François J. Bonnet & Stephen O’Malley: Cylene (2LP, Editions Mego, September 2019)

In which Stephen O’Malley out of Sunn O))) and François J. Bonnet of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in Paris’s National Audiovisual Institute have a beard-off. And the beards win.

You probably expect this is going to be a weighty business, and it is, but at the same time there’s an ethereal quality to it. A lot of the time, it’s all guitar-drone in the bass and floaty resonance in the top end, but it’s not quite as simple as that. However you analyse it, there’s a lot of power in the tension between the elements, and it rewards deep listening. The fourth side of the vinyl is a 15-minute track called Des pas dans les cendres (footsteps in the ashes) and its first half is kind of like the essence of a wintry night in a draughty castle (I recommend having a comforting blanket on hand for this bit) but its second half is kind of like the echo of a musty chapel and it’s a rather serenely magical ending.

(Fun fact: I once saw Sunn O))) at an All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. There was a heavily robed and hooded figure crouched at the front of the stage going “ommm” for much of the gig, and a very authoritative-sounding rumour was flying around stating that this was Julian Cope (who was also playing the festival), and an equally authoritative-sounding rumour that the first first rumour was nonsense. It was good, anyway.)

(As far as I know, my only previous encounter with François Bonnet was under his Kassel Jaegar alias, collaborating with Stephan Mathieu and Akira Rabelais on 2016’s Zauberberg.)

I bought this from Juno. They call it Ambient / Drone.