Sonic Youth have released a live recording of a show that took place in Kyiv on April 14, 1989 as a live album on Bandcamp to raise money for World Central Kitchen and Ukraine relief. You can download a copy of Live In Kyiv, Ukraine 1989 here and stream the project below.
Following the success of Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth played a number of shows across Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine, which were part of the USSR at the time. Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hutz, who was in attendance at the show in Kyiv, wrote in a statement:
That SY Kyiv show was life changing for all musicians that were there… we were already attuned to Nick Cave, Einsturzende Neubauten, S Pistols and Discharge but these were the new vitamins we needed. I made a decision to experience NY right there. Plus my friends VV were opening so i got in free 🤟🏼. The fact that it wasn’t shut down half way through like all other punk gigs was the doing of a Ukrainian man named Mikhail Gorbachev, who set up the atmosphere of political “springtime” and a promise of change.
Sergey Popovich of Siggy Pop added: “In general, few people said how much the Sonics, with their arrival, promoted the entire soviets, and not just Kyiv. After all, in fact, perhaps, with that tour they hammered the final nail in the coffin of the soviets, and it was as if they let us in Kyiv breathe a mixture that was finally suitable for life.”
Sonic Youth recently released the album In/Out/In, which compiles unreleased material the band recorded between 2000 and 2010.
