Sunn O))) announces self-titled album on Sub Pop, recorded in a converted barn

Sunn O))) has recorded a self-titled 10th album that will be released March 20 and will be the duo’s first full-length for Seattle’s Sub Pop. The sessions took place at Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, Wa., in a converted barn overlooking a coniferous forest. The record is the first Sunn O))) album on which only founders Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley appear; each plays guitar, bass and synthesizers, and the pair perform a spare piano passage together.

Brad Wood co-produced and captured the performances, and the album incorporates field sounds from the studio’s surroundings, including the gurgle of a creek and a stump grinder, so that the drone sometimes mingles with the outdoors. Wood said the team used extensive re-amping and a large microphone array, describing how they opened studio doors, blasted the music out and set microphones “a couple hundred yards away,” which he said “sounded like a thunderstorm rumbling off in the distance.” For cabinet miking he placed a mic on every speaker of each guitarist’s three cabinets and recorded direct signals for later reamping; Wood said, “I don’t think any song had less than 130 tracks of guitar.” Anderson and O’Malley estimated some songs had well over that number.

The album follows an earlier Sunn O))) single and EP on Sub Pop.

Key Topics

Culture, Sunn O))), Sub Pop, Bear Creek Studio, Greg Anderson, Stephen O'malley