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 approach, however perhaps each musician is channelling one thing exterior of them- selves,” muses Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley, sitting in an Previous Road studio. “Somebody as soon as mentioned that the overtones – like all the additional sounds you get if you hit a chord and let it resonate – are the sound of the massive bang, the resonance of the massive bang. That’s an fascinating mind-set about that sort of factor. It’s the results of the environ- ment. We’re channelling actually electrical energy by way of gadgets to create sound, and it’s the results of focusing vitality 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 lowered all the way down to radioactive sediment – might be forgiven for questioning the place the core duo, Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson, might go subsequent. In any case, lots 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 beginning to the indie-tinged reveries of Jesu, and even Earth – the guitar drone outfit Sunn O))) have been shaped in homage to – modified tack, as mainman Dylan Carlson discovered redemption from his earlier heroin habit 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.
Moderately, their music sounds just like the gateway to an unlimited, ageless continuum. Over the course of seven studio albums and varied collaborations, offshoots and dwell paperwork, they’ve drilled down by way of the crust of any acquired notion of rock’n’ roll, and tapped into convulsive, brooding, fathomless realms beneath, directly alien in its amorphous, primordial ooze, and body-shockingly fast in the best way it hijacks and squirms its approach all through your nervous system, resonates at frequencies our fashionable, compartmentalised minds have misplaced the means to include.
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 so far, it marries long-time collaborator, Mayhem frontman and possessor of a voice so deep it might be a service sign for the useless, Attila Cshihar, with, amongst others, a Viennese choir, a former member of the cosmically 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 positively that,” agrees Stephen, “however it’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 quite a lot of the acoustic devices, did the preparations primarily based on our authentic monitoring of our guitars and bass. Moreover being an arranger, he’s a translator in a approach.”
“It began,” provides 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 primarily based on that. There was fixed dialog about instrumentation, the place to give attention to, temper, reference factors, like tips on how to method it so far as the preparations, so it was built-in in a approach we have been trying to find. And it was actually essential to combine it too. Like yesterday, we noticed a video of a rock band with string gamers, which is cool, however we needed to develop the sound to incorporate extra timbre, extra element and focus, and as an entire, not as extra components caught on. We didn’t need it to be Sunn O))) with strings – that’s occurred earlier than with rock or steel bands. Nothing in opposition to these bands, however that’s not what we have been going for.”
“We’re creating items of music, not components of music,” says Stephen. “It’s type of a results of all the remainder of the stuff we’ve finished, and it’s all come so far when it comes to creating the ideas and concepts on the foundational stage over 10 years, to doing sufficient work and background stuff to simply to be bodily in a position, and have the capability and sources to attempt one thing like this.”
Though Sunn O)))’s gargantuan trawls have 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 making an attempt 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 recognize different types of music exterior 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 varieties 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 operating my file label, Southern Lord. I really like turning folks on to music that I like, and I like being turned on to music. So if Sunn O))) will be that for people who find themselves very involved in following traits, that’s superb. Possibly they’ll rethink Black Sabbath or Celtic Frost. That’s an excellent honour.”
“We have 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 types. It produces quite a lot of actually fascinating outcomes, and it’s additionally the best way the music develops; it’s assimilated into new types primarily based on components of historical past, the legacy of inspiration that involves these explicit musicians or teams.”
“The very first thing folks consider if you discuss fusion is jazz,” admits Greg, “however I believe thrash steel is a fusion music as properly. It’s punk and steel colliding. The Melvins principally 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 types and components of various genres of music. It’s music that’s been essential 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, in fact, 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, equivalent 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 have been actually cool about it,” says Stephen, surprisingly, “and a few of them have been hesitant about going ahead with the challenge. However finally we needed to do it for the proper causes, and the man who invited us to do it, he articulated that very properly to them. And in the long run, everybody was pleased as a result of we crammed the church, which is what they needed.”
“They mentioned there hadn’t been that many younger folks in church for 40 years,” laughs Greg. “They have 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 motive the band did, which is the constructing, the organ, and the expertise of attending to be on this sacred place – and perhaps 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 persona. 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. A few of the folks have actually robust views, however the music exists above that, or encompasses all of it in a approach, however it’s its personal factor as properly. It’s an assimilation of our influences, however Sunn O))) will not be in regards to the particular person.
“Music is seen by quite a lot of artists and writers and philosophers as one of many highest artwork types, if not the best artform as a result of it is ready to be non secular and sacred, and it’s potential for all types 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 day after day, 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 chance to have that reference to the universe not directly. 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 approach, for positive,” Stephen concludes. “He focuses on it as one among his core subjects, too. I respect that rather a lot. His angle, in fact, is type 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 printed in Metallic Hammer subject 192, August 2009
