[Tokolosh]

Sonic Youth recall No Wave
Paul Jackson / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
Apr 14, 2007

Was it a significant challenge to the confines of popular music as we know it, or a localized outpouring of energy by the musically inept? The start of a post-punk movement, or a transient carbuncle of incoherent noise on the body of punk itself? Whatever the answers--or questions for that matter--there is no denying there's a renewed interest in New York's No Wave movement of the late '70s.

New York is awash with bands apparently referencing No Wave, and among those working on projects exploring No Wave is Thurston Moore, guitarist and vocalist of the influential underground band Sonic Youth, who will be touring Japan this week with local noise purveyors, Vooredoms.

In Scott Crary's documentary Kill Your Idols, which recently screened in Japan, Sonic Youth are portrayed as the link between No Wave and contemporary New York bands the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, Black Dice and others. Even the garage rockers the Strokes get a mention even if the connection seems less clear. So who better than Moore to ask about the influential scene that essentially seemed to involve would-be artists playing punk?

"It was pretty much artists destroying punk," says Moore in a telephone interview that also sheds light on Sonic Youth's approach to music. "Punk rock always talked about wanting to destroy rock 'n' roll, but at the same time it was still Chuck Berry chords played fast. No Wave wasn't even doing that. No Wave really was destroying rock 'n' roll."

The scene centered on bands like the Swans, DNA, Suicide and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks who performed with little or no adherence to recognized chords, harmony or structure. Technique was strictly superfluous. An artistic bent preferred. At one point DNA had a Japanese drummer, Ikue Mori, and Teenage Jesus a Japanese bassist, Reck, who later formed the band Friction in Tokyo. Moore refers to the scene as New York's "most fascinating moment," a time when those inclined to the arts, like Moore, were attracted to New York because of the energy there.

So does Kill Your Idols, which will be released on DVD on May 25, accurately capture the energy and history of the No Wave scene?

Moore has some doubts.

"It's just one account of No Wave. It's a worthwhile film on its own right. But the intention of that film was to show the differences and similarities between bands that are playing in New York City now and the bands they referenced from the late '70s and early '80s New York underground. I don't think it was really intended as a history of New York No Wave. That film has yet to be made," he says.

"[Compared to the current bands] the bands from the original No Wave scene didn't know how to play. That was a big difference. It wasn't about any kind of musical chops. It was about a whole new idea of just coming up from nowhere with music. They weren't even calling it music."

Moore's account of No Wave, which is being cowritten with Brian Coley, will tackle the history more directly with pictures and accounts of the scene. Moore says it's due out next year from U.S. publisher Abrams, and unlike other books on the topic scheduled for publication in England, this book "will be written by someone who was there at the time."

While the influence of the scene these books and movies are covering is apparently resurgent today, the scene itself did not last long. Moore and friends formed Sonic Youth just as No Wave was "imploding" before it became "redundant." The band still comprises the nucleus that coalesced in 1981, namely Moore, girlfriend--now wife--Kim Gordon on bass and guitarist Lee Ranaldo.

"I think we are a link. We definitely came out of the No Wave scene. It was the world that we were involved with, a secret world not very popular outside of itself. But it informed us fairly distinctly as musicians. We took what we liked about the nihilism of No Wave and put it into a more positive framework. "

Then as now that involved the search for unusual sounds using unusual guitar tunings and implements to play them, and all manner of jarring feedback, overbearing distortion and noise. In fact their career spanning more than 25 years, could be described as a love affair with noise.

"I'm very interested in the reality that noise in any instance is musical," Moore says. "For me noise is actually meditational and can lead you into some interesting thought processes. It can also be annoying, as a lot of the rough edges of life are. But I wouldn't say noise is generally representative of the discord of life. I don't think of noise as discord myself. I think a lot of what is considered consonance and pleasantness in music is much more discordant and ugly. You know, when you hear something like Britney Spears, that's pretty harsh. It hurts."

One of the key creative tensions of Sonic Youth has been the meeting between the "traditional" musical background of Ranaldo and drummer Steve Shelley and the "nontraditional" playing of Moore and Gordon, while another dichotomy important for the band has been the challenge of unifying "stretched out improvisatory noise cosmo jamming and the idea of the concise rock 'n' roll song."

The band's two most recent releases, last year's Rather Ripped and the more recent compilation Destroyed Room: B-sides & Rarities, suggest something of this state of creative flux.

"After Rather Ripped, which was a very song-centric record, I thought it would be a good time to put out a record that had more extrapolated experimental music things."

Moore suggests that their 2004 album Sonic Nurse has a more unified feeling than either. That was during a phase in which Jim O'Rourke took over bass duties from Gordon, who switched to guitar. O'Rourke subsequently left the band for life in Japan.

That's just one of many episodes connecting Sonic Youth and Japan. Moore and company have influenced and championed many bands in Japan. Since Sonic Youth's first tour here in 1988, the band has had a close affinity with the Vooredoms, and true to form, Moore is generous in his praise for those he favors.

"The Vooredoms are one of the most magnificent playing groups on planet Earth and they always have been," Moore says. "I'm not quite sure what they're going to present now, but I know it has a lot to do with a kind of multipercussion performance that [bandleader] Eye has been putting together for the band. You never really know what to expect with the Vooredoms, but it's always going to be something super creative and exciting."

Moore also claims Japan to be the country whose underground scene most resonated to the stimulus of New York's No Wave scene back in the day, although he acknowledges he wasn't here at the time.

But for all this talk of No Wave, when asked to choose the label that best approximates to the sound of Sonic Youth, Moore still opts for association with the word punk.

"It's not something that's ever left the lexicon. We will always talk about punk rock," Moore says. "The punk rock scene is so much a part of what we came out of that I can't think of any other musical world that means as much to me."

L i n k

[whorefrost]

excellent read, gracias

[mAraujo]

Really interesting, thanks a lot!