Stephen O'Malley
Stephen O'Malley is a musician, predominantly a guitarist, producer and composer from Seattle, Washington who has conceptualized and participated in numerous drone doom, death/doom, and experimental music groups. O'Malley is a founding member of several groups including Sunn O))), Burning Witch, KTL, Khanate. He has collaborated with a variety of artists including Greg Anderson, Merzbow, James Plotkin, Julian Cope, Joe Preston, Attila Csihar, Peter Rehberg aka PITA, Lee Dorrian, Kristoffer Rygg, Aaron Turner, Oren Ambarchi, Alexander Tucker, and percussionist Z'EV.
Stephen O'Malley is a musician, predominantly a guitarist, producer and composer from Seattle, Washington who has conceptualized and participated in numerous drone doom, death/doom, and experimental music groups. O'Malley is a founding member of several groups including Sunn O))), Burning Witch, KTL, Khanate. He has collaborated with a variety of artists including Greg Anderson, Merzbow, James Plotkin, Julian Cope, Joe Preston, Attila Csihar, Peter Rehberg aka PITA, Lee Dorrian, Kristoffer Rygg, Aaron Turner, Oren Ambarchi, Alexander Tucker, and percussionist Z'EV.
Member of: St. Francis Duo
All Life Long
Created between March and May 2020, Does Spring Hide Its Joy is an immersive piece, positioned as a “study in harmonics and non-linear composition with a heightened focus on just intonation and beating interference patterns”.
Cylene II
Tip! The second round of Cylene, Bonnet & O’Malley’s collaboration initiated in 2018 and continued without interruption since then in a slow stream of concerts, installations and recordings. A presentation of tones and resonances where harmonic intersections elevate from the deep and scale up to the far firmament in careful motion, drawing emotions viscerally from the chest, giving rise to the suggestibility of the soul.
Sept duos pour guitare acoustique & piano préparé
Sept duos pour guitar acoustique et piano préparé is the second duo recording from Stephen O’Malley and Anthony Pateras. Their first together, Rêve Noir (2018), took an electro-acoustic scalpel to a 2011 duo concert for electric guitar and piano, using Revox and digital treatments to twist and smear gig documentation into ghostly echoes and fractured drones. Here, in contrast, the music is entirely acoustic and presented as it was performed, without overdubs. Both players’ choices of instruments…
Does Spring Hide Its Joy
Created between March and May 2020, Does Spring Hide Its Joy is an immersive piece, positioned as a “study in harmonics and non-linear composition with a heightened focus on just intonation and beating interference patterns”.
Nurturing Exhibitions
*Limited edition of 200 copies. Includes a 48 pages art book and 2CD.* Six musical compositions by Phill Niblock, soil and cutting tree of Amanatsu orange from Masanobu Fukuoka Natural Farm, wooden pedestals, speakers, wooden benches, wooden planter, acrylic case, water, sunlight. An exhibition by Mathieu Copeland.
Nurturing Exhibitions was one of two concomitant exhibitions that formed Exhibition Cuttings at Le Forum / Fondation Hermès in Tokyo, Japan between April 23rd (Fri.) and July 18th (Su…
Requies
A monstrous blast of jazz noise energy by the combustible trio with Sunn 0)))’s Stephen O’Malley and David Sandström of hardcore punks, Refused, on the mighty Rune Grammofon.
Cylene Suisse Redux
Cylene Suisse Redux documents François J. Bonnet and Stephen O'Malley's Switzerland tour in December 2019, following the release of their first album, Cylene. The two musicians chose to entrust sound material recorded on the tour to the expert ears of two friends and great musicians Jim O'Rourke and Ryoji Ikeda, giving them carte blanche, and each in turn chose a distinct personal approach. For Ryoji Ikeda, it was a question of finding a moment, circumscribing a fragment of time through his list…
At the GRM Paris
A ghostly visage on a cosmic scale, these remains of shocked, glowing gas haunt planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus and form the Veil Nebula. The nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. Also known as the Cygnus Loop, the Veil Nebula now spans nearly 3 degrees or about six times the diameter of the full Moon. That translates…
Öst-Väst Sommaren - MMXX-11
Stephen O'Malley’s contribution to the Matière Mémoire’s stunning MMXX Series, Öst-Väst Sommaren (MMXX-11), is a vast expanse of intricate ambience, texture, and tone that encounters the Sunn O))) veteran exploring quiet, introspective depths. Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies, on a single sided crystal-clear vinyl LP with a laser engraved artwork on the other, housed in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo, and containing an artist print by O'Malley.
VII
A new timley studio album from the duo of Peter Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley. Recorded and mixed during an unexpected extended stay in Berlin when the borders of the world suddenly closed. The claustrophobic urgency of this scenario is seared into the colossal vibrations set into this vinyl release.
