A Short Review: Like a fog slowly wrapping its tendrils around a slow-moving car, Nurse With Wound’s surgically enhanced version of Sunn O)))’s ØØ Void record takes its sweet time building a creeping, pervasive sense of dread before bursting into flames three tracks, and more than 35 minutes, in. Scream/Goatsnake vocalist Pete Stahl also enters the proceedings around this point, muttering something about “ash on the trees” as om-chanting monks close a circle around him and the ravaged riffs of Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley.

A masterful piece of macerated minimalism, rounded out by brief, cloud-parting glimpses of hope.

Available At: Amazon · Insound · iTunes · Spotify

While Kiki Hitomi got our sign of approval a while ago, the King Midas Sound vocalist just earned a couple extra points by posting a killer cover of the Crystal Waters classic “Gypsy Woman.” Not just any old rendition, either; we’re talking about freshly filtered vocals set atop the steady pulse of Ricardo Villalobos’  “Lugom-ix” single. Grab it below, alongside the DUMMY mix it’s taken from…

King Midas Sound, DUMMY Mix 94:
1. Swanlights (Oneohtrix Point Never edit) / Antony and the Johnsons
2. N.L.T. / Sunn O))) & Boris
3. 69th Street Bridge/ John Carpenter
4. 07 Untitled / Hype Williams + ‘Can’t say I love U’ Kiki revoice
5. Lean Boot (Version) / Richie Davis + ‘Army of One’ Kiki revoice
6. Rumble Dub / King Jammy Meets Dry & Heavy + ‘ My Sweetest Vampire’ Kiki revoice
7. Vanghoma / Tiyiselani Vomaseve + Alien revoice
8. Lugom-ix / Ricardo Villalobos + ‘Gypsy Woman’ Kiki revoice
9. Keep Your Distance /Amon Tobin + ‘Walking On Gilded Splinters’ Kiki revoice
10. Gris Gris Gumbo Yaya / Dr. John
11. Beware / Death Grips + ‘Pain under the blue sky’ Kiki revoice
12. Wonderland / Black Chow
13. Free press and curl / Shabazz Palaces
14. Giant Squid / Zongamin + ‘Catch a Fire riot mix’ Kiki revoice
15. Leaf House / Animal Collective
16. Tuk Tuk / OLAibi
17. Jamming (edit) / Black Roots Players + ‘‘Living in the dream Dub’ Kiki HItomi
18. Variation of Birds / The Knife
19. Lonely Star / The Weeknd
20. Dying butterfly – Can
21. Hater / Dj Rupture vs Filastine + ‘Earth A Kill Ya’ Kiki revoice
22. Sparrou-Amedito / Robert A.A. Lowe

[Mixcloud]

And while you’re at it, check out our Pelican vs. Neurosis interview here, as well as lots of Sunn O))) coverage.

Ben Frost

[Photo by Bjarni Grims]

Let the haunting hooks begin…

1. Lustmord, The Place Where the Black Stars Hang (Side Effects, 1994)
The dark lord of dark ambient music delivers a minimal descent into the unknown.

—

2. Ben Frost, By the Throat (Bedroom Community, 2009)
Haunted harpsichords, howling wolves, brutalized beats, and heavy sheets of noise collide, neo-classical style.

—

3. Tombs, Winter Hours (Relapse, 2009)
Blackened metal at its very best; as if My Bloody Valentine actually delivered one.

—

4. Wolves in the Throne Room, Black Cascade (Southern Lord, 2009)
Bubbling brooks and windswept synths meet buzz saw guitars and blitzkrieg vocals in the middle of a faraway forest.

—

5. Demdike Stare, Forest of Evil 12” (Modern Love, 2010)
Truth in advertising, with traces of subterranean techno and deviant drone tones.

—

6. Zombi, Cosmos (Relapse, 2004)
The original masters of 21st century John Carpenter scores.

—

7. The Caretaker, Persistent Repetition of Phrases (Install, 2008)
What happens when ghosts get into your record collection and toss scratchy 78s on your turntable.

—

8. Thomas Köner, Permafrost (Barooni, 1993)
If you dug a mic into a glacier, this is what it’d tell you. (Something along the lines of, “Cut the global warming crap, will ya?”)

—

9. Sunn O))), Monoliths & Dimensions (Southern Lord, 2009)
As accessible as two monk-like metal heads and one horrifying Hungarian (special guest “singer” Attila Csihar, also of Mayhem) get.

