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Sunn O)))) formed in March 1998 in Los Angeles. A synthesis of diverse: drone, ur, noise, metal, minimalism/maximalism; supported by a cast of collaborators, O))) has two core members: Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson.
For twenty years, Sunn O))) have been challenging the way we think about music. In that relatively brief time, core members Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson have forged connections between the worlds of Metal, Drone, Contemporary Composition, Jazz and Minimalism with startling results while remaining true to the eternal principles of volume, density and weight.
The release of The Grimmrobe Demos (1999) sent tremors throughout the underground with its bold realisation of hitherto unimagined heaviness. Building on the innovations of Seattle pioneers Earth - and naming a track in honour of their leader Dylan Carlson - Sunn O))) forged even deeper into a realm of reverberating darkness. However it was with the release of ØØ Void (2000) that the duo staked their claim as an outfit that would redefine how we view - and hear - guitar music in the early 21st century. There were detractors and skeptics, of course. But, undeterred, O’Malley and Anderson continued to refine their sound with 2002’s Flight Of The Behemoth, featuring contributions from legendary Japanese Noise artist Masami Akita aka Merzbow.
Evolving at a rate contrasting with the pace of their diurnal riffs, Sunn O))) unleashed White1 in 2003. This ambitious sonic document constituted many listeners’ first contact with the outfit and demonstrated the flexibility of their aesthetic. Contributions from Runhild Gammelsaeter (Thorr’s Hammer), Joe Preston (Melvins/Thrones) and the arch-drude himself, Julian Cope, assisted the music’s rapid radiation from its molten core of heavily amplified ambience. Around this time, the mainstream music media started to take an interest: the baffled curiosity that greeted ØØ Void gave way to the suspicion that something not unlike a paradigm shift was taking place. In interviews, O’Malley and Anderson revealed themselves as engaged and articulate ambassadors for the world of sound they had created. Meanwhile, rumours of hooded figures grinding out immense, immersive riffs suggested that Sunn O))) were a live experience to be reckoned with. This was confirmed by a succession of actions including a thunderous performance at London’s Underworld on Halloween 2003, an event preserved for posterity on the live album The Libations Of Samhain (2004). Sunn O)))’s live career is littered with such landmark shows. The group’s performance at Bergen Cathedral, Norway as part of the Borealis Festival in 2007 was immortalised on vinyl as Dømkirke in 2008, for example, and they have staged similarly memorable interventions at many international music festivals including Barcelona’s Sonar (2009), Krakow’s Unsound (2009), CTM Berlin (2013), Japan’s Earthdom (2007) and Leave Them All Behind (2012), North Carolina’s Hopscotch (2012), Primavera in Barcelona (2015), Australia’s Totally Huge New Music Festival (2007) and All Tomorrow’s Parties/The Nightmare Before Christmas (2003, 2004, 2007 and 2009), Supersonic (2007 and 2009) in the UK, Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival (2009), OFF Festival, Katowice (2015), Meltdown Festival , London twice: Royal Festival Hall (curated by David Byrne) in 2015 & Queen Elizabeth Hall (curated by Jarvis Cocker) in 2007, Hellfest in France (2012 & 2016), Leave Them All Behind, Tokyo (2012). Adelaide Festival (2016). Sunn O))) also curated the 2011 edition of Holland’s legendary Roadburn Festival, bringing together Keiji Haino, Winter, Scorn, Earth, Voivod and Circle among other heavyweights. In November 2015, Sunn O))) presented a four-day program at Le Guess Who? Festival in Utrecht, the Netherlands, including Annette Peacock, Magma, Julia Holter and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and Sunn O))) itself
At this moment the axis of the band irreversibly changed as grand vocalist and shamanistic Attila Csihar entered the constellation of the band. By the time White2 followed in 2004, which marked further steps into the collaborative experimental aesthetic spaces beyond and SUNN O)))’s initial recorded collaboration with the magnificent Csihar, there was no denying the group's impact. The shockwaves travelled internationally and were received eagerly by an audience notable for its diversity. Metalheads, Noiseniks and experimental aficionados were united in their appreciation while countless artists and groups attempted to incorporate Sunn O)))’s visceral churn into their own creations.
