Sunn O))) - “Monoliths & Dimensions”
Imagine waking up one day, rubbing the sleep from your eyes and realizing there was no Sun. Scared you walk to your window and begin to realize that the world is ending and bringing the end is a dark, thick, black cloud that is simply blanketing the world in darkness and choking the life from it. OK, keep that idea in your mind and then think of the soundtrack to this catastrophe and there you have “Monoliths & Dimensions” the new studio offering from doom/noise wunderkind Sunn O))).
To call this record doom would do a tremendous disservice to what is actually going on with Monoliths & Dimensions. This isn’t music in the sense most people think of it, this is more the audio translation of a black hole. The sounds are so dense, so droning, so devoid of any structure that the album transcends genre and elevates to something outside of music. Clocking in at 53 minutes Monoliths & Dimensions is made up of four very unique movements.
The seventeen-minute opening movement “Aghartha” starts with a simple droning sound that actually feels like it’s growing as it continues on. Most drone inspired bands rest easy in the idea of repeating one type of sound continuously where Sunn O))) find their dark arts better served by allowing what they do to grow naturally.
Though shifting in tone the sound of this droning mammoth doesn’t change for six minutes and then only to allow sparse vocals. I actually hate to call them vocals because they resonate more like the evil that would whisper into Satan’s ears giving him ideas. To call this creepy is silly, this goes straight to unnerving.
Then Sunn O))) moves into “Big Church” the second movement of their opus. Big Church begins with a haunting choir that descends into a thick wall of audio madness allowing you to feel the weight of every note. The continued sprinkling of the choir isn’t there to break up the drones but more to push them along in this chamber of horrors.
Towards the middle of Big Church the choir takes over with a chamber music feel going on behind it. Sunn O))) has introduced classical instruments into Monoliths & Dimensions but not in the shallow and boring way Metallica or Aerosmith does it. The classical sounds are part of the movement in that the actual music is almost leeching off of the original idea in order to elevate it. The way Mozart would start a piece with strings and then bring in woodwind instruments is how the classical elements are added to the music itself. Relax, I’m not comparing Sunn O))) to Mozart just using the idea.
The third movement, “Hunting & Gathering”, is the best of the four in my opinion mainly because more is going on. The simple drone has given way to a more noise induced sound and the high-pitched choir is exchanged for something much lower and meaner. As the movement progresses there comes these incredible horns that lay an atonal film over the music that Thelonious Monk would be proud of. Wrapped in all of this is a voice that whispers less and growls more. Not in the idea of “metal growls” but something much more primal.
There is something haunting and beautiful about this movement, the way everything blends together to create the passage really manages to drag beauty from darkness. It’s not beautiful the way we as a humans would classify it but the beauty is there if you really listen.
The final movement “Alice” is a perfect way to resolve these movements. Sunn O))) end their album with a noise and musical blend that is very soothing, almost a release from all the tension the past movements bared down on us. Alice feels like the sun returning, the end of the world being avoided and humanity left to ponder what it all means. I defy anyone to find a more haunting and lush end to a record than this final movement in Monoliths & Dimensions.
In lesser hands this album would be pretentious, even boring. Sunn O))) manage to avoid these pitfalls by allowing their music to follow a natural evolution. There is no predetermined genre this album belongs in so there are no parameters to work within. Instead Sunn O))) create their own ideas and then let chaos grow slowly and determinedly from within. This is not an album as much as it is a fully realized slice of emotional expression. The kind you take a deep breath from after experiencing it.
METHOD MAN/REDMAN - “BLACKOUT 2”
Don’t you just hate it when artists you love start phoning in their performances? That’s exactly what’s happened with “Blackout 2”, an album that isn’t so much bad as it is more of the same old thing. There’s no growth here and nothing that elevates the art form of Hip Hop outside of how many times can you rhyme about weed, guns and use pop culture references to show how badass you are.
All the elements of a great album are here, two of the Hip Hop’s best lyricists (Method Man & Redman), cool beats, some nice sampling and production work but it never really gels into anything besides yet another rap album. Gone is that feeling I had when I first heard these two emcees or the growth they showed from record to record. Remember the difference between Redman’s “Whut Thee Album” and “Muddy Waters” or how every song on Method Man’s “Tical” was amazing? None of that is here, these could be left over tracks from the first Blackout album and nobody would ever know.
Every now and then an individual song raises the bar a little bit and you get excited for the record to turn a corner that never comes. The tune “A-Yo” featuring guest vocalist Saukrates has a cool stutter beat with a well-placed horn line and “Hey Zulu” has a nice old school Hip Hop vibe to it. By far the best song on the album is “Four Minutes To Lockdown” where Meth and Redman join forces with Raekwon and Ghostface Killah. You hear this song and you know these guys can do better than the rest of Blackout 2.
There are some real crap songs like the Keith Murry infused “Errbody Scream” and the god-awful “Mrs. International” but for the most part all the songs are just so-so. When you listen to an album in any genre you want to believe that the artists tried their best to make the record kick ass. With Blackout 2 you almost feel like Method Man and Redman are laughing at you, knowing they can turn out anything and we’ll be stupid enough to buy it. I can’t imagine they put a lot of effort into this record at all, if they did then maybe Hip Hop’s two highest regarded rappers should take a little break.
With Blackout 2, Eminem’s new album and this so-called “Wu Tang” record Chamber Music about to come out we may be witnessing a changing of the guard in Hip Hop. The old guard has gotten lazy and somewhere they lost the connection to real life that allowed them to write amazing records. With the underground hip hop movement gaining strength everyday records about guns, riches, cars, weed and so on just don’t cut it anymore. Hip Hop is a new-horizon art form, with a fan base that is constantly searching for the next best thing. Combine that with uber blasts of creativity from artists like Themselves, MF Doom, Doseone, Dalek and even established artists like Mos Def and what you get is a new dawn in Hip Hop.
One that Redman and Method Man might not have a place in.