—

10. Xela, The Dead Sea (Type, 2006)
The sounds that pass through David Lynch’s brain when he’s meditating.

Boris' drummer jumps into the crowd while everyone else struggles to get the power back on

Words and Photos by Andrew Parks

The Artist and Their Latest Release: Sunn O))) & Boris, Altar (Southern Lord, 2006)

The Show: Sunn O))) & Boris present Altar, with Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter and BXI @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple, 9.7.10

The Set In a Few Sentences: “Sorry, but we blew two-thirds of the power in the building with that last riff,” said Sunn O))) guitarist Stephen O’Malley, “So it’s going to take us a few minutes to figure this shit out. Go get a beer or something.”

Grabbing a beer and a breather would be fine in most cases, but last night’s Masonic Temple bill wasn’t a simple show. It was a rarefied ritual featuring the blackened musique concrete compositions of Altar, a one-off LP featuring Sunn, Boris, and such special guests as bassist Joe Preston (ex-Melvins, Harvey Milk) and the sorely-overlooked alt-country singer Jesse Sykes.

With that in mind, the performance’s success had as much to do with its minor-keyed music as it did with maintaining a mood of soul-searching darkness and abject dread. A sonic spell if you will, albeit a short-lived one, as the second song—an extended, patience-testing take on the upright bass/bowed cymbal/gong duet “N.L.T.”—suddenly stopped and O’Malley told us we’d have to wait “10 minutes” for his amp-singeing big band to get their Marshall stacks turned back on.

Ten minutes turned into 30, but the group quickly regained their footing with swift, aggressive bursts of sludge and the wildly expressive beats of Boris drummer Atsuo “Fanganalsatan” Mizuno. Faithful, shadow-chased renditions of “Fried Eagle Mind,” “Akuma No Kuma” and “The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)” followed in its wake, sans stage lights but draped in the occasional fog machine formation.

While things weren’t as melodramatic as they could have been—blame the long gap between the beginning and the end of the Altar set—we’ll take the boundary-pushing soundscapes of metal’s high priests (and priestesses) over a typical indie rock tour any night.

And a Letter Grade: B+

Ian Astbury with Boris

[Photo by Miki Matsushima]

Words by Andrew Parks

“People don’t usually drop the Cult as being one of their favorite ‘cool’ bands,” admits the band’s longtime singer, Ian Astbury, “Because a lot of people associate us with late ’80s histrionics. The reality of the situation is that we were indie kids first—working class musicians who were into post-punk and psychedelic rock. Eventually it evolved into drinking beer, listening to AC/DC and selling millions of records, though, and I just went with it.”

Going with it meant switching gears from the proto-goth tunes of the Southern Death Cult to such pyro-ready stadium-rock singles as “She Sells Sanctuary,” “Wild Flower” and “Fire Woman.” Somewhere between then and now, Astbury launched an ill-fated precursor to Lollapalooza (Gathering of the Tribes), slipped into Jim Morrison’s shoes on three of the Doors’ reunion tours, and tracked an EP with his unlikeliest collaborators yet: the art-damaged Japanese band Boris.

On the eve of Boris and Astbury’s premiere BXI performance at Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple tonight, we asked Astbury about the following: Damien Hirst, Vogue fashion spreads, poverty-stricken reservations, 500-year-old monasteries, and his undying hatred for a certain breed of hipsters. (This story was originally supposed to be about Astbury’s non-musical influences—hence the Hirst question up top—but it quickly turned into an hour-long run through of the singer’s entire career.)

Damien Hirst's skate deck designs for Supreme

Let’s start by talking about Damien Hirst. I know you’re a major fan, but most people are only familiar with a few works of his—like the aquarium piece where he suspended a shark in formaldehyde. What are some other key facts people should know about him?
Well I’m not a Tea Bag Brit. I’m definitely an ex-patriot with a less romantic view of Britain. That’s one of the things about Damien Hirst, though—he’s a great romantic and working class hero. I love that he deals with death in his work, and the finality and the decay of the human body. It’s not just about trying to be shocking or controversial. His work is about the real themes of life. Like his butterfly paintings. Have you ever seen one of those things close up? They’re amazing. All of a sudden, it’s all about the profoundness of being. It’s an epiphany to look at that work.

