Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion

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Getting familiar with droning sounds fra Indian raga to British dubstep is neat, but it leaves me wanting for a more in-depth exploration of the drone as a concept. A lot of drone pieces are very long and the length encourages perceptual change. “If you know that the drone is absolutely constant… then you know that if you hear changing, it is you that is changing, not it,” Eno tells the author. Inside the drone, perceptions of time change too. I don’t know that Sword would go so far as to say that listening to and performing drone music is a kind of meditative practice, but the temporal pliancy of such experiences is crucial, he argues, because they allow you to take control of time, to forget the self and its sense of human transience and frailty. Reading Monolithic Undertow a phrase from a Louise Bogan poem has been running through my mind: “Music that is not meant for music’s cage”. Just as drone music offers a subversive art unconstrained by melodic, harmonic or rhythmic expectations, so it offers a release, however fleeting, from the small limits of our lives, bookended by greater oblivions as they are. It’s a portal from the body’s cage to whatever lies on the other side of ecstasy. One part sociological study of the drone and two-thirds of history of a variety of musical artists across multiple genres ranging from religious chants to "tribal", to jazz, heavy metal, pop, and electronic; the drone is regarded as the very essence, the beginning and end of music and how it underlays throughout much of popular culture. Much of the sociological writing is very reminiscent of Mark Fisher's work on rave culture and music.

These are the very foundations of seeking the face of god music and humanity and run through classical and jazz and into post-war pop culture and its esoteric and mainstream fringes from the Beatles and George Harrison’s fascination with Ravi Shankar or his equivalent in the Stones Brian Jones and his recordings of the Moroccan The Master Musicians of Joujouka . What I love about this book is that it turns you onto many of the game mainstream changers underground geniuses like Lamonte Young with zero snobbery. It thrills to the Stooges and the Doors slower drones to the genius of jazz goddess Alice Coltrane and on and on into post-punk and Swans and Sonic Youth and into fringe modern metal and the dark cellos of…. Sword is a deeply knowledgeable and perceptive advocate for a vast range of often esoteric, sometimes challenging, always extraordinary music

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A shorter chapter that follows on from the avant-garde exploration. Sword charts the origins and development of The Velvet Underground and the drones influence on the band. Lou Reed’s solo career post Velvet is briefly covered as well. TVU are a great band, I don’t need to At the same time it feels very strange that a book that purports to be about drone music makes no mention of any of the ambient drone scene: major figures such as Steve Roach, Robert Rich, Natural Snow Buildings, Lustmord, Stars of the Lid etc don't get mentioned at all. This is what happens when you draw clear battle lines around ancient and universal languages like music. You hurt yourself in your confusion! I think the problem of this book lies in what is presented and what it was marketed to be and what it actually is. So if you are interested in the drone genre, this book will most likely be a disappointment because you know most of the things in here already and will probably shake your head while reading about all the bands that - according to Sword - produce monolithic undertows. For example, Sword makes a big point of the of the religious and/or spiritual roots of droning sounds, but the idea is never really explored beyond the immediate manifestation of the drone in music. It's never really explored why the drone has had such a deep religious meaning for millennia. Nor is it explored what it means to the drone once it leaves the spiritual realm and settles in the secular.