For their next full-length release, O’Malley and Anderson journeyed deep into the abyss. With Malefic (Xasthur) and Wrest (Leviathan) on vocal duties, Black One was misinterpreted by some as Sunn O)))’s attempt at a Black Metal record. In fact it was, as O’Malley told The Wire Magazine in 2009, “a stark exploration” of certain aspects of their work. However bleak and unforgiving, Black One was their most collaborative effort to date, an approach which similarly informed O’Malley and Anderson’s other major release of 2006, Altar. Co-credited to Japanese rock mutants Boris, this album explored a broad spectrum of sonic strategies from thick, oily miasma to graceful, almost country-ish songcraft. The two groups came together for triumphant live performances of the album at Club Citta in Kawasaki Japan May 2007, London’s Kentish Town Forum in December 2007 and at ATP New York in September 2010.
Advancing from a self-created world and operating on their own terms, Sunn O))) have proven themselves the model of what King Crimson’s Robert Fripp would call a “small, mobile, intelligent unit”. They are capable of expanding or contracting their line-up according to the needs of each project and of moving fluidly between the concert hall and the academy. For a 2006 collaboration with Banks Violette at the Maureen Paley Gallery in London, O’Malley and Anderson performed inside a sealed room while vocalist Attila Csihar clawed his way, vampire-like, out of a black coffin. The audience were permitted to hear - but not see - the sounds created, although the relics of the performance were later preserved in salt and exhibited. That same year, Sunn O))) performed alongside Liars, Burning Star Core and Leopard Leg as part of the music strand of the Frieze Art Fair, filling the London Hippodrome with wave upon wave of amplification with the assistance of Godflesh/Jesu legend Justin Broadrick.
Pushing forward in their recorded work but unafraid to embrace their past, in 2008 Sunn O))) announced a number of live shows to mark the tenth anniversary of their first release The Grimmrobe Demos. For these dates, O’Malley and Anderson returned to their original two-man line-up, thereby reminding audiences where and how it all began, exposing once again the fundamental core of their sound. The same year saw Japanese label Daymare Recordings reissue ØØ Void with an extra disc of collaborations with legendary British experimentalists Nurse With Wound. Their sixth album nevertheless indicated a group with its feet planted firmly in the present. Monoliths And Dimensions (2009) retained the heaviness of previous releases whilst incorporating elements of spectralist composition and jazz. The album’s finale, Alice, was the most elegiac and beautiful piece the group had ever recorded, its mood of profound melancholy enhanced by veteran jazz trombonist Julian Priester (Sun Ra/Herbie Hancock) and typically masterful group arrangements courtesy of Eyvind Kang.
2014 saw the long-awaited release of their collaborative album with Norway’s Ulver entitled Terrestrials. Following their 200th gig, playing before 2000 people at the 2008 Øya festival, Sunn O))) teamed up with Norwegian legends Ulver at their Oslo studio, Crystal Canyon. They recorded three "live in improvisation" pieces, starting that evening and ending at dawn, as Northern sunlight seeped in through the windows. The three-track recording is fluid like the flow of magma beneath the Earth's crust: sonically uninhibited, unpredictably cosmic, haunting and stirring yet simultaneously ceremonious and beautiful. The same year saw an unpredictable collaboration with the cult composer Scott Walker, entitled Soused and released via the cult label 4AD, a body of work he wrote with SUNN O))) in mind. Sunn O)))’s dark reverbs adding nuanced textures of enigmatic yet disconcerting melody to Walker’s unmistakable and commanding baritone.
