Thursday, December 3, 2015

Sunn O))): Kannon

In 2008, Sunn O))) played a short series of duo concerts meant to acknowledge the band's modest, mimetic origins. Sunn O))) began as a tribute of sorts to Earth, the influential duo whose low, slow riffs and steadfast amplifier worship established the doom-metal mold that Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley were trying to fill anew. And for the first few years, that was the limit of the pair's output—lumbering riffs, played at a near-tectonic pace and deliriously high volumes.

During the next half-decade, however, Anderson and O'Malley evolved. They incorporated a constellation of metal, noise and experimental guests into a series of high-concept records—White1, White2, and Black One, each of which expanded the pair's personnel and possibilities.They staged high-profile, full-length collaborations with counterparts and heroes. They turned concerts in clubs and cathedrals alike into frame-shattering, wall-shaking temporary installations, where robes, fogs, and a shrine of their namesake amplifiers shaped a sort of heavy-metal happening. More than a 10-year anniversary, those 2008 shows represented chances to jettison the excess and prove that the anchoring idea—chords played so long and loud the listener heard every overtone and felt every subtle change—remained potent. The new art-metal masters wanted to show they could still get back to basics.

A year after those concerts, Sunn O))) issued Monoliths & Dimensionsan aptly named colossus that folded a horn section, a choir, a string section, a blown conch shell and black metal legend Attila Csihar speaking slowly into four pieces that were just ridiculous and divergent enough to work. In the years since, collaborations with Ulver and Scott Walker have also pushed Anderson and O’Malley farther beyond the early, atavistic comforts of Earth. Kannon is the first complete Sunn O))) since Monoliths & Dimensions, and it likewise documents a return to the elements for Anderson and O'Malley. Cut with a cast of familiar collaborators playing mere support roles to Anderson, O'Malley, and their amplifiers, Kannon reneges on that progression with a triptych of elegant yet underwhelming arcs and drones. It is typically loud. It is often pretty. It is, cumulatively, the first minor full-length studio album of Sunn O)))'s career.

There are, no doubt, many beautiful and bracing passages throughout Kannon. Few musicians can summon the same mix of patience, intensity, roar, and meticulousness as Anderson and O'Malley; it's wonderful to hear them interact in the pristine, refined acoustic setting offered by producer Randall Dunn. Near the midsection of "Kannon 1", the bass, guitar, Csihar's obscured voice, and a capillary of feedback lock into a perfect unison. Even delivered through headphones, the sound is somehow paralyzing and exhilarating, as though a team of masseurs has just found all the right pressure points. The playing is so careful and the recording so crisp that, during "Kannon 3", you can listen to chords and notes arrive one by one and track their slow disappearance into the din around them. It's like watching time-lapse footage of solitary raindrops forming a deep puddle.

But where Kannon exceeds as a collection of moments, it fails as both an album and an experience, especially given the general Sunn O))) scale. Brevity may be the only truly new idea the band incorporates here, as these three tracks just break the 33-minute mark. But Anderson and O'Malley don't seem to have squeezed the normal complications and layers into a tighter space so much as omitted them altogether. "Kannon 1" slowly gathers its riffs, pulling back the stage curtains for the subterranean rattle of an oddly subdued Csihar. "Kannon 2" begins with a wrestling match with a guitar that resolves in feedback and, again, introduces a familiar choir of incantatory voices, all surrounded by a wispy veil of electronic oscillations. The album's most unexpected instant actually comes at that song's end, when one massive, static bass note hangs still in the air. Percussion jostles beneath it, as though the enormous tone were rattling a household cupboard. Rather than explore the strange sound, Sunn O))) simply shut down the amps and discard it. And that's the problem, really: Kannon feels underdeveloped and rushed, like the start of a project that's been delivered prematurely. 

Since the release of Monoliths & Dimensions, Anderson and O'Malley have taken very separate paths. Anderson has re-launched the blues'n'doom outfit Goatsnake and retooled his label, Southern Lord, for old-school hardcore, crusty metal, and crossover fare. O'Malley, on the other hand, started an improvisational band with Keiji Haino and Oren Ambarchi, scored a film, composed for an orchestra, performed a new Alvin Lucier work, and launched a label devoted to such interests. That tension has long been an animating, thrilling force for Sunn O))). On Kannon, though, Anderson and O'Malley have opted to avoid rather than embrace it, to find a middle ground of compromise that steers safely away from the frisson of conflict. At least they sound good doing it.

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