Even his skateboard work with Supreme is stunning. It shows that his work isn’t just for the gallery cognoscenti, the enlightened Illuminati of Those Who Understand Culture.

Do you feel like the deeper meaning of his work is lost on most people—people who see it as just a shark in a tank or whatever?
Precisely. Some people don’t have that lexicon. On some level, they’re experiencing [the work], but their rational machinery doesn’t allow them to enjoy it. It just makes them think, ‘I shouldn’t like this. This is pretentious. It doesn’t touch me.’ Fine art’s a tough one. I remember the first time I saw [Jackson] Pollack. I didn’t know what it was, but it brought me to tears.

Really?
Yeah, I just started crying. It brought some raw emotion out in me. The same thing happened when I saw [Picasso's] Guernica painting close up and anything by Mark Rothko. There’s a guy who cut his wrists to the bone. When you hear that, his paintings suddenly make sense. All of these artists are trying to show how disconnected we’ve become from our emotions. That’s the kind of textural emotional space that’s in Boris and Sunn, too.

I’ve seen some fantastic snow jobs over the years—guys who look like they should be the next Bob Dylan or whatever, but once you examine the work, you think, ‘Where did all of that [emotion] go?’

“Ever since I’ve been a kid, I’ve felt like burning things down when life gets too comfortable”

You don’t sound like much of a skeptic.
No, I’m not. I give everything a chance. I guess it’s because I was such a fan growing up. Like I’d go to school and wouldn’t be afraid to say I liked Slade. They were kinda laughed at, but songs like “How Does It Feel?” have this great melancholic quality to them. They sound very sincere about what they did. They weren’t educated in the higher schools of learning, and maybe weren’t as eloquent as other artists, but there’s a sentimentality to their music that hits a spot in me.

I’m always skeptical about the kids who always pick the same things. Like I love the Smiths, but when journalists started jumping on them, it was for all of the wrong reasons. Like their intellectuality. They’re intellectual bullies who can beat up a guy who’s less intuitive. If you ask me, everyone’s opinion is valid. Ab-so-fucking-lutely. We’re all in the same space trying to work it all out. It’s like John Lennon said, “Your life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

The culture of celebrity that we have right now is very trite and shallow, but we have a choice. We don’t have to watch any of it. If you don’t like Lady Gaga, you don’t have to listen to Lady Gaga. It’s okay. There’s other things.

You’ve moved around a lot over the course of your career. Where are you based at the moment?
I’m in the Beachwood Canyon part of California. I came here for the desert, the ocean, and the mountains. One of my closest friends, [producer/multi-instrumentalist] Chris Goss, is based in [Joshua Tree], so I’m planning on doing a lot of work there.

I spent three years in Manhattan, and before that I was in Vancouver and India. The perception of Los Angeles is that it’s this superficial, disposable place, but the reality of it is that it’s a sprawling metropolis and if you go past West Hollywood, all of a sudden you’re in very poor neighborhoods. It’s real life. I mean, the majority of people here are Hispanic. And they’re very humble. That’ll set you straight very quickly.

Ever since I’ve been a kid, I’ve felt like burning things down when life gets too comfortable.

You recorded the BXI EP in Japan. Did you decide to go there because it’d be more of a natural environment for Boris?
There was a discussion of bringing them here, but it didn’t make sense for them to bring their whole operation to New York when I was heading there anyway. I’m very grateful we got to work on it in Tokyo. It has a certain mystique and otherworldly-ness to it.

It’s a different kind of energy too, isn’t it?
It is. New York’s a bit crazier, but Tokyo has an ordered chaos to it.

You know what’s funny? When you ask New Yorkers—like hipsters from Brooklyn—about L.A. They’ll say how much L.A. sucks, and yet, they remind me of why I left L.A. the first time.

What do you mean? That stereotype of how superficial it is?
Absolutely. You can always find a kid on a fixed gear bike with a mustache, a little white v-neck T-shirt, some keys hooked onto their jeans, and a beanie. I always go, “There’s that guy again! The twentieth one I’ve seen today.”

Were you living in that part of Brooklyn before you moved back to California?
No, I was living in the West Village.

“When you hear that shit and smell the Tibetan candles, you think, ‘This is what life should be about’.”

