Today Bikini Kill released a track from the forthcoming reissue of its demo album Revolution Girl Style Now. “Playground,” one of three songs left off the original demo, was recorded in early 1991 at the ABC House in Olympia, Washington, a day after one of the band’s first shows. The reissue, out Sept. 22, was mixed by Guy Picciotto of Fugazi. No, the band won’t be touring behind it (Bikini Kill broke up in 1997 and Kathleen Hanna went on to form Le Tigre and then The Julie Ruin) but plenty of other female-driven ’90s bands are back on the scene.
sonic youth
Thurston Moore Wants to Scribble On Your Records
Not only do Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth have shows in town this week, but today Other Music sweetened the deal by announcing that Thurston and his current bandmates Steve Shelley (who, of course, was also Sonic Youth’s drummer), Deb Googe (My Bloody Valentine’s bassist), and James Sedwards will be signing “scarce recordings and ephemera and copies of their latest record.” They’ll be in-store Thursday, August 6, at 7 p.m., before they head over to Bowery Ballroom.
Sonic Youth: Where Are They Now?
Remember this?
It’s July 21, 2015: do you know where the members of Sonic Youth are? Alas, there’s still no sign of a “fare thee well” show with a giant SY blimp and fireworks (paging Peter Shapiro), but here’s the next best thing: Thurston, Kim, and Lee have a bunch of local shows coming up, some of them freeeee.
Kim Gordon’s New Show: Fear of Lost Art and Ideas in a Changing City
“The City is a Garden” : an exhibition of work by Kim Gordon now at 303 Gallery (Photo: Nicole Disser)
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Minimalist Master La Monte Young Drones On About His New ‘Dream House’
Left to right: Alan Licht, Jung Hee Choi, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela. (Photo: Jung Hee Choi. Copyright © Jung Hee Choi 2015.)
La Monte Young, the minimalist master whose trailblazing work with droning has influenced everyone from the Velvet Underground to Sonic Youth to Brian Eno, who once called him “the daddy of us all,” made a rare public appearance at Red Bull Studios on Thursday, dropping some tantalizing details about a new Dream House installment coming in June to Dia:Chelsea.
Lee Ranaldo Has an Art Show; Kim and Thurston Have Some Show Shows
A sketch by Lee Ranaldo
If you were looking for an excuse to sport your $100 designer Sonic Youth t-shirt, here are a few of them. You may have missed Lee Ranaldo’s show at Union Pool last week, but if you’re up for a short jaunt upstate to Kingston, you can still catch him at an exhibition of his art.
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Blonde Redhead Defends Their Decadence at St. Mazie
(Photos: Phil Provencio)
Since 19-freakin’-93, Blonde Redhead has been conjuring killer music in New York freakin’ City. The trio – Italian twin brothers Amedeo and Simone Pace and Japanese chanteuse Kazu Makino – are absolute legends of noise-rock and sonic dreamscapes. First taken under the wing of Sonic Youth and later guided by Fugazi, the band constantly strives to create, as Simone says mystically, “something that feels right everywhere, that doesn’t feel it derives from anywhere but just comes because of something magical between us.” Their entire career has been defined by always feeling like outsiders in the city they call home.
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Lee Ranaldo Is Working On the Scorsese-Jagger HBO Pilot About ’70s NYC
Somewhere in Oslo, by Lee Ranaldo. (Photo: Daniel Maurer)
Okay, so that phonebook carving of Hunter S. Thompson wasn’t the only highlight of last night’s Select Fair preview: over at Kingston-based One Mile Gallery’s booth — wedged between a model made by the amazing Mark Hogencamp of Marwencol and some paintings created by a dog — we got to chat with Lee Ranaldo about his art, also on display.
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At a 100th Birthday Reading of Sun Ra’s Lost Works, Space Was the Place
Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon Are Playing The Stone (Not Together, Sorry)
John Zorn and Thurston Moore at a Faculty Against the Sexton Plan fundraiser at LPR in 2012.
The saga of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon has been back in the news lately (and by “the news,” we mean Pitchfork and Brooklyn Vegan). Thurston says he’s now in a “really romantic place” but next month, he’ll step into a not-all-that-romantic place: John Zorn’s East Village hole-in-the-wall, The Stone. As it turns out, Kim’ll be there too — about a month later.
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