| The Stars | 07 10 2009 | |
| The Stars
"Perfect Place to Hideaway" Im championing this album again for the nth time. Killer timing, drone, turnaround psychedelic cyclic rock & roll. Seek it down. It gets more arcane and infectious with repeated listening... elder rock from the higher order. | ||
 |
||
| More ALUK TODOLO | 07 10 2009 | |
| | ||
 |
||
| Post tour | 07 10 2009 | |
| Best element about returning home from a tour: excavation of all the weird musical treasures I picked up along the road, with proper coffee!
| ||
 |
||
| ALUK TODOLO vs Williamsburg | 07 10 2009 | |
| pic: Javier Villegas | ||
 |
||
| Appearance of a broken mirror | 03 10 2009 | |
| | ||
 |
||
| SUNN O))) vs Philadelphia | 03 10 2009 | |
| Sunn O))) & Eagle Twin: Live at the Church, Philadelphia
By Sean Caldwell I got to the venue early, maybe about 45 minutes before the doors were supposed to be opened, and took a seat on the steps of the First Unitarian Church. Sound check was pouring out into the streets, Sunn O))) and Eagle Twin basically offering a preview of what would be heard later, and inadvertently reminding me that I forgot to pick up ear plugs. This was going to hurt. As rugged, pulsating low end and vocalist Attila Csihar’s devilish throat haunted 21st and Chestnut, casual passersby were stopping with uneasy curiosity and taking careful ganders at the set-up inside the church. One exceptionally suburban clad couple stopped and exchanged glances while Csihar was mid-grunt. “It sounds like ‘The Exorcist,’” spoke the female counterpart before the both of them continued their leisurely stroll and left us early concertgoers to loiter in a haze of amplification. As sun set, sound check continued. And, continued. And, continued. More and more people arrived, an odd mix of traditional metalheads, long beards, black designer hoodies and characters pulled directly from any Daniel Clowes novel. An array of chemical influence was in effect, whether inhaled or imbibed. Everyone just played up their respective attempts at intimidation, smoking cigarettes and looking unapproachable. Kids are so cute. In the meantime, I was admittedly growing impatient, overhearing bad conversations and the perpetual noise emanating from the Church. It was almost 9PM by the time we were let in. Before the show even started, the hall was hazy with smoke. After spending $5 on a silkscreened poster, I secured a spot at the end of a pew thinking I had a good vantage point. I was about two or three rows up from the back, but I could see the stage clear as day. The altar was stacked tall with giant amps and gothic candelabras were attached to every other pew. It was obvious the ceremonial atmosphere automatically provided by any church was going to be played up for the festivities, the venue’s employees walking back and forth in monkish hoods, associating themselves with the headlining act. Eagle Twin, a duo comprised of metal guitarist Gentry Densley and drummer Tyler Smith, burn with an energy that some full bands can’t muster. An aggressive sludge with slow moving calamitous clangor setting the pace, Eagle Twin played a nonstop block of music for 45 minutes, most of their audience happy to nod in place while a couple people did physically respond in thrash-worthy gesticulations. Fifteen minutes elapsed between bands with some tuning required and push button confirmation that the smoke machine was operable. At this point I didn’t think the smoke would obscure THAT much of the show, but twenty minutes into Sunn O)))’s set, I realized that my seat sucked: I couldn’t see anything. Initially, while watching the few shutterbugs at the show scampering around the foot of the altar for decent shots of the band, I’d felt that flash photography might rob the band of its mystique. But, the strobe effect the camera’s employed led to second-long visions of the band in their hoods, momentarily breaking them out from underneath the walls of smoke that had built up around them. Disappointingly resigned to view nothing, I sort of sank into the reverberating maelstrom the band generated, as did everyone else around me. After the venue’s gimmicky monks lit each candle in succession, there was a steady hum from the amplifiers before organ music began to sound, building up drama until flawlessly transitioning into roaring movements of guitar. “Cacophony” is an understatement, as is “technical proficiency.” I can think of no band so amazingly talented at producing this level of noise in such an artistic and composed manner. I dub thee, Decibel Metal. That being said, it wasn’t the easiest show to sit through. Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley’s signature metallic crescendos are unmet by anything rhythmic for extended periods of time, blistering shrieks of high-amp’d guitar and bass living to drone, Csihar’s chilling and intense delivery… I think I heard four songs in almost two hours, and there was nothing you could move to. All you could do was drown in it, like Gregorian chant set to a thunderstorm. But, as an experience, Sunn O))) is something to behold. When the candles had been extinguished and the lights had come on, the one word universally spoken around me was “intense.” I picked up a t-shirt and headed to my car. As jazz musician Cecil Taylor once famously stated that his preparation for a concert should be met with the same efforts from his audience, it’s obvious that Sunn O))) live by a similar mantra. Well, that and “Maximum volume yields maximum results.” 24 September, 2009 - 18:50 — Sean Caldwell | ||
| Merzbow & Attila in Henie-Osntad, Oslo | 02 10 2009 | |
| | ||
 |
||
| SUNN O))) vs ATHENS | 30 09 2009 | |
|
LiveReviews 2 days ago Sunn O))) Sunday, Sept. 27 @ Seney-Stovall Chapel From the outside, the Seney-Stovall chapel looks like an elegant Chic-fil-a dwarf house, except 30 times the size. Inside, the chapel looks more like a Methodist church – cream walls, nice wooden seats, and a red velvet curtained stage that takes up a large portion of the floor. There’s also a balcony and a chandelier. This evening that stage was lined with a backdrop of human-sized amplifiers, which would soon emit colossal wattages of “Drone Metal/Doom.” These labels, however, are a little too ambiguous – essentially what we’re talking about is heavy fields of sound – fields capable of rattling light fixtures loose from the ceiling, and vibrating floors, walls, and handrails. I even noticed my vision clipping occasionally, but I’ll get back to that. Now, reimagine the chapel and add a small table to the center of the stage. This table has a small synthesizer and a small computer on it (my best assumption – there were black boxes there). Okay, fast forward through the opening band, who, to their credit, were at the right place at the right time (sorta kidding). They played hard, and as a two-piece (guitar, drums) “Doom” band, they made a good go of it. They are in another league entirely than the subject at hand though. It’s now 9:45 p.m., and the chapel is densely filled with fog; the house lights have just gone off and two green spotlights at the front of the stage illuminate a periodically reappearing burst of cloudiness. Conversations with production crew reveal that the building’s smoke detectors have been tampered with in the hopes of preventing sonic and civil-servantly interference. A long time passes before anything other than the retarded mechanical hiss of the smoke machine and the occasional cough are heard, and unfortunately the first sounds heard are not of bass thunder, but laughter and jeers invoking drum solos and Skynrd songs – you know the stuff. More of this for a while, then, from the stage: “Sorry, we’re having technical difficulties.” Uggh. Then, maybe two fog clicks later, the spotlights melted red and a wave of sound got the building shaking. The fog was so thick at this point that from the balcony I was only able to make out two figures on stage – one with a guitar, and one who appeared to simply be standing at the small table I mentioned earlier. Both were wearing hooded, full-length black cloaks. For anywhere between the next, say, four and 15 minutes, modulating drones moved like fat ghosts through the building, manipulating not only the air and surrounding physical structures, but also the physiological vessel as a result. Somewhere during this time another black-robed creature (this one with additional red turban, erased face, and long blonde hair) emerged and took up residence in the intermittently emerging fog cloud. Time would reveal this to be a singer/narrator/screamer/arm-dancer/sorcerer/priest? Shortly, there was a distracting flash of bright white light. Then again. The sound was so encompassing at this time that it took a second to realize that the fire alarms were blinking. Then a little bit later, when the sound decrescendoed a bit, the alarms’ buzzing became audible. These alarms persisted for the next 40-45 minutes, until the very minute the show ended (perhaps because of the opening of the chapel’s two massive wooden doors). Now the tricky part: The fire alarms made sense. I