CucosBlog

On the back of the ATP weekend, I wasn’t particularly excited to be going to yet another gig the very next day. But tickets get booked in that moment of desire/excitement/curiosity, and having already shelled out at £16 a pop I had to make the effort. It turned out to be an inspiring and moving experience.

The doom / drone triple bill of seminal band Earth, Japanese contenders Boris and reigning heavyweight champions Sunn O))) had started at 7.30, we were told by security as we bowled up at the very reasonable time of 8.30. Funny, I thought - don’t these deathdrone doom folk prefer things to happen in the black of the night? Well they probably do, but there are licensing laws in this country and when you like to play as long as these guys and you can’t finish late you gotta start early.

So Boris were already banging out a very decent stoner rock jam when we entered the auditorium. One thing I noticed about them was their way of sounding like they were just finishing a song, only to keep it going over and over again. The drummer was giving it everything, and when things got too much for him he turned and struck the enormous gong hanging behind him. Repeatedly. It was almost comical. Just having the gong there seemed this big 70s kind of gesture, it really looked great in the sepulchral light and ornamentation of the Forum’s stage. And in the end to cap it all he jumped down off the riser and threw himself into the crowd. It was a sweet moment of rock n roll abandon. I basically enjoyed their set but at the same time wanted it over. I think that says a lot about me. Just ordered the Boris CD with the Bryter Later rip off cover.

More drinks were had as we waited for the stage to be set for Sunn O))). A huuuuuge stack of amps formed a wall along the back of the stage. It wasn’t a truly record-breaking rig, but as big as I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile a man rudely tried to shove himself in front of me in the queue for the bar. He succeeded in getting served before me. He asked the woman at the bar if he could recycle his plastic pint glass. She said no she would give him a fresh one. I controlled my anger at this man, and I thought about what I expected from the Sunn O))) gig. I thought it would be some super heavy rock (”much slower, heavier” x 100) with the band wearing black cowls. That’s all I thought.

A digression

Two days previously, on Saturday, I had managed to stay on at this year’s Nightmare Before Xmas ATP festival in order to see the band Om. Thoroughly bored as I killed time waiting for Om to come on at midnight or so, I watched French Connection in the freezing cinema and then made my way to the centre stage for the show. Om are two of the guys from well-regarded stoner band Sleep. I first heard Om in Isabel’s car driving up to the Roundhouse to play the London Hallucination City show. After listening to the first 5 minutes of their 20 minutes plus first track on Variations, I said isn’t it amazing how a bass can just carry the whole sound of a band. She said that’s all there is, just bass and drums. I’d never heard that before. I’ve been listening to Variations on a Theme and the new one Pilgrimage ever since and I love it. They just find this great sound, this groove and roll with it. [I’ve since heard Pink Floyd’s “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” on Ummagumma and that’s pretty much the vibe.]

So seeing them live was a treat. The drummer was a great solid workman-like player, and the sound of the Rickenbacker bass was lovely. I won’t forget the sound I experienced when the bass player stepped on his distortion pedal. I have never heard such a loud and ferocious sound come from a band before - it was not like the usual saturated noise spray that gets emitted by loud/noise bands - this was tightly controlled and fucking loud. I was watching the drummer pounding away at those drums but I could not hear a single beat. As I watched them play during the non-distorted sections I heard how this is actually so close to Funkadelic, it just swings in a different way. Apparently Steve Albini produced Pilgrimage. Check em out.

So anyway I thought Sunn O))) would just be crushing noise. I was so wrong about them. I saw them walk onstage in their cowls amid a lot of dry ice just as expected, but there were quite a few of them, maybe 6 of them. One of them started playing trombone (such a silly instrument…). And the sound built up as the trombone was discarded - keyboards, one, two maybe three guitars, a standup bass, maybe another electric bass. How many is that, six? It was a long drone, echoing and not really identifiable. I thought: this is like watching the ring wraiths from Lord of the Rings playing in a rock band, this is exactly what it would be like. I wonder if they were actually inspired by watching LOTR. I mean, the ring wraiths were probably the most memorable thing about LOTR, just embodying some extreme and undying darkness. Fear and suffering incarnate.

Then the next thing I knew, a figure had come onstage and was standing up front as the singer - with the microphone. I was straining my eyes to try to see what exactly it was - what is that thing - a pagan Christ figure? Surrounded by dry ice, sometimes completely obscured in the mist, this figure with a head bandaged and wreathed with a sort of twig crown, the upper body covered in sack cloth with only the singing hand free, the other arm bound like in a straight jacket, the singing hand ornamented with a twig, and the merest stain of blood on the sackcloth. An extraordinary sight! The figure - man? - looked like he was singing, but I could never be sure what his contribution was to the sound. Was he breathily croaking some terrible demonic curse at us? At himself?

What struck me about Sunn O))) was that they were so dark - and there was so much pain there, without a shred of irony that I could see. Are there really people out there more tormented than me? Strangely, this gig hit me the same day as I read the first half of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and received a DVD with David Lynch’s Rabbits sitcom on it. A huge triple whammy of weirdly moving and engaging darkness.