Islington Mill, Salford
8 December 2009
Ever vampiric, the avant-guard periodically replenishes itself on fresh blood in pastures new. Jazz, psych, prog, industrial and Dance have all fallen prey during the past half century, and now it’s the turn of that seemingly most reactionary of genres, metal. The signs had been there as far back as the early 90s, with the Melvins, Sleep and Earth all forging new routes away from rock clichédom without forsaking the initial visceral appeal of the genre, but SunnO))) have taken up the baton with a renewed sense of purpose. Guitarist Stephen O’Malley’s MySpace page reveals his musical influences to include Sun Ra, Iancu Dumitrescu, Mika Vainio, Keiji Haino, Steven Stapleton and Andrei Tarkovsky – this is most surely what we want from our rock gods.
After a decade of increasingly good albums, 2009 saw Sunn O))) release the astonishing Monoliths and Dimensions, an album that managed to be simultaneously more of the same, a huge leap into the unknown and the summation of all that had come before. It enlisted a huge cast of guest musicians without for one second losing the monolithic minimalism that made the group so great in the first place and was quite clearly the best record of the year… I was really looking forward to my first live encounter with the group!
My initial disappointment that the mighty Om were not to be the support act in Salford instantly disappeared upon entering Islington Mill’s claustrophobic stone chambers to be simultaneously immersed in dense smoke, sickly faint green light and the overwhelming sonic storm being conjured up by Swedish sound sculptor BJ Nilsen (in full surround sound). Presumably using the same source recordings he utilised on Storms, his 2006 joint CD with fellow nature recorder Chris Watson, crushing thundercracks errupted from ominous sub-bass drones at earth-shaking volume, sound trails sweeping across and around the room for a good hour and a quarter as hapless punters had no choice but to follow the instructions printed out on the bar to “please point to order.”
The storm grows heavier as the smoke grows denser until the almost unbearable sense of foreboding is partly broken by the sound of guitars being plugged into amps, hinting that SunnO))) may have taken the stage, less than ten feet away but completely invisible in the green fog. A further logarithmic increase in volume soon provides confirmation – time to heed the sign on the wall that reads:
SUNN O)))‘s stage volume can reach levels as high as 125dB. Exposure to these levels can cause permanent hearing damage. PLEASE USE THE EARPLUGS PROVIDED
Popping in the co-ordinated lime green earplugs, the sonic waves flapping my clothes around my quivering body reveal themselves to be Aghartha, opening tune on Monoliths and Dimensions. Surely no other group have used sound in such a physical and sculptural way – this is not music to merely listen to… Sunn O))) are absorbed through every cell in the body… and who knows what kind of mutations it may be inducing in those cells.
As with BJ Nilsen’s set, the effect of the rhythmless, drifting intensity is to completely dislocate any sense of time. After what may have been twenty seconds or three hours, (but my watch claimed to be 25 minutes), the smoke has cleared just about enough to spot that there are probably four robed and hooded figures on stage, the core duo of O’Malley and Greg Anderson being augmented by regular collaborators Atilla Csihar on demonic growl and Steve Moore on Trombone and Korg MS20. Despite the absence of conch shell players, harpists, tambouras or Viennese choirs, the quartet manage to admirably achieve the album’s impressive degree of tonal subtlety (if such a word has any meaning at a bludgeoning 125dB). Atilla’s voice veers between sub-bass Milan Fras style proclamations, Blixa Bargeld banshee shriek and Tuvan overtone chanting, and despite the incredible volume, the clarity is such that any listener fluent enough in Sanskrit or Hungarian would have no difficulty at all in making out every word.
At some point, Atilla exits the stage, only to reappear minutes later pushing his way back through the packed audience dressed as a tree, complete with perching crows… As the intensity is unfeasibly raised a further notch, the clash of arcane ritual, un-nerving claustrophobia, physical sonic assault and old fashioned pantomime serves to disorientate perception, fracturing any assumptions of what distinguishes a ‘rock show’ from a ‘serious performance’. In lesser hands, Sunn O)))’s approach would be merely gimmick, but such is the absolute rigour and focus of their mission – apparently even using soundchecks to measure the resonant frequencies of the venue with oscilloscopes and tuning the performance accordingly – that no-one is left in any doubt that metal is in the healthiest state it’s been in since the first Black Sabbath album.
-Alan Holmes-