can see the argument otherwise, but I liked it, and feel that the overall presentation was only about three perecent hindered because of their existence, if at all. Only twice did I wish that they weren’t on, and on those occasions for maybe a second or two. I really had the sense that it all fit together appropriately, and from differing vantage points different alarm sounds were audible, which was a neat interactive experience. The alarms seemed simultaneously like an angry metronome and the building enjoying a prolonged and long-overdue orgasm. So within the previously mentioned 45 minutes, Sunn O))) continued much as it began – crafting and eliciting heavy ass waves of sound with shifting modalities and rolling tubes of feedback; Different organs and architecture vibrating with different harmonizations during a general loosening of Time. It’s like medicine in the sense that the band presents many different arrangements/pairings of tone, and each designates a wholly differing atomic situation (this really is music theory/physics in practice, it seems). Each varying wave frequency has a unique effect on the surrounding energy landscapes, so follow this train of thought and you have a method. Sunn O))) guides its craft on a journey through these primal, subtle landscapes with enough wattage to reach even the most preoccupied person in the house. So that’s what happened all set – variations on this theme through a “dark” (woodsy/pagan/celtic/spiritual?) approach, with no ostensible break in the whole set. The narrative was intriguing -- though I can’t say I have much background, basically what happened was that the red-turbaned creature went away around midpoint and a giant burlap sack creature smeared with blood replaced him in the spirit fog. This burlap sack creature had maybe two white faces (one of a wolf and one with vacant eyes?), an inverted christmas tree of black, orange-sized nodules sprouting from the “mouth” area, and several large sticks climbing from the top of the head. The sack/woods creature did more howling and throat singing than the turbaned one, who did more invocation/preaching/narrating, and it looked really weird, so I liked it. This whole production was a loaded sensory experience, and in the end quite refreshing actually – I felt very light cycling home in the surprisingly cold night – though, in further retrospect, I would like to see that set without the contribution of unplanned fire alarms and their save-the-deaf-too flashing lights (which, to close the reference above, sort of behaved like strobe lights, and when i was looking at the geometric pattern on the navy blue carpet, changes in the room’s sound coupled with the strobe effect produced an ocular skipping where clumps of the carpet would sort of jump around – and I didn’t indulge in any recreational substances prior to or during the show). To close, I’ll defend the idea that the band was able to incorporate the unexpected into the aesthetic, and perhaps themselves enjoyed the renegade dynamics at least a bit: It certainly sounded like there was an appropriate give and take, and most of the time the alarms were inaudible because the music was so dominating anyway. Seriously, no complaints about the alarms – it sounds worse in writing. This was a treat of mythic proportions. *Tonight Sunn O))) will be performing a special, one-time-only set at Seney-Stovall that will not be seen anywhere else on their tour. Tony Floyd from flagpole.com | ||
| SUNN O))) vs NYer | 29 09 2009 | |
| Set List: Sunn O))) at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, September 22, 2009
—Sasha Frere-Jones Hey, Bono, you’re doing it wrong. On the season premiere of that show everybody watches on Hulu, U2 played an extra, V.I.P.-style song under the credits, replacing the traditional closing where the cast stands around awkwardly waving. (This may have allowed host Megan Fox to escape before anyone touched her or tried to give her a rose.) In addition to a pair of off-kilter performances of songs from “No Line On The Horizon”—a big, blowsy album that doesn’t translate to the stage as well as the band’s leaner work—U2 performed “Ultraviolet (Light My Way),” from “Achtung Baby.” To make the performance more magical, Bono swung around on a fluorescent microphonic ring that hung from the ceiling, and then sang into it, because it was a microphone. His jacket was covered in dozens of miniature red lasers that shot into the crowd and distracted them from trying to remember what album “Ultraviolet” is from. (Apparently, the