Stephen O'Malley

Stephen O'Malley has spent three decades testing how much weight an amplifier can carry before sound stops behaving like music and starts behaving like architecture. Born in Seattle in 1974 and based in Paris, he is best known as co-founder of Sunn O))), the drone metal group whose robed, subsonic performances have filled concert halls and art biennales, and as a member of Khanate, Burning Witch, Thorr's Hammer and KTL. His solo work ranges wider: chamber and ensemble pieces, scores for film and dance, and long-form compositions assembled from single sustained tones. He co-founded the Southern Lord label and curates Ideologic Organ, a catalogue that runs from Romanian spectralism to Tibetan Buddhist ritual recordings. He is also a graphic designer, and a good deal of the visual identity of the extreme underground since the mid-1990s is his handwriting.