Sunn 0))) are the kings of avant garde drone. Their 2009 album Monoliths & Dimensions discovered them pushing again the boundaries even additional, with assist from members of Mayhem and Earth.
“Not essentially in a brand new age method, however possibly each musician is channelling one thing outdoors of them- selves,” muses Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley, sitting in an Outdated Avenue studio. “Somebody as soon as mentioned that the overtones – like all the additional sounds you get once you hit a chord and let it resonate – are the sound of the large bang, the resonance of the large bang. That’s an fascinating mind-set about that kind of factor. It’s the results of the environ- ment. We’re channelling actually electrical energy via gadgets to create sound, and it’s the results of focusing power into sound. Transmutation is maybe a greater phrase.”
Anybody listening to Sunn O)))’s 2005 album, Black One – a harrowing work that got here throughout just like the river Styx decreased right down to radioactive sediment – might be forgiven for questioning the place the core duo, Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson, might go subsequent. In spite of everything, a lot of their predecessors in low- end-driven, body-crushing noise had discovered themselves at a sonic deadlock and in want of reassessment.
Swans, as soon as the holy grail of heavy, went acoustic, Godflesh imploded and gave delivery to the indie-tinged reveries of Jesu, and even Earth – the guitar drone outfit Sunn O))) had been shaped in homage to – modified tack, as mainman Dylan Carlson discovered redemption from his earlier heroin dependancy in nation and gospel-tinged cadences. Sunn O))), nonetheless, have by no means been tied into such human dynamics; for all of the near-unendurable gravity of their sound, their driving impulse has by no means been about testing private limits, waging inside psychological battles or giving vent to existential woe.
Relatively, their music sounds just like the gateway to an enormous, ageless continuum. Over the course of seven studio albums and varied collaborations, offshoots and reside paperwork, they’ve drilled down via the crust of any acquired notion of rock’n’ roll, and tapped into convulsive, brooding, fathomless realms beneath, without delay alien in its amorphous, primordial ooze, and body-shockingly instant in the best way it hijacks and squirms its method all through your nervous system, resonates at frequencies our fashionable, compartmentalised minds have misplaced the means to comprise.
Even when Sunn O)))’s signature tone – all layers of distorted, frayed-edged, glacially rumbling guitar – is immediately recognisable, their forthcoming new opus, Monoliths & Dimensions, proves past doubt that their capability for revelation is limitless. Their most bold outing to this point, it marries long-time collaborator, Mayhem frontman and possessor of a voice so deep it might be a provider sign for the lifeless, Attila Cshihar, with, amongst others, a Viennese choir, a former member of the cosmically acutely aware free jazz ensemble Solar Ra Arkestra, Julian Priester, the aforementioned Dylan Carlson of Earth alongside his keyboard participant Steve Moore, and wide-ranging composer, Eyvind Kang.
The result’s a piece of mind-bogglingly immersive vary and element, so orchestral in its intricately rising dynamics and gradual osmosis of temper that one author on the album’s playback felt it wouldn’t be inappropriate to pitch it to Gramaphone journal. The place Black One, for all its energy, was Sunn O))) at their most withdrawn, Monoliths… feels just like the crossing over of a brand new threshold for the band.
“It’s undoubtedly that,” agrees Stephen, “but it surely’s a threshold even deeper into the guitar sound. All of the preparations are impressed by the sounds of guitars, and it’s organized to the element of the guitar. Eyvind Kang, who organized loads of the acoustic devices, did the preparations based mostly on our authentic monitoring of our guitars and bass. In addition to being an arranger, he’s a translator in a method.”
“It began,” affords Greg, “as with all of the Sunn O))) albums, with Steve and me in a recording studio, exchanging concepts and bouncing riffs off of one another, creating the muse for the songs. Eyvind listened to that and composed preparations based mostly on that. There was fixed dialog about instrumentation, the place to concentrate on, temper, reference factors, like find out how to method it so far as the preparations, so it was built-in in a method we had been looking for. And it was actually necessary to combine it too. Like yesterday, we noticed a video of a rock band with string gamers, which is cool, however we wished to develop the sound to incorporate extra timbre, extra element and focus, and as an entire, not as further parts caught on. We didn’t need it to be Sunn O))) with strings – that’s occurred earlier than with rock or steel bands. Nothing towards these bands, however that’s not what we had been going for.”
“We’re creating items of music, not parts of music,” says Stephen. “It’s sort of a results of all the remainder of the stuff we’ve finished, and it’s all come so far when it comes to growing the ideas and concepts on the foundational degree over 10 years, to doing sufficient work and background stuff to simply to be bodily in a position, and have the capability and assets to strive one thing like this.”
Though Sunn O)))’s gargantuan trawls had been first claimed by the doom neighborhood, a classification Stephen and Greg have by no means been snug with (“That’s extra a product of… advertising and marketing,” reckons Greg. “For me, that’s restrictive, however I perceive why folks use these phrases. They’re simply attempting to know the music higher. I’m superb with that”), they’ve managed to take in and distil a variety of disciplines. From sludge, to black steel, jazz and now fashionable classical, all have been pulled throughout their occasion horizon – within the course of seeping out over the rim of cult standing to be embraced by an unlikely viewers.
