Sunn O))), do it slow, Lives,
Sunn O)))’s impressive backline, fit for one of Cream’s legendary farewell shows and consisting of some 40 pieces of vintage gear, lands in the Italian capital.
Sunn O))) Orion Club, Rome
IT’S 10.30PM on the first night of Sunn O)))’s eight-date Let There Be Drone tour. Support act Valerio Tricoli packed away his musical boxes almost an hour ago, but there’s still no sign of the main attraction, just a couple of burning josssticks and devotional Indian music piped over the PA. At last, some action, as two machines begin to belch out smoke. Fifteen minutes later, a neon-studded concrete discotheque on the outskirts of Rome has been transformed into a gaseous black hole. This, it seems, is how we disappear.
A switch is flicked. It’s our first sound of loud. Then a growling, grim reaper slab of sound. Sunn O)))’s signature, gutchurning drone is in motion. Call it the power of slow.
Like an Om chant for amps and guitars, Sunn O)))’s variations on ‘the Big Note’ are an overwhelming thing. Life Metal and Pyroclasts, their recent Steve Albiniengineered albums, marked the high-point in a two-decade career and form the basis of tonight’s seamless performance. Live and loud, always loud, the impact is magnified. And with band and crowd fogged out of existence, all that’s left is a nirvana of exquisitely controlled noise – the sonic sublime.
Once the smoke turns red under the lights, and the fog starts to fade, two, then three, then five hooded, monk-like silhouettes appear. With slow, deliberate, Noh-like movements, the Sunn O))) collective hold their instruments as sacred tools for a religious ritual, intermittently saluting the sky beyond the low ceiling with raised arms.
Sunn O))) are savage messiahs, annihilating time and space with their volcanic flow of overloaded guitars and feedback, evoking worlds both ancestral and otherworldly. They are more likely to regard themselves as Druidic guides, their music illuminative and empowering. And they’re not wrong. Thirty minutes in, the relentless high tips into ecstasy when rare keyboard notes shine shafts of light into Troubled Air. I find myself flinging my arms open to let the Sunn shine in. Close by, a woman has her fingers in ears and, I swear, a smile on her face. There are scarcely more than 100 people here tonight, though I suspect many other inner lights were turned on.
It’s as if escape is impossible. And why would you, when Sunn O))) are busy reclaiming music’s rightful place as king of all arts? There was little evidence of any walkouts, and I’d not seen a bar do such light trade since my time on the Tokyo underground scene a decade ago. Only with the arrival of the trombone, the angelic, potentially melodic element that’s so often the signal for the return journey, did the spell lose a little power. The lights turned the fog a more visible yellow. A couple of band members even swigged something from a bottle – the elixir of life, perhaps.
The brass man fell into drone-line, guitarist Stephen O’Malley began twanging like Duane Eddy doing the devil’s business, the smoke lifted once again and the unthinkable happened: an Experience, and one unlike any other, reverted back to being a performance.
When the smoke returned, it seemed that Sunn O))) would preserve some mystery and disappear in a puff. Instead they went for the ear-splitting, My Bloody Valentine-style finale, before all five stood out front alternating deep bows and holding their instruments high above their heads. The crowd loved it. But for so much of this extraordinary night, executed with little evidence of human agency, the world had become this rich, pulsating, mysterious, unfathomable place. Sunn O))) may be mortal. But they certainly dig deep for those hidden truths.
“Live and loud, always loud, the impact is magnified.”