sometimes wonder where Sonic Youth would’ve gone had they released their Invito al Cielo EP in 1998 and then made all of their subsequent Geffen records just like it.

Just think: masses of guitar drones that sink into the earth, attacks on the guitar that sound like factories collapsing from machines un-oiled for years, vibraphone laments that drift across cracked seafloors, shambling rhythms that maraud the streets in the dead of night, and atmospherics that knock out streetlights second by second. The band would certainly lose many fans and financial security, but there would still be ideas unheard in rock for years to come. Invito marked the band’s first release with Chicago indie rock’s omni-musician and producer/current Sonic Youth bassist Jim O’Rourke. Depending on your outlook, his touch blasted the band into stratosphere of possibility, or he mired them into aimless and airless noisemaking. The question arose again when the band, O’Rourke and a slew of comrades including avant-percussionist William Winant covered electro-acoustic and modern music classics by the likes of John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, and Steve Reich in Sonic Youth’s self-released Goodbye 20th Century. Since then, the band has kept their unhinged noise work to the festival circuit, along with solo works and side-projects released on micro-labels. A pitiful shame to me, but a sign of good common sense to many others who find little intellectual weight in chaos and patience-testing discord.

NYC improv unit White Out breaks bread with the Sonic Youth unsold at shopping malls. Multi-instrumentalist (autoharp, analog synth, and god knows what else) Lin Culbertson and percussionist Tom Surgal typically buckshot-fire an electro-skree that snaps into Cubist angles and slashes blood out of the air. China is Near with O’Rourke and Winant, is another rough and tumble sprawl of electrolytes and metals that crash into the night. Winant—who nearly outgunned the madness of Looney Tunes composer Carl Stalling on Mr. Bungle’s Disco Volante and has performed with the likes of John Zorn, Yo-Yo Ma and Danny Elfman on the Batman Returns soundtrack—simply sharpens White Out’s jagged edges. Overall, China brims with great imagination and depth that pours through the delirium and the hits of clarity that tame it. But if anything mars the music, it’s the kitschy analog synth work that make much of the music sound like ace free-jazz swordsman Rashied Ali thrashing his trapkit on the Forbidden Planet soundtrack.

The 13-minute opener, “Ghost Mirror Image” is hampered by that combination of stringed and cigarette smoke-puffing UFO noises and scattershot rhythms. The song first breaks windows with roiling beats and deep-friend synth blurts that eventually pulls out its hair with skittering microtones. It’s difficult to become engrossed in the sound when blown-up verbs like “ZAP!” “POW” “SMACK” keep shouting. The following, “Lost in Grey” is much better: it’s a subdued track that gazes at the stars with ominous drones, staggering cymbals, and bells peeking through the silence and then howling at the moon toward the end. “Empty Centre” effectively expands that approach with a low drone and rambling cymbals; imagine listening to a bassist warm up in a basement jazz club with cleansers rushing by on the street above and you’re there. Elsewhere, Surgal and Winant chase ghosts with cymbals in “Stipledmoon,” while “Mutinous” rumbles with a timpani that gives way to an off-beat synth that squeaks like teeth against a balloon. Still, the kitsch festers at the worst times; the haunting rhythms that first drive through “Favorite Jungle” all lead to a moment where the ensemble is seemingly more amused by a synth’s gee-whiz laser gunfire than building to a cathartic release. Maybe a good remix will delete those sins. Still, something new is heard upon each listen to China, making the payoff complete.