Holding on to Darkness: Healing Through the Sustained Drones of Sunn O)))

Written By: 
Marty Sartini Garner
Tags: 
Share:
  •  

Marty Sartini Garner reflects on the healing power of ambient and metal during darkened times.

The first new album I fell in love with in 2020 was Leo Takami’s Felis Catus and Silence, a gentle, opalescent jazz guitar record in the tradition of Windham Hill and Studio Ghibli. The last record I fell in love with was Necrot’s Mortal, a brutal death metal album whose cover is an illustration of a person who has removed their own skin with a scythe and is holding it up for the viewer to see; the defiance on their face is plain, despite the missing eyeballs. The music—thrashing, wailing, full of force, like watching a sea of ball bearings churn and tumble—feels the same way.




It’s banal to say that the last year affected profound change on all of us here in the United States, but that doesn’t make it any less true. At times the past ten months have felt like they’ve brought a series of revelations about who we are, both socially and individually. And yet those changes can be hard to see when so little in our environment changes from day to day. Contrast is basically impossible to find. Hours pass by in a fog of collapsed time, only to be shaken violently into the present by some new terror. The more the shaking continues, the more the brutality of it fades, and you find yourself in a new, denser fog. 

Perhaps that’s dark. I mean to make it dark. It’s been a dark time. And the longer the pandemic endures, the time in which incredible confusion clings to razor-sharp clarity like steam on a glacier, dark it will stay. This is why I can’t stop listening to metal. 

For someone who typically favors transcendental jazz and citrus-toned grooves, and who is still dealing with the shame of having grown up a Limp Bizkit fan, this is something of a foundational shift. Had I been told in advance what 2020 would have in store, my bet would have been that I would spend my time with new releases by Green-House, Iceblink, Emily Sprague, Ana Roxane, Omni Gardens—people whose music points to healing and forms of optimism as artistically enriching and sources of great emotional peace. This is one of my greatest and most hard-won convictions: There is more truth and resonance and depth in positivity and joy than there is in the cynicism that passes for realism.

And yet, as the year clicked along and the state of what we found ourselves in became more apparent, I often lost the taste for these sounds, or perhaps I lost the specific kind of attention they require. 

GrimmRobes Live is as textured and sustaining as Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Music for Nine Postcards; like so much of the healing music whose values I love and affirm, it holds me aloft.

When I needed to quiet my mind, I found myself turning instead to Sunn O))). With headphones on, I’d let the guttural exhale of Stephen O’Malley’s guitar and Greg Anderson’s bass flood my consciousness, blasting through me so loudly I could practically taste the pebbled leather of their amplifiers. Over the past two decades, O’Malley and Anderson haven’t tamed the staggering noise they produce, but they’ve influenced its direction, resulting in a greater range of sound than the rages of their early music might have suggested possible. And while I’m not immune to the orchestrated power and broad palette of Monoliths & Dimensions or 2018’s Life Metal, the 2008 recording (初心) GrimmRobes Live 101008, recorded at L.A.’s Regent Theatre on the tenth anniversary of their debut, GrimmRobes Demos, is the version of Sunn O))) that some freshly awoken part of me craves. Across 90 minutes, their two instruments drone in long, ugly waves that never crest, their lowest undulations testing the bottom limit of the mics. Though it goes nowhere in particular, it’s almost purely physical music, meant to be experienced in the body instead of the head. It asks a lot of you: patience, the ability to withstand prolonged abrasion. The point is simply to abide…




GrimmRobes Live is as textured and sustaining as Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Music for Nine Postcards; like so much of the healing music whose values I love and affirm, it holds me aloft. But healing music, I’ve realized, reminds me of the need to heal. And what did it mean to heal in 2020? To come to terms with the unrelenting carnage of the COVID–19 pandemic? To no longer feel the urgent press of racial protest? To be free from the effects of the intense corruption and attendant collapse of our political institutions? Is it acceptable to want not to feel the brutality of the era? Or would healing mean feeling these things in their true intensity? These are the questions—the tensions—that roll through me every day. Often I’m not aware of them; often I’m privileged enough to feel good, cheerful, playful. But they are there.




So frequently I didn’t want to see the pain and confusion that gird everyday life. But, for perhaps the first time in my adult life, I really wanted to feel both. Feeling—taking the darkness into my body, or dredging it up from within me—seemed like the only proper response.

