Mats Gustafsson, Sonic Youth and Friends

Recorded several years ago, but not available commercially until recently, Hidros 3 captures Sonic Youth at their most experimental. Swedish improviser Mats Gustafsson composed the piece for the band to play live while they were performing a series of concerts at the Ystaad Art Museum in the fall of 2000. The musicians in the expanded nine-person ensemble were isolated from each other in different rooms of the gallery while Jim O'Rourke mixed the separate feeds live. The music is structured like a game of chance with audience members free to walk around the museum taking in whatever parts of the process they wanted to. With five guitars in the line-up there is a definite rock element but Kim Gordon's vocals are grounded in jazz and Gustafsson's contrabass sax is pure method acting. He lives and breathes his music with an uncompromising singular vision organising sound out of the beautiful chaos.