vinyl. "Culled from three 1985 gigs in the UK during a transitional and transcendent time in the band's story, Sonic Youth's The Walls Have Ears appeared/disappeared as a 2LP set in 1986, not just a live album but an artful tapestry full of live experimentation with songs, between-song tape segues, darkness, humor and audio verité. It's now issued for the first time officially under the band's auspices.""The '85 shows were the second time the band appeared on UK soil, Brits now getting jui…
Daydream Nation
2024 repress. "Daydream Nation was Sonic Youth's sixth full-length, their first double-LP, and their last for an indie label before signing with Geffen. Widely considered to be their watershed moment, the album catapulted them into the mainstream and proved that indie bands could enjoy wide commercial success without compromising their artistic vision. More recently, Daydream Nation has been recognized as a classic of its time: Pitchfork ranked it #1 on their '100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s'; …
Live In Brooklyn 2011
The final U.S. show, a triumphant and blistering bookend to the storied career of one of the most influential bands in rock music, featuring a unique and expansive eighty-five minute set list that spans Sonic Youth’s nearly three decade catalog. Received an 8.3 Best New Reissue rating from Pitchfork.
Anagrama
BACK IN PRINT ON VINYL! While 1995's Washing Machine LP moniker was a thinly-veiled jab at the corporate aesthetic ("no, you cannot turn Sonic Youth into a household appliance brand", the band even considered changing its name to Washing Machine but settled on the album title instead), their major label relationship was indeed a curious buzzpoint of talk on the street after their intake to DGC in 1990. It wouldn't be fair to say that this state of existence propelled the band to reinforce its i…
Sold Out
Invito Al Cielo
For the third of Sonic Youth's sound experiment series, they teamed up with legendary nosie-nik Jim O'Rourke. Building on the ideas from the brilliant extended version of "The Diamond Sea" (from Washing Machine); the series explores the (mostly) instrumental side of the band. Though sold as an EP, the three tracks on the CD version of clock in at just over 56 minutes, and can sit quite comfortably with any of SY's best work.
The title track opens the record with over 20 minutes of drenching feed…
Slaapkamers Met Slagroom
The Dutch title that literally translates to "Bedrooms with Whipped Cream" and harkens back to the band's experimental days. On three tracks spread over 28 minutes, Sonic Youth work out extended, hypnotic themes for non-existent psychological case studies. The title track, the longest of the three "songs" included here, opens with a swirl of sound before eventually settling into a 17 minute cavalcade of guitar effects overlaying a particularly "in-your-face" drum sound. The results are simultane…
In/Out/In
In mulling over their career, it’s staggering to realize that Sonic Youth not only delivered a healthy slab of releases as a unit but also have a myriad of shelved material still waiting for broader ears. While the group’s current Bandcamp abode lays out a generous amount of it, a bunch more has yet to surface. And it’s a massive mountain to chip away at in the sense of the group output alone; individual members’ projects are a whole other game, needless to say. "In/Out/In" ably delivers a new s…
Confusion Is Sex
Originally slated to be a seven-inch single to follow up their self-titled debut, Sonic Youth ’s Confusion Is Sex blossomed into the band’s first album: a brain-bludgeoning, completely fried endeavor of dissonance and disarray, a perfect soundtrack for running from a chain-wielding gang near the SIN Club. This was the sound of 1983 New York City: nothing like London where punks were starting to scrub their faces and sounds to get on Top of the Pops , and nothing like the jangly roots of college…
Sister
Received a 9.8 rating on Pitchfork. “Let’s get something straight. There is no album in the entire corpus of indie rock—not Loveless, not Surfer Rosa, not Psychocandy—that reaches the heights of invention, joy, and magic of Sonic Youth’s sublime fifth album.... The haunted reveries of Sister remain with you for years, even if you only hear them once…. Sister is the sonic manifestation of refracted light. It’s a record that changes you.” —Stereogum
One of Sonic Youth’s most beloved albums, 19…
Live at Liberty Lunch, Austin, TX. November 26, 1988
Touring in support of theIR classic LP, Daydream Nation, Thurston, Kim, and the gang rolled into Austin's legendary Liberty Lunch club for what would turn out to be one of the most highly regarded live dates in the group's history. With a track list that drew heavily on their latest LP, Live at Liberty Lunch captures the touring Sonic Youth at their noisiest and gnarliest, proving once and for all that they were the best and most important indie-rock group of the 80s (and beyond).