Kannon, Sunn O)))’s 2015 album, was shaped by O’Malley and Anderson to be a kind of sonic relief; the title refers to the Buddhist transformation of suffering into compassion. Its three grainy drones remind me of a tub I used at an onsen in Kyoto that shot an electric current through the water. It gave me a bewildering and terrifying and ultimately pleasurable buzz to stand there, in the presence of danger with the assurance of safety, and think, I’m not supposed to feel like this, but I do. The steadiness of Kannon allows me to soak long enough for the first part of that sentence to fizz into nothing, until it’s simply an affirmation: I feel this way.

I keep going back to Sunn O))), and to the brutality of a single chord being allowed to decay.

These two sentiments—I’m not supposed to feel this way and I feel this way—are difficult to separate, but it feels increasingly urgent to try, and the physical power of black metal makes the effort more manageable. Pushed along by the sheer melancholy force of Silver Knife’s self-titled album, I found myself agog at how the bleak can always get bleaker. The deeper I wandered into Afsky’s Ofte Jeg Drømmer Mig Død or Death’s classic Human, lost in a thicket of riffs and blast beats, with only occasional scraps of discernible vocals lighting the way, the more able I felt to say, simply, This is how I feel, regardless of how I felt about that This.

Literary theorist Terry Eagleton says the sublime is “the most typical of all aesthetic moods, allowing us as it does to contemplate hostile objects with absolute equanimity.” Black metal functions this way, though perhaps contemplate is too heady a word. Indeed, in a world gone increasingly gnostic, black metal is an ironic icon for the goodness of incarnation, a reminder of how it feels to inhabit a body. Following Tomb Mold as they leap from riff to riff in a song like “Beg for Life” can at times feel like listening to Ornette Coleman’s double quintet: It’s brutal, but it’s not monotonous. It moves with its own internal logic, and. Once you learn how to ride the bucking ghost that lives at the center of all this static, you realize how supportive it feels: You’re taken for a ride, but you won’t be thrown off. 

To feel the sublimity of black metal requires a tacit admission of weakness; you have to be willing to acknowledge, even quietly, that you’re staring at something bigger, uglier, and more powerful than you are.

We live in a terrifying and confusing age. Whole days pass where things feel normal, sometimes even good. And some days feel as though they’re perched on the edge of an abyss. It’s amazing how wide the tear in the seam of what was once reality has become, and how on the days when it’s stitched up you can’t even see it.

Sunn O))) return to the surface world yet again with new improvised album  “Pyroclasts” | Music News | Tiny Mix Tapes

I keep going back to Sunn O))), and to the brutality of a single chord being allowed to decay, how O’Malley and Anderson’s shrieking amps and effects keep that tangle of notes ringing for so much longer than its natural lifespan would dictate, and to the violence of allowing its frequencies to scream until they no longer cohere. Those rippling frequencies are the sound of what was once the known and apparently natural world being shredded, so that whatever’s next might become visible. Nearly all music is the sound of death and resurrection, of chords that attack and then decay and ultimately give life. Maybe Sunn O))) is just more transparent about the whole thing. Or maybe there’s mercy in the sustain pedal.

To feel the sublimity of black metal requires a tacit admission of weakness; you have to be willing to acknowledge, even quietly, that you’re staring at something bigger, uglier, and more powerful than you are. And that in itself feels like a form of progress—a way of knowing one’s own limitations more honestly. In this brutalizing, no-bullshit time, listening to it has helped me to peel away the skin that I’ve worn for so much of my adulthood. From the safety of my square-walled bedroom, I hold it up, and I look out, unsure of what to do next. Maybe I’m still recognizable to myself, maybe I’m not. It’s difficult to see. But I feel so much more.

