check the tech rider!
With regard yet again to bass feeling, but especially the way that loud, low frequencies operate at a seemingly (sub?)atomic level, vibrating us like a set of “permeable membranes through which forcefields can pass,” note this evocative passage from Sasha Frere Jones’s review of a recent Sunn O))) concert:
Sunn O)))’s performance last week at Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple may be the loudest show I’ve ever seen. I saw a Ramones show in the late eighties that might have come close, though that music mostly took place in an upper midrange that Sunn O))) doesn’t visit much. The median sound for Sunn O))) is a low chord, pitched below standard tuning, that blows through the crowd like a humid wind and stays in your body like that liquid they make you drink before you go through the CAT-scan machine. Standing in front of the stage on Tuesday night felt like a teen-age dare. How long could I stand to have my organs palpated? How could I tear myself away? Would the volume loosen up kinked muscles? Sterilize me? The intense physicality of Sunn O)))’s music makes it seem like any number of things might be happening to you and only a forensic reconstruction will reveal exactly what did happen.
That rider is amazing.
Perhaps as important as the stripping of bass frequencies when this stuff is played on little speakers: How can a cell phone replicate the effect of attila csihar’s laser pointer-fingered gloves?
there’s an app for that
checking their rider it says that they play between 120-125 decibels…that’s just past the threshold of pain, which is actually not too uncommon at rock shows. i heard a story just today about how metallica required their stage monitors set at +130 dB. definitely not good for the ears if you actually want to hear ANYTHING when you are 60 years old! but i suppose rockers aren’t out for longevity.
also fitting (though a bit morbid): i read today that there is a threshold of death @ 200 dB. at this amplitude your intestines will turn to mush from the sound (shock) waves! sound can absolutely be a very physical phenomenon!
been enjoying these articles on mega/mini bass. also been wanting to jump in to add that i’ve noticed over the last few years that ethiopian concerts are the loudest events i go to. it’s usually pretty brutal, and most of the time, like the big ethiopian new year’s concert at the middle east downstairs this past sept 12 in cambridge, ma, it’s the bass that’s devastatingly loud. it quite literally shook my body and pounded my chest — it’s a ‘lil somethin i like to call, ethioPAIN music (ok, i just made that up :-)
not that it’s the best example of what i felt three weeks ago, but
here is a youtube video that i think, perhaps, points to the root (no pun intended) of this “ethiopain” bass aesthetic.
the singer is the legendary tilahun gessesse singing one of his most beloved songs, “eywat setenategagn.” the video editing couldn’t make my point any clearer — dig that the bassist’s image is literally “on top” of tilahun.
awesome example, danny. thanks for sharing. hmm, i might have to check that new year’s party out…
yeah or any big ethiopian concert — i’ll try and keep ya in the now fer the next 1.
p.s. the title of the tilahun song should be “eywat setenafeqegn”
ethioPAIN, that’s genius! you should start your own genre with that in mind. i’m sure jonah would be into it…
i swore you had a post about sound warfare…i can’t seem to find it. might work here too considering heavy metal is a musical complement to the military industrial complex…
I was recently…er…blown away by this photo which illustrates the true physical power of sound.
and though i can’t find a photo, nuclear bombs are yet another massive & ugly example of sound as a concrete force…the shock wave from a nuclear bomb is actually also a massive sound wave.
sunnO)))) on your cellphone, man that would sound hilarious!
Kiddid, I think we’ve had a couple conversations in the comments on posts here about sound as weapon. The treble culture post gets into it a little bit, for instance.
See also:
http://www.weirdvibrations.com/?p=272
ah yes, there’s that video of those dudes testing the sound canceling helmet over in the original mobile music/treble post.
i totally forgot to describe what was happening in that photo above…that’s a jet breaking the sound barrier. i believe what we are seeing is water converting instantly into vapor from the sonic boom, thus forming a giant ring behind the jet.