Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions

photo ©2009 Gisele Vienne

SUNN O))) is proud to present their 7th studio album, after 10 years of existence. Work that spanned a year and a half resulted in our most intense, mature and off-a-point-of-reference work to date.

The group has always revolved its music around the foundation of two heavily amplified and saturated electric guitars, and over the years the ensemble has grown and evolved in many ways, incorporating many different electronic musicians, noise artists, other guitar & synthesizer players, percussionists and vocalists.

With this album we wanted to extend this embracing of sonics to integrate acoustic ensemble players. We collaborated with a fantastic composer named Eyvind Kang (notable for his work with, amongst others, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, and Bill Frisell) on various acoustic ensembles, in addition to the helios fueled electric guitars & basses. It is not “SUNN with strings” or “metal band meets orchestra” material.

We took an approach concentrating on more of allusion toward the timbre of feedback and the instruments involved, so the piece is really illusory, beautiful and not entirely linear. The effect really brings out the musical side that exists in those huge waves of sound in a different way. Radiations. We’re really amazed and proud of how it’s developed. Its something inspired in waves by the composers Iancu Dumetrescu and Gérard Grisey. Its also an homage to the sonic power of implied & actual orchestrated structure of our heroes: Earth, Celtic Frost & Entombed. That said it’s out but also probably the most musical piece we’ve done & also the heaviest, powerful and most abstract set of chords we’ve laid to tape.

In addition to our core of guitars and electronic symbiosis, we stepped forward together with long-time collaborators; Australian guitarist genius Oren Ambarchi and Hungarian enigmatic & tremendous lead vocalist Attila Csihar. Additionally we managed to have a number of really special musicians work on this. Including most notably Julian Priester (who worked with Sun Ra in the 50s, was in John Coltrane’s African Brass band, and was in Herbie Hancock’s Sextant band) and Stuart Dempster (new music horn player who plays with Pauline Oliveros in Deep Listening band and had several Cage commissions over the years). There’s also an upright bass trio, french & english horns, harp & flute duo, piano, brass, reed & strings ensembles. And a Viennese woman’s choir led by Persian vocal savant Jessika Kenney. These guests amongst many notable others, none the least being slow music godfather Dylan Carlson.

Monoliths & Dimensions is practice in density, gravity and momentum.

This description is the tip of the iceberg, literally.