For the Sunn O))) listening session from a month or so back, I conducted interviews with both Sunn's Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley. I had met Anderson a few times randomly, but this was my first chance to engage in a dialogue with O'Malley. Quiet, focused, yet open, O'Malley and I chatted abit about his work with artist Banks Violette, my recent obsession with Robert Irwin and perception, and about the Richard Serra painting that adorns the cover of their latest album. Below are a few choice quotes from our chat:
The direction we decided to do before we started anything is to finally work with acoustic instrumentation, to bring that to the table. And then we fleshed it out. Specifically, the integration of acoustic instruments, we wanted it to be a real integration, not just an additional element. It had to be musically relevant. Part of the inspiration of that came from French composers who work in a ‘spectralist’ style. Their style of composition is based on computer analysis of timbre. They’ll work backwards. A lot of it sounds electronic, but it’s not so simple as that. Hallucinatory, like Messiaen. Spectral composers are scientific. That’s all about perception. It’s not illusion. Illusion is the expectation of how an instrument should sound.
It’s extremely focused on sensorial aspects. I like such extreme experiences like isolation chambers. It allows you to re-examine your own work, see flaws, see other details. Of all the records I’ve made, this is one that continually is opening up with more listening.
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It’s like family, this band. The people that get involved, you get to be really close. But it’s not the other experience I had with bands, where it gets to be bad. You’re not in the band to be friends. It’s been one of the main points working with people. It’s that friendship. It’s a pretty tremendous experience playing the music live so you have to be trustful and confident.
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It’s spanning generations now with this record. Those guys are old-timers, in their 70s. Dempster has more energy than everyone else. He’s been doing yoga 50 years now. Meanwhile Priester is out in the parking lot. I don’t smoke anymore actually. But they’re deep listeners. They’ve been making experimental free music since the 60s. In some ways, it’s cool to feel you are part of this longer tradition by having these guys involved. We’re the generation doing it now.
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I hope people who get into Sunn get into other stuff, going backward through the catalogs, references, like I do with music. Real music fans are always doing that, the quest to find the ultimate records, it’s the exploration. That’s the joy of music. If we can turn some kid on at the Hot Topic...fuck. I bought Darkthrone at the mall in Seattle. To be able to do that again, that’s the theory. Hot Topic, it’s fucking hilarious. But teenagers are into it.
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This record really goes into the musicality of it though. I used to think Sunn was more about repetition in the style of raga perhaps, then cycles. But I found recently that it seems more cyclic than ever, a continual tone, a slow build, a continual piece more than repetition. The focus on the actual musicality has become much more tuned in. musical aspects have been…There is something about the repetition of playing concerts. That’s where the music actually exists. That’s the reality, the manifestation of it, that’s the only thing that matters. Everything else is just documenting. I’m really into that, exploring that way. That seems more like penance somehow (laughs).