You realize that’s a big part of Boris’ audience in New York though, right? The Brooklyn kids…
Yeah, but some of them go for the wrong reasons. For example, I went to see the [black-metal documentary] Until the Light Takes Us and there was a load of hipsters who clearly just came off the L train, looking like they just walked out of Urban Outfitters. I’m not one to judge other people’s fashion, but this gang of 12 kids laughed throughout the whole film. Which I thought was pretty sad. That movie affected me deeply.

That part with the Satryicon guy cutting himself was pretty intense.
Exactly. You have to get what they’re saying—that they’re not a part of McDonald’s, MTV or Lady Gaga; that they’re an extension of nature, with a pagan culture that worships the trees, the sun, and the mountains. The poet Robert Bly said it best when he said that our problems began when we lost touch with wild animals. When I hear a statement like that—by an older guy in his eighties now—it breaks my fucking heart.

Is that one of the main reasons you moved back to California? To feel more in touch with nature and your surroundings?
To be honest with you, the city was doing my head in. I was a refugee, though. I had nowhere else to go. I mean, it was great at times. Like when I walked out of my house and Sam Shepard was standing outside. Another day I bumped into Patti Smith in the street. That’s fantastic.

Why did you feel like a refugee? Because you never felt at home here?
I never felt at home anywhere. I’ve been moving since I was literally 6 years old. When I meet British people and they ask me what part of England I’m from, I always say, “You don’t need to know. It’s not important. I don’t identify with you.”

Where have you felt the closest to having a real home then?
New York. I could have stayed there longer, but I knew I had to disappear into the mountains and the Pacific Northwest. I love it out there. It’s like the Himalayas, probably my favorite place in the world. Walking through there with the Tibetans and Sherpas is just fucking amazing. It’s like Star Wars. When you’re in a 500-year-old monastery and they’re doing morning prayers—those guttural throat chants—when you hear that shit and smell the Tibetan candles, you think, ‘This is what life should be about.’

Life should have a level of peace, you mean?
Yeah, serenity—being in an intuitive space. When you’re in the city, you’re distracted by so many things, from people to traffic. There’s too much stimulation. And we don’t really know how we feel until we sit down with a therapist or something.

It sounds like you’re the kind of person who’s still interested in different ideas of spirituality but you don’t subscribe to any one of them…
That’s fair to say. Some people would call me a pseudo-spiritualist.

Well people have always said that you’re interested by Native American culture, which is one of the reasons you became a replacement for Jim Morrison in the Doors.
People make that comparison, but when I ask them what they actually know about Native American culture, it’s very limited. That criticism’s been thrown at me, but I was living around Native Americans when I was 11 years old and living in Canada. I didn’t even know who Jim Morrison was back then…

It must be sobering to see reservations first hand…
Right. Go ask your hipster friends if they’ve ever lived in the Rapid City area of South Dakota. The reservations are some of the poorest areas in the United States—human beings living in squalor. I’ve actually been working on a documentary down there. It’s such a precious culture. The Americas are a magnificent continent. It’s phenomenal what’s here in nature once you get out of the cities. I mean, why the fuck would you want to sit in a nightclub, shoveling cocaine up your nose in a nightclub and ordering Cristal? I’ve certainly had my fair share of narcissistic, hedonistic behavior, but I’ve balanced it off by losing it all and asking the questions, finding the elders, and looking to our teachers.

I’m writing something called Death of a Hipster right now and it’s semi-autobiographical, I think. The [BXI] song “Magickal Child” is about a Korean model named Daul Kim. She killed herself in Paris two years ago. She was incredibly beautiful but she was also a great poet and amazing writer. So I was really fascinated with this beautiful person who’s objectified as one thing but they feel themselves to be something else—something much more delicate. She was only 20 years old when she died. It’s fucking crazy…

“Oh, I get the irony of it all. I get how the Cult may have come off as incredibly crass sometimes.”

Suicide has always been an issue in the fashion industry but some people have written about that becoming a bigger problem lately.
There’s this famous picture of Daul Kim where she’s wearing a leopard skin coat and she’s holding these two machine guns. She’s looking at the camera sheepishly but there’s something incredibly striking about it. She looks like some sort of exotic terrorist or something—a Baader Meinhof for the 21st century—but there’s also this little wounded 20-year-old girl in there. So I wrote, “Your wounded guns point back at me.” It’s as if those guns were her only line of defense.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, are we really buying into the Pitchfork Media culture? The intellectual bully culture? I mean, I experienced that as a kid. I was on a TV show with Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, had just bought Daydream Nation, and loved Sonic Youth. When they finished their interview, I said, “Nice to meet you. I’m a really big fan.” And they walked off. When I went into the interview, the guy looked at me and said, “Oh, well they just reviewed your video. They said, ‘What was that?’” And that really fucking hurt. It was the same kind of cold, intellectual bullying when I moved to New York and saw them at parties, too.

