Posts Tagged ‘Project House’

Sunn O))) / Black Mountain – Project House, Leeds, 1st July 2026

Posted: 2 July 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

I can still smell the smoke on my clothes and skin. I can still taste the smoke. Not tobacco smoke, as used to be the case way back (although more recently than seems possible), but smoke machine smoke. Back in the 90s – and no doubt prior – gigs would often leave this lingering residue embedded within the senses. But some time, around the turn of the millennium, perhaps, there seemed to be a change in the formula of smoke used at most live events, in favour of something less dense and noxious, and which didn’t make you sweat so much, with most fog formulas now being advertised as being white, without ‘unpleasant odour’ and ‘leaving no oily residue’. Sunn O))) seem to have managed to hijack an entire tanker’s worth of the old vegetable oil-based stuff and pump it out at a rate of gallons per second during the entirely of their set, which, despite featuring (apparently) five tracks, has a colossal duration in the region of an hour and three quarters.

So much of the Sunn O))) experience is steeped in ritual and ceremony. From the hooded robes, the power of incense drifting in amongst the smoke from the machines, the wielding of the guitars as eternal drones ring in sustain from the amplifiers. Those amplifiers, vintage valve amps, stacked almost to the ceiling my towering monoliths, arranged in such a way as to resemble the interior of a prehistoric monument, bathed, before the show begins, in a celestial blue hue, inviting worship simply by their looming presence, even when silent.

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Black Mountain make for an interesting choice of support, and an appropriate contrast. Initially, they present as a quiet acoustic folk duo. There’s some chat at the side towards the toilets and bar, but the swelling audience is largely quiet and respectful in front of the stage. Their second song introduces drum machine and distortion on the guitar, and while the harmonious form doesn’t change, the texture very much does, with squalling desert rock overtones and bluesy strains and a dash of 70s rock filtering their way into the songs throughout the set, which is pleasant – not in the vague, not much of anything sense, but mellow and melodic and low-key. It’s a most enjoyable half hour which contrasts nicely with the earth-shattering experience which follows.

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Black Mountain

By way of an intro, they play all of the talk from between the songs from an entire live set by Venom, the progenitors of black metal (something Melvins did with their ‘Cowboy’ single, which was equally frustrating). It made for a long and twitchy eight minutes of suspense that felt like an eternity. But this is Sunn O))) all over. Their entire ethos seems to be based on the question of ‘how far can we actually push this?’ – and when they find what must surely be the absolute limit, they nudge it a bit further, and then further still. And as it played on, and on, the stage began to flood with smoke… and more, and more smoke, until it became completely impenetrable. Vertical LED beams along the front of the stage illuminate the smoke in such a way as to create a curtain which renders the stage itself invisible when viewed from the other side.

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Sunn O)))

Anderson and O’Malley are guided onstage with torches, and moments later the first chord strikes. Immediately, everything shudders. The very air quakes as I feel my flesh quiver and my ribs, my lungs tremble. Time immediately stalls. And something strange happens. Perhaps I enter something approximating a trance-like state. Whatever it is, I find myself utterly spellbound, and borderline hypnotised by the combination of the spectacle and the sound. It’s not zoning out, but zoning in, fixated on the tones and textures, and the way the two interact and interweave, catching glimpses of the band in the brief moments when the smog thins.

Stripped down to a two-piece, the volume is typically obliterative, but it’s clear they’re fully immersed in exploring the spaces between the notes, more subtle dynamics of the way certain frequencies resonate. The sound is remarkably clear, and while there are howling walls of feedback, the sonic spectrum is predominantly low-end, meaning that there’s no tinnitus-inducing harsh treble (at least not with earplugs, and everyone I see is suitably equipped), and as a consequence, it’s easier to simply bask in the huge throb which envelops every inch of your being. The first two tracks are run together as one continuous piece, a full hour in duration, and at this point, the smoke reaches a new peak of density. It’s beyond suffocating, you can’t see your own hand let alone the stage, from which emanates the most brutal howl of feedback yet. But there’s no checking your watch to puff that only twenty minutes have elapsed, and they’ve barely played three notes. Some people move further back to escape the full force of the backline, but the majority simply stand, transfixed. This is peak Sunn O))). As much as there’s a sense that they’re testing us, they’re also testing themselves, and revelling in the theatre of it all. It’s high art.

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More smoke blasts across the stage like a tidal wave. Everything is vibrating, from my nostrils to my buttocks. I’m amused to see people nearby attempting to film clips of the show, only for their phones to be completely submerged in billows of smoke – which are an analogue of the billowing rumble radiating from the stacks of speakers, and with the backline alone capable of filling the 1,000 capacity with that organ-bothering low-frequency drone, the fact they’re all in turn mic’d up only adds layers to this oceanic swell of sound. Anderson and O’Malley don’t so much strike chords as mildly stroke a string to set off another devastating avalanche of sound.

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Towards the end of the set, O’Malley lodges his guitar on top of a stack, wedged against the ceiling, before subsequently hanging it by the neck from a power cable above, and letting it swing from the rafters.

And just like that, it stops. The smoke clears, and the two men step forward and receive – humbly, and with gratitude – the most rapturous applause. Because for all of the theatre involved in creating the separation between band and audience, the obstinate absence of engagement, for the pain-threshold volume, the appreciation flows both ways. It’s a joyously respectful experience: no chat (as if!), no heckling, but a symbiotic exchange based on pure immersion in pure art. And tonight, we’ve witnessed an ascendency to a new pinnacle. Pure transcendence.

