Sonic Youth Su Tim Barnes

Glistening feedback, noise and plugged-in improvisation have long served as Sonic Youth’s fingerprint, even when going through the motions of being a rock band. Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui, the sixth installment of the SYR series, growls to life with all the chaos and buckle of a garbage truck smashing into a guitar shop. And that’s a good thing. This type of free-form, zoned-out experimentation is where Sonic Youth truly excels; lost in its own hazy head space somewhere along the sonic journey from strings to pedals to amps to the ether.

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A percussive rattle shimmers in a framework where rhythms are only vague afterthoughts and aural swells fall on occasion prompting an invisible audience to cheer with reserved affection. This pulls listeners out of the moment unexpectedly, but only to be seduced by the next cycle of droning murkiness already in progress.

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The three tracks that make up the disc were captured live at a memorial benefit for experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Whereas Brakhage’s films often consisted of short bursts of light and abstract imagery shrouded in silence, Sonic Youth’s dark, resonance is the negative image of Brakhage’s visual aesthetic. There are no pretty pictures or simple formulas at work here, only the unpredictability of the universe mirrored by the hands of offbeat virtuosos.