Gathering prospective sources in my research aided me in collating a number of key points or topics I could structurally build my essay around. Based on my knowledge of the band’s dynamics, I selected books from the library that spoke to their core dynamics.
In Resonances: Noise and Contemporary Music, I found an essay discussing the contradictory risk of ruining the very organs we use to appreciate music through high volume. The sheer volume of Sunn O)))’s music is perhaps the defining control element in their manipulation of frequency, and stylistically the core of their upending of metal norms.
‘By and large, more or less, generally speaking, most culture does not crip, its consumption or production is not disabling. But pop – and more specifically, rock – seems to have developed a self-negating potential. The irony is indeed profound; it’s heavy. The very discriminating organs that make most possible profession and pleasure in popular music are those under threat of dysfunction by popular music’ (2007, pp. 69)
McKay, G. (2007) ‘To Be Played at Maximum Volume: Rock Music as a Disabling (Deafening) Culture’, in M. Goddard, B. Halligan and N. Spellman (eds) Resonances: Noise and Contemporary Music. New York: Bloomsbury.
It also felt significant to me to pursue and analyse the psychological effects of the music Sunn O))) are performing, an examination of the internal world would be equally significant and necessary when writing a sonic ethnography. Their music is uniquely glacial in form and pace, but could not perhaps be considered sedative in its excoriating parameters of volume and distortion.
‘A hypothesis often tested is that stimulative music increases physiological responses, while sedative music decreases them… research findings do not unanimously support such a direct relationship between stimulative and sedative music and physiological responses.’ (2011, pp. 179)
Hodges, D.A. and Sebald, D.C. (2011) Music in the Human Experience: An Introduction to Music Psychology. New York: Routledge.
In choosing to study Sunn O))) it would be necessary to draw on sources directly from the band themselves, and to reflect on metal music as a cultural touchstone with which to compare them to. The emotional character and colours that core member Stephen O’Malley attributes to the Sunn O))) concert experience is indispensable in creating an argument within an ethnographic context, and can lead to further interrogation of what power and transcendence mean in the musical space.
‘To me it focuses completely on the power that Metal music is able to access in pure ferocity, energy and even bliss… To me “Into the Pandemonium” provided a certain type of challenging influence which in some ways may be a Rosetta stone “Monoliths & Dimensions” perhaps. Somehow the direction and ambition could be interpreted as 21st century interpretation of that album. Not entirely, but honestly it is there in spirit. I will also tell you this: A Sunn O))) concert is raw power personified and its execution transcends the typical Metal experience people have become accustomed to.’ (O’Malley, pp. 699)
O’Malley, S. and Kristiansen, J. (2011) Metalion: The Slayer Mag Diaries. Edited by T. G. Warrior. New York: Bazillion Points.