Graham Reid | | 1 min read
Recorded for the album YOKOKIMTHURSTON (shortly after Gordon and Moore of Sonic Youth separated), this typically demanding, poetic piece was -- at almost 10 minutes -- mostly improvised in studio.
Also on the album was the 14-minute Early in the Morning which they recorded and released to raise funds for a home in Japan for those displaced by the 2011 tsunami. I don't imagine it brought in a lot of coin.
If you thought Ono's scream-fest stuff was hard going -- not an opinion shared at Elsewhere I have to tell you where we have an almost unnatural affection for it -- this one, which starts with each participant reading snatches of poetry, won't be easy.
And it isn't until two and half minutes in that it forms some kind of musical shape through Moore's free-plunked guitar and Ono's sometimes sensual vocalising (followed by Gordon in similar manner).
It is the nature of avant-garde music that not every experiment works out, but you have to give Ono credit. In the early Seventies she was written off as a dilettante in music but -- with the exception of a hiatus for a decade after the mid Eighties -- she has continued to record (and sometimes perform), often with artists whose work was also once considered on the periphery.
She'll never be mainstream but she's always been of interest. And she is 82 at the time of this writing.
There's a new album Yes, I'm A Witch Too of remixes and collaborations released this week.
For more on Yoko Ono at Elsewhere -- including interviews, reviews and overviews -- go here. For more on Sonic Youth go here.
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