Performer Notes

This is an Enhanced audio CD, which contains regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Sonic Youth: Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, 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.
Personnel: Jim O'Rourke (vocals, guitar); Christian Marclay, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, Thurston Moore, Takehisa Kosugi, William Winant , Christian Wolff (vocals).
Recording information: New York, NY (03/1999-08/1999).
New York's premier alternative band has been releasing "experimental" material on the sly on its private label, SYR, for a few years now. But this fourth release, a homage to a handful of highly influential experimental composers such as John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, and Pauline Oliveros, qualifies as a major Sonic Youth album. There's formless experimental music and then there's formless experimental music. This bona fide modernist rock & roll band knows the idiom so well and has been playing so well together for so long that the group's finely honed guitar textures (and familiar voices) make for a surprisingly revealing addition to the mix. These are no musical amateurs. Cage's music in particular demands a kind of haiku-like perfect placement of musical elements and the band demonstrates on no less than three tracks that it knows where to put what and when. Even Steve Reich's "Pendulum Music", a composition for a swinging, feedback-prone microphone and speakers seems somehow sweetly melodic in the loving hands of these millennial kids.

Professional Reviews

Spin (3/00, p.155) - "...a stairway to postmodernist heaven....finding SY and pals rifling through scores by venerable oddball composers..."

Alternative Press (2/00, pp.90-1) - 4 out of 5 - "...one of the best records Sonic Youth have done in quite a while....a beautiful thing, a career highlight for the band and well worth owning."

The Wire (1/00, p.67) - Included in Wire Magazine's "50 Records Of The Year ['99]"

The Wire (1/00, p.78) - "...Sonic Youth's farewell to the century effectively says thank you to some of the...avant garde...enablers....That these figures still appear avant garde is a sign of their continuing usefulness....satisfying....it all sounds fine..."

CMJ (12/13/99, p.21) - "...this music is meant to not only push the envelope but also twist it, shred it, burn it and mail it to places where sound has never been before....provides a challenging listen..."

Album: Goodbye 20th Century
#	Song Title		Time
	Disc 1
1)	Edges	More Info...	0:16
2)	Six	More Info...	0:03
3)	Six For New Time	More Info...	0:08
4)	+-	More Info...	0:07
5)	Voice Piece For Soprano	More Info...
6)	Pendulum Music	More Info...	0:06
7)	Treatise	More Info...	0:03

Album: Goodbye 20th Century
#	Song Title		Time
	Disc 1
1)	Edges	More Info...	0:16
2)	Six	More Info...	0:03
3)	Six For New Time	More Info...	0:08
4)	+-	More Info...	0:07
5)	Voice Piece For Soprano	More Info...
6)	Pendulum Music	More Info...	0:06
7)	Treatise	More Info...	0:03