Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion

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The weakest chapter of the entire book closes it out. An annoyingly political and unfocused chapter meanders along before ending. I don’t care about Swords half assed political points I bought this to read about the drone, not how someone playing a violin reflects Brexit and how some other album reflects late stage capitalism. I really enjoyed most of this book but to end it on such a bum note is embarrassing. It’s like a flight to Mars where the La Monte Young chapter was an asteroid shower which hammered the ship and this final chapter is the ship crash landing and exploding. My advice to Sword and White Rabbit would be to edit this out of subsequent runs and actually write a decent conclusion, not whatever this ball-less political preening was attempting to be. It was nice to get so much affirmation that there's a wider world of drones. Too often I have thought of "drone" as simply Eliane Radigue near-stasis, and categorizing so much else as "sort of drone," including my own work.... like my music has drones but is not drone. I'm glad to discard that distinction. Drones can replace traditional chords and harmony as an axis for other parts to rotate around, or can underpin rhythm while still managing to bend the perception of time and progression. 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. I get the impression that the author had an idea and tried to put bands and albums that he loves into a rather tight framework— whether these albums actually fit or not does not seem to matter. I mean, just because The Beatles use the sitar on some songs does not make them a drone band. Not even the Beatles songs the author talks about have a strong drone vibe - meaning that there is a sense / feel of sustain to get lost in. With many of the bands the author writes about, there really is no eponymous “monolith undertow”. 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...

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. Starts off strong with the author in an ancient Maltese mausoleum with strange amplifying acoustics. The early chapters have the tone and sprawl of an enthusiastic stoner relating a recent dive down a wikipedia rabbit hole. He establishes the premise that drone is the basis for all music and is key to the way we connect with the world and space and time, and begins to elaborate on the role of drone in so many different musics. An entertaining tour through musical history which effectively culminates in the drone/doom of Sunn O))), Sleep, Electric Wizard, etc. The introduction mentions that the book was originally intended to be a history of doom metal and I think it's helpful to still think of it in these terms because otherwise the choices made about what to include/exclude might seem odd. Without that frame in mind, it can feel like the focus on drone has been forgotten at some points so that the author can write about whatever music they particularly like (e.g. the sections about punk).This is a book about the very human fascination with sound, the drone and the shamanic other. The whole weighty volume works like a drone – pulling you into its own ecstatic journey – perhaps a groundbreaking in itself – perhaps the world’s first book of drone writing!

I'm interested but I'm also curious if the book caused you to change the style of drone music you make where the old style is lost forever. For a while I thought I might use this book as a reference. So Harry and I disagree on a few things. Who cares? I can just ignore his wittering and explore the numerous musicians he mentions myself, right? But then I realised - if he's making such mistakes and such dumbfounding assertions about stuff I am familiar with, then who knows what sort of boneheaded things he's saying about stuff I'm not so familiar with? And what followed was just dismal. The chapter on techno and industrial music ("real" industrial music, mind you!) was dreary, and the final chapter was just miserable. Rather than concluding his tedious tome with a final hurrah about the transcendent possibilities of music, Harry instead decided to lash out at some of the usual modern boogeymen. Even though Harry and I likely agree on many points, nobody wants to get trapped in the corner by a pub bore after he's had a few. You might nod along at the points they make, but you're still going to leave the pub covered in their stale spittle. So thanks, Harry, you vampire. You drained your subject of all its joy and power. The Quietus awaits!

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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. 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. In the book the author is talking to Brian Eno who makes the point that in the past a drone was produced by a person and it was limited by their endurance, now you can hit a switch and the drone can last months or years. 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.

Sword is a deeply knowledgeable and perceptive advocate for a vast range of often esoteric, sometimes challenging, always extraordinary music This chapter is an odd one as it’s not as focused on a scene or genre as the other chapters are. I loved the Brian Eno bit. You have Aphex Twin, Godflesh and other stuff in this chapter. It’s great albeit not as focused as other chapters. It kind of felt like a “what have I left out?” kind of chapter to me. Sword writes the book with infectious enthusiasm; it is a breezy, friendly read. At the end of the day he's a metalhead (albeit a slightly pompous one) and this is where he's happiest. Unfortunately, I don't think he clearly defines what he means by drone music. He frequently talks about "the drone" as if it's something that can be invoked, or as if it's some cosmic force that one can tune into (usually aided by drugs). There's a lot of talk about "transcendence", and other wavy-gravy ideas - he even ends the book by asking "do we play the drone or does it play us?" To me it sounds exactly like the "New Age woo-woo" that Sword clearly looks down on. What then does the drone speak to? I was going to write that the drone is sacred and profane at the same time, but really, that’s a category error. It is neither of those things; it predates them. The drone is one way in which humanity has learned to connect to, commune with, corral the Other – to balance our own vulnerability and transience against the immanent and eternal. “A lot of the aspects we find so graceful in ancient cultures are to do with their ability to interweave their own lives with the bigger processes they were part of,” Brian Eno tells Sword. “They had to build their lives around surrendering.” The drone has a role in ritual music that delivers repetitive rhythms and sensory excess just as it does in music of spiritual discipline and devotional austerity. Which is to say, the drone sometimes demands surrender, and sometimes merely enables it. Monolithic Undertow undertow takes you on this journey with an eminently readable and fascinating trip. Harry Sword’s writing style is super informed and explains the complex with clarity and the strange with familiarity creating a well-informed and captivating account as he embraces the whole journey deep into the heart of pop culture.This story does not start in the twentieth century underground: the monolithic undertow has bewitched us for millennia. The book takes the drone not as codified genre but as an audio carrier vessel deployed for purposes of ritual, personal catharsis, or sensory obliteration, revealing also a naturally occurring auditory phenomenon spanning continents and manifesting in fascinatingly unexpected places. The thing to be surrendered, of course, is the self. The phrase In Search of Sonic Oblivion, which forms the book’s subtitle, refers to “the potent ability of sound – in this case slow-moving sound – to help dissolve the fragile trappings of ego”. On this reading, drone music offers not just an escape from western individualism and the social and political constrictions of 21st-century capitalism, but a way of making music that negates the egotism and posturing of other contemporary forms. A kind of liberation, in other words. In this respect, Monolithic Undertow put me in mind of a quote from turn-of-the-century psychologist William James: “Religious rapture … ontological wonder, cosmic emotion, are all unifying states of mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood incline to disappear … [It is] a region in which we find ourselves at home, a sea in which we swim.” My only problem with this book is that I knew a lot of what it talked about already. Being pretty well informed about metal music already and having read Alex Ross' Listen to This and JR Moores Electric Wizards, Monolithic Undertow came in a LITTLE redundant. 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. Great introduction chapter. The drone in: doom metal, household appliances, the womb, drones flying over warzones, industrial music, actual industry and the universe itself. This chapter is great as it really shows Sword setting out his stand and what he’s going to offer you in this book. It is never single minded, he’s great at looking at the drone from the countless angles you can examine it from.