Turn it up

Silence can bring its own terror. In one of the world’s quietest rooms, the concrete-sealed anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratory in Minneapolis, attendees have reported episodes of panic caused by the environment of extreme sensory deprivation, a simmering dread at the sound of the blood thrumming through their ears, while anyone who has watched a slasher movie will be familiar with the eerie quiet that foreshadows a jumpscare – the silence that brings forth the scream.

Halfway through their show at east London’s Troxy on a steaming hot July night, American guitar duo Sunn O))) suddenly cut the noise to create silence so thick it feels like a wall. The air is vacuumed from the packed room of more than 3,000 (mostly male) revellers, leaving nothing but humming dead space and the ringing of ears acclimatising slowly to an ambient decibel level. On stage, Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson are cloaked in black robes, wielding guitars, waiting. Then their arms swing down on strings and the banshee wail of volume starts up again. Even through the noise, I hear the middle-aged man next to me let out a yelp of surprise.

Read the feature in the Observer.

[This piece was published on 12/07/26]