[Hip Priest]

One of the things that convinced me to splash out the not inconsiderable sum being demanded by Virgin was this rather good review (note his words on track three!):


Like a Viking warrior striding through the field of battle, coolly despatching his wounded, vanquished opponents with a smite of the axe, PlayLouder is currently wading through a big mountain of 2004's CDs, searching for things to metaphorically knock off with a whoop before the year is out.

On first listen to 'Hidros 3', I must confess I was pondering using the "Viking axe wielded at poor unfortunate" angle. Noodly balls! Did our brain first cry when the jazzy flicks of guitar tickled each other pointlessly at the beginning of Track One - 'Hidros 3' seems somewhat wary of anything as conventional as names. Track Two didn't bode much better at first. Kim Gordon, never really one to try for a Katie Melua, deliberately allows her voice to gently grate on either side of the note as the same guitars pitter and patter away in the background.

But this being a Sonic Youth side project with some folks you have never heard of, this track is over 17 minutes long... and so does Gordon shut up... and strange watery murmurs begin. As does a deep, mechanical buzz of some massive capacitor at least three rooms away in a power station - anyone who's stood next to the far wall of the Tate Modern will know exactly what I mean. This in turn breaks down into strangely empty guitar soloing, like a dull-brained rocker playing into space as his craft explodes. Actually, it's the sound that you can imagine the dude from Dark Star had in his ears at the end when the bomb has its existential crisis and he's set forth into space for all eternity, riding a board.

It all points to the fact that now Sonic Youth have decided they're a band who like their noise focussed again, their other projects - white-beard-God-lookalike on sax of Dream/Action Unit, say, or Gordon and bits of Erase Errata's Anxious Rats, achieve their own strong, idiosyncratic identity whereas the experimentation under the centralised Sonic Youth name seemed to lack focus. I recall a particularly painful moment at Glastonbury a few years back where Kim Gordon could be espied walking along her bass with a drumstick, apropos of very little.

What makes 'Hidros 3' so interesting are its multitude of layers and forms, forming some strange triangle with jazz, rock and wilful wondering what things do as its three points.

So track 3 is composed of a strange and perverted animalistic sound, like a screaming pig throwing up a load of conkers with their shells on as a horse is gently skewered next to it. It is deeply, deeply gruesome, and possibly emanates from both SY guitar and the contrabass sax of key collaborator Mats Gustafsson. Number 7 features Kim Gordon's by now more tolerable vocal lurchings tailing off into a motorized growl as little squeaks go off, as if minnows lived on dry land and could talk.

And in between? Noise glorious noise, of every shape and hue. A terrific and wide ranging exploration of sound and textures, this Viking striding through the field of the dead has chanced upon a comely maiden.

Luke Turner


That's from here. It's an accurate review, I'd say. A bit unfair on Kim's vocals, which are as usual most engaging.