Music has brought us to southern Arizona, Tucson specifically, as the band performing this evening is not playing closer to Phoenix this year. But first, once we collected Brinn on our way down the road, we were merrily traveling the interstate nervous as always that we’d be late. That perpetual anxiety of being late is likely what has had us arriving early nearly everywhere we go. Anyway, we were in Tucson earlier than expected, and so the opportunity to visit Charro Steak & Del Rey easily entered the realm of possibility because our concert venue is just around the corner.

Caroline and I had been here barely two weeks ago and enjoyed it very much, hence our desire to return, and now we have a convert found in Brinn. I thought we’d get drinks for them, coffee for me, and split a tableside guacamole, but Brinn’s eyeball fell on the Scallops Agua Chile and it did the trick and lured him into planning his own return visit.

We lingered at the restaurant, under the impression that Shoshin (初心) Duo was opening the show. Nope, it turned out that Sunn O))) was starting at 9:00 and not Shoshin (初心) Duo which actually is the name of the tour. I guess this kind of knowledge is a no-brainer for those who follow bands they enjoy closer than we obviously do. No matter, the show had just begun and only a strum or two of the guitars had been played prior to our entering the Rialto Theater proper. We could also tell the show had just gotten underway because the place wasn’t filled with fog yet. Seeing only two musicians on stage wasn’t what I had expected when we saw Sunn O))) in late 2019 they were a 5-piece and now the Duo part of the tour name starts to make sense.

The high priests of sonic bewilderment this evening are the core members of the band, Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson. While there are three fewer people featured on stage, I’m not sure I can tell if there is less sonic bombardment than what we experienced last time. I am relatively confident however that the acoustics between the cavernous Rialto and the Mesa Center of the Arts are quite different because the show a few years ago featured far more girth of distortion wrapping itself around us. We were enveloped in a much deeper sound that penetrated our bone marrow to alter how red blood cells form. Regardless, there was enough alchemical mischief of Sunn O))) present this evening to bring us into an altered state of consciousness, as much as that’s possible considering that no illicit drugs are involved.

One does not clap for Sunn O))), we raise our hands in awe. Our ears are now defeated after the pummeling of being in the presence of such enormous fields of distortion and feedback, and mere claps would fail to be recognized above the maelstrom. Plus, how else should the cosmic energy of the druid overlords feed those present other than through our hands raised in obeisance while we pull into our souls the trembling remains of vibrational decay signifying the end of the ceremony?