An inspired and intuitive navigation of the drone continuum, MONOLITHIC UNDERTOW maps the heavy underground with a compass firmly set to new and enlightening psychedelic truths You can still find many interesting bands and album recommendations in this book, but, to be honest, I would have preferred a simple list format for that. In the beginning, he highlights that he doesn’t want to write a history of drone music, but a book that “explores the viscous slipstream - drone, doom and beyond - and claims the sounds uncovered, which hinge on hypnotic power and close physical presence, as no less radical.” He goes on to say that Monolith Undertow “follows an outer stellar orbit of sounds underpinned by the drone.” And I would argue that the book falls short of this goal except for the first and last chapters. From ancient beginnings to bawdy medieval troubadours, Sufi mystics to Indian raga masters, North Mississippi bluesmen to cone-shattering South London dub reggae sound systems, Hawkwind's Ladbroke Grove to the outer reaches of Faust, Ash Ra Temple and sonic architects like La Monte Young, Brian Eno, and John Cale, the opium-fueled fug of The Theatre of Eternal Music to the caveman doom of Saint Vitus, the cough syrup reverse hardcore of Swans to the seedy VHS hinterland of Electric Wizard, ritual amp worship of Earth and Sunn O))) and the many touch points in between, Monolithic Undertow probes the power of the drone: something capable of affording womb-like warmth or evoking cavernous dread alike.In 1977 Sniffin' Glue verbalised the musical zeitgeist with their infamous 'this is a chord; this is another; now form a band' illustration. The drone requires neither chord nor band, representing - via its infinite pliability and accessibility - the ultimate folk music: a potent audio tool of personal liberation. Immersion in hypnotic and repetitive sounds allows us to step outside of ourselves, be it chant, a 120dB beasting from Sunn O))), standing front of the system as Jah Shaka drops a fresh dub or going full headphone immersion with Hawkwind. These experiences are akin to an audio portal - a sound Tardis to silence the hum and fizz of the unceasing inner voice. The drone exists outside of us, but also - paradoxically - within us all; an aural expression of a universal hum we can only hope to fleetingly channel...

But I'm just left with the feeling that however many bands Sword can list and describe in flowery prose, the book never truly live up to the expectations set by its introductory chapter. In his short author bio Harry proudly boasts of having been published by The Quietus. And yes, his style of writing is a perfect fit for that place. It's all here: the laboured points; the use of five adjectives when one will do; the meandering run-on sentences; the overuse of italics for emphasis; the tendency to namedrop; and tortured metaphors that look good on paper, but which actually make no sense at all.A shorter chapter that follows on from the avant-garde exploration. Sword charts the origins and development of The Velvet Underground and the drones influence on the band. Lou Reed’s solo career post Velvet is briefly covered as well. TVU are a great band, I don’t need to tell you that but an underrated aspect of their sound is the drone and Sword highlights that brilliantly. The book itself It has a particularly drone-like feel in that middle section: like the same story is repeated with different players, facing different emotional challenges, in different cities, on different drugs, each one influencing the next. So. many. drugs... This was a great trip through all things drone, with some minor hang-ups I'll discuss later in this review. I discovered some great music that I hadn't listened to and read some spirited descriptions of some of my favourite musicians. Monolithic Undertow is quite linear in structure but extremely wide in its focus. There is a definite chronology in music. Everyone owes a debt to someone else. If I was trapped in a room Oldboy style for most of my life with no view of culture I wouldn't be asking for a guitar when I was released. Every artist decides to make art based off the art of another and Sword does a great job tracing the lineage of drone throughout this book. Every artist has to be inspired. For example Sunn O))) and Earth would never have made drone metal if the Melvins did not release the album Lysol. Much of this book is Sword describing someone's art, the scene around them and then how those inspired by the music would go on to create their own music. This is much more than a history of the drone and I want to give you an idea of the books layout and if it might interest you. I'll do this with a brief look at each chapter, my thoughts on each chapter and my closing thoughts. Inspired by sacred spaces, the minimalist aesthetics of La Monte Young and Éliane Radigue – and her early access to an enviable selection of instruments and synths while working at the National Music Centre in Calgary – Davachi works in the electroacoustic sphere, augmenting rich organ drones with subtle electronic post production. Much of her work has combined rich tones from machines such as the ARP and Buchla synthesiser with organ, harmonium and piano. Last year’s double album, Cantus, Descant, was her most ambitious record yet, featuring her vocals for the first time. Midlands layers reed organ drones against distant rumbles but is also Davachi at her most melodically progressive; as emotionally moving as it is immersive. Beginning in 1963, performances of his Theatre of Eternal Music ensemble – which at one point included John Cale, soon to be in the Velvet Underground, and Tony Conrad, who would work with Faust in the 1970s – were long explorations of single, sine-wave tones. Young and his wife, light artist Marian Zazeela, hummed; Conrad played violin; Cale played a viola with a flattened bridge that he’d strung with electric guitar strings. It wasn’t just the nakedness of the drone that was transformative. It was also the volume. Every element was heavily amplified. The sound, by all accounts, was overwhelming – wild, raw, and elemental – an embodiment of the romantic idea of the sublime as beauty plus terror. The drone, Young said, is “an attempt to harness eternity”; the primal is neither nice nor pretty.