Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui
Label: SYR
Rated: NONE
WorkNameSort: Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui
What’s nifty about Sonic Youth’s SYR series is how it’s completely unlike the work the band releases on Geffen. What isn’t so nifty is that the last SYR recording came out half a decade ago. Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui, a live 2003 tribute to the late experimental filmmaker needlessly sectioned into three untitled movements, finds them again puttering about noncommittally at the margins of composition. Ephemera coaxed lightly from guitars and drums idle into and around the venue like incidental specters; cymbals bloom and disperse like mushroom clouds; mannered howls, clangs and wisps of feedback are wrung from idiosyncratic tunings; Kim Gordon moans through some sort of distorting filter. Coagulation, artfully thwarted at every turn, pounces at Koncertas’ end: a miasma of squealing, panicked white-noise guitars and schlumping thumps punctuated by kamikaze streaks of fire-alarm bells.
This article appears in Dec 7-13, 2005.