Composed in the aftershadow of the aforementioned recent successes in immersive collaboration, Sunn O)))’s latest full-length Kannon (2015) emerged both independently as a conceptual entity and with roots in the legacies of those projects. The band also engaged closely with the literal representation of Kannon, an aspect of Buddha: commonly known as the Guanyin Bodhisattva (Chinese: 觀音菩薩) amongst a plurality of other forms. Aliza Shvartz was commissioned to write a text / liner notes around these ideas and topics. She explores the relations and perceptions of their approach to these ideas via the metonym of music and discusses Sunn O)))’s place/approach within the framework of music and metal overall, exemplifying that Sunn O))) recognise and shape the physical, discursive and philosophical ideas that inspire, impact and transmute their sonic vision.
Kannon is also very close to the cyclical character of mantra which the band has evolved into as a living creature with the live concert element - the organism that has flourished, metamorphosed and transcended tremendously over the past decade, and continues to do so. In order to document the intense sensate detail of their live sonic invocations, Sunn O))) have established two Bandcamp pages which serve as an exhaustive archive of their entire back catalogue, including rarities and essential live material. Their live Bandcamp page is compiled of taper and fan recordings, spanning from their 2002 show at the Blackbird in Portland up to their recent headlining shows in summer 2017. These documents are presented in their raw and unedited beauty and fans are invited to contribute to this sonic archive.
At the very beginning of 2018 SUNN O))) co-founders Stephen O’Malley & Greg Anderson set out on a path toward a new album production. They were both determined to create new music and a new method of working in the studio, without forgetting the long and proud history of production and studio accomplishments forged during their first two decades of existence (and the members’ own musical experiences out of the band’s). One long term goal was completely clear: to record Sunn O))) with Steve Albini in his Electrical Audio studio. Steve took the call, said “Sure, this will be fun. I have no idea what is going to happen.”
In July 2018 SUNN O))) spent just over two weeks in Chicago at Electrical Audio (Studio A) with Steve Albini at the helm. The results are astounding: there is breadth and luminosity of colour, it sounds vast. The sessions were impeccably recorded, authentically represented and completely accurate. The spectrum cracked the firmament open in clarity. An all analogue technique was used, they recorded and mixed on tape, providing a creative gateway for SUNN O))) to evolve their production methods into stronger, confident, performance based and a more logical executive process. The album was mastered and lacquers cut from tape in October by SUNN O))) ally Matt Colton at Alchemy in London. The LP version is a AAA album, recorded and mixed on tape via a completely analogue production, from the input of the band’s amplifiers and the air coming off the speakers in front of the microphones to needle touching the pressed vinyl on your turntable.
Continuing one of the main currents of the SUNN O))) concept, depth of exploration within collaboration, brought forth Hildur Guðnadóttir to the Sunn O))) constellation. Hildur is a sometime live collaborator of Sunn O))) and a renowned film music composer, former member of the bands Múm, Pan Sonic and Angel. She was a long time collaborator with the composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (RIP). Hildur lent her incredible attitude, as well as her voice, breath and electric cello, and the enigmatic haldorophone to the proceedings, culminating in the epic composition/concerto “Novæ”. The cosmos clearly expands.
The resulting album is titled Life Metal. It is fully realised and completely real. The record was produced by the core of Stephen & Greg & arranged by the greater constellation Sunn O))). Paintings by visual artist Samantha Keely Smith graciously adorn the sleeve and provide a perfect suitable mask to the proceedings. They collide ideas of 19th century romanticism & late 20th abstract expressionism (mysticism) with Sunn O)))’s approach to metal (via reference points of Arbo, Turner, Delville, Richter, Turrel, Wou-Ki). Photographer Ronald Dick shot them in baths of light colour representing depth of sound pressure in the work.
The Pyroclasts album is the result of a daily practice which was regularly performed each morning, or evening during the two week Life Metal sessions at Electrical Audio during July 2018, when all of the days musical participants would gather and work through a 12 minute improvised modal drone at the start and or end of the day’s work. The piece performed was timed with a stopwatch and tracked to two inch tape, it was an exercise and a chance to dig into a deep opening or closing of the days session in a deep musical way with all of the participants. To connect/reconnect, liberate the creative mind a bit and greet each other and the space through the practice of sound immersion. The players across the four pieces of Pyroclasts are Tim Midyett, T.O.S., Hildur Guðnadóttir, and as always Stephen O’Malley & Greg Anderson.
