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All Music Guide:
Lee Ranaldo, co-founder of avant-garde rock group Sonic Youth, was born in 1956 in East Norwich, NY. In addition to constant touring with Sonic Youth, Ranaldo has been extremely active in the New York music scene for the past 20 years, recording and collaborating with numerous acts, producing discs, and publishing several books of poetry and journal entries.
Ranaldo attended SUNY Binghamton in Binghamton, NY, where he played in an experimental punk outfit called the Fluks (named after the dadaist art movement, Fluxus). His early influences include many psychedelic California bands from the late '60s, including the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Hot Tuna, as well as early New York City punk units like the Ramones, Television, and Talking Heads.
After moving to New York in 1979, Ranaldo briefly attempted to revive the Fluks before playing in a series of acts including Rhys Chatham and Plus Instruments (with whom he recorded an LP in 1982). Through Chatham, Ranaldo met the charismatic composer Glenn Branca, who created avant-garde pieces for electric guitar ensembles. Through the burbling downtown no wave scene of the early '80s, Ranaldo met future Sonic Youth bandmates Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon.
Throughout the '80s, the band worked hard to sustain themselves, recording and touring constantly. The early years of the band are documented in a book of road journals written by Ranaldo and published by Soft Skull Press in the mid-'90s. In 1987, he released his first solo album, From Here to Infinity, on SST Records, a vinyl release with locking grooves at the end of each track.
By the early '90s, after the completion and subsequent canonization of their seminal Daydream Nation (and probably partially by dint of sheer survival), Sonic Youth was looked up to as elders in the fledgling alternative music scene, acting as mentors to dozens of younger bands (including Nirvana). In this role, Ranaldo has produced albums for Babes in Toyland, You Am I, Deity Guns, and others.
Ranaldo's role in the ever-experimental Sonic Youth has been an important one, acting as a textural axis for Gordon and Moore. Though he typically only contributed a handful of songs to each Sonic Youth recording, Ranaldo quickly developed his own songwriting style -- throbbing beats topped with beat-influenced, half-spoken/half-sung poetry delivered in Ranaldo's reassuring, gently confident voice, such as "Eric's Trip" on Daydream Nation and the title track off of 1999's NYC Ghosts & Flowers.
In addition to releasing a book of his poetry (also published by Soft Skull Press), Ranaldo has also edited a volume of tour journals from the 1995 Lollapalooza Tour written by Moore, Beck, Stephen Malkmus (of Pavement), Courtney Love, and others. Ranaldo also has an ongoing collaboration with jazz drummer William Hooker. The two create dissonant music -- Hooker on drums, Ranaldo on modified guitars, synthesizers, and other electronics -- while taking turns reading and improvising poetry.
Wikipedia:
Lee M. Ranaldo (born February 3, 1956) is an American singer, guitarist, writer, record producer, and visual artist, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Ranaldo and his Sonic Youth bandmate Thurston Moore the 33rd and 34th Greatest Guitarists of All Time, respectively.
Biography
Ranaldo was born in Glen Cove, Long Island, and graduated from Binghamton University. He has three sons, Cody, Sage and Frey, and is married to the experimental artist Leah Singer.
Ranaldo started his career in New York in several bands and joining the electric guitar orchestra of Glenn Branca. Among Ranaldo's solo records are Dirty Windows, a collection of spoken texts with music, Amarillo Ramp (For Robert Smithson), pieces for the guitar, and Scriptures of the Golden Eternity. His books include several with art or photography by Leah Singer, including Drift, Bookstore, Road Movies, and Moroccan Journal: Jajouka excerpt (from a full-length book of writings on Moroccan travels and music). Ranaldo has also published Jrnls80s (published by Soft Skull Press), as well as a book of poems, Lengths & Breaths, with photography by Cynthia Connolly. His most recent book of poetry, Against Refusing, was published by Water Row Press in April 2010 with cover artwork by Leah Singer. His visual+sound works have been shown at galleries and museums in Paris, Toronto, New York, London, Sydney, Los Angeles, Vienna, and elsewhere.
Ranaldo has produced albums for artists including Babes in Toyland, You Am I, Magik Markers, Deity Guns, and Dutch art rock-ensemble Kleg. He has edited a volume of tour journals from the 1995 Lollapalooza Tour written by himself, Thurston Moore, Beck, Stephen Malkmus, Courtney Love, and others.
Glacial is a band consisting of Ranaldo, guitarist David Watson and drummer Tony Buck. In 2010 Ranaldo released the solo album Maelstrom From Drift on Three Lobed Recordings with guest appearances of Tony Buck and David Watson.
Collaborations
Ranaldo has also worked with jazz drummer William Hooker on improvised music, and reading and improvising poetry.
His main side projects are Drift and Text of Light.
Drift is a duo with his wife Leah Singer, with whom he has performed many live installation pieces with improvised music. This collaboration, utilizing live manipulated 16mm film projections, electric guitar and recited texts, occupied the duo from the early 90s until late 2005, when they re-created the performance as an art installation at Gigantic Art Space, a gallery in New York City. Since then the pair have been performing a new piece entitled "iloveyouihateyou", a combination installation and performance work that has been presented in the US and Europe.
Text of Light was founded in 2001 by Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, Ulrich Krieger, Christian Marclay and William Hooker. The core group is Ranaldo, Licht and Krieger with changing DJs (Marclay, DJ Olive, Marina Rosenfeld) and drummers (Hooker, Tim Barnes, Steve Shelley). The music is free improvised and mostly played along with, but not really referencing, films by Stan Brakhage. The name for the band comes from Brakhage's film The Text of Light.
In 2007 Ranaldo collaborated with British rock band The Cribs on their third album Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever. Ranaldo performs a spoken word piece against the track "Be Safe".
Ranaldo made an appearance in the 2008 feature documentary by Nik Sheehan about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine entitled FLicKeR.
Equipment
Moonlander guitar.Ranaldo usually uses Fender Jazzmaster, Telecaster Deluxe electric guitars and sometimes Gibson Les Pauls, with radically alternative tunings, and modifications. One of his Jazzmasters has a single coil pickup installed between the bridge and the tailpiece to exploit the resonating chiming sounds on that area of string at these so called tailed bridge guitars.
In 2007 Yuri Landman built for Ranaldo the Moonlander, a biheaded electric guitar with 18 strings: 6 normal strings and 12 sympathetic strings.
Since Ranaldo and Moore, together with Elvis Costello and J. Mascis, are known for being key figures in the popularisation and resurrection of the Fender Jazzmaster, Fender introduced in 2009 a special Lee Ranaldo signature edition of a transparent blue version, together with a transparent green one for Thurston.
