Sunn 0)))'s Greg Anderson on “Big Church” and Monoliths & Dimensions

By Randall Roberts for La Weekly:

“Big Church,” by the L.A./Paris duo Sunn 0))), begins with a female chorus. Then a low-tuned, distorted guitar powers up like a muscle car, and the juxtaposition between the chorale passage — all altos and sopranos — and the creeping guitar pattern (baritone and bass) is striking. Both move slowly and with great intent, beauty colliding with darkness, melting into a mysterious other. This other glides into a layer of orchestrated feedback and male chanting, courtesy of Attila Csihar, too quiet to comprehend. Then a long drone, a solitary church bell and a swath of rich silence that proves John Cage’s theories. Another guitar ignition bursts forth, as though Sunn 0))) guitarists Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley, joined on this track by Earth founder Dylan Carlson and Oren Ambarchi, have discovered and unlocked an infinite cavity inside their guitars.

There are no drums. The beauty is the anticipation, the waiting for something big to happen. It’s 10 minutes long, so we’re not in any hurry. Where epic rock songs of yesteryear such as “Sister Ray,” “In a Gadda Da Vida” and “Losing My Edge” find beauty in serialistic, Steve Reichian repetition, fewer are the extended songs that use space and time to craft something huge, which takes patience and concentration to resolve. The prog-rock bands of the 1970s made long songs that took advantage of the space, but ELP, Yes and King Crimson used the full album sides to show off their chops and quote melodic patterns from baroque and romantic sources. They used “classically trained” as an excuse.

Sunn 0))) offer big ideas gradually, thoughtfully, create a monolith of sound and then mold it into something graceful but menacing. It’s no accident that their new album, Monoliths & Dimensions, features a cover painting by sculptor Richard Serra; the band’s output feels heavily inspired by Serra’s massive series of Torqued Spirals.

West Coast Sound recently sat down with Sunn 0))) co-founder Anderson at the offices of the record label he co-owns, Southern Lord. Located in East Hollywood, the second-floor Lord HQ is much less dark and menacing than the records that the label, a consistently surprising and barrier-busting metal imprint, delivers. We asked him about the genesis of “Big Church.” What follows is an edited transcription of the conversation.

Read more here. Sunn O))) performed at Soundlab on 07/01/04 with Orodruin