Sunn O))): Rothko Drone

 

Sunn O))) remain that perfect blend between doom metal and ambient music. Others will say they are the natural fusion between Earth and Godflesh, and they wouldn’t be wrong either. But there’s something else buried deep inside. Did Lysol, that legendary 1992 Melvins album in which the Melvins partly paid homage to Flipper, have anything to do with it? Surely. The roots of Sunn O))) grow downward, in every direction, and ever deeper.

Their music is made of what emerges when night falls and darkness slowly begins to fill the room, without haste, without permission. The air becomes dense. Then it becomes heavy. And at some point between those two things, you stop trying to make sense of it and simply let it in. Sunn O)))’s music goes far beyond notes or melodies. It is pure sound in its darkest form, and that is exactly what makes it so impossible to ignore.

This time they have taken minimalism to one of its most radical extremes. The album has no title. There are no guests. There are no more instruments than the guitars of Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley, plus some synthesizers, basses, and pianos that they played themselves. Two men, their guitars, and the silence they know exactly when to break. Nothing is superfluous. Nothing is missing. That, in itself, is already a statement.

The cover is a painting by Mark Rothko, and the choice is neither casual nor decorative. Sunn O)))’s music and Rothko’s painting share something that very few things in the world share: a fierce austerity and tones that shift from the luminous to the darkest, transforming slowly, sometimes almost imperceptibly. Both work the same territory. One does it with color. The other with frequencies that you feel in your chest before your brain has time to process anything.

The only guest on this album has been the sound surrounding the studio during the recording. Birds, the wind, water flowing in a river. Nothing more. And yet, those elements turn the album into something that breathes, something with its own texture and temperature. Once again, Sunn O))) create a piece that works as a solid block even though it is composed of several tracks. Sound turned into density. A single mass that moves and presses from within. The sound of the Earth itself, constantly in motion.

Sub Pop is Sunn O)))’s new home. Just as it once was for Dylan Carlson’s Earth, who were also an inspiration for Sunn O))). In this way, the album also becomes the closing of a cycle. The drone, the sound wave, returns to its point of origin.