Although Sonic Youth have been operating in the big league on Geffen Records for some years now, accusations of selling out aren't leveled at them very often, if ever. Their second major label album, 1992's Dirty suffered greatly from its frequently unsuitable Butch Vig production which was so over-polished that one could not so much see one's face in it as see right through it, despite the strength of the material trapped underneath the sheen.

While, during the 1980s, they provided a somewhat caustic beacon of hope that the decade would die like the dog it was, the post-grunge mid-1990s could potentially have left them high and dry. For over a decade Sonic Youth had somehow always been there; as scenes changed and clandestine fashions came and went, they managed to survive as a yardstick of untouchable underground cool. The over exposure and subsequent death of grunge threatened to take them with it as 'alternative rock' rapidly became just as superficial and commercialised as the mainstream. The creative flow of many of their peers had dried up leaving them without a career, or, in one extreme and tragic case, without a face. For a short while it seemed that they could possibly end up outstaying their welcome, even becoming irrelevant; a horrifying thought when listening to something as gripping / thrilling as Evol or Daydream Nation. Subsequent releases, however, have seen Sonic Youth slide neatly and freshly into their own niche of assured and coolheaded experimentalism, re-establishing themselves yet again, without ever actually changing what they do nor how they do it. While the 'youth' may be in short supply, the abundance of sonic sounds has more than made up for it.

A key outlet for their sundry yet often challenging probes into the avant garde has been their own record label, SYR and the SYR releases have dug even deeper underground than the Geffen material. The pinnacle (if you can have a pinnacle to a hole) being last year's Goodbye 20^th Century, a kind of Now That's What I Call Avant Garde with its covers of tunes by Steve Reich, Yoko Ono and George Maciunas. Goodbye... provided a finer and more complete document of the musical advances made in the last century than any of the many rush-released compilations loudly claiming to do the same which emerged at the end of last year. Sadly, it seems to have slipped by almost unnoticed, but the best things very often do just that.

SYR releases are now up to number five, and this one, Kim Gordon, DJ Olive, Ikue Mori, the most recent, isn't even by Sonic Youth.

The assembled trio on this CD consists of Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon (back on guitar rather than the bass with which she has been more recently associated) and two key New York sonic experimentalists. Ikue Mori (see interview elsewhere in this issue of Clicks and Klangs), ex-member of DNA who has spent two decades exploring the 'boundaries of beat' through her intriguing Heath Robinson approach to the drum machine and sampler; and DJ Olive, prominent in New York's illbient scene, provides turntablist ruminations, and, as the album's most pleasant surprise, even the occasional bit of skank.

The three frequently entwine with a surprising cohesion, overcoming their seemingly disparate backgrounds to produce something often unlike any of the individuals' own work. Every song ends where it starts, and it's not always possible to identify where some songs do actually start. There are precious few 'hooks' for the easy listener, and the music never really 'goes' anywhere at all. But why go anywhere when you're already surrounded by these elysian intonations? I'm not.

This almost minimalist, semi-abstract illbient avant rock is seldom oppressive despite its inherent bleakness and superficial lack of direction. It's actually a perfectly entertaining hour of music/noise and is the closest thing any member of Sonic Youth has done, either solo or combined, to 1989's Whitey Album by their Ciccone Youth alter-ego with its glorious, should-be-unworkable-but-isn't fusion of Krautrock, hip-hop beats and Madonna.

This trio work well together with Ikue on drum machine and programming, DJ Olive on loops and turntables and Gordon on guitar and vocals. They smartly resist the temptation to veer into an agitated noiseland, instead producing delicately structured dabbles with bedlam which never fully let rip, and show a restraint which works to their credit. Jim O'Rourke mixed the resultant recordings and the finished product is reminiscent sound-wise to parts of his Terminal Pharmacy album. The non-silent parts, that is.

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