crowd got a performance of “With or Without You” after the broadcast ended, because U2 hates people who watch TV.) Bono is not Attila Csihar. That guy shooting laser beams out of his hands is Attila Csihar. You are not as metal as he is, and neither is Bono, even if Csihar is both Hungarian and vegetarian. Csihar sings with Sunn O))) and the legendary Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. Long before Csihar joined Mayhem, the band’s second vocalist, Dead, committed suicide, and their guitarist, Euronymous, was murdered by his bandmate Count Grisnackh, in 1993. Csihar probably doesn’t have to worry about being killed by anyone in Sunn O))). The core members of the band, Americans Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley, are largely peaceful, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any violence in their music. Sunn O)))’s performance last week at Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple may be the loudest show I’ve ever seen. I saw a Ramones show in the late eighties that might have come close, though that music mostly took place in an upper midrange that Sunn O))) doesn’t visit much. The median sound for Sunn O))) is a low chord, pitched below standard tuning, that blows through the crowd like a humid wind and stays in your body like that liquid they make you drink before you go through the CAT-scan machine. Standing in front of the stage on Tuesday night felt like a teen-age dare. How long could I stand to have my organs palpated? How could I tear myself away? Would the volume loosen up kinked muscles? Sterilize me? The intense physicality of Sunn O)))’s music makes it seem like any number of things might be happening to you and only a forensic reconstruction will reveal exactly what did happen. Over the course of twelve years, Sunn O))) have devised something that operates to the side of, or behind, music: their sound eats up space and time. After the show was over, my head felt like a bag of blueberry muffins that had been left under a bench for three days. I walked down Vanderbilt Avenue towards my house, sweaty and bereft of the ability to echolocate. Low-budget theater is part of the current Sunn O))) show. The opening? A recording of monk chants playing while chemical smoke filled up the room for twenty minutes. When nothing on stage was visible except a microphone stand and the top of an enormous speaker assembly, the band entered. (The smoke machines continued, intermittently, all night.) Anderson, O’Malley and additional musician Steve Moore (a trained jazz pianist who has “never heard Slayer’s ‘Reign In Blood’ ”) began to play, all in monks robes. After we had adjusted to the deep tissue massage of their sound, Csihar entered in robes to perform “Agartha,” the first song on the latest Sunn O))) album, “Monoliths & Dimensions.” In heavily accented English, Csihar recited a set of lyrics about “the riddle of clouds,” stones, sky, and Eskimos. Eskimos! Csihar left and then returned in a robe covered with reflective shards and a headband ringed by reflective spikes. Csihar pointed the laser-fingers at his own outfit and then the crowd, getting more mileage out of the get-up than you would expect. (From my vantage point, the lasers looked like everyday office pointers sewed into black gloves, four on each hand.) His final outfit, an “earth mask” designed by Egyptian artist Nader Sadek made Csihar look like the victim of violence and some light gardening. Each “song” (a paltry term here) lasted at least twenty minutes. Reaching 2 A.M. with Sunn O))) was not a lark. Yet I would have gone back the next night, had it been possible. The immersion Sunn O))) offers is like nothing else. (A series of photographs by Andrew Parks of Self-Titled magazine will help explain exactly what the assault looked like.) A few days later, I emailed O’Malley, and this is what he wrote back: "Being in that space definitely put a frame around the music and our presence within and beside it. The mystery was amplified and there is certainly something both forbidden and off access to modern though in a place like that. We discussed the importance of temple to freeze time, or to rather to bypass it. The masons lay metaphysical cornerstones in physical locations." O’Malley also revealed that the band doesn’t rehearse much, partially because he lives in France and Anderson lives in Los Angeles. "It’s a free music, but the structures are written to a point. Since the geography doesn’t permit rehearsal, it doesn’t happen unless there’s an event like a tour. Mostly the sounds develop themselves along the arc of continuity." (Fauxlaroid by Nikola Tamindzic, other photographs by Aeric Meredith-Goujon.) from www.newyorker.com | ||
