LIVE REVIEW: SUNN O))), EARTH

by theseseans (NYC)

Sunn O)))
When: Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Where: Brooklyn Masonic Temple, Brooklyn, NY
With: Earth, Pelican, Eagle Twin

12:08 a.m. - The lights went down and the crowd applauded. But that always happens. Twenty-plus minutes of lighting changes and constant fog machine output, however, is fairly unusual. From my seat in the balcony, I looked down on the people in the front row and felt sorry for them: they were surrounded, invisible to my sight, by increasing amounts of choking, opaque fog. Pity gave way to empathy as those 20 minutes rolled on, ushering in more and more suffocating smoke, until the entire Brooklyn Masonic Temple was filled. Visibility was reduced to about 10 feet in any direction. Did someone just enter the stage? No, that was just a fresh batch of fog spewed from a machine rolling across the stage. The fog was so thick that it could actually be seen in layers.

Of course, before those Kings of Drone Doom took the stage, even before they blanketed the audience with throat-closing clouds of dry ice, another band I really wanted to see played – Earth. I arrived just before Dylan Carlson and Co. took the stage, which gave me enough time to say a few hellos and find a good vantage point. Carlson kept his stage talk to a minimum and the band opened with “Omens and Portents II: Carrion Crow,” before entering into an extended version of “The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull.” The band wasn’t super tight, but that was OK. They sounded – and felt – truly organic.

Performing as a four-piece (Carlson on guitar, backed by long-time drummer Adrienne Davis, Don McGreevy on bass and Steve Moore on keys), they just didn't sound as fully-realized as on 2008's massive and mult-layered Bees.... Going in, I really wanted them to play with a big band to hear live what I heard on record. What I got, though, was something unexpected: instrumental rock delivered in a more personal and intimate way than I could possibly have expected. Davis pulsed with her entire body, the rest of the band following her undulations. Perfect time wasn’t asked for; rather a simple togetherness was expected. I am more a fan of 2005's Hex... and its subsequent records than the noise/drone Earth helped pioneer early in their career. So when they followed “Bees” with a new and as-yet-unrecorded song that flowed in the same vein as their recent releases, I was thrilled. That song was livelier – and busier – than anything else I've heard Earth play. Carlson said the band will start recording a new record in December. Not as thrilling was their truncated set: they played just three songs. A solid 40 minutes, but I was expecting more.

12:25 a.m. - Earth had ended their set nearly 30 minutes prior. The Temple was full to the brim with smoke. The minimalist recorded chanting of Gyuto monks present during the set change came to end. Someone in the restless audience called for “one more song!” The tension broke and the crowd released a collective – and much-needed – laugh. When Mssrs. Anderson and O'Malley did enter, they were greeted with raucous applause which they quickly silenced with a few slow (and deafening) open chords. Thee Drone had begun.

Regular collaborator Attila Csihar entered, dressed initially like the rest in black "grimm robes." He began much like he did on Sunn's latest, Monoliths & Dimensions: slow and dry. Rhythmic isn’t the right word. Perhaps deliberate is a better choice. Like the fog, the more Csihar spoke, the more invasive his voice became. Realization struck: this is what we were there for. The crowd breathed in. Everything about the beginning of that particular performance was hypnotizing.

I’m not sure I can accurately describe the journey from beginning to end, point A to point B, but I can tell you how I felt before the show. I could not wait to see Earth and hoped I would be able to make it all the way through Sunn’s legendarily demanding set. I just wasn't a huge fan. I liked Monoliths a lot, but their older material did little for me. Seeing them live, and with Attila Csihar, no less, certainly made this special for me. While Csihar's presence (not to mention his incredible costumes) was a major highlight, it wouldn't be fair to ignore the near-telepathic communication between O’Malley, Anderson, Csihar and keyboardist Steve Moore, who performed double duty that night. They played as a single unit. Slow strokes and massive, ear-flattening sound melted under Csihar’s guttural delivery. Hooded and alone, they might have come off as the pretentious artistes they are occasionally accused of being. But behind Csihar, it honestly seemed they might have been as transfixed as the crowd. Waving their guitars against the massive power they unknowingly (or maybe knowingly) awakened, they worked the entire Temple into a climax unlike anything I’ve experienced before. Theirs was a performance clearly meant to be seen from beginning to end, by those those with patience and perseverance.

Point B? I left more a fan of Sunn O))) than I ever thought I could be.


Attila Csihar photo by Greg Cristman. Catch the rest of Greg's photos, along with some videos at Brooklyn Vegan's wrap up.