Sonic Death is a live album

Live album

A live album is a recording consisting of material recorded during stage performances using remote recording techniques, commonly contrasted with a studio album...

 by Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...

, released in 1984.
It contains live recordings from 1981 to 1983.

Many of the songs on this album appear only as fragments, often with no breaks between.
Most of the songs are live versions of songs from Sonic Youth's first 3 releases, Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth (album)

Sonic Youth is the debut release by Sonic Youth. It was recorded in 1981 at Radio City Music Hall, New York City and released on Glenn Branca's Neutral label in 1982...

, Confusion Is Sex

Confusion Is Sex

Confusion Is Sex is Sonic Youth's first studio album, originally released on 12" vinyl in 1983 on Neutral. It was reissued on SST Records in 1987 and on CD in 1995 on DGC with extra tracks from the Kill Yr Idols EP. The album features a live cover of The Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog". The cover...

and the Kill Yr Idols

Kill Yr Idols

Kill Yr Idols is a 1983 EP by the rock band Sonic Youth, originally released only in Germany.In 1995, the tracks on Kill Yr Idols not found on 1983's Confusion Is Sex were appended to the DGC reissue of that album.-Side one:...

EP.

The album was originally released as a cassette on Thurston Moore's

Thurston Moore

Thurston Joseph Moore is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label...

 Ecstatic Peace

Ecstatic Peace

Ecstatic Peace! is a record label based in Easthampton, Massachusetts, founded in 1981 by Sonic Youth member Thurston Moore. The premiere release was a split cassette featuring spoken word performances from Michael Gira of Swans and Lydia Lunch...

 label and was later released in the cassette and CD formats by Blast First

Blast First

Blast First is a sub label of one-time independent record label, Mute Records, founded in approximately 1985. It was named after a phrase taken from the first number of the radical Vorticist journal Blast, published by Wyndham Lewis in 1914...

 and SST

SST Records

SST Records is an American independent record label formed in 1978 in Long Beach, California by musician Greg Ginn. The company was initially called Solid State Transmitters through which Ginn sold electronics equipment...

. It is currently out of print.

Because Sonic Youth use many different alternative tunings, but could not afford to travel with separate instruments for each tuning in the band's early years, members of the band can be heard changing tunings between songs.

Track listing

The album's cover has no track listing, and CD versions are either only 1 track, or 2 tracks (matching the 2 sides of the original cassette). The following is a list of songs that can be recognized clearly, with approximate times from the beginning of the disk:

Side one

1. "The Good and the Bad" (fragment) – 0:00–5:05
2. "She Is Not Alone" (fragment) – 7:16–10:31
3. "The Good and the Bad" (fragment) – 12:21–17:02
4. "The World Looks Red" – 17:02–19:15
5. "Confusion Is Next" – 20:26–23:44
6. "Inhuman" (fragment) – 23:44–25:16
7. "Shaking Hell" (fragment) – 29:29–30:20
8. "Burning Spear" – 30:21–33:39

Side two

1. "Brother James" (fragment) – 40:05–40:23
2. "Early American" – 40:23–47:31
3. "Burning Spear" (fragment) – 47:32–48:43
4. "Kill Yr Idols" – 48:44–51:35
5. "Confusion is Next" (fragment) – 51:36–53:05
6. "Kill Yr Idols" (fragment) – 56:18–57:03
7. "Shaking Hell" (fragment) – 58:45–60:20
8. "(She's in a) Bad Mood" (fragment) – 62:46–63:40