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| Artwork by Samantha Keely Smith. |
Critics often point to drone’s snail-like momentum and supposedly flavorless ingredients as the genre’s major stumbling blocks. Obviously, there’s no getting around the fact that drone creeps and crawls rather than sprints or gallops, and drone can definitely be bland and unimaginative. Even worse, drone can be unbearably monotonous. Laboring at the same point, over and over again.
That’s why truly sublime drone should be treasured, which is where Sunn O)))’s enthralling synthesis of crushing metal and sound art enters the frame. Sure, the band’s music is slow moving and often comprised of minimal components. But all of Sunn O)))’s releases have traversed different audio terrain.
The band’s core creative duo, Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley, have explored new and often inventive pathways with every Sunn O))) release. Sometimes those pathways have been shrouded in darkness. Sometimes they’ve been bathed in light. But they’ve never been featureless or one-dimensional.
Case in point, Pyroclasts, the latest colossal release from Sunn O))). It wasn’t that long ago that I was writing about Sunn O)))’s last album, Life Metal, which was the band's most rapturous release yet. It’s a testament to Sunn O)))’s forever-evolving nature that I’ve yet to exhaust my vocabulary about them. In fact, this is the 19th edition of this Monoliths and Opinions series, and I’m not remotely tired of writing about Sunn O)))’s adventures.
Reason being, Sunn O)))’s music always feels so ripe for interpretation, from myriad perspectives. In Pyroclasts’ case, one interpretation points to it being Sunn O)))’s most curious release yet. In a nutshell, Pyroclasts is unrehearsed but still heavily conceptualized and purposeful. It features immense mood pieces, as you’d expect, but they’re off-the-cuff drones, where musicians seek each other out on a higher creative plane.
In practical terms, Pyroclasts is the result of daily practice. Every morning or evening during the two-week recording sessions for Life Metal (at Electrical Audio), Sunn O))) and co-collaborators –– Tim Midyett, Tos Nieuwenhuizen, and Hildur Guðnadóttir –– would work their way through a 12-minute “improvised modal drone”. The aim was to (re)connect and focus energies, and everyone involved immersed themselves in oceans of sound and aligned their creative chakras via meditative means.
As a whole, Pyroclasts is a vast introspective and contemplative work. Digest the lot in one sitting, and you’re in for a transcendent treat. The album’s four lengthy drones merge into one monumental teeth-rattling suite, with gargantuan slabs of noise being channeled in deeply devotional ways. (And, as always, Sunn O)))'s inner space explorations are offset by celestial escapades.)
Of course, Pyroclasts is a companion piece to Life Metal, which is scrupulously assembled and arranged. Pyroclasts is far more impulsive, but both releases share a similar ambience, with molten riffs that are as dense, intense and heavy as collapsing stars. Mesmerizing tracks “Frost (C)” and “Kingdoms (G)” look to the heavens, but they also shake the membranes, memories, and anchors that maintain our place in time and space. Massive chords collide and coalesce, altering our perceptions, which is what Sunn O))) have always done at their best.
In towering tracks “Ampliphædies (E)” and “Ascension (A)”, huge shifts in sound spark equally intoxicating shifts in emotional states. Mantric musical movements see pulverizing tones rise and fall, with subtle melodies lurking beneath the crashing waves of trance-inducing drone. “Ampliphædies (E)” and “Ascension” also have a far more intimate impact, which is just as powerful as their earth-shaking presence.
Like its volcanic namesake, Pyroclasts is a slow-motion eruption. But for all the album’s brawn, Pyroclasts is one of Sunn O)))’s most reflective releases. Perhaps that comes down to the close connections forged as everyone involved sought to find common ground through instinctual and unscripted drones. Whatever the case, much like Life Metal, there’s a brightness and even euphoria to the heavyweight dirges here –– and a similarly mercurial sense of adventurousness.
Sunn O))) have noted that Pyroclasts can be viewed as a lens to “re-experience the complexity" of Life Metal, and you're free to press play and scrutinize Pyroclasts’ contextual (and textural) relationship to Life Metal. What's most interesting, though, is that Life Metal underscored that Sunn O)))’s ultimate creative destination remains unknown, while Pyroclasts highlights some of the experimental footsteps along the way.
In the past, Sunn O)))’s creative preparations have remained hidden from sight. But Pyroclasts grants us a view of the band and their collaborators bonding and scouting potential routes. In doing so, Pyroclasts becomes a profoundly soul-stirring voyage unto itself. Revealing a band eager to explore new artistic methods as well as new creative avenues. Sunn O)))’s artistic journey has made for an enthralling odyssey thus far. Long may their expeditions into the hinterlands of sound continue.
The Sunn O))) Monoliths and Opinions series.