Drone attack
Robed doom messiahs channel feedback as an irresistible force on newly released radio session. By Andrew Perry.
Sunn O))) ★★★★
Metta, Benevolence SOUTHERN LORD. CD/DL/LP
MAXIMUM VOLUME has again yielded maximum results for cowled cacophonists Sunn O))) on this release of a panoramically deafening 2019 radio session.
Named after the low-budget rockers’ preferred amplification provider in their native Pacific Northwest, the duo of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson first debuted on 1999’s The Grimmrobe Demos ostensibly unleashing unmediated torrents of downtuned feedback.
From rudimentary origins, they’ve become respected overlords of drone music, their live performances somehow bridging ribald metal theatricality and scarifying occult ritual, ever transgressive in their aural extremity. They’ve rattled the foundations of arts theatres such as London’s Barbican, and been validated for their heaviness and dexterity by Scott Walker on 2014’s intricately scored team-up, Soused.
In 2019, they followed a sequence of digitally assembled albums featuring an international cast of acolytes (including Attila Csihar, from Norway’s black-metal linchpins Mayhem) with a pair of all-analogue albums engineered by Steve Albini, cut live to capture their feral energies on-stage. Life
Metal came loaded with pre-composed riffs and breathily intoned poetry; ‘shadow album’
Pyroclasts, meanwhile, contained four of the 12-minute improv jams, with which they loosened up each morning at Albini’s Electrical Audio.
Now semi-officially a trio, augmented by Dutch Moog maverick Tos Nieuwenhuizen, Sunn O))) duly toured transatlantically and, suitably road-hardened, entered BBC Maida Vale to record a radio session for Mary Ann Hobbs’ show on Radio 6 Music. The resultant three tracks, extrapolated from this latest batch of material, make up Metta, Benevolence.
For two Pyroclasts pieces, Anderson, O’Malley, Nieuwenhuizen, plus touring members Tim Midyett and Steve Moore, are joined by Swedish singer-songwriter Anna von Hausswolff, who supported on the European leg.
On the original album, each warm-up jam was conducted in a different key; these are in another two again, F and C#. On Pyroclasts F, multiple droning synths underlie waves of six-string feedback as grittily textured as peanut butter, before, at around 6:00, von Hausswolff’s wordless cries swoop between the layers, just two notes, up and down, adding brittle human urgency to the sonic tsunami.
Counter-intuitively, Pyroclasts C# opens with morning-bright synths, gradually acquiring churchy processional tones courtesy of pipe-organ virtuoso von Hausswolff, who, as guitar hum inexorably begins to intensify, at 7:30, whisperingly coos until the howl gently subsumes her – Sunn O))) at their most benignly meditative.
Best of all, though, a 32-minute reading of Life Metal’s Troubled Air doles out a mammoth chord change every 20 seconds, each a seismic event, some lumberingly inevitable, others tricksy and wrong-footing, others again presaged by pulse-racing amp howl, all ever-ascending like a Penrose staircase in sound. At 19:20, the climbing drones recede for a kind of après-apocalypse last post from Moore on trombone, until the journey beatifically ends in a sludge of imponderable depth.
Some say that Sunn O))) are a one-trick pony, but here are three contrasting sonic miracles, no less, from master sculptors of improvised noise.
★★★
The Water Goes The Other Way GLITTERHOUSE. CD/DL/LP
Stuttgart songwriter’s debut stresses the importance of being Earnest.
Oliver Hauber’s middle name is Ernst, but he’s calling himself Earnest because it’s more “international” and he likes “the meaning of the word in regards to my songwriting.” So, earnest by name and nature, with lyrics on the wry side of existential musing in a distinctly Americanised setting (he spent time in Colorado as a child). The National’s epic brooding palate, with Matt Berringer’s stately tenor, is a close comparison point: check Life Expectancy, where Earnest’s measured delivery of, “My life expectancy either bores me to death or scares the shit out of me” errs on the side of faintly bored, though the music is passionate. He’s more roused by Marble Stars’ galloping riff, inspired by Arctic Monkeys and Modest Mouse, darkly intoning in Alex Turner fashion, “locked in an age of feeling… we’re tea dreg children circling the drain.” Martin Aston
Fred Hersch ★★★★ Breath By Breath PALMETTO. CD/DL
A bold new slant on the New Yorker’s music, Breath By Breath pairs a rhythm section with a string quartet. Far from sounding bolted-on, the quartet swap guises at will across the eight-movement, meditationminded Sati Suite, the pianist working in subtle harmonic substitutions and Monkish offbeat accents when least expected. For all the back and forth there’s a lightness of touch, epitomised by closing Schumann homage Pastoral.
Brian Molley Quartet ★★★★ Modern Traditions BGMM. CD/DL
One-time stalwart of early-noughties outfit Brass Jaw, Glasgow-based saxophonist Molley’s warm lyrical tone and cultured interplay with pianist Tom Gibbs pays dividends across a carefully crafted album packed with hidden depths. Be it the swinging, wonky blues of Magic Ten, tender sweep of Lullaby-Bye or an unrushed jaunt through The Trolley Song (from Meet Me In St Louis), BMQ never waste a note. Fazer ★★★ Plex CITY SLANG. CD/DL/LP
These jazz graduates from Munich’s Academy for Music and Theatre have turned into a tightly coiled, well-oiled machine. Their most sprightly affair by some distance, Plex gets off to a flyer with the upbeat two-step groove of Cuentro. Elsewhere, their dual drummers’ polyrhythmic flurries carve out a safe space for guitarist Paul Brändle and trumpeter Matthias Lindermayr to show off their subtle but resonant chops. Monodrama ★★★★ Mndrmooaa EVERLASTING. CD/DL/LP
Madrid trio Monodrama continue to defy easy pigeonholing on an enigmatic third album deeply attuned to the night. Slow-building emissions A Blue Flame, Hobo and Sarabande conceal a wealth of sonic strangeness beneath the pulse of Alberto Brenes’ brushed drums and Mauricio Gómez’s lyrical tenor sax as keyboardist David Sancho toys with noise and distortion. A slowcore, post-rock take on nu-jazz for fans of Cinematic Orchestra or BADBADNOTGOOD. AC
In December 2019, Australian experimental guitarist and drummer Oren Ambarchi performed his 2016 album Hubris with a 14-strong band at London’s Café Oto. With seven guitarists, three drummers, German electronic coordinator Jörg Hiller, Eiko Ishibashi on flute, Mats Gustafsson on shrieking baritone sax and a long-distance Jim O’Rourke on guitar synth, Ambarchi created an everascending groove of celestial motorik funk now available on Bandcamp as Live Hubris. You’ll need to calm down after that, so we recommend the appropriately named Eiderdown Records, a Seattle-based label specialising in contemplative acoustic psych-drone from artists such as Prana Crafter and UK guitarist Nick Jonah Davis. If those purchases leave you out of pocket, head over to deathisnot. bandcamp.com where Luke Owen’s ethnographic label are offering everything from Jamaican doo-wop to North Carolina mountain singing for a “pay what you want” special deal. AM