The music on Pyroclasts is inextricably woven to Life Metal. It exists on the very same tape reels, was explicitly recorded by Steve Albini. The brightness and vividity of that glorious session glares through these four tracks, the precision and radiance, prismatic lustrousness of the saturation, the elemental sculptural shapes, the abstract renderings. It is a sister, or perhaps a shadow album. Or perhaps the now apparent miasma or aether. But it also exists in a form of a pause, a time space which exist in between and around the compositional structures of Sunn O)))’s titanic works.
For the listener or recipient/participant there are deep rewards within the patience of pulling down the walls and letting the music feel, and feel the music. To be immersed will reveal great detail and colour, clarify image, encourage a depth of focus and stillness which may lead to a quite profound experience. Sitting inside the space of time. A deep form of elementalism, even atomism, and connection with presence moment, time and reality.
In late October 2019, following a successful UK tour ending in a sold-out concert at the mythical Roundhouse in London, SUNN O))) entered studio 4 of the BBC Maida Vale. On invitation to record a live session for Mary Anne Hobbs to be broadcast on Samhain via her excellent radio show on BBC6. To enter the legendary John Peel studios was to enter a temple of music and experimentation, liberty in ideas and sound.
The band was nearing the end of a long touring year around the Life Metal and Pyroclasts albums. SUNN O))) had developed the compositions extensively, embracing the formative concepts of the Life Metal album conceptually and emotionally, but actualised and evolved into vast, open and bright hyper-saturated arrangements. Particularly the pieces the band chose to perform on this recording: Troubled Air and Pyroclasts. The former enriched into a total aspect of the band’s ethos and form in many ways, and Pyroclasts had evolved to become all-inclusive radiation of O))). The radiation embraces collaboration and freedom of interpretation by each player, within a structural format of the massive monuments of sound and distortion which define SUNN O))).
Anna Von Hausswolff and her band had accompanied SUNN O))) on the UK leg, and Anna joined SUNN O))) in the studio on synths and with her tremendous voice on the Pyroclasts pieces. The resulting album " Metta, Benevolence BBC 6Music : Live on the invitation of Mary Anne Hobbs" Was released in early 2021.
Post-pandemic, SUNN O))) continues to plan live activities with dates across North America and Europe. In celebration of their 25 years founders/guitarists Stephen O’Malley & Greg Anderson returned to the live aspect in its core, original raw form and performed several tours across Europe and North America as a duo.
For Sunn O)))’s 25th anniversary in 2023 the band recorded a seven inch EP for the legendary Seattle label Sub Pop's equally legendary singles series. SUNN O))) also recorded celebratory 25th anniversary demos with producer Brad Wood. In October 2024 Sub Pop released SUNN O)))'s three song Maxl 12" and all is leading toward a brand new self titled album to be released by Sub Pop in April 2026.
Together they relentlessly pursue their exploration and elaboration of Sunn O)))'s legendary experiments with the physicality of sound in instrumental based live performances with remarkable events at some of their favourite venues, as well as concerts as part of singular events and in unique spaces such as David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center in New York, Italy’s impressive cultural complex Labrinto Della Masone, Germany’s Ruhrtriennale Festival of Arts, Royal Festival Hall & The Barbican in London, Bergen's Dømkirke and Manchester International Festival being a few emblematic examples.
Immersed in profound valve amplification, spectral harmonics, distortion and volume. Pure and primaeval riffs of temporality, massively heavy structures of sound pressure. Devoted audiences bear witness to a live experience of physical sound, fog and glacial maximalism like no other.
All hail.
-Joseph Stannard, Lauren Barley & Stephen O'Malley
