День мечтаний: История альбома Sonic Youth

1988 studio album by Sonic Youth
the film

Daydream Nation is the fifth studio album by American alternative rock band Sonic Youth, released on October 18, 1988. The band recorded the album between July and August 1988 at Greene St. Recording in New York City, and it was released by Enigma Records as a double album. After Daydream Nation was released, it received widespread acclaim from critics and earned Sonic Youth a major label deal. The album was ranked high in critics' year end lists of 1988's best records, being voted second in The Village Voices annual Pazz & Jop poll. Daydream Nation has since been widely considered to be Sonic Youth's greatest work, as well as one of the greatest albums of all time, specifically having a profound influence on the alternative and indie rock genres. It was chosen by the Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Recording Registry in 2005.

Sonic Youth's standard songwriting method involved Thurston Moore bringing in melody ideas and chord changes that the band would spend several months fashioning into full length songs. Instead of paring the songs down as the group did with previous records, the months long writing process for Daydream Nation resulted in long jams, some lasting over half an hour. Several friends of the band, including Henry Rollins, had praised the band's long live improvisations and told the group that its records never captured them. With Moore on a writing spree, the album ultimately had to be expanded to a double album. Sonic Youth recorded Daydream Nation at New York's Greene Street basement studio. The studio's engineer, Nick Sansano, was accustomed to working with hip hop artists. Sansano did not know much about Sonic Youth, but he was aware the band had an aggressive sound, so he showed the band members his work on Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" and Rob Base and DJ E Z Rock's "It Takes Two". The group embraced the sound of the records. Sonic Youth booked three weeks of recording time at Greene Street's Studio A, starting in mid July 1988. The band paid $1,000 per day of studio time, which was the most they had paid to record an album up to that point. Due to the amount of preparation the band put into composing its music, the recording process was efficient. The session became rushed near the end, when Paul Smith, the head of the band's British label Blast First, had set a mastering date of August 18. As a result of the time pressure, Kim Gordon was not happy with some of her vocal takes. The band spent a whole night creating a final mix for the three song "Trilogy" so it could be mastered the following morning. The record ultimately cost $30,000, which led Moore to refer to the album as "our first non econo record".

Daydream Nations title came from a lyric in the song "Hyperstation". Sonic Youth had also considered the title Tonight's the Day, from a lyric in "Candle", which made reference to Neil Young's 1975 album Tonight's the Night. The cover for Daydream Nation features the 1983 Gerhard Richter painting Kerze ("Candle"). The back cover art is a similar Richter painting from 1982. The vinyl version's four sides and the compact disc inner tray contain four symbols each representing one of the members of the band, in an homage to—and parody of—the four symbols from the fourth Led Zeppelin album. The symbols are infinity (∞) for Ranaldo (referencing his 1987 album From Here to Infinity), female (♀) for Gordon, uppercase omega (Ω) for Moore (referencing Leo, his zodiac sign), and a drawing of a demonic–angelic baby holding drumsticks for Shelley. in compact disc, cassette and double vinyl formats. It did not chart in the United States, but reached No. 99 on the British albums chart. Three singles with accompanying music videos were also released: "Teen Age Riot" (in 1988 on 12 inch vinyl and CD), "Providence" (in the United Kingdom in 1989), "Candle" (October 1989 on 12 inch vinyl), and a live version of "Silver Rocket" for subscribers to Forced Exposure. The song "Teen Age Riot" was popular on alternative radio and reached No. 20 on Billboard's newly created Modern Rock Tracks chart. Sonic Youth also promoted the album with a North American tour from October to December 1988, concentrating almost exclusively on material from the album. In 1989, they took the tour to New Zealand, Australia, Japan, the USSR and Europe, finishing the year with their first network television appearance—on the syndicated Night Music—playing "Silver Rocket".