© Korrin Stoney

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Sunn O))) and Boris

As part of Tura New Music’s 8^th Totally Huge New Music Festival

Club Capitol

Thursday 3^rd May 2007, 10pm

Time seemed to be standing still as other patrons started shuffling in their impatience and the beer in my glass began to disappear, I watched the smoke machine puffing and panting on the right of the stage, giving off the illusion that the long oily hair from the guy in front of me was somehow on fire. Just as I began to loose track of where I was conversationally, I looked up and saw a guitar reminiscent of Bo Didley’s square guitars but all the more modified by contemporary technology, then the dark cloaked man handling it emerged, his body practically invisible and his face and hands like white sombre street lights. He fiddled with some knobs on various effect gizmos that were on the table on stage and, it began softly.

Sunn O))) are an American power ambient/drone metal band, consisting of two members Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson. Though on this occasion for Tura New Music’s Totally Huge New Music Festival they were teamed with Atsuo of the Japanese band Boris as well as Oren Ambarchi, Thomas Nieuwenhuizen and Attila Gabor.

The THNMF is dedicated to bringing highlights of the national and international experimental music and sound art stages to West Australian audiences.

Due to the fact that there is such a narrow line between experimental music and sound art, I have chosen this particular performance as an example to discuss. You may ask ‘why choose a band to review in an art context? well this was just as much performance (art?) as it is “gig” and there was a certain realization of dramatic atmosphere and theatricality that Sunn O))) have undoubtedly learned how to harness both sonically and visually over the last 8 years since their formation. We may recall in a sound art context, the noise works of Futurist Luigi Russolo or more recently the reverberative work of American artist Mark Bain. We can relate it to the countless explorations of inside and outside and the in-betweens, to transcendence, to the visceral and primitive works found in Viennese ‘actionism’ during the 70’s or the dark and dismal depictions brought to us by the Expressionists, the list goes on. Now I am not claiming that Sunn O))) are artists and I am not necessarily saying that what they created was art, for in order for it to be so there would need to be artistic intention and frankly I have no idea where they stand on either of those issues. What I am saying is that what I (and many others) witnessed that night had the potential to possibly be art and I know that what was perceived was an experience and an event that I think had many commonalities with fine art pathways and I found it worthy to review in a fine art context whether or not it’s classified as such.

There was a mixture of crowd-goers to see the performance, though all of which, I’m sure, had an interest in experimental music and/or various genres of metal, so for the most part the crowd knew what kind of thing they were there to witness, more or less. Coming into this I had no prior knowledge or interest in metal as such but being a fond follower of experimental (and also noise) music, I thought I’d check it out because it seemed to be one of the grand highlights of this years THNMF.

With some initial knob fidgeting and loop manipulation, constantly ascending in volume and intensity with the occasional stab in frequency, the rest of the SunnO))) tribe came out sequentially to play their first and only song for the evening in front of the wall of amplifiers. On lead, Attila’s screeches and screams shuddered the senses and merged into the “music” so much so that it became hard to distinguish what was feedback and what was amplified human voice. Visually his garment was strangely embroidered red unlike any of the others. I wonder as to whether there are any direct links to eastern costume design in this scene?

As each instrumentalist came out on to the stage, adding personally their touch to the thickening layers of distortion and droning noise, time and space itself became more indefinable to the audience that settled uneasily into the environment.

Their motions were slow and heavy as if their bodies were representations of the noise, as the performance progressed everybody there began operating like this, as though mechanically. One might say that it was like an intense sonic wave rushing over you, though a wave would signify some sort of ebbing and flowing motion, something coming and going but this was like being trapped within the wave, an immense tidal wave, not dwelling in static but constantly uneasy and entrapped by some sort of slow hauling motion. The ardour and the fury of the piece (although improvised) produced emotional reactions in the ones perceiving it, it can be compared to Bill Viola’s The Quintet of the Astonished, where suffering is at the forefront, whereas here it may not have been visible on the faces of people but it was something triggered inside both mentally and physically purely by the sounds to which we were surrounded by.

Apparently certain bass tones can’t make a person vomit, well Myth Busters I think you are sadly mistaken, I think it’s about duration, if a person is subjected to them long and loud enough, I think it is entirely possible. Though I did not vomit that night I am sure nonetheless that if I had bore much more I certainly could have gone down that path as many of the crowd goers would likewise agree.

Sunn O))) played for well over an hour with their constant yet steadily increasing noise howls, I wish I had known the db levels of that event for I was certain that my eardrums were going to explode, never to receive audio data again. This was not a concert, it was an endurance test. At one point there was some sort of soft dinging, upon which I turned to my left and saw Atsuo viciously thrashing a metre high and wide gong.

The glasses oscillated wildly under the smoke veiled spot lights, the men inhabiting the stage clad in their black robes (though somewhat cheesy) stood their ground in the stillness of the noise that perforated the space. The bass frequencies swam through the floor and the walls and up into every audience members gut, swishing around incessantly until the end. There were people that uncontrollably swayed, others that fell and a good few that went outside for some air before jumping in for another bout of expressionistic yet tedious whirring. When finally it drew to a peak, the audience was left to fumble outside dazed with hazy vision and ringing ears in a startling silence, like being pulled from a womb. I still know not whether I hated it with a fiery passion or whether I loved it with a fiery passion I think it’s a hybrid of the two, fittingly residing in-between. Never-the-less it was a worthwhile experience that was perceptually awe-some.