Lee Is Free

Founding member of -FUPPETS- House Band, SONIC YOUTH, Lee Ranaldo is known as a magnificent creator of some of the most skreelicious and skronktastic sounds ever to come from an electric guitar. This past Sunday, Lee Ranaldo performed a 4-hour guitar drone piece at the Hogar Collection in Brooklyn NY. It was a celebration in honor of the closing of the exhibition currently on view there, Lee Ranaldo: a random collection of cells.
Georgekrz, standing member of the Sonic Youth Gossip Forum, provided a small description of the proceedings:

yes. I was 10 minutes late, but Lee finished 10 minutes early so it sort of evened out? There was very very little down time in that performance, maybe 2 short breaks to stretch legs (though the sound loops never stopped) There was also a guy on a laptop live mixing, though I missed his name. It was a tremendously tremendous performance. Plus the gallery was very nice to to supply us with complimentary beers. It finished in murky darkness lights out sun down.

Lee himself, under his Sonic Gossip moniker Lee Is Free, posted this as well.

Thanks to everyone who came to the gallery to hear the music and see the show--it was pretty intense to conceptualize a performance that stretched 4 hours without any really significant breaks. The live sound processing was by Damian Catera--our first time working together after many years. I'll try to post some pictures if i can figure out how... - LR

Lee Ranaldo, being the bad-ass motherfucker that he is, also provided a short clip of part of his 4-hour performance.

A Random Collection of Scenes from a Performance by Lee Ranaldo at Hogar Collection

Happy Birthday LEE RANALDO!

Yesterday was the birthday of Lee Ranaldo, guitar skronkmeister supreme and founding member of -FUPPETS- House Band, SONIC YOUTH. In honor of this excellent occasion,
-FUPPETS- is proud to bring you a clip from a recent performance at the opening in Madrid Spain of the traveling art and multi-media show SONIC YOUTH Etc.: Sensational Fix that is currently traveling through Europe. The catalog of this exhibition can be seen HERE.

This was provided by SONIC YOUTH drum-pounder supreme Steve Shelley.
Many -FUPPETS- thanks to you!

LEE RANALDO, STEVE SHELLEY & ENRIQUE MORENTE - Madrid performance at opening of art show Sonic Youth etc.: Sensational Fix (February 2, 2010)

-FUPPETS- Loves Lee Ranaldo

LEE RANALDO, guitarist and vocalist for -FUPPETS- House Band, SONIC YOUTH, is always a great interview. For this cold-cold Friday, -FUPPETS- brings you a conversation with Lee Ranaldo, in which he discusses how he fell in love with the guitar, and how Sonic Youth expanded what could be done with electric guitars, at a time when the synthesizer was the supposed avant-garde of music-making tools.

Enjoy.

SONIC YOUTH Interviews

-FUPPETS- is pleased to bring you a collection of recent interviews with Sonic Youth and the various members that make up Sonic Youth. Long live the skronk. Thanks to TESLA69 and Zombie Robot, two of the sonic fanatics at the Sonic Youth Gossip Forum for the links to the second, second-to-last, and last interviews.

SONIC LIFE!


Sonic Youth Interviewed: A Rude Awakening - ( The Quietus )

Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth - ( Gothamist )

SENSATIONAL FIXED: Kim Gordon interview, translated from the German by babelfish - ( INTRO )

Youth Movement - ( The Guardian )

Elixir of Youth - ( Sydney Morning Herald )

Summer in NYC - ( Time Out NY )

-FUPPETS- Video Of The Day - MAELSTROM by Lee Ranaldo

blunderbuss, one of the sexy bastards at the Sonic Youth Gossip Forum, has posted a link to a great art/soundscape piece by Sonic Youth guitarist and all-around skronk bad-ass, Lee Ranaldo. The piece is called MAELSTROM FOR THE MORNING LINE. Here is Lee Ranaldo's description of this piece.

Maelstrom is a multichannel soundscape that, - following on the heels of my 2005 DRIFT project in collaboration with Leah Singer, utilizes elements extracted from that work to create a wholly new piece. I have taken some sonic details - tonal clusters created with electronic guitar - from that much larger project and used them as the basis for a sprawling, seemingly static state of guitar bedevilment. While there are many subtle shifts going on within the sound field, the overall effect is meant to be rather sustained, monolithic sonic cloud - indeed, a maelstrom - real brain-eraser type stuff. I intend to erect a series of loud chambers within Matthew Ritchie's work, within one might think silent thoughts.

-FUPPETS- knows that some of us could regularly use some "brain-eraser type stuff," to quote Lee Ranaldo, pictured above.


LEE RANALDO - Maelstrom For The Morning Line, 2008

-FUPPETS- Happy Birthday to LEE RANALDO

One of the Grand Masters of SKRONK, Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth fame turns 53 years old today. In his honor, -FUPPETS- dedicates these videos of his bad self giving us what we need, and what we know we want, SKRONK. Lee is Free. Not only does he rock with the Youth, but he has many side projects with various free jazz musicians as well as collaborative art efforts with his wife Leah Singer. Happy Birthday Lee, from -FUPPETS- .


LEE RANALDO - Notebook

SONIC YOUTH bringing the SKRONK Live

SONIC YOUTH - Mote