- Release Info -------------------------------------------------------------- -
Artist: Sunn O)))
Album: Kannon
Label: Southern Lord
Playtime: 33:25 min
Genre: Noise
URL: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21286-kannon/
Rip date: 2015-12-04
Street date: 2015-12-05
Size: 64.91 MB
Type: Normal
Quality: 258 kbps / 4410kHz / Joint Stereo
- Release Notes ------------------------------------------------------------- -
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 outputùlumbering 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 recordsùWhite1, 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 ideaùchords played so long and loud the listener heard every
overtone and felt every subtle changeùremained 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 & Dimensions, an
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 OÆMalley 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.
- Track List ---------------------------------------------------------------- -
01. Kannon 1 (12:50)
02. Kannon 2 ( 9:09)
03. Kannon 3 (11:26)
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