Unlike many of their releases this is a studio record made unto itself as opposed to the many soundtracks they have made for theatre works and the like. It also stands as one of their most fully real…
Criss-Cross / Hanover
Black Truffle present the premier recordings of two recent works by legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier. Lucier has been crafting elegant explorations of the behavior of sound in physical space since the 1960s and is perhaps best known for his 1970 piece I Am Sitting In a Room (LCD 1013CD). He has written a remarkable catalog of instrumental works that focus on phenomena produced by the interference between closely tuned pitches, often using pure electronic tones produced by os…
Bima Sakti
Ancient Indonesian tradition meets doom rock in profoundly Ur ways on Stephen O’Malley and Senyawa’s collaborative commission for choreographer Gisèle Vienne. Following a decade of creative bonds forged between theatre director and choreographer Gisèle Vienne and doom sayer Stephen O’Malley that spans multiple soundtracks (solo and with Peter Rehberg in KTL) and visual artworks, the pair travelled to Indonesia on a commission to explore the country’s rich culture in 2018. They immersed in a magi…
Auflösung der Zeit
Produced within the context of 'The Guidebook of Church Burners' publication release, this performance was recorded at visual arts institution LE BAL in Paris, May 4th 2018. Published by Païen in a limited edition, the book explores and transforms into an abstract narration the multiple facets of black metal iconography and history. Emerging from a dialogue between sound and image, the otherworldly piece created for that evening by Stephen O'Malley is a result of this collaboration." --Emilie La…
Los Bordes de Las Respuestas
**500 copies, hand-numbered, limited edition with 3 photo inserts** Combining the searching, raucous spirit of free improvisation, massive guitar textures and slowly shifting moods of the drone / doom-tradition the Saint Francis Duo proves there’s still a place for adventure and innovation in the world of improvised music.Four years after their debut recording as a duo, influential guitarist Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O))), KTL) and master percussionist Steve Noble (Rip, Rig & Panic, Brötzmann, Park…
Cylene
First time outing from two ardent explorers of peripheral sound tactics. Cylene is the first collaboration by François J. Bonnet (Kassel Jaeger) and Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))). Laid bare we have a subtle and nuanced study of their individual practices forming a titanic whole. O’Malley’s guitar inscribes a void that patiently opens up a spacious universe for Bonnet to discreetly alter with perception re-orientating studio maneuvers. Cylene is infinitely rewarding for those that succumb to its …
Fuck Fundamentalist Pigs
F*ck Fundamentalist Pigs is Stephen O’Malley’s crushing, personal and intensely emotive retort to the fascists and fundamentalists who undermine his and our sense of personal liberty and freedom, particularly in the wake of attacks suffered by Charlie Hebdo magazine and the residents of Paris during late 2015, and the countless poor souls who’ve suffered in the Middle East, Kenya and North Africa. The material itself is just staggering - appearing a mere couple of weeks after Sunn O)))’s Kannon …
End Ground
Second Edition Pressing of 250 copies only. Vinyl-only release, no digital, no CD. End Ground forms the third and final installment in a series of records documenting the solo prowess of Sunn 0)))’s Stephen O’Malley released on Sweden’s iDEAL Recordings. It was performed on electric guitar thru Sunn model T amps, and captured on a zoom H4 at Centre Cultural Suisse, Bad Bonn Carte Blanche, Paris, France, on 18th October 2013. In solo mode, stripped of his usual accomplices and collaborators, O’Ma…
Dread Live
Second Edition Pressing of 250 copies only. Vinyl-only release, no digital, no CD. Sunn O)))’s feedback architect Stephen O’Malley cranks the amps even louder on his solo vinyl LP Dread Live. This is an extended and extremely loud improvisation for solo guitar (though the colossal heaviness sounds like an army of guitarists). Relentless waves of heavy drones and squeals bombard the listener; the man has turned distortion into an artform.The minimalist electric guitar mantra Dread Live was perfor…
Reve Noir
Cross-continental tape exorcisms. Combining Anthony Pateras’ exploratory piano techniques with Stephen O’Malley’s harmonic ecstasies, this duo performed a one-off show at Instants Chavirés in 2011. Remixed and re-constructed here primarily using 1/4 inch tape machine, Rêve Noir presents a compelling landscape of fractured musique concrète, introspective meditations, buzzing electro-acoustic textures and straight up walls of monolithic guitar.A 20 page booklet interview with O’Malley is includ…
Peacemaker Assembly
LP version. Steve Noble: drums and percussion. Stephen O'Malley: guitars and amplifiers. Stephen O'Malley (cult-guitarist of SUNN O))), KTL) teams up with one of the leading UK drummers of the avant-garde scene, Steve Noble, to build hypnotic sound-sculptures and drones.
Whilst others still plough stylistically dead fields, these two are forging something vital and coolly life-affirming in Peacemaker Assembly, with Noble’s dextrous, diffused percussions picking out a pointillist cosmos of unq…