Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth came out of the New York no wave scene in 1981 and turned detuned guitars into a language of their own. Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and, from 1985, drummer Steve Shelley worked with alternate tunings, screwdrivers wedged under the strings and feedback that became melody as often as noise. Daydream Nation from 1988 is the reference point for that approach: the Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry in 2006. The band then moved to major label DGC for Goo and Dirty, ran their own SYR series of instrumental experiments, and made later records such as Murray Street and Sonic Nurse. Sonic Youth ended in 2011, and archive recordings from three decades of shows have kept appearing since.

This collection brings together Sonic Youth on vinyl, LP and CD: studio albums from the eighties and nineties, reissues and live and archive releases.