   |
||
| New GRAVETEMPLE art | 29 09 2009 | |
| via Justin Bartlett
Live CDR & shirt artworks | ||
  |
||
| Cameron Jamie vs Athens | 29 09 2009 | |
| Cameron Jamie
Barking Tar: New Ink Works October 8 - November 13, 2009 Opening reception: October 8, 2009 Bernier/Eliades Gallery 11 Eptachalkou Street Athens, GR-118 51 Tel: +30 210 3413936-7 Girl Reading A Dog Magazine 2009 ink on paper 120 x80 cm | ||
 |
||
| SUNN O))) vs Asheville | 28 09 2009 | |
| Photos: Mark Hepp | ||
  |
||
| Mathilde Darel | 27 09 2009 | |
| Exposition
Mathilde Darel Photographies 2008-2009 Vernissage le vendredi 9 octobre à 18H30 Artothèque municipale de Grenoble - Bibliothèque Kateb Yacine- Centre commercial Grand'Place Exposition du 6 octobre au 14 novembre 2009 | ||
 |
||
| Robbe-Grillet tribute | 26 09 2009 | |
| | ||
 |
||
| Ambarchi live 1009 | 25 09 2009 | |
| Wed Oct 7
Oren Ambarchi/Rob Mayson/Matt Skitz Sanders @ Stutter Horse Bazaar 397 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Australia www.horsebazaar.com.au Wed Oct 14 Oren Ambarchi & Stephen O'Malley duo Kairos/Almost Cinema 09 @ Vooruit Kunstencentrum Vooruit vzw, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 23, 9000 Gent Belgium http://vooruit.be/en Thu Oct 15 Oren Ambarchi & Robbie Avenaim duo + Keiji Haino/Tony Conrad, Norbert Moslang & more @ Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival Salle des fêtes du Casino de Montbenon Lausanne Switzerland http://www.luff.ch/en/ Sat Oct 17 Oren Ambarchi & Robbie Avenaim a/v duo + Thomas Brinkmann, Arnold Dreyblatt @ Impakt Festival Theater Kikker, Main Hall Ganzenmarkt 14, Utrecht Postbus 185 3500 AD Utrecht The Netherlands http://www.impakt.nl/ Sun Oct 18 Oren Ambarchi & Robbie Avenaim a/v duo @ Levontin 7 Tel Aviv Israel http://www.myspace.com/levontine7 Mon Oct 19 Oren Ambarchi & Robbie Avenaim duo + Magik Markers @ Levontin 7 Tel Aviv Israel http://www.myspace.com/levontine7 Tue Oct 20 Oren Ambarchi & Robbie Avenaim duo (TBC) @ Uganda Aristobulus 4, Jerusalem Israel http://uganda.co.il/ Wed Oct 21 Oren Ambarchi solo + Manuel Mota @ Netwerk - Center For Contemporary Art Houtkaai, B-9300 Aalst Belgium http://www.netwerk-art.be/en/home Thu Oct 22 Oren Ambarchi & Robbie Avenaim duo + Jan Jelinek, Jon Hopkins, Davide Rossi @ Bimhuis Piet Heinkade 3 1019 BR Amsterdam The Netherlands http://www.bimhuis.nl/ Sat Oct 24 Oren Ambarchi & Robert Piotrowicz duo + Greg Kelley/Jason Lescalleet, Bertrand Gauguet / Thomas Lehn / Franz Hautzinger, John Tilbury, Robbie Avenaim & more @ Densites Festival Pole culturel, rue de Bonnétage, 55160 Fresnes-en-Woevre France http://www.vudunoeuf.asso.fr/ Sun Oct 25 Oren Ambarchi solo + Pow Ensemble @ Utmark Bergen Kunsthall Rasmus Meyers allé 5, 5015 Bergen Norway http://www.kunsthall.no/default_e.asp Tue Oct 27 Oren Ambarchi solo @ Bla Brenneriveien 9c 0182 Oslo Norway http://www.blaaoslo.no/ Sat Oct 31 Oren Ambarchi solo (playing Alan Lamb's Wires) + Alan Lamb, Dave Noyze, Garry Bradbury, Robin Fox @ Wired Open Day Wired Lab Site (somewhere near) Cootamundra, NSW Australia _________________ "My days are darker than your nights" - Oren Ambarchi | ||
| KTL vs Music Gallery Toronto 2008 | 25 09 2009 | |
| Pics: Bryan Walker
astralra.blogspot.com | ||
    |
||
| 144 | 25 09 2009 | |
| Residents of Allahabad, India, stand in front of 144 loudspeakers during a competition to find who is playing the loudest.
| ||
 |
||
| Alva Noto | 25 09 2009 | |
| alva noto live in malmö, sweden
02nd october 2009 unitxt live set @ full pull festival inkonst, bergsgatan 29, malmö, sweden http://www.full-pull.org/ | ||
| O))) Attila NYC | 25 09 2009 | |
| Pic Javier Villegas | ||
 |
||
| Words of wisdom | 24 09 2009 | |
| Scott Weinrich: Now I'm an electrician's helper. I make $150 a day, cash. We pull wire, I mule the tools up and down, and I'm learning about electrical stuff. One thing I'll tell you is, when you devote your life to art the way I have, when you devote your life to playing music that's under the radar and out of the mainstream and absolutely refusing to sell out -- I mean, I've had offers from rap dudes who want to buy part of my songs to put in rap songs, and I will not fuckin' do it. No fuckin' way, no how. You could offer me fifty fuckin' grand to take part of my song and put it in a rap song and I will turn you down on the spot, guaranteed. I'll never, ever compromise my art.