Related Articles

Sort By
12th Isle
2 Tone
2020
2022
2023
33rpm
45rpm
4AD
5 Selects
7"
99 Records
A&M
Abbey Lincoln
Aboriginal
Abstract
Ace Tone
Acid
Acid Archives
Acid Folk
Acid House
Acid Punk
Acid rock
Acoustic
Adrian Sherwood
Africa
African
Afro
Afro-Cuban
Afrobeat
Alan Ginsberg
Alan Greenberg
Alan Thicke
Albert Ayler
Album Cover
Alex Patterson
Alice Coltrane
All Genre
Altec
Amaro Freitas
Amazon Music
Ambient
Ambient Jazz
ambient techno
American Primitive
Amoeba Music
Amplifier
Analog
Anatolian Rock
Andrew Weatherall
Andy Warhol
Anenon
Animal
Animation
Anna Butterss
AOR
Aphex Twin
Aquarium Drunkard
Archie Shepp
Archival
Armenia
Art
Art & Design
Art Dudley
Art Film
Art Pop
Art Rock
Artform Radio
Arthur Russell
Article
Arvo Part
Ash Ra Temple
Asian Underground
Audiogon
Audiophile
Audiovisual
Austin Peralta
Australia
Autechre
avant
Avant-Garde
Avant-pop
Avant-Rock
Avent-Garde
Balearic
Bali
Ballad
Bargain Bin
Baroque
Baroque Pop
Basquiat
Bass
Bauhaus
Bayou Funk
BBC
BBC Radiophonic
Beat Scene
Beats
Beats in Space
Bebop
Belgium
Bennie Maupin
Berlin-school
Best of 2020
Beverly Glenn​-​Copeland
Bhutan Stamps
Big Band
Bill Laswell
Black Ark Studios
Black Jazz
Blaxsploitation
Blue Note
Blues
Blues Rock
Bob Marley
Bola Sete
Bollywood
Boogie
Book
books
Boredoms
Bossa
Bossa Nova
Brainfeeder
Brazil
Brazilian Folk
Breakbeat
Breezy
Brian Eno
Bruce Weber
Bruton Music
Buddhism
Budget Audiophiler
Cabaret
Calypso
Cambridge Audio
CAN
Candombe
Cannanes
Canterbury
Cape Jazz
Cape Verde
Caribbean
Carla Bley
Cartridges
Casio
Cassette
Cats
CD
Celluloid
Chamber Jazz
Chamber Music
Chan Marshall
Channel One Studios
Chanson
Charles Lloyd
Charles Mingus
Chee Shimizu
Chet Baker
Chicago
Chillout
Choral
Christmas
City Pop
Classic Album Sundays
Classical
Classics
Clothing
Club
Cocteau Twins
Coctueau Twins
Coffee
Coldwave
Colorfield
Comedy
Commercial
Community
Compass
Compass Point
Compilation
Concept Album
Condesa Electronics
Conlon Nancarrow
Conny Plank
Contemporary Jazz
Cool Jazz
Cornelius
Cosmic
Cosmic Disco
Cosmic Folk
cosmic jazz
Country
Country Pop
Country-Rock
Covers
Cult Classic
Cumbia
DAC
Dacne
Daft Punk
Dance
Dance Music
Dancehall
Daniel Aged
Dark
Dark Entries
David Behrman
David Bowie
David Byrne
Davida
Dedicated listening session
Deep Dive
Deep House
Deep Listen
Deep Listening
Delia Derbyshire
Demo
Dennis Bovell
Denon
Detroit
Devotional
DFA
Diasporic Disco
Dick Verdult
Diggin in the Mags
Disco
Discogs
DIY
DIY / Amateur
DJ
DJ Shadow
Documentary
Dogs
Don Buchla
Don Cherry
Donald Byrd
Doom Metal
Downtempo
Dowtempo
Dr. John
Dream House
Dream Pop
Dreamy
Drone
Drum Break
Drum Machine
Drum n Bass
Drums
Dual
Dub
Dub Poetry
Dub Techno
dublab
Dubwise
Durutti Column
Düsseldorf School
Dust and Grooves
Eames
Earl King
Early Electronic
East African
Easy Listening
EBM
ECM
ecoustic
ecoustics
Electric Lady
Electro
Electronic
Electronic Jazz
Electronica
Elegant Pop
Elvin Jones
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam
Enossified
Environmental Music
EOY
Eric Dolphy
ESG
Esoteric
ESP Institute
Essential Listen
Essential Listening
Essential Listenning
Ethereal
Ethiopian Jazz
Ethnic
Event
Events
Exotica
Experimental
