Spinhead Sessions by Sonic Youth

Recorded at Spinhead Studios, North Hollywood, CA 1986 during soundtrack rehearsals for the film "Made In USA"
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The slow-burn sounds of Sonic Youth’s 1986 rehearsals to score Ken Friedman’s spooky highway film Made In USA are yet another mile marker in the band’s long and varied existence, now being issued as Spinhead Sessions (named for the North Hollywood studio used by SST label acts like Black Flag and Painted Willie). These jams were later built upon for a full-on (and quite different) soundtrack production, but the rough sketches here find the band taking time with truly new and introspective sound worlds. It was basically a brand new way of working for Sonic Youth, albeit a challenging one, under the auspices of major Hollywood film production overlords, routing their way into the world of soundtrack scoring. And it all comes at a key time and place.
It’s no secret that 1986 was a transformative year for the band in many ways. The gravitation to the beloved SST stable, in addition to Steve Shelley, now drumming, certainly gave Sonic Youth a renewed vigor and vocabulary. They were already an international touring machine, and gaining considerable steam with critics (even spinning the heads of detractors who had dismissed their arty downtown boho sensibilities prior to ’86’s EVOL). Their cultdom with fans had concrete roots by this point, and the influences that were swarming in the band’s orbit marked an exciting time, where almost any trajectory seemed possible, and they were going for it.
Friedman’s film worked on a relatively darker frame for a mainstream Hollywood flick; characters played by stars Chris Penn and Adrian Pasdar made a cross-country journey that started out in Centralia, Pennsylvania, a real-life, anthracite coal producing town that had to relocate all its residents due to a decades-long, inextinguishable underground fire. The Sonics passed through this haunted-looking locale on their next tour after the sessions, and are pictured on the sleeve standing amidst smoldering embers. For the sounds they made at Spinhead, this image seems a fitting mental picture. Guitar harmonics billow like smoke, heavily reverbed drumming and shimmering cymbals echo from what sounds like the bottom of a deep mine.
This newly born Spinhead Sessions release once again defines Sonic Youth in a raw and engaging state of discovery at a terrific time. Is it a missing link between the complex, crafted cavernosity of EVOL and the frayed-electric powerline sizzle of Sister? Yes and no. It’s an entirely unique animal, a meditative album where you can soak in the template of tapping overtones, sedate explorations of new chords, even sounding at times like AMM trying to play the VU’s Sweet Sister Ray bootleg or something similar. It’s trademark Sonic Youth at the core, and in an unfettered, dreamy state and time, there and gone like smoke.
—Brian Turner

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This music was made in preparation for the first chance Sonic Youth had to score a feature film. A savvy editor had placed some SY music on the working soundtrack of MADE in USA and director Ken Friedman liked what he heard and invited us to score the film. We were still a young band trying to raise a racket and never imagined such a working situation at that time. The couple weeks at Spinhead were spent watching the rushes and inventing some themes-and-variations that could work as film score. The film follows a group of misfit characters making their way across the country by car, from the burnt out town of Centralia, PA across to the great west. By coincidence, SY had just finished our EVOL tour across the USA and our route was strikingly similar to that followed by the characters in the film. The various landscapes rolling by onscreen were becoming pretty well-known to us. We always loved the sound of these Spinhead recordings and hoped they’d someday see release. Now, 30 years later, here they are.
–Lee



The story was a dark, somewhat politically pointed road movie. We watched the film a few times and set up a rehearsal/demo situation at the now legendary (and defunct) Spinhead Studios in the San Fernando Valley. This studio was the home to a lot of music generated by the SST record label (Black Flag, Painted Willie, etc.). We found ourselves constructing spindly, twisting rhythms and quiet rushes of noise and melody. We also blasted out some straight-ahead Mac-truck rock riffs. Anything to fit the film's "mood."
–Thurston

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Spin your head

Phil Newman and I constructed the modest 8-Track studio from scratch within a storefront on Burbank Boulevard in funky North Hollywood, prior to the introduction of the 818 area code. Spinhead Studios was Phil’s fledgling recording business and record label. It didn’t have the comforts of home but we could play music pretty much all night long. I was working as a punk rock extra in Hollywood movies while making my own Super-8 flick Desperate Teenage Lovedolls. We ended up recording most of the music for the film in the studio, bringing in Redd Kross, Nip Drivers, White Flag and others. Word got out and eventually bands started coming in to record. Spinhead was on it’s way…

It was during this same time that I took a trip (quite literally) out to the Mojave Desert to the Gila Monster Jamboree, which presented my favorites Meat Puppets and Redd Kross, along with a New York band making it’s West Coast debut, Sonic Youth. Who was this mysterious band that played guitars with drumsticks? It was quite an experience seeing these bands in the middle of the desert under the canopy of the Milky Way. Big things were happening in American underground music.

It was on a subsequent visit to Los Angeles that I would connect with SY and a friendship with the band would emerge. They would contribute to the soundtrack of my sequel Lovedolls Superstar. They chose Spinhead to track demos for a film project they were hired to work on, the very tracks that comprise this release.

–David Markey

Sonic Youth Archive is a home to SY recordings including official, unreleased, self-released and stray SY recordings.

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