And when you have that kind of ideal, you can bet your ass you're never gonna be able to learn a trade, because you're gonna be out struggling on the road. You can bet your ass that you're gonna miss your kids' and your wife's birthdays, you can bet that the most important show you can get is gonna fall on someone's birthday, one of your kids' or your wife. That's the kind of thing you've gotta do. If you're not willing to do that, don't do it. | ||
| Neurosis Retrospective | 24 09 2009 | |
| Neurosis Video Retrospective
http://unartignyc.com/2009/09/23/neurosis/ Covering the years between 1994 and 2008 All exclusive, original and previously unreleased footage Text contributions by Kevin Egan of Beyond and 1.6 Band & Stone of Trust Zine | ||
| Karl Paulnack | 24 09 2009 | |
| Welcome address to freshman
class at Boston Conservatory given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory [September 2008] "One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would notproperly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had verygood grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and theyimagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might bemore appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember mymother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to musicschool-she said, "You're WASTING your SAT scores." On some level,I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of musicwas, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. Theyjust weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that alittle bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts andentertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever todo with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let metalk a little bit about music, and how it works. The first people to understand how music really works were the ancientGreeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music andastronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as thestudy of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects,and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal,hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving piecesinside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of thingsinside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works. One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartetfor the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940.Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany.He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in acattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp. He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper anda place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist,a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with thesespecific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for fourthousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of themost famous masterworks in the repertoire. Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, whywould anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playingmusic? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food andwater, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyonebother with music? And yet-from the camps, we have poetry, we have music,we have visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, manypeople created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused onsurvival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art mustbe, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, withouthope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but theywere not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the humanspirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways inwhich we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning." On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reacheda new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat downat the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; Idid it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover onthe keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took myhands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter?Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given whathappened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent,pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time?Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost. And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey ofgetting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact Icontemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. Andthen I observed how we got through the day. At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. Wedidn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, wemost certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that Isaw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sangaround firehouses, people sang "We Shall Overcome". Lots of people sangAmerica the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember wasthe Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New YorkPhilharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our firstcommunal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was thebeginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured theairspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular,that very night. From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is notpart of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have usbelieve. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers ofour budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is abasic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of ourlives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, away for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with ourminds. Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heartwrenchingly beautiful pieceAdagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you mayknow it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone moviePlatoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of musiceither way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like awalnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music canslip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on insideus the way a good therapist does. I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely nomusic. There might have been only a little music, there might have beensome really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And somethingvery predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kindsof emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of thewedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And evenif the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple ofmoments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to movearound those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides sothat we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can youimagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialoguebut no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the rightmoment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying atexactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with themusic stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks: Music is theunderstanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects. I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert ofmy life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousandconcerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought wereimportant. