Nazoranai – Scala, London 11/07/13

90bpm? 80, maybe? Nazoranai certainly don’t play their music fast, but it’s absolutely the quickest I’ve ever seen Stephen O’Malley move his hands around the fretboard of a bass guitar. More regularly seen holding one note for ten minutes at a time in the inimitable Sunn O))), O’Malley tonight proves what I’d long suspected – that he can pretty much do anything he likes with one of those things. It just so happens he just likes doing Sunn O))) with it and treating us to music that at times even flirts with things as corporeal as grooves. Though it might seem out of character, it suits him, mainly because it turns there’s a foreboding quality to his playing no matter what the speed.

O’Malley is just one of the noise/doom rock superstars in Nazoranai, a group who also number experimental multi instrumentalist Oren Ambarchi on drums, and Fushitsusha front-fellow Keiji Haino on guitar, vocals and electronics. In certain circles, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call the latter something of a legend, and neither is it tough to see why noise aficionados are so taken with him. His guitar playing is at once indescribably intricate and unashamedly brutal, filling every space in O’Malleys grooves and textures with a new sound each and every time he swings it around his neck. Quite how he’s generating them, one dreads to think. He’s a whole lot of fun to look at too, this old Asian fellow with his sunglasses and whiter-than-the-sun hair, bent double over his pedals conjuring up all hell. And whilst he’s not a man of many words, the ones he does deliver are chosen pointedly – “I hate songs! And people!”, he yells at us in place of a “hello”.

Of the three of them, it’s very much Ambarchi’s place to keep things from falling apart – even improvisational noise bands need some structure, it seems – and his drumming, whilst highly impressive (if a little too heavy on that ride cymbal for my liking, Oren), seems happy to take a back seat in its own jazzy, understated manner. Other than reaching for a violin bow to gently stroke his bass strings at one juncture, O’Malley too casts a stoic figure, his gazed fixed on keeping up with whatever sound Haino might unleash on his band and audience next.

Since the release of their self titled debut in 2011, Nazoranai’s live shows have been few and far between. One can only guess that, going on the look of the three come the show’s end, it’s because it just takes one hell of a lot out of them. Their small yet dedicated crowd are left feeling the same way, but both are smiling, exhausted, wondering when that ringing in their ears will ever stop, if indeed they want it to.