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Kannon Music. By SunnO))). Southern Lord, 2015. Digital download, $9.99.

2016; Wiley; Volume: 42; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/rsr.12281

1748-0922

Richard F. Nance,

Linguistics and Cultural Studies

Over the course of nearly two decades, the Seattle band Sunn O))) has been developing a sound that has come to be called “drone metal”—a sound indebted as much to the slow roar of Glenn Branca's 1980s guitar symphonies as to the doom metal scene with which the band is more routinely associated. Simple and repetitive minor-key or modal chord progressions, glacially paced, are fed through overdriven amplifiers and layered with precisely controlled feedback. Occasionally, vocals are introduced, but not as a point of focus. The result is intended to provide an immersive and overwhelming sonic experience, and is clearly meant to be played at very high volume. The most recent release—their first full album in six years—is no exception: Sunn O)))'s work is nothing if not consistent. What has changed in this release is the framing, which gestures at once to Buddhism and to the contemporary academy. The album is named for Kannon, a Mahāyāna Buddhist bodhisattva associated with the virtue of compassion, and the striking cover art, by Angela LaFont Bollinger, recalls and transforms Buddhist figurative sculpture. The album is also graced by liner notes penned by New York University PhD candidate Aliza Shvarts. Such framing devices perhaps suggest a wish to situate Kannon as the most recent moment in a long-unfolding duet between Buddhism and experimental music, one begun decades ago by composers such as John Cage and Eliane Radigue. Well suited to use in courses concerning the mutual imbrication of Buddhism and contemporary culture, the album's bracing combination of the familiar and the forbidding is likely to get students talking. Although its relentless use of high volume and low frequencies may put it some distance from anything resembling a Buddhist middle way, I suspect this would suit Sunn O))). They never wanted to be middle of the road anyway.