• Al Cisernos of Om • (Interviewed by Jesua)

I remember seeing Om's 2nd record in Scratch and buying it because of how captivating the cover was without any idea of what it sounded like. I took it home and it turned out to represent itself brilliantly. Everyone in my household continually took turns borrowing it. I have fond memories of playing dominoes with my housemates after a Thanksgiving feast last year with joints, wine, a bag of ketamine and Conference of the Birds on repeat for hours.
Om are made up of ex-Sleep bassist/vocalist Al Cisernos and ex-Sleep drummer Chris Hakius. Sleep were considered a “tightly focused, intensely dedicated super-heavy riff band” from the bay area of San Francisco. Fans were right pleased when rumors of Sleeps rhythm section coming together on a new project started to circulate after a long silence. Pilgrimage is Om’s 3rd and most intricate release.





JK• To start I want to ask you about the choices for the art of the record. I've only seen the front cover.

AC• The front cover is all there is. We try to express the sounds with an accurate visual representation…and when I first saw the painting and I wrote to the iconographer, we talked, I felt we connected. We gave him our previous records and he felt that there was a commonality also. It’s a photograph of his work from the wall of a church in Wisconsin.

JK• How’d you link up with Steve Albini for Pilgrimage?

AC• It was a recommendation…I got 5 or 6 different bands, different styles of recordings he’s done and the drum sound was remarkable on every one of them, they passed every single test…so we went to Chicago. I wanted to aim for that reason [drums] …especially being a two-piece band.

JK• What were the tests?

AC• Listening.

JK• Oh, I was imagining actual lab experiments going on…

AC• Yeah, the lab in front of the stereo.


JK• There’s a lot of references to esoteric stuff in the lyrics of Om, I was wondering if there was any specific schools of esotericism that you’re particularly interested in or look to for inspiration of ideology?

AC• Not within one specific tradition, but for certain I look for that back similarity… that background in all the systems, you know even a formal devotional style or the philosophy of a system…or even in art, all approaches. It’s essential that that background-- in some point in the process that I’m taking in-- be tapped or I’m like what the fuck? What is this? You know? (Laughs)

JK• What do you think of the idea of drone and noise music being married to this sense of druidism and monkism and priesthood?

AC• Uhhhh…is the question do I connect Monasticism to drone music, is that the question?

(And here I should have said no…because it wasn’t the question specifically, but I I just blurted out “Yeah” for some reason).

AC• No. I connect any music that taps…it’s not a place, it’s not even a thing it taps…what word can be used here? [pause] In any of those approaches if that’s done it creates that atmosphere and it creates a sacred presence and there is an atmosphere that does take place, but it seems kind of overly contrived to be like “Oh Ok, we’re a drone band and this reminds us of a monastery”…I mean that’s ridiculous….

JK• When you write, are numbers important to you?

AC• When it’s analyzed later there are consistent sets of numbers but it’s not calculated in a meter sense ahead of time…at the end I can go back and chart it, so it happens subconsciously…but it’s based in emotions for us.

JK• Do you guys have any specific rituals that you do before you get together to work on your stuff that help to get you into the creative state?

AC• We definitely have to get into that space, I guess a better way of saying it is that we have to leave ourselves at the door you know..?
So…that can be done in so many different ways. We usually start by having a discussion while staring into the sun or something…and there’s this usual point where we both start laughing, and we’ll run and grab our instruments…something like that.
And it’s always changing, but we definitely have to get into that in whatever form it’s happening in, in whatever part of life we’re in. And everything else just happens from there…I don’t even know if that make sense, but I’m trying to discern things that are left best said through the work itself…I know it’s an interview so I’ll try to describe it.
It reminds me of that principle in physics where you can’t observe the location and the speed at the same time or in doing so you change it…you just need to let it be.

JK• Yeah…when it’s identified, it ceases to exist.
Do you want to talk a little bit about the religious undertones of Om?

AC• Umm…I don’t feel that there’s a compartmentalization of religion from other areas of life in any other area of life or consciousness…I think that it’s inseparable from life…it is life and so to specify…”and here there’s an intentional”…you know, it doesn’t work that way for us. All of life is a song, all of it.

