On paper, Ensemble Pearl isn’t supposed to sound quite so subdued: The new quartet is led by Stephen O’Malley, the stage-right guitarist in thunderous hooded drone giants Sunn O))). Though they’ve explored a range of intricate ideas and dynamic approaches during the last 13 years, they’re perhaps best known for extreme volume, with tidal riffs powered by an arsenal of linebacker-sized amplifiers. In Ensemble Pearl, O’Malley is accompanied by Bill Herzog, the former bassist in Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter, and the two flashiest members of Japanese metal pillagers Boris-- Atsuo, the bare-chested and gong-banging drummer shouting into the microphone attached to his face, and longtime collaborator Michio Kurihara, a guitarist whose playing seems to thrive partially on sonic showmanship. If you dreamed a team for heavy rock with psychedelic tendencies, this ensemble would be an acceptable fantasy.
But Ensemble Pearl, the quartet’s elegant six-song debut, serves as a spotlight for the plasticity of the musicians that made it, not their power. The brief “Wray”, for instance, recalls little else in the vast catalogues of Ensemble Pearl’s principals. Above a wafting drone that suggests a choir of glass harps, the band adds granulated guitar notes that scrape and pop over guest Eyvind Kang’s mercurial viola tones. For the bulk of the album, however, you’ll likely recognize O’Malley’s steely tone and deliberate progressions from Sunn O)))’s more spare moments. But he avoids the monolithic sound of that group, or their full-length collaboration with Boris, 2006’s Altar. Instead, he etches his riffs here at a relatively low volume. During the smoldering seven-minute “Painting on a Corpse”, he traces each arid note toward its vanishing point. If Sunn O))) began as an Earth tribute band, Ensemble Pearl is an extension of Earth’s latter-day testudinal blues. “Island Epiphany” begins with a similarly subdued lurch, but it rises steadily in both density and decibels. Nine minutes in, the track nears its apogee of intensity, Kurihara webbing sheets of noise and sustain through the rhythm section’s insistent trot and O’Malley’s still-flickering riff. Even then, though, the music feels more like a conversation than a shouting match or, in the case of Sunn O))), an ordered instrumental chant.
That conversational aspect is crucial for Ensemble Pearl, a record whose layers connect with one another without coercing one another. Though Atsuo has certainly been at times quiet with Boris, his playing here stands as some of the most patient and considered of his career. When the guitars go a bit wild during “Island Epiphany”, he and Herzog stay the course, fostering tension by providing an anchor. He does little more than keep time with his snare and add texture with his cymbals for “Ghost Parade”, and that distance gives even his smallest contributions that much more impact. Ensemble Pearl seems very much about sustaining the balance between being present and passive, or using minor devices to create major effects. To that end, “Giant”-- the late-album, sans-drum drone charged by amplifier hum, and Kang’s viola-- stands as this band’s crowning achievement. These 10 minutes are thick but strangely luminous. The sound is as unified and overwhelming as the audio environments La Monte Young built with the Theatre of Eternal Music, but every element is clear and balanced. You’ll notice moments of twinkling timbre and radiating noise just beneath the hum, telltale signs of the real-time interaction between the players in the room.
That interaction began in 2009, when the band first assembled in Tokyo to start writing material that became part of Gisèle Vienne’s multimedia play, This is How You Will Disappear. Those sessions only began to take shape as an album after the players realized how much they enjoyed working together, so, years later, they returned to the material and finished it stateside with producer and engineer Randall Dunn. Later this year, O’Malley reports, Ensemble Pearl will likely begin work on a new record with additional members. That’s good news not only because this debut itself is compelling but because, at last, it represents a clear synthesis of so many of O’Malley’s activities. In recent years, Sunn O))) has limited its activity to rare live shows, reissues, and rehearsal releases, freeing O’Malley to explore the more experimental realm of his muse. Last year, his duo KTL released its best disc yet, V. His new label, Ideologic Organ, has issued excellent and overlooked work from composer Mats Lindström and improviser Norbert Möslang. He’s improvised with Tim Hecker and Steve Noble, and at May’s Tectonics Festival in Glasgow, he will perform both with American innovator Alvin Lucier and Romanian spectralist Iancu Dumitrescu. That dossier is meant to say that, of all his projects, Ensemble Pearl feels like a probable and timely place for O’Malley’s past with Sunn O))) to collide with his future outside of it-- that is, a laboratory with purpose.