Factory Records
Faye Wong
Feel Good All Over
Fela Kuti
Festival
Field recording
Films
Fingertracks
Fingetracks
Fishing with John
Fleetwood Sound Company
Floating
Floating Points
Folk
Folk Funk
Folk-Rock
Fonts
Footwork
Fourth World
France
Free Improvisation
Free Jazz
Friends of ISC
Frippertronics
Fundraiser
Funk
Fusion
G-Funk
G.S. Schray
Gal Costa
Gamelan
Garage Rock
Garrard
Gems from the Dollar Bin
George Martin
George Oban
German techno
Gifts
Gilberto Gil
Glam Rock
Glitch
Gogo
Gospel
Grado
Graphic Novel
Grateful Dead
Group Sounds
Growing Bin
Guide
Guitar
Gwo Ka
Gypsy
Habitat Ensemble
Haçienda Club
halloween
Hard Bop
Hard Rock
Harold Budd
Harp
Harry Nilsson
Haruomi Hosono
headphones
Heavy Metal
Henry Lewy
Herbie Hancock
hi-fi
hi-NRG
Hidden Gem
Highlife
Hip Hop
Hip-Hop
Hiroshi Yoshimura
history
Holger Czukay
Holiday
Hollywood
Holy Grail
Home Listening
House
Hypnotic
Iasos
Ibiza
IDM
Illbient
Illustration
Improvisation
Impulse!
In Conversation
In Stock
India
Indian
Indian Classical
Indie
Indie Rock
Industrial
Ingmar Bergman
Installation
Instrumental
International
Interview
ISC Classic
ISC Collection
isc guide
ISC NYC
ISC Record Store
ISC Selects
Island Records
Isolation
Italo Disco
Italo House
Italy
Jackie McLean
Jah Shaka
Jamaica
James Baldwin
Jangle Pop
Japan
Japananese
Japanese
Jazz
jazz funk
jazz kissa
Jazz-funk
Jazz-rock
JBL
John Coltrane
John Fahey
John Martyn
Jon Hassell
Joni Mitchell
Judee Sill
Jungle
K-pop
K. Leimer
Kankyo Ongaku
Keiji Haino
Keith Haring
Keith Jarrett
Kid-Friendly
Kim Yaffa
Kitty Records
Klaus Schulze
Klipsch
Kompakt
Kosmiche
Kosmische
KPM
Kraftwerk
Kranky
Krautrock
Kruatrock
kwaito
L.Shankar
La Monte Young
Labels We Love
Lafawndah
Lagniappe Sessions
Laraaji
Larry Levan
Last Resort
Laswell
Latin
Latin Jazz
Laurel Canyon
Laurie Spiegel
Leaving Records
Lebanese
Lee Scratch Perry
Left-field
Leftfield
Lena Horne
Les Baxter
Lester Bowie
Library
Library Music
Liquid Liquid
Listening
Listening bar
Listening Party
Listening Session
Live Performance
Live Recording
Loose Ends
Loren Mazzacane Connors
Los Angeles
Lost & Sound
lost and sound
Louisiana Blues
Lounge
Lounge Lizards
Love Songs
Lovefingers
Lovely Music Ltd.
Lovers Rock
Luaka Bop
Mad Professor
Magazine
Mandopop
Marantz
Marcel Duchamp
Marcella Cytrynowicz
Marcos Valle
Mark E. Smith
mbaqanga
McCoy Tyner
McIntosh
Meditation
Meditational
Meditative
Melancholic
Mellow
Melody As Truth
Meredith Monk
Metal
Mexico
Miami
Michael Franks
Microhouse
Mid-Century
Miles Davis
Milford Graves
Mills College
Minako Yoshida
Minimal
Minimal Techno
Minimal Wave
Minneapolis Sound
Mixes
Mixtape
Mizell Brothers
mo wax
Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs
Modal
Modern Classical
Modern Soul
Modular Synthesis
Moki Cherry
Mono
Mort Garson
Motown
MPB
MTV
Munich
Music Blog
Music from Memory
Music Interior
Music Therapy
Music Video
Musique Concrète
Mwandishi
Narrative
Neneh Cherry
Neo Soul
Neptunes
New Age
New Islands
New Jack Swing
New Music
New Orleans
New Wave
New York
News
Nico
Nightmares on Wax
Nina Simone
No Wave
Noise
Non-Profit
Northern Soul
Now Sound
NTS
Nubian Pop
Nubian Soul
Numero Group
NYC
OBI
Obscure
Obscure Sound
Occult
