Adelaide Festival. Thebarton Theatre. 12 Mar 2016
At the outset, you wouldn’t think there was anything to link the two bands.
But there is. Both Sun O))) and Magma are heady sounding bands with a strong focus on gripping bass structures, counter balanced by delicious lifts in percussion and wind instruments which work to take each bands musical output in the direction of heart felt, hard driving ballad territory.
Magma opened the night and powered their way through a 90 minute set in which Christian and Stella Vander’s heart rendering vocals, coming off warm yet really gutsy percussion arrangements by Stella Vander and Isabelle Feuilebois, had their fans enthralled immediately.
Magma exuded unstoppable passion, song for song. Even in the lightest numbers, it’s impossible for them to pull back in any way. They must cry out, they must celebrate as loudly and as distinctively as they can across instrumentation; they work extremely hard to reach an audiences’ heart.
Sun O))) are another beast all together. Band members, dark robed, utilised a superb light show augmented by ice smoke. Here was a band that went to the greater depths of ballad-fuelled emotional darkness, rendered in body ripping, rumbling, high decibel surging bass guitar and keyboards so perfectly arranged in orchestration they elicited an extraordinary varied line in composition that even had place for the lilting notes of trombone in the arrangement.
Sun O))) are masters of theatre. Vocalist Attila Cishar’s sweeping hand gestures enhanced his rolling, vibrato voice as it rose and fell with the sonic waves of sound pouring from Stephen O’Malley’s guitar and Greg Anderson’s synth. Here was an operatic dark God’s mourning, celebration, and longing in full, mesmerising play holding the audience in complete attention, gripped by the loudest music you could encounter, yet filled with hypnotising darkly rendered hooks.
David O’Brien
When: 12 March
Where: Thebarton Theatre
Bookings: Closed
