SunnO))) are a drone metal band from Washington State in the Pacific Northwest of America. Founded in 1998 by Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley, over the last quarter of a century they have tended to release records via the former’s Southern Lord label. After deciding to record their first new album in seven years, they looked to a new label, Sub Pop to release it and they booked a studio on the outskirts of Seattle surrounded by forests.
The setting had a strong influence on the music. Taking the unusual step of playing the record as a duo, they brought the outside into the studio and walked each morning in the hills before recording, as part of their creative practice. The project involved sleevenotes commissioned from British landscape writer Robert Macfarlane, highlighting connections between walking, the outdoors and their signature doom metal sound.
It started with getting a dog and COVID
Greg Anderson: That was the impetus for getting outdoors. Throughout my life I’ve loved to hike and be in nature, but life gets so goddamn busy that you sometimes don’t have the time or make the time to do it. And I had lost a connection, I guess you could say, with the outdoors and breathing in fresh air all caught up in the madness of daily life. So it was nice with the pandemic to have the opportunity; I was somewhat forced to, but I’m glad.
About 10 years ago I understood that I needed to be out in the countryside more
Stephen O’Malley: I had been in a relationship for a long time with someone whose family was from the Salzburg region. We would go to the family house there a couple of times a year, and I’d always be walking in the Steinernes Meer mountain range. Working in and visiting Austria and the Alps a lot, the mountains became a place of contemplation, as well as somewhere to just encounter the environment. I live in Paris, but I spend time in the north of Sweden as well. We do a lot of hiking in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado too. My interest in walking outside and hiking has built up to a point where it’s a regular thing.
It became important to my mental wellbeing to be able to get out, hike and see nature
GA: I started really, really looking forward to it, enjoying it, and then making it almost a ritual. It’s part of my day now, especially to go out in the morning. Routine always seems to have a stigma attached to it, but that’s what it is. The dog needs to be walked pretty much first thing in the morning, so I turn that into 90 minutes, two hours, sometimes more, of exploring the area. As I did more, the time and the challenge of the trails increased. So now I’m really into it and I love the exercise and the elevation, trying to get up higher.
Julian Cope introduced me to megalithic landscapes
SOM: I got into walking here too in the UK, especially in Wiltshire, because I got turned on to megalithic information and sites. That was over 20 years ago through my friend Julian Cope – he introduced me to that mentality. It’s like going through a doorway. You have to be exposed to certain things to develop awareness of them. I’ve also spent time at the incredible standing stones at Carnac. Exploring the stones is a great way to walk.
Nature keeps me in Los Angeles
GA: I live in Glendale, California. The amazing thing about Los Angeles is that you don’t have to travel far to be surrounded by nature and forests. The nature and the outdoors here are a strong presence. Within a half hour to an hour of any point in Los Angeles you can be at the ocean, at the beach, you could be in the desert, you could be in the forest.
Moving is really what it’s all about for me
SOM: Your perception can be at different levels of open and closed while you’re walking – the movement itself encourages that. You have more of an engagement with your environment. There is also something about just simply being in a place, and being able to have a longer focus. And I know that psychologically that’s very beneficial for me.
The Pacific Northwest is lush and the greenery is very psychedelic
GA: It’s a different thing to LA, more wet but also beautiful. I lived there for about 25 years of my life during formative years, especially for discovering music. My teenage years and my early twenties were spent there. Los Angeles has a million studios, and it’s great. But this album, recorded outside Seattle, was a kind of return to where we began. There are a lot of ghosts there from our past. And I mean ghosts in a loving way – they don’t have to be terrifying.
We opened up the barn doors
SOM: The studio was in an old, converted barn. And there’s a creek that goes through the property, woods on the farm, and some derelict buildings. After being there for a few weeks and doing all of this hiking, we realised we needed to somehow bring that environment into the recording. So we opened up the doors of the studio. Brad [Wood, co-producer and engineer] had mics outside, down by the creek and in the trees. We brought the environment into the studio, taking away the veil that separates us from the outdoors. It became a very documentary record in terms of the sound detail captured. Every detail of the distortion, for example, is very clear. The album is quite raw in some ways, but not raw because it’s unborn.
GA: The studio we chose to record SUNN 0))) was surrounded by beautiful forest and hiking trails. It became this sort of ritual or routine of waking up in the morning, having a coffee together, and then going out and exploring and hiking. It’s an LA thing to go hiking together, but I prefer to be alone. The hiking that Stephen and I did together – there were some great moments, but at the same time it was a lot of silence. There was an acknowledgement that it was somewhat of a personal moment for both of us, so there was no reason to fill the air with words. Rather, it’s important to listen to the air.
I look at hiking and walking as meditation and as personal therapy
GA: what I really enjoy about it is being in a space that’s massive, and letting yourself go in that space. It can lead to some real creative moments for me, where I do a lot of thinking and listening: not only to the sounds around me, which I think are incredible to focus on when you’re deep in the woods, but also music. Really deep listening. A lot of thoughts and ideas come to mind and I’m constantly taking notes. It’s been really important for me personally.
Robert Mcfarlane is an amazing writer
SOM: He expresses walking as a spiritual experience, which it is for me too. A friend turned me onto his book, Mountains Of The Mind, and it’s incredible – such an advanced poetic expression of the meaning of being in the environment. I found it really moving, and I got into all of his books. In his liner notes for the new album he writes about standing waves existing simultaneously with flowing water. There’s something about the way the sound energy works with our music that I see as liquid, but not liquid, and it is a great metaphor for that.
Something happened to me that’s almost embarrassing to discuss
GA: This makes me sound like a burned-out hippie. It was the day that David Lynch had passed. I went for a hike deep into the woods, and I started hearing a sort of faint hum, almost a melodic drone in my head. I thought it was something from my headphones, but my music player was off. So I completely shut down my phone, and I still heard the sound. There were no power lines and nothing that could be making this sound. And it had a certain quality or tone to it. So I recorded it on my phone. As I was turning around I saw something out of the corner of my eye, and this giant owl was flying straight at my head. We locked eyes, then about two inches from my face he shot directly up and perched in a tree. It was amazing to be close to such a beautiful creature. I got back to the studio and played the recording for Stephen and Brad. We went back the next day, but there was nothing there. It was a moment where I just let myself go and be open to my surroundings. And I guess that’s what we did in the recording session: we left ourselves open.
Twenty years ago walking would have been boring, but now it’s essential
SOM: I have this thing with my writing where I formulate something to a certain degree and then I stop, and then I do walking or meditation or different things. For me, trusting that’s happening while shifting your awareness to the reality of being has been very beneficial in a creative sense, but also in the sense of being a person who wants to be creative. I feel it makes me a much better person as an artist, and as a human to be around too.
Two days after we started recording, the area I live in was evacuated during the LA wildfires
GA: that was super heavy because my family was evacuated at 5.30am. I had been in touch with them through the night. There was a lot of discussion about whether Brad (who lives in the same area) and I should go back home. It all happened so quickly. Those fires were spreading so fast that there’s no time for us to even make a decision. And literally 24 hours after my neighbourhood was evacuated, they were allowed back. We didn’t lose anything and nothing serious happened there, but it was heavy and we were very lucky. It really put life in perspective. We decided to really enjoy it, to squeeze every single drop out of the recording session that we possibly could. Because you never know. It’s obvious, but as you get older it becomes more and more apparent. There’s an intensity to the music, and that’s where it comes from.
SunnO))) new s/t album is out now on Sub Pop. The band are currently on tour in the US and their UK/EU tour starts on 16 June
