![]() ![]() The film follows a group of misfit characters making their way across the country by car, from the burnt out town of Centralia, PA across to the great west. The couple weeks at Spinhead were spent watching the rushes and inventing some themes-and-variations that could work as film score. We were still a young band trying to raise a racket and never imagined such a working situation at that time. A savvy editor had placed some SY music on the working soundtrack of MADE in USA and director Ken Friedman liked what he heard and invited us to score the film. This music was made in preparation for the first chance Sonic Youth had to score a feature film. It’s trademark Sonic Youth at the core, and in an unfettered, dreamy state and time, there and gone like smoke. It’s an entirely unique animal, a meditative album where you can soak in the template of tapping overtones, sedate explorations of new chords, even sounding at times like AMM trying to play the VU’s Sweet Sister Ray bootleg or something similar. Is it a missing link between the complex, crafted cavernosity of EVOL and the frayed-electric powerline sizzle of Sister? Yes and no. ![]() This newly born Spinhead Sessions release once again defines Sonic Youth in a raw and engaging state of discovery at a terrific time. Guitar harmonics billow like smoke, heavily reverbed drumming and shimmering cymbals echo from what sounds like the bottom of a deep mine. For the sounds they made at Spinhead, this image seems a fitting mental picture. The Sonics passed through this haunted-looking locale on their next tour after the sessions, and are pictured on the sleeve standing amidst smoldering embers. Their cultdom with fans had concrete roots by this point, and the influences that were swarming in the band’s orbit marked an exciting time, where almost any trajectory seemed possible, and they were going for it.įriedman’s film worked on a relatively darker frame for a mainstream Hollywood flick characters played by stars Chris Penn and Adrian Pasdar made a cross-country journey that started out in Centralia, Pennsylvania, a real-life, anthracite coal producing town that had to relocate all its residents due to a decades-long, inextinguishable underground fire. They were already an international touring machine, and gaining considerable steam with critics (even spinning the heads of detractors who had dismissed their arty downtown boho sensibilities prior to ’86’s EVOL). The gravitation to the beloved SST stable, in addition to Steve Shelley, now drumming, certainly gave Sonic Youth a renewed vigor and vocabulary. It’s no secret that 1986 was a transformative year for the band in many ways. ![]() And it all comes at a key time and place. It was basically a brand new way of working for Sonic Youth, albeit a challenging one, under the auspices of major Hollywood film production overlords, routing their way into the world of soundtrack scoring. 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 sound worlds. 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). Recorded at Spinhead Studios, North Hollywood, CA 1986 during soundtrack rehearsals for the film "Made In USA" ![]()
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