Sunn O)))

Sunn O)))

02 December, 2009

On the face of it Sunn O))) look like a bunch of guys who like to dress in robes and play death metal, but as always, looks can be deceiving.

Underneath the influences and imagery reminiscent of your usual straight up hard-riffing black metal act, Sunn O))) make music that can only really be described as huge, obsidian black tombstones toppling slowly over to crush you until your eyes pop out.
 
Formed around core members Stephen O'Malley (a member of Khanate and Burning Witch) and Greg Anderson (who plays in Goatsnake), the self-described power-ambient act is hardly the most prolific, but when they do meet up, the albums and stage shows they come up with, despite having little-to-no percussion, pulsate and throb with some alluring power that has the same strange menace to that last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
 
In fact, it might have been this mystical energy that made the phone cut out so many times when I tried to chat with Stephen O'Malley recently. You just pronounce it Sun by the way...
 
The first question is pretty much the most obvious one: you're in the studio, what you working on?

Stephen O'Malley: It's some music for a film, but it's kind of in progress, so I don't really want to get into it too much.
 
That's cool. How did you guys get into playing atmospheric/drone music in the first place?

What you hear of Sunn O))) right now is the culmination of quite a long period of working together and artistic collaboration. Greg and I have played together since '93 and this is the result.
 
But where we are right now is not a destination of sound. Sunn0))) has had a lot of different sounds and has moved in a lot of different experiments, so where we're at now is where it lives right now.
 
Isn't it strange that music that seemingly has such a strong sense of concept and narrative can come from a band that is in a constant state of flux?

Well, that depends on how you define narrative. Our pieces are developed individually as far as arrangements and compositions go, but of course we talk around bigger, overall concepts and stuff, and the overriding themes and production are constant, so maybe thats' where this narrative aspect comes from.
 
But there's not a lyrical narrative or a dramaturgy to our music, if that's what you mean? Our albums are a full complete work; they're not really supposed to be listened to track by track.

How did you come up with the cloaks and stuff?

I guess originally we wanted to get away from being on stage watched by people and, in some way, transform that experience for the audience. That seed has ended up blossoming in quite a weird way, and its' turned into a play on perceptions with a lot of veiling of the individual players and trying to direct the focus onto the entity of the music itself.
 
Recently our vocalist Atilla Csihar has stepped quite outside of this and has become sort of the prow of the idea in a way well, if it was a ship. I haven't really analysed it too much, but our shows certainly have a phenomenological quality to them, so his blossoming in this way somehow seems quite fitting with the music.

With the development of the live show, is Sunn O))) now intended to be experienced on record or in concert?

Music only really happens when it's being played. An album is only a documentation of an event, but when it's been played live, that's when it's real. We're lucky we have fans that care enough to allow us to have concerts, and to be able to have that experience as artists or whatever, it's a symbiotic relationship with the fans.

The fact is we don't really have the resources to play music together except at concerts. Sometimes, like every two years or whatever, we get to go into the studio, but apart form that there's very little contact. I guess that's the nature of what Sunn O))) is – it's people from very different places working together on fucked up music, you know? Over time the platform for that has turned out to be the live setting. That's why this visual side has developed, to keep it personal and keep the insular energy away from the need to be an entertainer and put on a good show.

I think our concerts are so fucking weird for the audience, but that allows them to be sort of absorbed into it so they end up participating with what happens. We're not trying to get good reactions from press officers and shit like that. I hope that it's weird and different enough to stand in its own space, and when it's good, it does.

Sunn O)) play Koko on the 14th of December and are returning for a full UK and European tour in January/Feburary. The new album 'Monoliths and Dimensions' is out now on Southern Lord Records.

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Domzig