Lee Ranaldo & Michael Vallera: Early New York Silver

They say lightning never strikes the same place twice, but on their debut collaboration album, Early New York Silver, both Lee Ranaldo and Michael Vallera defy those odds.

Having first met November 2021 during Ranaldo’s show at Williamsburg’s Union Pool in support of his In Virus Times EP, it was the embryonic stages of a dynamic alliance.

Both cutting their teeth into exploratory guitar through the lens of alternative-rock and post-punk (Ranaldo’s heroics in Sonic Youth; Vallera’s in the supremely underrated Luggage), together they underline their appreciation for the avant-garde with two long-form compositions that leave indelible marks.

Ranaldo has always held an intense fascination in the world of guitar-based experimentalism, and while the results have varied over the years, alongside Vallera (who recently released two collaboration albums, firstly with Joseph Clayton Mills as Maar and then alongside Steven Hess as Cleared), the pair reach their creative apex on Early New York Silver.

Recorded over two days in July 2022, the duo improvised at Williamsburg’s 411 Kent. A cavernous empty space, and Ranaldo and Vallera utilise its sparseness throughout these recordings with compositions that echo with a dark, chasm-like effect. Not only do they capture the existential dread indicative of these times, but also the humid surroundings of the inhabited space.

It begins with Early New York Silver I. A deep metallic hum of greyscale textures and tones, while Sunn O))) have spent an existence sending instructions from the void, Ranaldo and Vallera remain within it. The pair’s chilling communicates, creating an imagery of an apocalyptic wasteland, as the storm clouds blacken like they are about to break.

And break they do, where more chaos awaits – this time a thrumming, nerve-jangling cacophony of noise that sits somewhere between a fleet of black hawk helicopters and a ship in search of a port escaping the unforgiving high seas. It’s a black acid fever dream committed to tape, but Ranaldo and Vallera somehow manage to orchestrate something that feels profoundly hypnotic. A moment where improvisation not just reaches its core, but also its logical conclusion.

Early New York Silver II emerges from the other side of the wreckage. But only briefly. A meandering exchange of feedback that slowly forms a mosaic of possibilities, any hope is swiftly crushed under the weight of seismic tonal overload. Drones that send tremors through oak, and so erotically charged, it illuminates the very void this album was conceived in.

With Ranaldo’s abrasive walls of sound offset by Vallera’s arcing, glacial-like noodlings, their respective styles entwine for something that strays outside the unspoken bound. A communication that could be deemed spiritual. Message music through sound which forms as the missing link between punk and psychedelia.

But not as it would suggest on paper. With these compositions, the mind-altering facets of psychedelia are eclipsed by a ferocious energy likened to a tidal wave sweeping through the brain and flooding it. What Ranaldo and Vallera have produced with Early New York Silver, so empowering that it may just change your life forever.

Early New York Silver is out via Amish Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.