I don’t know what it was, although my friend said, “Have you looked at yourself lately? Well, you don’t look like them.”

You look like a rock star instead?
Maybe. I mean, I was in Vogue magazine when I was 23 years old, but I don’t know what that has to do with it. I guess I had a skinny little ass when “Fire Woman” came out, when I used to drink like a fish and fight like a maniac.

Hasn’t that always been the tough thing about your career? That you’ve never been alternative enough for the underground or straightforward enough for the mainstream?
Oh, I get the irony of it all. I get how the Cult may have come off as incredibly crass sometimes. There’s moments where it’s incredibly ironic.

While that may be true, you seem like the type of person who pursues a project because he really believes in it, whether it’s Boris, the Doors, or singing on a song for UNKLE.
Yeah, James [Lavelle] is a very private person as well. He doesn’t just invite anybody in the door. He’s like Stanley Kubrick—fucking precise about every fucking detail. He knows exactly what he wants. In fact, when I was singing “Burn My Shadow,” he said, “No vibratto. I want it like you’re talking. Just give me Ian. I don’t want the rock singer. I want the guy.”

“I wanted to see Guns N’ Roses play on the same stage as N.W.A.”

How did you and Boris hit it off then?
There was a lot of talking with Stephen [O'Malley] and Greg [Anderson, of Sunn O)))] at first. You’ve got to go through a lot of layers to reach the inner sanctum of Boris. I approached their agent first—about five years ago. So they kinda knew about my love of the band already, and when I met Greg and Stephen at a Sunn show last year, they kind of brokered the deal. I think Boris approached me first about the project, which shocked me.

Was the music already done when they approached you?
Pretty much, aside from some overdubs. They sent me 10 pieces, so I picked four and lived with them for a while.

Was their cover of “Rain” recorded yet?
That came together later. They were adamant about covering it, which surprised me. I was like, “That’s a pop song written by a 23-year-old.” But they said they really liked the song. And when I heard their version, I was blown away by it. I love the way [Wata] sings it, and was very honored that they wanted to do it.

You seem humble now, but the Cult was touring with some major bands back in the day.
I didn’t know what day it was for a while, because we were touring so much—playing shows with Guns N’ Roses, Billie Idol, and Metallica was a totally different animal.

Guns N’ Roses opened for you, right?
Yeah, at my insistence. And then there was the whole Gathering of the Tribes festival, which was my idea and Bill Graham helped put on.

You lost a lot of your own money on that, didn’t you?
About $50,000, yeah. My business is being creative; I’m a terrible businessman beyond that. It was an altruistic venture—a Monterey Pop Festival for this generation. Hip-hop wasn’t even on the map in 1990, and I wanted to see Guns N’ Roses play on the same stage as N.W.A. The festival was 10 dollars…

Ten dollars?
Yep. Fourteen acts for 10 dollars—Public Enemy, Iggy Pop, Soundgarden, Ice-T, the Cramps, etc. etc. Mark Geiger, an agent for Jane’s Addition and Stone Roses, was advising people not to do the event because they weren’t involved. Anyway, he went on to start Lollapalooza with Ted Gardener and Perry Farrel, strangely enough. Which was kinda confusing, like, ‘Did I start this?’ It’s like when you host a party and get kicked out of your house.

I’ve been knocked down so many times, though. I’ve been laughed at, ridiculed, pissed on, stabbed—all of it. But I love music. I love culture. I was at the Die Antwoord concert the other night actually…The second I saw their video, I thought, ‘This is brilliant—every last bit of it.’ It’s like America through a filter thrown back at America—really fucking fresh. But as the story often goes, they got signed to Interscope and brought to L.A. for their ‘big show’ and it was kinda a flop. I thought a litany of insider-y L.A. folks would be there, but only me and Andy Samberg showed up. That was it. And I’m not exactly part of the Who’s Who right now, so it was basically just him, some goth girls, and guys in Affliction T-shirts.

