Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth is the eponymous band’s first release. It’s also their first recording with (most of) the original lineup, taped about six months after Lee Ranaldo joined the band after their performance at Noise Fest in 1981.

The album is also their first and only recording with original drummer Richard Edson. While he contributes some interesting rhythmic arrangements to the songs here, Edson didn’t last long. He split from the band after a couple shows at the Mudd Club in 1982. Simply put, Edson’s heart was set more firmly to the music his first band, the Afro-Cuban dance-punk act Konk, was making. Edson is now most widely known as a character actor, famous for his roles in films like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Stranger Than Paradise.

The record was brought about due to the influence of close friend of the band and primary musical influence Glenn Branca. Branca had just founded his own label, Neutral Records. He’d had prior experience with much of the band (he was friends with Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo was a former member of his Ensemble and he’d played in the same circles as Moore’s previous group The Coachmen) and was eager to get a record made for them once their lineup coalesced.

The EP was recorded in a studio on the 9th floor of the Radio City Music Hall that had previously seen use by famed punk luminaries like The Ramones, Richard Hell, and the Golden Books series of children’s books-on-tape. The sessions took place over two days in late December 1981 – that’s all they could afford. Since the recording took such a short amount of time, the band was unable to distort the tone of their guitars to the level they soon became known for and the lyrics weren’t quite fleshed out. Said Kim Gordon of the recording:

We were lucky how well it came out, considering we had so little time, but it wasn’t a representation of what the music was like live.

The record was released in April 1982; Neutral Records pressed 3000 and shopped it around to distributors. Slowly but surely, the press caught on and the EP recieved attention from The New York Times, Billboard and famed punk zine Touch & Go, who called the band “Interesting as shit”.