Sunn O))) and Boris have worked collaboratively before, and Ensemble Pearl sees Stephen O’Malley, the dark overlord of Sunn O)), back with Atsuo and Michio Kurihara, guitarist and drummer respectively of Boris. The lineup is completed by Eyvind Kang and Timba Harris. The result is most definitely the sum of its parts, and that’s a good thing. With O’Malley at the helm, that ‘Ensemble Pearl’ emerges monumentally heavy and dark was inevitable, and with Kang’s penchant for dark atmospherics thrown into the mix, it was always going to be a recipe for blackness.
Deliberately paced and simultaneously majestic and doomy, it’s also scary as hell as searing guitars slash through the drones and on ‘Painting on a Corpse’, hypnotic ceremonial beats that thump beneath a swath of swampy fog.
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The first three tracks hover between the five to seven minute mark: however, on the second three, Ensemble Pearl get really expansive, building through ‘Island Epiphany’ and ‘Giant’ and twelve and ten minutes respectively, to the colossal closer, ‘Sexy Angle’, which clocks in at a few meagre seconds short of 20 minutes. Of course, length isn’t everything, but with this triptych it’s possible to feel the weight and the quality, too.
Ensemble Pearl Online
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