Meanwhile, the record execs upstairs are all like, [In a mocking American accent] “This is really great. Hey, this is really hip.”

Sunn O))) @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple

That’s pretty ridiculous. Speaking of shows, I’d love to hear about the first time you saw Sunn play.
The first time I saw them was about a year ago. I remember a lot of young men standing around reverentially, waiting for them to play. And I met Stephen before the show and was just gushing, like, “I love you guys.” The atmosphere inside was great because it was an old Masonic building and just looking at the amplifiers—the entire stage aesthetic—made it appear like a ritual was about to occur. Not a performance—a ritual. And once they came onstage, everything else melted away. It felt transporting, otherworldly, and profoundly empowering.

I got Black One in 2005 and I remember driving around downtown L.A. in a Mustang Cobra with tinted windows and that record on. It just fit perfectly. The way the car was vibrating and it was working with everything around me felt like a religious experience.

Not quite the record you’d expect someone to blast while speeding through L.A.
I highly recommend it.

[Dirty Projectors @ Austin City Limits, 10.4.09]

[Boys Noize @ Central Park SummerStage, 8.8.09]

[MSTRKRFT @ All Points West, 8.31.09]

[Jay-Z @ All Points West, 8.31.09]

[Australia's Parklife Festival, 9.12.09]

[A Lightning Bolt fan @ Above the Auto Parts Store, 10.30.09]

[Sunn O))) @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple, 9.22.09]

[Throbbing Gristle @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple, 4.16.09]

[Yeah Yeah Yeahs @ Santos Party House, 4.12.09]

[Ganglians @ Santos Party House, 9.24.09]

[Das Racist @ Webster Hall Studio, 8.20.09]

[Metallica @ SxSW, 3.20.09]

[Micachu & the Shapes @ Piano's, 3.25.09]

[The Big Pink @ Mercury Lounge, 6.15.09]

[Real Estate @ Silent Barn, 9.12.09]

[The Pitchfork Music Festival]

[SxSW Crowd Shots]

[Scion Rock Fest Crowd Shots]

[Nine Inch Nails @ Terminal 5, 8.25.09]

[A Place to Bury Strangers @ Bowery Ballroom, 10.29.09]

[The Arctic Monkeys @ Highline Ballroom, 8.3.09]

[Fever Ray @ Webster Hall, 9.28.09]

[Jay Reatard @ Stuy Town Oval, 7.1.09]

[The Wrens @ The Bell House, 4.10.09]

[Thurston Moore & Carlos Giffoni @ Glasslands, 3.14.09]

[Fischerspooner @ Music Hall of Williamsburg]

[Converge @ Europa, 3.27.09]

[Yeasayer @ Guggenheim Museum, 10.30.09]

Florence and the Machine

[Photo by Ivan Jones]

Sorry to break it to you, blogosphere, but we just don’t believe in lists anymore. They’re just so arbitrary, and a couple mouse clicks away from being obsolete, you know?

That’s why we decided to give you a completely random rundown of our favorite ‘09 releases—because it’s not as predictable or pointless as an argument over “who’s No. 1 this year, Dirty Projectors or Animal Collective?” Be sure to watch out for a second set of s/t-endorsed records before the clock strikes 12 on Thursday night.

The Artist/Album: 2562, Unbalance (Tectonic)

The Vibe: Tomorrow’s dubstep today.

RIYL: Intercepted space stations; traces of techno; feeling a bit wonky

—

The Artist/Album: A Place To Bury Strangers, Exploding Head (Mute)

The Vibe: New York’s ‘loudest band’ learns how to bark without losing their bite.

RIYL: Strobe lights; jet packs; hazy hooks

Related Reading:

• WAVE OF MUTILATION: Oliver Ackermann Shares His Kevin Shields-Endorsed Guitar Pedals
• 1MM: A Place to Bury Strangers Claim “Head” Casualties at Bowery Ballroom
• SIREN FEST SPOTLIGHT: A Place to Bury Strangers Beat the Living Shit Out of Their Gear Without Actually Breaking Anything

—

The Artist/Album: Bat For Lashes, Two Suns (Astralwerks)

The Vibe: A reason to redefine “ethereal,” Merriam-Webster be damned.

