Presenting the band and their gestural approach to physically imposing sound, and simultaneous subversion and harnessing of Metal cultural signifiers
Ethnographic description of concert
Thick description of the intensity of the concert experience, safeguarding measures for hearing protection and observations about the music itself and audience behaviour
The physiology of damaging and dangerous decibel levels in extreme music
Encapsulating Sunn O)))’s extended technical approaches to conventions of metal music, namely volume as a tool for sculpting uniquely vibrational low frequencies
Analysis of distortion
Exploring distortion’s role in harmonically enabling frequency manipulation, its elemental qualities in the ritualistic concert setting
Metal cultures as avant-garde source material, Sunn O)))’s lineage from Cage, Xenakis and Stockhausen
Analysing Sunn O))) as avant-garde in relation to Fluxus and electronic progenitors
Subversion of concert experience:
Investigating emotive and visceral conceptual ideas of power in the metal arena and concert archetype, linking back to achieving vibrational frequencies through extreme volume