Confusion Is Sex/Kill Yr. Idols

Performer: Sonic Youth
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: CONFUSION IS SEX now includes the KILL YR. IDOLS EP. Sonic Youth includes: Thurston Moore (vocals guitar); Kim Gordon (vocals, bass); Lee Ranaldo (guitar). Producers: Sonic Youth, Martin Bisi, John Erskine. Recorded at Wharton's Studio and live at The Pier, Raleigh, North Carolina in November, 1982; and at Plugg Club, New York, New York in October 1983. Combining Sonic Youth's first full-length release, 1983's CONFUSION IS SEX, with its followup EP, KILL YR IDOLS, this disc shows the New York noise-guitar quartet at their most uncompromising. Where 1982's self-titled EP sounded timid and too beholden to guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo's mentor, composer Glenn Branca, these two releases combine Branca's methods--including bizarre tunings and guitars attacked with screwdrivers, vibrators and other implements. These techniques are juxtaposed with sloppy punk rock, as demonstrated by the cacophonous opener "She's In A Bad Mood" and a startling deconstruction of the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog." The mood on KILL YR IDOLS is even darker and more claustrophobic, from the title track's attack on Village Voice critic Robert Christgau to the appropriately-titled "Shaking Hell." Heard in retrospect, it's clear that these two records contain the inspirational seeds for much of the '80s and 90's alternative scene that followed in the wake of Sonic Youth's innovations.

Spin (6/95, pp.100-101) - 8 - Very Good - "...stands as the great document of early Sonic Youth. Those wind-chime crazy-tuned guitars still sound like a self-inflicted wound; wanting to be rock'n'roll animals again, Sonic Youth chewed off its leg, i.e. the blues, to get out of the classic rock trap..." Entertainment Weekly (3/31/95, p.62) - "...CONFUSION IS SEX is [Sonic Youth's] funniest, hardest-rocking, and most underrated album ever..." - Rating: A- Q (5/95, p.132) - 3 Stars - Good - "...it's not full-blooded punk as some might expect but more spacy, eerie, meandering dynamics, rife with atonal tunings and anxious vocals, true to the band's original avant-garde, minimalist influences....the sound of confused, sexy, bratty, novel, experimental, attitude-ridden New York with guitar-knobs on." Melody Maker (5/4/96, p.58) - "...Traces of The Stooges and The Velvet Underground can be heard....`Inhuman' and `The World Looks Red' are repetitious Krautrock mantra-drones whose arsequaking rumble is deeply pleasant..."

Drawing equally from punk rock and new-music pioneers such as John Cage and Glenn Branca (whom guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo both played with), Sonic Youth employed a palette of white noise that deconstructed punk-rock orthodoxy into radical new configurations. Seemingly the opposite of what major labels would want in a band, Sonic Youth inked a deal with Geffen records in the late 1980s and caught the ear of a certain mainstream listenership. With the release of their 16th proper studio album, RATHER RIPPED, in 2006, Sonic Youth secured their position as icons of underground and alternative culture.

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