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; itmade me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have playedfor people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers,foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life tookplace in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago. I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began,as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during WorldWar II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who wasshot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about thepieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written programnotes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, wedecided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come outand play the music without explanation. Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near thefront of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, wasclearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair,square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his lifein the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be movedto tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn'tthe first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with theconcert and finished the piece. When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talkabout both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstancesin which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downedpilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he hadto leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see himagain, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explainhimself. What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, andI was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. Iwatched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japaneseplanes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachutechords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched myfriend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have notthought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music youplayed, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I wasreliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but thenwhen you came out to explain that this piece of music was written tocommemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How doesthe music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me? Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships betweeninternal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I haveever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect,somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lostfriends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. Thisis why music matters. What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman classwhen I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will chargeyour sons and daughters with is this: "If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicingappendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you wouldimagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into youremergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, myfriends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert halland bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soulthat is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on howwell you do your craft. You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sellyourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musicianisn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevys. I'm not anentertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescueworker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, aspiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who workswith our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we cancome into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well. Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; Iexpect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness onthis planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutualunderstanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from agovernment, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it tocome from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought usas much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind,if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal thingsshould fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that'swhat we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, theartists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal,invisible lives." | ||
| L Magazine vs SUNN O))) | 24 09 2009 | |
| sonic brain sauna
I arrived in time to see Earth and Sunn O))). I am a long-time follower of both acts, and am perhaps biased in my fanatical review: With a venue as grand as the Brooklyn Masonic Temple's massive hall, and an 8-foot-tall wall of fully restored vintage Sunn amps, there was no way I could have prepared myself for the sonic brain sauna that was last night. Unlike any music venue in NYC, the Temple has absolutely no sound restrictions on its performers. That means that a band that has spent its entire career attempting to reach the lowest possible sonic limits at maximum volumes could finally reach its full live potential. Earth soothed the audience with rich and clean guitar drones, the entire band slowly trudging through each measure and occasionally fooling the audience into thinking a song was over, when in fact it just took THAT LONG to reach the next bar. The overall effect was that of being lulled off to some ominous desert at dusk, the horizon disappearing into starry night as guitars echoed through the endless landscape. Sunn O))) was next. Notorious for testing their audience's patience, the band played an elaborate trick on us. I was sitting smack dab in the center of the balcony, with a full view of the enormous hall. The stage lights dimmed and a recording of tibetan throat chants and percussion played over the house speakers. Dense fog emerged from the base of the un-peopled stage slowly, and over the course of 15 minutes, the entire hall was transformed from an already muggy dark room to a smoke filled sauna. In all honesty, all was rendered invisible and I could not see past two people to either side of me. As the stage was hidden by fog, it took a moment to realize that the tape of the chanting faded out into an identical live rendition of the tibetan throat singing, provided by long-time Sunn collaborator, Attila Csihar, and seat-rumbling percussion and cymbals. The effect was a little too eerie for some, and a third of the balcony and floor dwellers left the venue before Sunn began their actual set. Nothing can describe the physical sensation caused by the first rip of Sunn's guitars. The soaring feedback and barreling drop-B drones sent tremors through my entire body. For a moment, I was convinced that I was having a seizure and that I needed medical attention. After a good fifteen minutes of this, the guitars fell almost silent. Attila's draconian voice emerged from the silence, intoning an ancient riddle from Agartha (the opening track to Sunn's recent release, "Monoliths & Dimensions"). Green and Blue beams of light illuminated the fog as it shifted and casted swirling forms into the air above the crowd. This was not a concert. It was a full-on sensory incantation. My reptile brain took over shortly after this point, so I'm afraid I cant very well recall what happened for the remainder of the show, but I ensure you: Whether it be electronic current or plain-out sorcery, SunnO))) have succeeded in giving their audience a complete religious experience. -Zev David Deans | ||
| Limewire vs SUNN O))) | 24 09 2009 | |
| Sunn O))) at Brooklyn Masonic Temple, NYC 9/22/09
