>I’m a huge fan of repetitive, monotonous, minimalistic music, be it rap, noise, doom, shoegazer, kraut, black metal, experimental, ambient, classical, instrumental… I guess it’s the bewitching trancelike state it may put you in. I can experience total relaxation listening to the most vicious noise, which might seem odd to most human beings, but the intensity and power of something truly monotonous should never be underestimated.

Something funny happened this summer. I was going home after work and had probably had a terrible day since I was exhausted beyond comprehension. As soon as I got on the bus I drifted into darkness while listening to Om‘s absolutely stunning Pilgrimage album. Sure, I know this one is repetitive as fuck, but I remember kind of waking up from my slumber thinking ”How insane are these guys? They’ve been playing exactly the same riff for ten minutes now, no variation whatsoever! What the fuck?!” … And so I looked at my mp3-player and realized I had accidentally pressed the ”AB Repeat” button and the player was repeating only two seconds of the whole song in a goddamn perfect loop, and it had been going for ten or fifteen minutes just playing the same two seconds over and over and over again… Wow.
When I pressed the play button the magic disappeared.
I came to think of the famous horror monologue in one of my top ten movies of all time, Apocalypse Now (ignore the Redux version!).

And then I realized — like I was shot…like I was shot with a diamond…a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, “My God, the genius of that, the genius, the will to do that.” Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure.

Watch Marlon Brando, in the role of Colonel Kurtz, improvise horror:

I’ve been trying several times to find that perfect loop again, but have not succeeded. It’s never as pure and complete as that day on the bus. Maybe I’ll find it on Thursday as I’m going to Gothenburg to watch Om perform live at Nefertiti. Or maybe tomorrow when I’ll listen to Mogwai at Cirkus in Stockholm. Or maybe tonight when listening to Loop… Within monotony the possibilities are endless.

On another note: Sleep (who split up in 1998 which resulted in two of the members forming Om) will perform the album Holy Mountain as well as selections from Dopesmoker and more at All Tomorrow’s Parties next year. It’ll be two world exclusive performances that will not be repeated.
Even repetition must come to an end.

Now here is Om.