Simon Werner A Disparu
In Spring 2010, Sonic Youth gathered at their Echo Canyon West studio in Hoboken, New Jersey, to watch the rushes of a new film, Simon Werner a Disparu, by French director Fabrice Gobert. They spent the following few weeks recording music which was then shaped as needed to fit the various scenes. For this release, rather than present the small clips of music as used in the film, the band went back in the autumn to the original tapes and re-organized the various pieces for this original soundtrac…
Massage The History
In celebration of The Infinite Mix, The Vinyl Factory releases the soundtrack to Cameron Jamie's ‘Massage The History’ by Sonic Youth. Cameron Jamie has described his films as ‘a way to visit hidden worlds within our world.’ In Massage the History, the artist combines footage of young men in Alabama performing an erotically charged, provocative dance with living-room furniture in middle-class homes, with found footage of violent or surreal events filmed in anonymous American suburbs. In the…
Bad Moon Rising
Sonic Youth’s second full-length LP Bad Moon Rising was originally released on Homestead and Blast First in 1985. The album is a fascinating examination of “the junction where hippie idealism [meets] the cold hard world,” says guitarist Lee Ranaldo, “where Woodstock [meets] Altamont—Death Valley, Charles Manson, Brian Wilson, musicians, murderers, heroes and villains.” Its original eight-song tapestry of droning guitar feedback, distant clattering percussion, and sullen vocals, all held together…
Spinhead Sessions 1986
" The slow-burn sounds of Sonic Youth’s 1986 rehearsals to score Ken Friedman’s spooky highway film Made In USA are yet another mile marker in the band’s long and varied existence, now being issued as Spinhead Sessions (named for the North Hollywood studio used by SST label acts like Black Flag and Painted Willie). These jams were later built upon for a full-on (and quite different) soundtrack production, but the rough sketches here find the band taking time with truly new and introspective so…
EVOL
"EVOL" was Sonic Youth's fourth album, significant for one fairly obvious reason: the addition of Steve Shelley behind the kit. Steve joined the band in mid 1985, and this is the first album he plays on. EVOL also features the first real "guest appearance" on a Sonic Youth album -- Mike Watt, who contributes bass to "In The Kingdom #19" and the non-LP bonus track "Bubblegum". "Shadow Of A Doubt" became their second music video. At some point circa June 1985, after the first European Bad Moon Ris…
Silver Sessions
"Silver Sessions were taken from an evening when Sonic Youth had to do vocal overdubs for 'A Thousand Leaves' - the band upstairs was hammering out some funky metal overdrive and we couldn't "sing" properly - we decided to fight fire with molten lava and turned every amp we owned on to 10+ and leaned as many guitars and basses we could plug in against them and they roared/howled like airplanes burning over the pacific - we could only enter the playing room with hands pressed hard against our ear…
In The Fishtank
Another installment of Konkurrent's fantastic series which invites bands to record while touring Holland, giving 2 days to record 20-30 min of whatever they want. In June 2001 SY played the Holland Festival. For their studio time they invited the Dutch ICP-jazzers HAN BEENICK, AB BEARS & WOLTER WIERBOS, plus LUC & TERRIE of THE legendary EX! In one day they recorded these delicate, abstract & elusive miniatures that fit in the jazz tradition rather than pop music, based on sounds, instant compos…
Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui
The sixth edition of the SYR series is a live recording of the April 12, 2003 benefit concert held at and for The Anthology Film Archives, the international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of avant-garde and independent cinema. In addition to screening films for the public, AFA houses a film museum, research library and art gallery.
The event, which raised money for the Archives and celebrated the life and work of avant-garde film maker Stan Brakhage, featured Sonic Youth prov…
Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth
Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth is an album by Sonic Youth with Mats Gustafsson and Merzbow. It is the eighth release in the SYR series. It was released on July 28, 2008. It will not be released on vinyl. The album is recorded the first July 2005 on the Roskilde Festival. The album title is in Danish and means "Other sides of Sonic Youth".
J’accuse Ted Hughes
Another great installment in Sonic Youth's SYR series, this one features two engrossing, lengthy pieces : 'J'Accuse Ted Hughes' and 'Agnes B Musique'. The former was recorded at All Tomorrow's Parties 2001, when the band were premiering material from their NYC Ghosts & Flowers album, and takes the form of a ragged twenty-two minute noise jam featuring free association lyrics by Kim Gordon ("I sent my poem to Good Housekeeping. They paid me ten dollars" she imparts). Meanwhile, the more composed,…