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costumes
I've been thinking a lot lately about the power of costumes. After some experiments with costume at both Spring and YAC I've begun to think of costumery as being located at a unique juncture between art and psychology: there are definitely aesthetic elements to designing / selecting a good costume, but it also has a profound psychological dimension, both in the way it influences other people's response to you and in the way it allows expression or manifestation of a certain facet of your personality.
So I really responded to the following comments by Sunn O))) frontman Stephen O'Malley in the new Wire, remarking on the druidic-style robes that members of Sunn O))) wear at their shows:
"These things are very important. The difference between being on stage playing heavy guitar music wearing street clothes, and doing it in the uniform of a medieval robe, with elements such as light and dry ice, is enormous. The group can operate as an entity or the sum of its parts, rather than just a bunch of people playing together. We use the robes very specifically—where they're not worn at all, except for five minutes before we play, and then they're taken off immediately after the performance. By wearing them we adopt an alternate identity, which helps to put out minds in a different state to evoke this beast of sound. They were used by Aleister Crowley in the same way, as a uniform to create a different being within yourself."
Sunn O))) plays tomorrow night at the Empty Bottle. I saw them back in September of last year, and it was one of my live music highlights of the year; I look forward to going and seeing them again. |
Friday, July 02, 2004
6:12 PM
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