NON • children of the black sun (Mute Corporation, 2002)

Lifting up a rock one day, I was fascinated anew to see how various forms of arachnid live so closely  huddled together...keeping cool in the feted dampness...coming home, and hearing the South of the Border ommp pah pah music obscenely bleeding through my walls, I realized that another type of collective was near...and lucky me, I didn't have to bend over to reach that rock...

So what does one do when their neighbors cultural low IQ makes it self known? Surely you just can't sit idly by...wishing to escape, and thinking of the lovely dark matter void that is space, I put on Beaver & Krause's "In A Wild Sanctuary". For as much as I love that recording, it just wasn't doing the trick. The electronic tones were way to ethereal to overcome my next door idiots...what does one do...

While standing in front of my CD collection, my minds eye brought up images of Triumph Of The Will. I had it, NON! If there was ever music for a non specific Reich, this was it. 

Most of NONs output is abrasive tape loop music, with sources coming from the most innocent of places; Girl Group records, Children records and the like. It seems that after his collaborations with Douglas P., Boyd Rice has started to get more musical. The result is a Teutonic mood music. Pick any movement that has matching uniform and architecture, and Boyd is now supplying the score. It's a locked grove take on Wagner. Slowly played instruments mixed to sonic homaging quoting the best of any opera -  the death scenes. 

After the opening tack with it's lilting harp, it becomes a showcase for heavy echo and reverb. In this sludge you have a hard time distinguishing the violins from distorted guitars, or even the marital french horns. So engrossing is this music that I can barely tell if my next door dunces are continuing their day laborers holiday...by the time Fountain of Fortune drifts in, with it's bed of treated choir loop and burning sound (or is that water?) I can barely tell...but then again, my minds a million miles away, and I'm sitting on the front porch of either a bunker or plantation...I really can't tell...but it's oh so peaceful here in the deep south of Bavaria...

Please click on the review title for selected track: Black Sun       

sunn 0))) • 3: Flight Of The Behemoth (Southern Lord, 2002)

Pure unmitigated nihilism...low frequency drones layered on its self, band members dressed as cartoon Heavy Metal monks. This is the Dream House over run with thoughtful knuckleheads, this is the beauty of Sunn 0)))...everything here smacks of intellectual put on. As the old saying goes, is you can't laugh at yourself, someone will do it for you. They escape the trappings of attempting to be the heaviest band on earth by taking the art route. 

Heavy Metal when striped of it's inept vocals is often not too far from drone. Perhaps there are more changes involved and it's played a little faster, but that most likely is because the musicians are coming from pop sensibilities. By now, thanks to the Internet, anyone with a little free time can track down the nearly hidden work of Charlemagne Palestine. Marry that sound to a bunch of guys who love Sabbath, Venom, St. Vitus, et al, and you have Sun 0))). Added to the assault is noise master dilettante Merzbow for remixing of two tracks.  

There is a lineage to the post rock bands of the 1990's, Jessamine or Experimental Audio Research come to mind, with the use of over amplification and artful sludge. But here the proceedings aren't as polite, and it's wrapped in cheep polyester Satan's robes.

Please click on the review title for sample track: Death Becomes You