Sunn Trio: Electric Esoterica ( TWENTY ONE EIGHTY TWO RECORDING COMPANY)
Fantastic new music from Phoenix, Arizona, very much in the complex and multidirectional tradition of Sun City Girls.
Long been curious why Arizona (and New Mexico) generates such strange and singular art and musical projects like this. Certain the region’s unique artistic sensibility is threaded deep in its history, but Placebo Records in the late 1970s offers an important starting point for what we’ve appreciated about Arizona over the last two or three decades. Hyper-regionalist, curiously open in terms of form, and irreverent to genre, that label, and this new release, push into new and ecstatic experimental terrain.
From the one-sheet:
“Enter Sunn Trio. A punk trio that is influenced by Middle Eastern psych, free jazz, and improvisation. While not recorded in a traditional studio, these recordings represent the first studio-produced sounds from this group. The group is built around Joel Robinson and has had as many as eight-to-ten members in recordings and live performances, but more recently has been focused on a trio that composes music that challenges every notion of what rock, punk, or psych can be; however, at the same time, the music is crafted with improvisational focus and middle eastern influence that should be the basis for this generation's new music. Robinson makes his melody maker sound like an oud, rabab, and even at times a gamelan when he isn't using these instruments to generate the lead lines to the compositions. The music has an import that shows a deference to eastern music, while expressing a freedom that isn't present in any modern music.
We stood idle during the Arab Spring; we decimated Iraq and Afghanistan; and now we retreated from Syria as the Kurdish people struggled to survive. Sunn Trio creates music that responds to these atrocities and works to build a bridge to these people. Urgent music for urgent times. Electric Esotericais the third album from Sunn Trio. It is the third in a series of records that revolve around Alan and Richard Bishop, Charles Gocher, W. David Oliphant, and Joel Robinson called the Mount Meru Anthology. These sounds are rooted in a history of creation in Arizona that involves people that were inspired and supported by people who do things differently. Sunn Trio wants you to listen, but don't be fucking passive.”
*We have other releases from the Twenty One Eighty Two Recording Company label, so please reach out if you want to add other titles to this order. Dig into the label’s catalog. One release prints the following on an OBI strip describing their label project: “2182kHz was used as the distress frequency on shortwave radio. The Recording Company was certainly borne out of this spirit . . . These sounds are rooted in a history of creation in Arizona that involves people that were inspired and supported by people who do things differently.”