Amidst this swirling, ever-increasing stew, followers are beginning to uncover and admire different types of music outdoors their very own boundaries, whether or not it’s hipsters gawking on the corpse- painted Xasthur mainman Malefic screeching the final rites or the deformed-mystic determine of Attila Cshihar, intellectual sorts enveloped within the sheer visceral energy of the music or excessive followers rocking out to the sharp, veil-piercing energy of choral preparations.
“Yeah, what an honour,” beams Greg. “It’s like a gateway drug. To me, that’s an enormous a part of who I’m. I’m actually into turning folks onto music, that’s why I’m working my file label, Southern Lord. I like turning folks on to music that I like, and I like being turned on to music. So if Sunn O))) might be that for people who find themselves very serious about following developments, that’s superb. Perhaps they’ll rethink Black Sabbath or Celtic Frost. That’s a terrific honour.”
“We had been speaking about this earlier than,” provides Stephen, “as a result of we touched on this factor, like ‘fusion music’. It’s cool when a few of our favorite sorts of music are a collision of various kinds. It produces loads of actually fascinating outcomes, and it’s additionally the best way the music develops; it’s assimilated into new kinds based mostly on parts of historical past, the legacy of inspiration that involves these explicit musicians or teams.”
“The very first thing folks consider once you discuss fusion is jazz,” admits Greg, “however I feel thrash steel is a fusion music as properly. It’s punk and steel colliding. The Melvins mainly introduced collectively Black Sabbath and Black Flag, and there’s fusion there too. I simply made this realisation that we’re actually into fusion, and that’s an enormous a part of what Sunn O))) is – a fusion of various kinds and parts of various genres of music. It’s music that’s been necessary to us and our historical past of taking part in and listening, stuff that’s impressed us too.”
As a lot as Sunn O))) handle to make a totality of their musical sources, so their sense of presentation builds up into an entire. Every album finds its truest kind on heavy, semi-abstract, talismanically packaged vinyl, the cowls worn onstage and elaborate gestures of Stephen and Greg giving the impression of an arcane order invoking historic, Chthulhu-esque entities, cloaked much more amidst eye-watering volumes of dry ice, and, after all, the ear-canal flooding, chest cavity-commandeering intoxicating VOLUME are all transmitters for a unified aesthetic of aura.
Sunn O))) have even began to create performances uniquely catered to the venue, comparable to Bergen, Norway’s Dømkirke cathedral – a masterpiece of gothic structure. A 2007 efficiency was launched on vinyl solely a 12 months later. How did the custodians really feel about having the singer for one of many nation’s most infamous black steel bands, as soon as implicated within the early 90s church-burning, performing of their home of God?
“A few of them had been actually cool about it,” says Stephen, surprisingly, “and a few of them had been hesitant about going ahead with the mission. However finally we wished to do it for the proper causes, and the man who invited us to do it, he articulated that very properly to them. And ultimately, everybody was completely satisfied as a result of we crammed the church, which is what they wished.”
“They mentioned there hadn’t been that many younger folks in church for 40 years,” laughs Greg. “They had been actually happy about that.”
“It’s humorous that that they had an angle of ‘they’re again within the fold’,” Stephen continues, “however they got here for a similar cause the band did, which is the constructing, the organ, and the expertise of attending to be on this sacred place – and possibly bringing that factor that’s in our music out, by placing them in that area.”
The ‘sacred’ is maybe the core concern of the Sunn O))) expertise, their mediation of different dimensions as if they belong to a bloodline of religious, diabolic midwives. However what do Sunn O))) consider in?
“We consider within the music,” Greg states bluntly. “That’s what’s sacred to us: the music, not any ideology.”
“Every participant that’s been concerned,” says Stephen, “has an incredible breadth of character. It’d be detrimental to single out a sure factor or mind-set to place as a requirement to take part. Music’s larger than that, it’s larger than any of these personalities. Among the folks have actually robust views, however the music exists above that, or encompasses all of it in a method, but it surely’s its personal factor as properly. It’s an assimilation of our influences, however Sunn O))) just isn’t concerning the particular person.
“Music is considered by loads of artists and writers and philosophers as one of many highest artwork kinds, if not the best artform as a result of it is ready to be non secular and sacred, and it’s attainable for all kinds of individuals to have the ability to attain that. Whether or not it’s in a church with a choir or the baker or the fishmonger, or guys who’re simply daily, residing on this city, singing on this choir in Sunday mass and having this non secular expertise. I maintain music to be sacred, and a possibility to have that reference to the universe indirectly. It’s the closest factor I’ve ever needed to a non secular expertise.”
Does Attila carry some perspective on that?
“He kinda embodies it in a sure method, for certain,” Stephen concludes. “He focuses on it as considered one of his core subjects, too. I respect that loads. His angle, after all, is sort of peculiar and distinctive, and typically a bit weird. That’s nice, although. That angle helps you realise that simply because it’s sacred, doesn’t imply it needs to be cherished as this object that must be preserved and fawned upon. Music’s fairly tough and ugly typically too.”
Initially revealed in Steel Hammer difficulty 192, August 2009
