Bohren und der Club of Gore + Stephen O'Malley

There is smoke everywhere. A mass of it builds above St John’s Church pews, cushioning the upper balcony. It’s like a spiritual gas chamber. Beyond the performance area is the distant likeness of a stained glass window; pious sketches obscured, manifested into an all more chimeric backdrop. A brazen-faced gawper takes the opportunity to flip the hymn number board to read ‘666’. Before the altar, muddied by the vapour, are Bohren und der Club of Gore.

Their faces drift in and out of focus as overhanging spotlights waft from red to green to white to blue. Small pockets of the crowd are slouched back on their seats; completely comatose. Others are gently waving their heads in a state of waking REM. It’s such a rare appearance. The group’s presence has this unyielding supremacy other acts could only dream of bearing. Everything – the staging, the location, the musicianship – is immaculate. Tonight, Bohren und der Club of Gore are undisputedly perfect.

Prior to all of this puzzling doom-jazz divinity is an altogether opposing performance. Stephen O’Malley, most notably of Sunn O))), stands in front of eight amplifiers. Cast against him are projections that consume the entire back wall of the church. Abstract sequences of water pouring from unknown sources fall from the ceiling to the stage. O’Malley touches his guitar and the noise is deafening. He strums a single chord over and over and over. The front row shrink, cupping their hands over their ears. The sheer racket storming out of his Hi-Watts are enough to rattle bottle tops loose from their decanters. He continues strumming, very rarely changing notes. Some actually choose to leave; physically distressed, cerebrally shaken. It goes on like this for what feels like an eternity but was probably more in the realm of an hour.

Bohren und der Club of Gore refuse to appear until the room is submerged in fog. ‘We would like to bring you back down to earth,’ jokes saxophonist Christoph Clöser with a slow, stony delivery. They begin with Im Rauch – opening track from their latest full-length, this year’s magisterial Piano Nights. The contrast between O’Malley’s traumatising drone and Bohren’s quixotic ambient jazz crossover is an obvious one, but the sonic disparity is undeniably complimentary. Very few words are uttered throughout the act. In soft broken english, Clöser occasionally acknowledges the euphoria his sounds seem to be forcing onto everyone. He thanks the crowd and returns to darkness. Trawling through Bei Rosarotem Licht, Ganz Leise kommt die Nacht and Segeln ohne Wind, der Club of Gore perform with an offbeat dexterity that would make Badalamenti shiver with envy.

The band’s musical output is minimal. They hang on notes until they vanish. They allow their instruments to inhale and exhale slowly. They make no mistakes and are totally synchronised with one another. Time becomes immaterial. They playfully dismantle the concept of an encore by bidding farewell whilst remaining glued to their spot. They close with Prowler from 2000’s Sunset Mission. Small clumps of the audience dance in this state of forced rhapsody. They stop playing and everyone rises to their feet, screaming and wheezing. They give no indication as to when they’ll return to these shores. Other than those conservative enough to storm out during O’Malley’s set, no one leaves feeling anything other than out of this world.