RIYL: Kate Bush (with lasers!) at the Planetarium; unicorns; Björk, before she started dating Matthew Barney

Related Reading:

• I WAS THERE: Bat For Lashes’ Bowery Ballroom Show Makes Us Believe In a World Without Björk
• BUY IT: Bat For Lashes
• PEEP SHOW: Johan Renck Reveals All About Bat For Lashes’ “Karate Kid”-Cribbing “Daniel” Video

—

The Artist/Album: Bear In Heaven, Beast Rest Forth Mouth (Hometapes)

The Vibe: A 3-D album for the post-Avatar age.

RIYL: Genesis’ Peter Gabriel era; prog-rock suites; surround sound

Related Reading:

• A QUICK TALK WITH BEAR IN HEAVEN ABOUT … Stealing Sarah Palin Fans, Confusing Charlie Gibson, and Being a Proud Southerner Without Resorting to Lynyrd Skynyrd References

—

The Artist/Album: Cold Cave, Cremations (Hospital Productions)

The Vibe: The beginning of a beautifully-damaged relationship.

RIYL: Leather-bound poetry/philosophy books; rough sex; the real dark shit

Related Reading:

• ALL OUT OF LOVE: ST006 Cover Story
• LONG PLAYER OF THE DAY: Cold Cave

—

The Artist/Album: Desire, II (Italians Do It Better)

The Vibe: A moonlit, manic depressive foil to Glass Candy, the fulltime gig of producer/multi-instrumentalist Johnny Jewel.

RIYL: French Canadians with a story to tell; the dark side of the disco ball; driving until the sun comes up

—

The Artist/Album: The Flaming Lips, Embryonic (Warner Bros.)

The Vibe: Art-rock godfathers uncover secret acid stash, gobble every…last…tab right in front of Karen O and MGMT.

RIYL: Kraut-rock crib sheets; double LPs worth their weight in vinyl; Flaming Lips songs that don’t need distractions like fake blood and man-sized plastic bubbles

Related Reading:

• THE S/T INTERVIEW: Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips
• S/T Survived … The Front Row of a ‘Christmas On Mars’ Screening
• LIB SERVICE: The Flaming Lips

—

The Artist/Album: Florence and the Machine, Lungs (Island)

The Vibe: Speaking of Kate Bush…

RIYL: Getting smacked by scorned women; Lilith Fair with a Lollapalooza ‘94 mentality; the NME getting things right for once

Related Reading:

• SEALED WITH A FIST: ST004 Cover Story

—

The Artist/Album: Girls, Album (True Panther/Matador)

The Vibe: Literal love-songs and hang-out anthems from the year’s most fascinating cult-reared songwriter.

RIYL: Parachuting your mom’s Wellbutrin; Soul Asylum’s “Runway Train”; the idea of Marc Bolan covering This Year’s Model

RELATED READING:

• PARENTAL ADVISORY: S/T Lets Mom and Dad Review New Music by Islands, Ducktails, Girls, Japandroids, The Drums and YACHT

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The Artist/Album: HEALTH, Get Color (Lovepump United)

The Vibe: Mind-crumbling aggression delivered with a destroy/build/destroy pathos.

RIYL: Trent Reznor’s co-sign; angst with balls; self-titled cover stories

Related Reading:

• THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: ST005 Cover Story
• PARENTAL ADVISORY: S/T Lets Mom and Dad Review New Music By St. Vincent, Phoenix and HEALTH

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The Artist/Album: Hell, Teufelswerk (International Deejay Gigolo)

The Vibe: A day/night diptych saluting Germany’s kosmiche and techno legacies.

RIYL: Peter Kruder productions; gratuitous Diddy banter; actin’ slutty for party photographers

Related Reading:

• THE S/T INTERVIEW: DJ Hell

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The Artist/Album: The Juan Maclean, The Future Will Come (DFA)

The Vibe: New York’s finest dance label breeds its very own shiny-skinned Human League.

RIYL: Glow-stick necklaces; sweating through your jeans; the impeccable, propulsive kitwork of the late Jerry Fuchs

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The Artist/Album: Kylesa, Static Tensions (Prosthetic)

The Vibe: Crust punks, metalheads and hipsters call a truce in the name of one killer album, then proceed to punch one another in the face because they simply can’t help it.

