Jun 30, 2026 · 13 min · 8 segments
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Luke TurnerHostYou know, like Sunn were for me what Pauline Oliveros is for other people, before I discovered Pauline Oliveros, you know? Like this is...
It's, it's one of those things that, that Sunn records work in so many different contexts.
It's, it's that thing that I love when writing, is something that's not background music, but has that bit of grit and attention, so you're, you're listening very intently, but it's also freeing you and freeing your imagination, and there's not many artists who work in kind of drone and so on that can do that.
But I'd say i- i- is altered quite different because in terms of the dynamics, they're a lot more, I- I don't wanna say varied 'cause that implies there's not a variance in, in the other Sunn records, but because you've g- you've got, um, you know, a very vocal, gentle song like The Sinking Bell on it.
Um, and some of the drumming is a lot more traditionally kind of, well, it's fast, it's, well, it's got drums on it, which Sunn records don't generally have.
Th- this is the one where there's, [tongue click] um, some more traditional song structure and so on coming in.
Su- sure, sure, but I think this was the, you know, this was the, the break in the levee.
... that allowed me to then go back and properly dig in, in a more kind of critical way to everything that they'd done before that.
I mean, I interviewed Stephen O'Malley and Atsuo in the foyer of the Holiday Inn in Camden in 2006 for Metal Hammer, and at that time, I was the go-to guy who went and drank with bands.
Y- y- you know, and like I would match American bands, whatever they were doing, and it made for good colorful copy, even though it wasn't really that good for me in the long run.
I thought at the time he was a difficult interview, but he wasn't, he was just a critical interviewee, and he clearly could see that I'd spent an hour in the pub beforehand scribbling my questions on a beer mat, and when the questions weren't good, he wasn't having any of it, and I had to really fight to get them both back on side.
Um, I remember Atsuo saying to me that he saw, like, doom as a philosophy, and he could see it in lots of different aspects of life.
You know, like Sunn were for me what Pauline Oliveros is for other people, before I discovered Pauline Oliveros, you know? Like this is...
It's, it's one of those things that, that Sunn records work in so many different contexts.
It's, it's that thing that I love when writing, is something that's not background music, but has that bit of grit and attention, so you're, you're listening very intently, but it's also freeing you and freeing your imagination, and there's not many artists who work in kind of drone and so on that can do that.
But I'd say i- i- is altered quite different because in terms of the dynamics, they're a lot more, I- I don't wanna say varied 'cause that implies there's not a variance in, in the other Sunn records, but because you've g- you've got, um, you know, a very vocal, gentle song like The Sinking Bell on it.
Um, and some of the drumming is a lot more traditionally kind of, well, it's fast, it's, well, it's got drums on it, which Sunn records don't generally have.
Th- this is the one where there's, [tongue click] um, some more traditional song structure and so on coming in.
Su- sure, sure, but I think this was the, you know, this was the, the break in the levee.
... that allowed me to then go back and properly dig in, in a more kind of critical way to everything that they'd done before that.
I mean, I interviewed Stephen O'Malley and Atsuo in the foyer of the Holiday Inn in Camden in 2006 for Metal Hammer, and at that time, I was the go-to guy who went and drank with bands.
Y- y- you know, and like I would match American bands, whatever they were doing, and it made for good colorful copy, even though it wasn't really that good for me in the long run.
I thought at the time he was a difficult interview, but he wasn't, he was just a critical interviewee, and he clearly could see that I'd spent an hour in the pub beforehand scribbling my questions on a beer mat, and when the questions weren't good, he wasn't having any of it, and I had to really fight to get them both back on side.
Um, I remember Atsuo saying to me that he saw, like, doom as a philosophy, and he could see it in lots of different aspects of life.
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