Bernard Herrmann

My awareness of Bernard Herrmann started when I saw Vertigo. I thought that movie was incredible, and part of the reason that it had an impact on me was the score. It was really dark and mysterious. He did a lot of stuff with Hitchcock, he did a score for Cape Fear, he did Taxi Driver and some film scores for Brian De Palma as well. The deep listening happened within the last 20 years, and in particular in the last four or five years. It’s really influential on some of my solo stuff that I’ve been doing the last couple of years. If you remove the film from the music, it’s great music on its own. It doesn’t necessarily need the movie, and that’s amazing. 

David Pajo

Slint is one of my favorite bands of all time. I discovered Slint in the early 90s. I’d grown up playing in the underground hardcore and metal scene, and I was searching for something beyond that. I’d never heard anything quite like Slint. It had elements and textures of punk and metal but it was presented in such an interesting way. His guitar playing throughout Spiderland is phenomenal; it’s completely inventive and dark and powerful and moody. It pushed all the right buttons for me. He’s done so many things over the years. I especially like his solo stuff under the name Papa M or Aerial M. About six or seven years ago I met him in Los Angeles and we became friends and then he played on my band Goatsnake’s album, Black Age Blues - he did a really awesome guitar intro. Then Sunn O))) invited him to come out on tour in I think 2019, and that was really great. The music he chose to play was amazing. Within the last month I’ve been working on some solo stuff and he and I collaborated on that. It’s beyond an honor to work with him. I love his playing and I love his approach to music. Everything I’ve heard him do is great.

Tony Iommi

I mean that one’s pretty obvious; there’s not much to really say that can’t be figured out. I first heard Black Sabbath in the 6th grade. On Fridays, our teacher would let someone in the class bring in a record from their collection. This girl in my class who I had a real crush on brought in Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, and played “Iron Man”. The sound that came out of the intro with the bending and sustained notes completely blew my mind, and ever since that moment I was a fan of Sabbath. A lot of what I’ve done over the years, with Sunn O))) and Goatsnake and the Southern Lord label as a whole can all be traced back to Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi. I don’t know if the right phrase is a debt of gratitude, but it all comes from that. When I grew up, my introduction to music was The Beatles, who I never liked (laughs) because it was forced on me, but I of course understand their importance to everyone and to music, but Black Sabbath is my Beatles. That’s where it all starts. It’s all incredibly influential and important to my guitar playing and my sound and the sound of Sunn O))). It’s all heavily rooted in Sabbath and Iommi.

Kim Thayil

My obsession with Soundgarden started early. I’d seen a few big concerts; Kiss, Robert Plant on a solo tour, the Kinks, but my first time having real deep interaction with live music was at this venue The Gorilla Gardens in downtown Seattle that was hosting underground punk, metal and alternative shows. At that time I was really into punk and metal, and Soundgarden was slower, but I thought it was cool. Then they came out with the Screaming Life EP, and there’s a song on there called “Nothing To Say” that was really heavy and reminded me of Sabbath. When Louder Than Love came out I saw them on that tour in Seattle and they completely blew my mind. 

Kim’s playing was really interesting - it wasn’t typical metal or typical rock. It was coming from somewhere different. I read a lot of interviews - he was citing people like Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman and a lot of free jazz as his inspiration, and if you listen to his solo work it makes sense. It was slightly atonal and it still had a strong musicality to it that had some elements of punk and chaos. I really like that about his playing. His riffs were incredible. He became one of my favorite players to watch and listen to. Around the mid 2000s we connected because he played on a record that I put out on Southern Lord, Probot, a project of Dave Grohl. One of the songs was with King Diamond and Kim did the solo on it, and I was really excited about that, but I didn’t have any contact with him. Then he called me asking if he could get a copy of the record. We started talking and he’s an obsessive music fan, really enthusiastic about all kinds of different music. He’d heard about Sunn O))) and wanted to check it out, so I sent him a package. He was really enthusiastic about it - the elongated, sustained riffs and drones made with guitars - so we struck up a friendship and he’s been super supportive of the group. Last time we played Seattle in 2019 he came out and played with us, and he wrote the liner notes for a record we did with Boris. To be friends with your heroes, and then actually play music with them is even more of an honor. He blows me away on many different levels. 

Miles Davis

I was searching for music that was different from the underground metal and punk that I’d grown up with. I heard Miles Davis around the same time that I heard Slint and John Coltrane. The first Miles Davis that I heard was Kind of Blue, and that’s an amazing record, but it’s not the record that I really connected with - that was Bitches Brew. When I heard that record, I was completely unaware of the fact that there had been this entire movement of music in the late 60s and early 70s, fusion, where jazz musicians were incorporating rock into their music and the other way around as well. These incredibly skilled jazz musicians were embracing rock and making these really interesting, electric records. Bitches Brew is the first record I heard like that, and the mood and the atmosphere of that record, and how dark it is, and hearing it played by a legendary jazz musician blew my head off. I became extremely obsessed with his recordings, especially the late 60s, early 70s recordings he made. He was blazing an entire path. I also really like groups he inspired like Weather Report, Return to Forever, and Mahavishnu Orchestra, with John McLaughlin who played with Miles. John McLaughlin is also one of my favorite guitar players of all time. The first two Mahavishnu Orchestra records were incredible and have always been important to me. While Sunn O))) is technically nowhere near Mahavishnu Orchestra and McLaughlin or Miles Davis or jazz, we’ve been inspired by the spirit and the atmosphere. A lot of people were surprised when we started talking about being influenced by Miles Davis and Alice Coltrane because the music sounds nothing like it, but their body of work has been absorbed by us, and this is how we channeled it. Maybe it’s completely unrecognizable but there are certain elements that are influenced by jazz. There’s a piece on the Monoliths and Dimensions album called “Alice” that’s a tribute to Alice Coltrane. Sunn O))) has embraced the freedom of jazz and not being concerned about boundaries.

Below is a playlist including selections from Sunn O))) as well as Stephen and Greg’s other projects and favorite musicians / bands / composers.

Photo of Greg Anderson by Al Overdrive.

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