Stephen O'Malley - Éternelle Idole (2015)

"Effectively Stephen O'Malley-on-ice, 'Eternelle Idole' is the Sunn 0))) agent of doom's debut composition for ice-skating choreography. His score for Gisèle Vienne's eponymous piece sparingly spreads 47 minutes of modular synth, guitar, clavichord, piano keys and vocal over 3 sides of 2 discs - the 3rd side is mysteriously left blank - accompanied by familiar collaborators, Steve Moore, Daniel O'Sullivan, Peter Rehberg, Jesse Sykes, Bill Herzog and Randall Dunn. Arriving quick on the heels of his high register explorations in the 'Gruidés' slab for DDS, here he shifts focus towards a shadowy spectrum of awning synth strokes broken up with Thor-like guitar shocks, rustling field recordings and a black hole lacuna, holding acres of pregnant negative space around each element. It's not hard to imagine the skaters carving graceful geometries around his vaulted arcs, and is made even easier to picture with Estelle Hanania's accompanying 16 photographs documenting the event, establishing a clear visual bridge between the skaters' elegance and the sweeping, sustained lines and ballistics of O'Malley's music. "