On Screen
On-U Sound
online radio
Opera
Organ
Organic
Organic Music
Ornette Coleman
Ortofon
Oswalds Mill Audio
Outsider Pop
Overtone Singing
Painting
Painting with John
Pandit Pran Nath
Paradise Garage
Pastoral
Patrick Cowley
Paul Horn
Paul McCartney
Pauline Oliveros
PBS
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Pensive
Percussion
Pharoah Sanders
Phillip Glass
Philly Soul
Piano
Pioneer
Plantasia
Plants
Player Piano
playlist
Playlists
Plinth
Podcast
Poetry
Political
Polygonia
Pop
Pop Art
Pop not Slop
Pop Rock
Popp
Popul Vuh
Post Bop
Post Rock
Post-Punk
Post-Rock
Power Pop
Premiere
Prince
Private Press
Pro-Ject
Producer
Productions
Professor Longhair
Prog Rock
Progressive
Progressive Rock
Prophet-5
Proto-techno
Psych-folk
Psychedelic
Psychedelic Rock
Psychic Hotline
Psyhedelic
Punk
Qobuz
Quadraphonic
QUARK
Quiet Storm
R&B
Radio
Raga
Rare Groove
rca victor
Receivers
Record Fair
Record Label
Record Store
Record Stores
Record Stories
Reggae
Reggaeton
Reissue
Reissues
Releases
Religious
Remix
Retrospective
Rock
Rocksteady
Roland
Roland Kirk
Roller Skate
Room Recordings
Room Treatment
Roots Reggae
Rotary Mixers
Rough Trade
Rudy Van Gelder
Russia
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Ryuichi Sakmoto
Sacred
Sade
Sam Gendel
Samba
Sample
Samples
San Francisco
Saxophone
Sci-fi
Séance Centre
Seefeel
Sensual
Shamisen
share
Shibuya-kei
Shoegaze
Silver Apples
Simeon Coxe
Singer-Songwriter
Sisters with Transistors
Ska
Sly & Robbie
Smooth Jazz
Soft Rock
Solid State
Songwriting
Sonia Pottinger
Sonny Sharrock
Soul
Soul-jazz
Sound Art
Sound Collage
Sound Installation
Soundsystems
Soundtrack
South Africa
South African
South America
Southern Soul
Space Rock
Spain
Speaker
speakers
Spiritual
Spiritual Jazz
Spoken Word
Squama Records
Staff Picks
Steely Dan
Stereolab
Stereophile
Steven Halpern
Stevie Wonder
Stoner Rock
stores we love
Stories
Streaming
Street Soul
Studio One
Substack
Sun Ra
Sunn O)))
Supergroup
Surround Sound
Susumu Yokota
Suzanne Cianni
Suzanne Kraft
Suzanne Langille
Swamp Rock
SYNG
Synth
Synth Pop
Synth-pop
Synthesizer
Synthwave
Taarab
Tadanori Yokoo
Takoma Records
Tangerine Dream
Tape
Tapes
TD-160
Technics
Techno
Techno Pop
Tel Aviv
Television
Terry Callier
Terry Riley
The Beatles
The Broad
The Fall
The Loft
The Meters
The Mizell Brothers
The Music Center
The Orb
The World Stage
Theater
Thelonious Monk
Third Side Music
Third Stream
This Mortal Coil
Thomas Fehlman
Thorens
Tim Sweeney
Time Capsule
Too Pure Records
Total Luxury Spa
Traditional
Tribal
Trip-hop
Tropical
Tropicalia
Tuareg
Tube
Turntable
Turntable Lab
TV
UK
UK Jazz
Ultramarine
Underground Resistance
Underrated
Val Wilmer
Vandersteen
Vanity Fair
Velvet Underground
Vice
Video
Video Art
Vince Guaraldi
Vintage
Vintage Audio
Vintage Gear
vinyl
Virginia Astley
Visible Cloaks
Visual Art
Vocal
Vocal Jazz
Vocoder
Wackies
Wah Wah Watson
Walearic
Wally Badarou
Warp
Water
Website
Werner Herzog
West Africa
West African
Western Acoustics
Windham Hill
wiring
World
Wrecking Crew
Yacht Rock
Yamaha
Yann Tomita
Yasuaki Shimizu
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Yma Sumac
YouTube
Yukihiro Takahashi
Zamrock
Zither