JK• I came into this thinking…I mean, this is your first record on Southern Lord and there is a theme with some of that music, like RTK and Earth and Sunn O))) and people stand and listen to loud, repetitive din and it is maybe not religious…but definitely spiritual to be washed over by that sound…you know people stand and close their eyes and lose themselves and…

AC• It’s cathartic…I think….

JK• …it’s more about, instead of thinking about something, you just feel it with your body instead of trying to verbalize…this is what I’m getting at by asking about the religious undertones of Om.

AC• I don’t equate the combined expressions on these different bands or artists as symbolic of a movement or scene. I don’t. I feel each one is specific, unique and I don’t want to imply or infer that there’s a community around everything because it’s doing this thing…

JK• Yeah, or connected by a label…

JK• Yeah, because I think when that begins everything starts to go backwards and divisions start rising, and

JK• …It’s looked upon as a scene, and now that scene is done…

AC• Exactly, people roll their eyes and go [bored] “oh that’s cool”. And it’s just another divider in the record store, and I think everything is unique in that sense and an attempt to categorize it for efficiency in communicating it may be practical, but it feels self-defeating.

JK• …and you know that’s true, because I came into this thinking ‘Ok, Southern Lord, it sounds like this…

AC• Well, and you know that’s one of the reasons why we did sign with them because we do feel that they have a diverse roster that they aren’t a label where they say ‘Oh yeah, we’re on that label’ and you know people are all [bored] “oh cool”.
And it definitely was like that on Ear Ache, for certain…at the time Sleep was putting out that album we sounded like no other band on the label but they’re like [sarcastically] “oh that’s cool, nice…I’ve heard that before”.
And I think we’re seeing a time period now where bands are kind of all feeling that, and playing together and sharing more and [sarcastically] ‘there’s that camp over there and that camp over there and’ you know…fuck that. San Francisco is awesome for that stuff though.

JK• That’s hands down my favorite American city…

AC• Yeah, mine too…

JK• It’s so amazing…and beautiful. I’m from north of there, Vancouver.

AC• Yeah, we played Vancouver in ’93 at the Cruel Elephant with Neurosis just after they’d put out Enemy of the Sun.

JK• If you had to choose from any powers, would you rather be able to fly or read minds?

AC• (Laughing) [Repeats the question to someone in the background, long pause] Umm…I don’t know. I’m not sure.


JK• I’m also interested in some of what you’re reading. Based on references to Sufism, esotericism, Masonry…whatever….

AC• There’s too much. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Again I think that stuff is case specific, like a book that moved me at a certain point in my life and my journey, was in that karma…and so you can’t just give a list of books out and say here…go. You find those things when you’re supposed to find them.
This morning I’ve been studying a game on my chess board that was played by Mikhail Tal, and he’s one of my favorite chess players, you know, that and drinking coffee…

JK• I read that you were teaching chess a while ago. How’d that come about?

AC• I do that around the tours of the band, I still do that. When Sleep stopped playing I met a woman in Berkley named Elizabeth, and she’s run a chess school now for over 27 years and I‘d met her and I told her that before I ever got involved in bass playing I spent lots of time and played lots when I was a kid and she suggested I try [teaching]. I thought it was ridiculous…impossible, but she really encouraged me to try it, I did and something happened, it was effortless and the kids were happy and I thought it was cool to share and study chess together.

JK• I work at a camp and whenever the kids take out the chessboard it’s like oh good…put down the video games, you know…give chess a try.

AC• Most definitely.


JK• Ok, I think that’s it for today. Thanks so much man.

AC• Yeah great, we’ll be in Germany soon.

JK• Great! Are you going to Canada at all?

AC• Eastern for sure, but if we do the Northwest it’d be on route to Alaska because we’ve had tentative plans to play Anchorage. On route to that we’d play the west part… and hopefully we play like Whitehorse in the middle of winter or something. We just need some generators and we’re good to go…

JK• Yeah, I’ll spread the word up there.

AC• (Laughs) Ok, thanks.