Swans / Jessica Moss – Project House, Leeds, 7th November 2025

Posted: 8 November 2025 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

The last tour of Swans’ current iteration, drawing the curtain on a succession of albums – and tours – which have been truly immense in every way: the build-up felt like the end of an era. The event itself, perhaps less so. At one point, someone calls out a request. “We don’t do that,” Gira explains, in a kindly manner. He seems pretty relaxed tonight, and smiles a fair bit. No-one in the band gets bollocked or scowled at, and they all seem to be having a pretty good time.

But no, they certainly don’t do ‘that’. You don’t go to see Swans expecting to hear choice guts from their extensive back catalogue. You don’t even go expecting to hear songs, at least not in any recognisable form. The versions of recorded songs bear only limited resemblance to their studio counterparts, twisted, stretched, and otherwise evolved while on the road to a point whereby they’re almost new songs entirely. Recent shows have seen the band playing sets spanning a full two and a half hours, while only featuring six songs.

Before we come to Swans, Jessica Moss, who, amidst an extensive catalogue of work over the course of a lengthy career, is best known for her contribution to Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and being part of the whole Godspeed You! Black Emperor milieu. Tonight, she plays a rendition of her latest album, An Unfolding, in its entirety, and it’s breathtaking. Her nuanced violin and vocal work is augmented with booming, resonant bass tones. There’s a lot of yakking at the bar and further back in the 1,000 capacity, sold-out venue, where the house light stay up toward the rear of the room for the duration of the night, but for those of us in the front two-thirds, it’s a spellbinding experience, which perfectly sets the tone for the main event.

Moss’ half-hour set is over by around 8:40, and Swans, after a few brief checks, take to the stage around ten minutes later. Gira politely asks that there are no cell phones – “at least not where I can see them”, before he begins strumming a monotonous at two strings. He does so for what feels like an eternity. Or perhaps not. When Swans play, time takes on a different meaning, and it’s been a feature of this current iteration that the songs evolve and elongate over the course of the extensive tours, transforming and transmogrifying over the weeks and months on the road. They’ve been touring Birthing and this ‘farewell’ for a fair while now, although the set on the most recent leg has only featured ‘The Merge’ from said album. With ‘Paradise is Mine’, from The Beggar, and ‘A Little God in My Hands’, from To Be Kind, this is as close to a retrospective set as you’re likely to get, but none of these songs much like the studio versions, and half the set therefore features material which is either new or so far removed that it’s been retitled as well as restructured. But as I say, you don’t come to a Swans show for the songs. You come for the experience. And what an experience it is.

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It’s fair to say that there is simply no other band like Swans. Their reputation for extreme volume is only part of the story, a piece of the equation. Older fans who saw them in the 80s love to regale with tales of people throwing up, passing out, and so on, and that they’re pretty tame these days, and I have no reason to believe that these are purely apocryphal. Gira just can’t do quiet: even his solo acoustic sets playing smaller venues circa 2003 / 2004 were fucking punishing.

Some time in, Gira downs his guitar and stands up, turning to face the band, and flails his arms as if experiencing some kind of rapture or episode. But every gesture is a signal, from which the band members – there are six of them, plus Gira – and his near-psychotic choreography guides them through ebbs and flows, to ever greater, more intense crescendos. It’s maybe half an hour before the full drum kit kicks in, and I feel my nostrils vibrate with the sheer quantity of air displaced from the speakers. It’s transcendental, euphoric.

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A number of people who had started the set near me in the front row dissolved. I didn’t really notice when: like almost everyone else, I was simply transfixed. And yet, this was by no means loud by Swans standards: while I can’t claim to have witnessed the nauseating brutality of their early years, or the notorious punishment of the Burning World tour (ironic that their gentlest album, released on a major label, should have been served by a tour of such infamous volume… or perhaps not, perhaps it was a statement to prove that they hadn’t sold out), their shows at Leeds Stylus in 2016 and 2017 were something else – something so intensely physical, it hard to find the words. Then again, on their last visit to Leeds, playing at The Belgrave, I found myself thinking ‘this isn’t so loud’ but before long finding myself dizzy and wondering quitter where that immense noise had grown from. And this is perhaps an indication of how they’ve evolved. The bludgeoning force is still very much present, not least of all with two basses and the return of Norman Westberg to the lineup – surely one of the world’s most patient and understated guitarists, content to stand, not playing for ten to fifteen minutes, before battering away at one or two chords and thirty BPM for the next fifteen minutes, creating noise and texture rather than doing the conventional ‘guitarist’ thing – but now it’s more subtle, growing building, slowly, so slowly. A tweak here and there, another player adds a later, and while you’ve been watching the dynamics of the two bassist and Gira’s windmilling, the volume has increased threefold and your ribcage is rattling and your brain is slowly scrambling. Kristof Hahn does things with lap-steel that is beyond comprehension, cranking out squalling, screaming walls of noise – but there isn’t a weak element in the lineup. They each bring something unique, and the collective output is something else.

If this is the end of Swans doing big band, big noise stuff, then they have certainly delivered a finale of spectacular proportions. And whatever comes next, we look forward with bated breath.