Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Contre Le Sexism

The first song on Sonic Youth's 1998 LP A Thousand Leaves is called "Contre Le Sexism."

This has got to be one of the weirdest openings to a great album. Opening an album with a an improv noise jam seems very ambitious, even for Sonic Youth.

This 3:55 jam has been edited down from a longer improv that has been said to clock in over 20 minutes! This song has never been performed live but some of the lyrics have popped up during live noise improvs of the tour.

A Thousand Leaves was not only an ambitous record, but a natural progression. I have always felt that most of the bands albums go in three's but this string of albums wsa interupted by the theft of the bands equipment in July 1998.

A Thousand Leaves was the first album recorded at the bands newly built recording studio ECHO CANYON. The constant access to a recording studio allowed the band to fully explore the art of improv song writing without the time constraints of a large studio bill.

1 comment:

Juan Horsetown said...

They had the original gear for all of the making of this record, so I'm not sure what you mean by the interruption of the albums in three's--unless you're referring to NYCG+F.

I love this song. When Tha D and I were into eating stacks of pancakes at a time, our theme song became, "Alice! Come back! It's just a pancake! It's just a paaancaaaake!"