Friday, July 27, 2012

Stephen O'Malley & Steve Noble – St Francis Duo

March 5, 2012 • Bo' Weavil Recordings

Apparently people will praise anything just because a certain person's name is on it... and it doesn't always apply to the most mainstream stuff. Here we have everyone's favorite drone doom star doing some free improvisation for us, and it's just mind-boggling.

For nearly eighty minutes, Steve Noble spazzes out on the drums while Stephen O'Malley creates incessant feedback on his guitar. And during those eighty minutes, absolutely nothing happens. It's just sound for the sake of sound. There's no mood, no tension, nothing pleasant. At least the two musicians are coordinated with each other insofar as crescendo and decresecendo are concerned... but it ends there.

O'Malley's guitarwork is pretty far removed from his Sunn O))) sound—here it's often quite dreamy, with lots of reverb and dissonant strumming up in the higher register, kind of like a more laid-back and slowed-down Acid Mothers Temple with the occasional low-end grinding. Meanwhile, Noble is all over the place, furiosly banging on toms and cymbals like he was filling out the ending to the longest free jazz piece that ever existed. And it clashes horribly. O'Malley is standing still while Noble wants to take off in every single direction at once. It simply doesn't work. At least Noble gets interesting—he seems to have a very diverse drumkit at his disposal, which is pretty cool—but he isn't nearly enough to save it on his own.

I'm not gonna ask you again, Stephen O'Malley... stick to Sunn O))), for everyone's sake.

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