Countless shows spent standing around tables piled with miscellaneous electronics and pedals while some bearded dude bobs over them making disjointed noise has made me leary of seeing any band with even a tangential connection to anything that might be considered “experimental.” Sorry, but I have a short attention span and listen to punk rock, so if your performance isn’t trying, at least a little bit, to keep me interested, I won’t be. This made me nervous to see Sunn O))), an experimental drone metal band who put out one of my favorite albums of the year, the aptly titled Monoliths & Dimensions. Sunn O)))’s music (the O))) is silent) play dense and heavy guitar riffs at a glacial pace, and their live shows are known for dense room-filling fog, towering amps, mysterious cloaked figures, and unbearable volume. To me, the uninitiated, sounds interesting, but not especially exciting. Sunn O)))’s headlining set at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple last night (could there be a more appropriate venue?), completely lived up to the band’s reputation, and yet they amounted to so much more than that. Before Sunn O))) took the stage, Mongolian chants emanated from the PA and smoke machines slowly filled the hot room with a dense atmosphere. I joked with my companion that the band wouldn’t start to play until the massive space was completely full, but by the time Sunn O))) took the stage 20 minutes had passed and fog had rendered half the crowd invisible. Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson, the core of Sunn O))), eventually emerged, taking their places in front of a literal wall of amps, and began to fill the room with riffs as dense as the smoke emanating from their machines. Soon legendary death metal vocalist Attila Csihar appeared, dressed in a dark robe to match his accompanists, and Sunn O))) delved into “Agartha,” the first song on Monoliths. While band proceeded to lumber through the rest of the album, with O’Malley and Anderson laying down expert sonic assault, Csihar rose as the real star of the show. His vocal range, from banshee whale to demonic bellow, was unbelievable, and his costume changes, the first to a mirror-covered armadillo-like suit with laser pointer fingers and then to some kind of bondage tree-being, were a source of sustained awe. The other star of the show was, of course, volume. Loudest show of my life. No question. Not only were my bones shaking and my gut totally busted, but I felt my clothes ripple and my nostrils flare. Seriously. If it weren’t for ear plugs I probably wouldn’t be able to hear the clacking of my own keyboard right now. This, though, isn’t novelty, or a badge of honor that reads, “I experienced Sunn O))) and lived to hear another day.” As any musician will attest, playing music is a physical experience, by which I don’t mean tactile sensation, or the action of playing, but the feeling of playing. Great music comes from the body, the instrument merely a medium for that expression, and the source of the most engaging of live performances. Sunn O))), with their amps turned up way past 666, offer this elusive sensation to their audience, in a real physical form: stomach rumbling, ribs rattling, and face melting. For a band that seemingly does so little on stage, Sunn O))) managed to play one of the best shows I’ve seen all year; totally not boring. from blog.limewire.com | ||
 |
||
| Village Voice vs SUNN O))) | 24 09 2009 | |
| Live: SunnO))) and Earth Smoke Out at the Masons at Brooklyn Masonic Temple
By Christopher Weingarten Wednesday, Sep. 23 2009 @ 12:30PM SunnO))), Earth, Pelican, Eagle Twin, Brooklyn Masonic Temple, September 22 "Thanks to the Masons for letting us use their building" - Dylan Carlson, Earth You should know the deal for these Southern Lord shows by now: oppressively loud doom metal riffs, guys in robes, limited edition posters, tote bags, slip mats, 180 gram vinyl, smoke machines, Mongolian throat singing as between-band music, seven amp stacks, a mile-long guest list (I spotted Matthew Barney and Yoko Ono). So the real novelty this time out is the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, billed by the promoters as "the loudest room in New York." The Temple is already a mystical place before you add the five hours of sitting in a rickety seat and the windowless hotbox effect of a steamy crowd. The balcony vibrates when, like, Jose Gonzalez plays in there. So how would wave after wave of suffocating doom feel? Here's a quick rundown: Eagle Twin: A gentle seat-rumble--not unlike like sitting on a vibrator--which occasionally moves up to your cheekbones. Pelican: A dull throb that starts in the armrest and penetrates your hands. It's a physical relief when they finish, like stepping out of a bumpy cab ride. Earth: A gentle, fingertip-light wave. Some physical revulsion for especially icky guitar feedback. SunnO))): A motorcycle-ride vibration that starts at the base of the spine and climbs toward to the head, where it slowly evolves into a headache. Some mildly enjoyable but ultimately unpleasant tickling. Annoying twitch in nose and ear canal, even with earplugs. Dull drone after returning home, even after using proper hearing protection. The echo chamber that is the Masonic Temple did wonders for slow, hypnotic doom riffs, but didn't exactly do drummers any favors. Eagle Twin's spasmodic Tyler Smith made an impressive show of whacking like a caveman, raising his sticks as high as possible before kicking his kit's ass. But he couldn't outplay the enormous amps of frontman Gentry Densley, who certainly looked like he was playing in a rock band, though he mostly stuck to coaxing unholy slime and inhuman drones from his guitar. Truly monumental sound from just two dudes: Think Big Business minus anything cute or fun. Pelican returned from the shadow of their gloomy City Of Echoes somewhat happier and--dare I say--funkier? Their set--heavy on grooves and drones--certainly earned the gentle headbanging and booming applause it received, though crowd didn't exactly cut loose during the two mosh-ready avian openers. They clearly wanted something more meditative. From the second Earth hit the stage to do their Neurosis Dude Ranch prairie metal, a giant weed cloud wafted from the floor. Slow, deliberate drummer Adrienne Davies telegraphed every punch as the whole band slowly lurched on. Someone shouted out "Let's kick it up a notch," to which Carlson replied, "You're at the wrong show." The crowd was pumped anyway. They cheered lustily for an as-yet-untitled new song, and hooted as the band broke down their gear. Dudes had to leave before midnight to make room for the two-hour SunnO))) marathon--an endurance test for even the most loyal fans. SunnO))) brought nothing if not drama, spending the first 20 minutes of their set offstage, filling the entire room with a comically dense, mucky screen of burnt-hair-smelling smoke. For the next two hours there would be essentially nothing to watch--Were they even on stage? Are they in robes or just rocking their pajamas? People happily took pictures of a cloud anyway. When the band finally emerged (I assume) from the 20-minute smokescreen of ambience, they unleashed a guitar woosh loud enough to crack the foundation. At forty minutes in, a vague figure emerged--Mayhem's Atilla Csihar. He opened with a version of Monoliths And Dimensions's "Agartha," a fantastic Vincent Price-style tale about being lost at sea, punctuating it with a growling solo and some concussive throat-booms. After a quick costume change, Csihar emerged again in a mirror ball suit--somewhere between Voltron, Gwar, the Donnie Darko bunny, and Duchamp's Nude Descending A Staircase. With laser-pointer claws. A set-ending third costume took the form of a big armless potato bug. Joke all you want, but SunnO)))'s intense stage presence and attention to detail are paying off. This is the fourth SunnO))) show I've seen in New York and the first where more than half the audience actually made it to the end. At 2 a.m. on a work night, no less. blogs.villagevoice.com photo by that.turtle | ||
 |
||