Sonic Youth-- Silver Session (For Jason Knuth)

(SYR 001)

One of the first CDs I ever bought was Weld, by Neil Young. Remember that one?

It was borne of that one horrible, misbegotten, completely wonderful tour that matched up Neil and SonicYouth. The CD was nothing but feedback, spliced and (no doubt lovingly) manipulated into a thirty-minute long skree from the intros and outros to Neil's songs. Didn't work. Mainly because there were little bits where you could hear Neil sing, or moan (I remember him sighing, 'No more!'). The whole thing was (reportedly) Thurston Moore's idea.

OK, segue... here we've got the Sonic with an outtake from their new album, completely instrumental (completely inhuman, actually) where they turned all their amps up and leaned any stringed instruments up against those very same amps, like Jubal did with strings against the resonating surface of the Old Testament God.

It sounds like trains on the way (maybe wrecking). It sounds like take-off (maybe flaming). It's not music, it's not songs, it's just noise and totally mindless and to me it sounds very soothing and heavenly. Then again, when I was a kid, all pink and terribly insomniac and eleven years old, I couldn't sleep until I heard the two-in-the-morning Vevey-to-Lausanne express go west to east for five minutes. Then, at last, I could not be awake.

Jason Knuth was a suicide. Jason Knuth loved Sonic Youth. Maybe you know what that feels like. Proceeds from the sale of this CD go to the San Francisco Suicide Prevention Hotline, 415-781-0550, and that's a good thing. I'd like to think that this CD might have soothed him.

T.Magill