Sonic Youth / SYR 4: Goodbye 20th Century

As their way of saying "bah-bye!" to a century of creative musical innovation, Sonic Youth launched a double album in 1999—probably their most ambitious project to date—by teaming up with radical geeks Jim O'Rourke, William Winant, Christian Marclay, and Wharton Tiers (plus Kim and Thurston's daughter, Coco Hayley Gordon Moore) to pay homage to a handful of legendary avant-garde composers such as John Cage, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Steve Reich, and on-site helpmates Takehisa Kosugi and Christian Wolff. Even if you're not familiar with Marclay's cut 'n' paste sound art or Reich's repetition theory, these at times wonderful pieces will work their way into your cranium—certainly not your standard Sonic Youth album by any stretch of the imagination. But just as A Thousand Leaves took Sonny Sharrock's Coltrane guitarscapes into pastoral territory, Goodbye 20th Century makes unknowable art, be it Cage's zoning "Six" or Wolff's evil electro-orchestral dry heave "Burdocks", seem atmospheric, natural, and even erotic. The oceanic build to James Tenney's "Having Never Written a Note for Percussion", Gordon Moore's 16-second screech through Yoko Ono's "Voice Piece for Soprano," the Youths pounding and piano plinking hammer at George Maciunas's "Piano Piece #13 (Carpenter's Piece)," or Lee Ranaldo and William Winant's take on Nicolas Slonimsky's short, lovely percussion piece, "Pièce Enfantine," wouldn't sound out of place even to this day.

Tracklist

DISC 1:
1. Christian Wolff / Edges
2. John Cage / Six - (take 3)
3. Pauline Oliveros / Six For New Time
4. Takehisa Kosugi / + -
5. Yoko Ono / Voice Piece For Soprano
6. Steve Reich / Pendulum Music

DISC 2:
1. James Tenney / Having Never Written A Note For Percussion
2. John Cage / Six - (take 4)
3. Christian Wolff / Burdocks
4. John Cage / Four6
5. George Maciunas / Piano Piece #13 (or better known as the "Carpenter's Piece", it's literally a painful sequence of hearing the piano keys being nailed down one by one)
6. Nicolas Slonimsky / Piece Enfantine
7. Cornelius Cardew / Treatise Page 183

Sonic Youth: Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, and Thurston Moore.
Additional personnel: William Winant, Jim O'Rourke, Takehisa Kosugi, Christian Wolff, Christian Marclay, Coco Hayley Gordon Moore, Wharton Tiers.
Producers: Sonic Youth, William Winant, Jim O'Rourke.

Recorded in New York, New York from March-August 1999.
Released November 16, 1999

Further notes and information, including covers and liner notes, can be found from the Sonic Youth website.