Let me be someone I admire

The Fall

Perhaps I am naïve for just assuming this show would be flawless, but I tend to get lost in nostalgia for a band of such magnitude…plus I just wanted it to be good so very badly. When I went to see the Vibrators last summer thinking I’d be consumed in their poppy streety radness I was really disappointed. They were sloppy, boring, old and who cares? We like slathering vehemence and moody atmosphere at our live shows, that’s the point, right?
Oh, but I’d heard that the Fall were hit and miss live, either “ON or OFF” and that people had seen them lately and that they were undoubtably “ON”. Plus, whatever incarnation of them is around, it still puts out great records.

The Fall came out during the opener, a VJ busy mussing up clips of Black Sabbath and Elvis, and their entrance alone was grand. The band got on stage and started to set up in the dark while the visual background screen changed from a huge fat Elvis to a shitty pink and yellow spray paint throw-up that looked both tacky and amazing reading "The Fall". And then Mark E. Smith nonchalantly strolled onto the stage in a sport jacket, the longest shoes I’ve ever seen on a man and trenches in his weird face. Everyone went bats including I. There is no need to explain what a legend the cuss is or why because.

But the shows atmosphere turned out to be a problem. The Maria is a nice place located on the Spree, with around a 4-500 person capacity, and it was the introduction to their 3-night anniversary party.
The crowd at this show was exceptionally bad though. Before the live entertainment started a DJ was playing some unfamiliar yet bitchin' surf, and there was a crowd of what I gather were old-schoolers, mostly dudes, dance-twisting their cares away in front of the speakers at the stage. You see that and think, hey, it’s cool that weird, badly dressed old school Germans are still having a good time at that age when my boring parents are breaking their backs all day and giving anything left to the Television…but then you look a bit closer and you realize that they are absolutely fucking shitcanned, slobbering, crossed-eyed. This could have been the tin-can radio at a local currywurst kiosk blasting Scorpions, and they’d still be air guitaring windmills, squatting to the floor. I think the rock scene in Berlin is hidden very deep in the ground because of all the dudes who jock out at loud, energetic rock n roll shows. Its a pity.

So back to the Fall. This embodiment of the band was tight and together. The guitarist was great, pale and sweaty, even though MES kept turning his amp knobs downwards until they were practically off by the end. The bassist was very new metal, but his playing was on and he and the drummer looked as though they were having a really good time. The foxy keyboardist sang, and played a Korg MS-20 in a pretty little red dress.
An unnamed source told me that he recieved the Fall's Rider request via fax the week before in messily handwritten child scrawl that looked like this:

Fall Rider:

2 Packs of Benson and Hedges

SPEED – ( NOT COCAINE )


And MES remains King Fuck, jaw vibrating, providing enough power to fuel Berlin for a week. Then there are the rumors that the keyboard player is his tiny babe wife, and he just celebrated his 50th birthday.

So, the Fall played, Pacifying Joint, Blindness, Sparta FC (with less enthused backup vocals than the record) I’ve Been Duped and Mr. Pharmacist which I did not expect. When they played What About Us? last, MES walked off the stage casually and forcefully hucking the mic over his shoulder, into the audience, where the crowd took turns shouting back at him “What about us?” while the band played on. A beautifully punctuated and adeptly executed move.
The Fall joined Berlin in a 2 song encore ending the show in White Lightning. Older ladies still kept getting smashed all over the place while they tried to capture digital proof of MES’ Muppet face. I was knocked all over trying to do the same (blurry photos aside) and people continued to behave like they’d never been to a show before, jumping on the stage, dancing so so badly (you think dancing in expression but this simply was not) and knocking people down in a soaked, sweating drunk rage and further dampening the mood. Mark E. Smith ignored the many annoying attempts to flag his attention by never making eye contact, either engaged in the back wall, his band members, or waving his hand dismissively towards the arms overly enthusiastically giving him the double thumbs up over and over and over and over and over again.
The Fall played well despite their lack of enthusiasm, with MES just how I’d expected him; dry, uninterested, festered. But a combination of that and the terribly Alpha crowd left me unsatisfied.