RIYL: Hydra-headed drummers; psychedelic sludge; metal that could only come from below the Mason-Dixon Line 

Related Reading:

• FREE ASSOCIATION: Kylesa Shares the Stories Behind Our Favorite Metal Album of the Year
• FLOOR PUNCH: The View From the Pit of Kylesa’s First Basement Show in Forever
• BUY IT: Kylesa

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The Artist/Album: Le Loup, Family (Hardly Art)

The Vibe: Animal Collective before dad started blasting Merriweather Pavilion in his Ford pickup.

RIYL: Hippies who leave the patchouli at home; weekend getaways; taking a hit of this

Related Reading:

• RECORDING UNDER THE INFLUENCE: Le Loup

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The Artist/Album: Mastodon, Crack the Skye (Reprise)

The Vibe: Mainstream metal’s freakiest band learns how to sing, loses their mind down a bottomless rabbit hole.

RIYL: Rasputin references; maimed melodies; Jim Beam and Jameson

Relating Reading:

• 1MM: Mastodon Lose Us At Hello, But Hey, At Least Their Visuals Are Bad Ass
• FORGET THE ALBUM: Mastodon Ponders the Legacy of Edible Underwear and Furry Handcuffs, Serenades Us With Journey

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The Artist/Album: Memory Tapes, Seek Magic (Acephadale)

The Vibe: A reason to believe in all that ‘chillwave’ nonsense.

RIYL: Night lights; ecstatic sunshine; to move it, move it

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The Artist/Album: Oneohtrix Point Never, Rifts (No Fun Productions)

The Vibe: A long day’s journey into night.

RIYL: Kubrick; pawn shop synths; flashbacks to your sixth grade science class

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The Artist/Album: Passion Pit, Manners (Frenchkiss/Columbia)

The Vibe: Twee as fuck.

RIYL: Gossip Girl reruns; pajama parties; frontmen who insist on singing falsetto

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The Artist/Album: Sunn O))), Monoliths & Dimensions (Southern Lord)

The Vibe: The first truly-listenable LP from those guys in the robes.

RIYL: Black hole suns; Merlot-pounding druids; watching ‘critics’ suddenly care about ‘drone-metal’

Related Reading:

• JUST A LITTLE PATIENCE: The Sunn O))) Interview
• S/T Survived … Smoke Machines, Laser Claws, A Howling Hungarian and 90 Minutes of Relentless Riffage at Sunn O)))’s Masonic Temple Show
• FREE ASSOCIATION: Sunn O)))

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The Artist/Album: Wild Beasts, Two Dancers (Domino)

The Vibe: ‘Art rock’ that’s so much more than that.

RIYL: Acquired tastes; threatening one’s masculinity; Rimbaud

Words and Photos by Andrew Parks

“Marco!”

“Polo!”

And there you have it. It took Sunn O))) 15 minutes, tops, to lose their stranglehold on a crowd of curious masochists, here at Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple to soak up pea-soupy patches of fog and feedback that feels like a fireball to the face. Or at the very least, a bass-heavy full body massage.

Of course, you’ve gotta be willing to wade through waves of slowwww, shape-shifting distortion for a good 90 minutes if you want the true Sunn O))) experience. And, well, we thought about leaving several times during the quartet’s (rounded out by multi-instrumentalist Steve Moore and Mayhem frontman Attila Csihar) late-night set. Not because we were surprised and/or bored by what we were witnessing.

If anything, we were simply distracted by all the goddamn smoke. We get why the duo uses it—to establish a meditative atmosphere and make those robes seem a tad less silly—but they were pumping out enough plumes of the stuff to choke a steel-lunged fireman. The group’s 2006 bill with Boris and Oren Ambarchi, on the other hand, balanced the B-movie theatrics with the music itself, an unending hymn of praise to The Riff.

Thank Hades for the unparalleled operatic vocals of the almighty Attila, then. While we haven’t the faintest idea what he was shrieking/shouting/sing-speaking about throughout Sunn’s set, there’s really nothing like watching a scarily-intense Hungarian in his very own Hellraiser costume, complete with laser claws and a crown of thorns. Then there was his tree get-up, a Guillermo del Toro-like creation that could easily play a starring role in our next never-ending nightmare.

Here’s the thing, though: Attila doesn’t need to pretend every night is Halloween to hold our attention. His voice is undeniably haunting, and creepy in parts that should come off as pure camp. And that stage presence—wow. Get this guy a role in Broadway’s first black-metal-scored play, please. Thanks.