And the award for best use of harmonica by a jamming band in 2016 goes to Kim Gordon of Body/Head. Arriving midway through “The Show Is Over,” the second of three improvised pieces that make up the band’s No Waves, Gordon—late of Sonic Youth—discovers a whole new use for the instrument. Nominally a guitar duo with Bill Nace, the two build jams from silver sound swells, drifting into harsh-edged ambience and punctuated occasionally by Gordon’s vocals, all containing more declaration than melody. Recorded live at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., the operative mode of the music is heavy and serious, the fun and song-forms of Sonic Youth dispensed with like remnants of a more innocent time. Punning on the post-punk No Wave meme that spawned Sonic Youth in the early ‘80s—and which Sonic Youth at least partially rejected with some of the best hooks in the underground—No Wave and No Waves are returns to nothingness, the obliteration of all pop from punk in search of pure art. And now, in quest of that, Gordon’s harmonica, run through distortion, is still the most welcoming and human sound on the album. Returning near the coda of the final track, the 24-minute “Actress/Abstraction,” the metallic mouth harp doesn’t contain the wheezy feels of Neil Young or the speediness of John Popper, but music itself, reduced to the breath of life, pleading against the chaos surrounding it.