Somatics, a field within body work, originated as a product of a cultural movement in the 18th century that focused on physical activity and strength-building. The principal element of somatics, which has gained prominence in the past decades in wellness culture and therapeutic contexts, is soma. On a surface level, soma is the perceived experience of the body, as distinct from the intellectual response to stimuli in your brain. The divide is easy to grasp. Maybe your brain thinks you’re at ease, but your body tells you something different: It’s tense, shaky, locked up. Our bodies can send us messages that our cerebrum might not be able to parse in the moment. The thought can be unsettling, but it can also be empowering, even invigorating, to acknowledge that the body can communicate in a way that defies conventional logic and easy explanation.
Somatics can help explain why some bands choose to work at volumes that most people consider dangerous. And they’re especially pertinent when discussing Sunn O))). The American duo of guitarists Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley has been making intoxicatingly loud music since 1997, flanked by a fortress of 100-watt Sunn Model T amplifier heads (the band’s name is self-evident) atop towering stacks of speaker cabinets. They’ve been described as drone metal, noise rock, doom, and ambient, and aside from regular collaborations with vocalists like Attila Csihar and select other heavy-music singers, Sunn O)))’s music is largely instrumental.
“That’s our band practice—hiking in the woods.”—Greg Anderson
Their new, self-titled record certainly is, and there is only one type of instrument present: electric guitar. The album’s six tracks, entirely performed by Anderson and O’Malley, unfurl slowly over the course of roughly 80 minutes; in the most complimentary way, these are not thinking songs—this is music that is perceived and experienced more than it is understood.
Even through headphones, the compositions have a palpable, breathtaking sense of mass and space. Guitar may be the only instrument on the record, but it is not the sole source of sound. Throughout the fourth track, “Mindrolling,” we hear running water, recorded in the woods around Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, Washington. Just northeast of Seattle, a large window in the studio looks out onto the perma-green of the northwest’s forest. You can feel the environment in Sunn O)))’s tracks. The power chords are as towering and knotted as an ancient Douglas fir; the distortion as enveloping and forgiving as the forest floor; the feedback as deep and powerful as the Pacific. This is music to listen to while lying back, spread-eagled, on a cliff face in a hard, thrilling wind.
For Anderson and O’Malley, though, the record is evidence of something else, something just as sacred. “It’s really, to me, a representation of my relationship with Stephen,” says Anderson. “I get a good feeling listening to it.”
O’Malley (l) and Anderson, out in the closest thing they have to a practice space.
Photo by Charles Peterson
Sunn O))), the band’s 10th LP, arrives seven years after Pyroclasts. That seems like a long time to most people, remarks O’Malley, but he considers those years a natural part of “the arc of the creative process.” The new record, he says, is like a flower that emerged over the years. The duo worked with producer Brad Wood, sleeping in a farmhouse on the same property as Bear Creek Studio, which is itself housed in an old barn. Anderson and O’Malley would wake up, have coffee, then hike for a few hours in the forest nearby. After lunch, they’d meet up with Wood in the barn to work.
Anderson lives in Los Angeles, while O’Malley lives in Paris. When pandemic restrictions on concerts began to loosen, they started playing shows as a duo as a way to mitigate risk: Plenty of international tours had been thwarted, at great financial loss, by sudden changes in regional gathering restrictions. But the two-piece shows quickly became more than a logistical necessity. They felt fresh and open, says O’Malley, and he and Anderson were coming up with new ideas based on the limitations of only having two guitars onstage. “The fundamental ideas of the ensemble instrumentation were all there in the distortion,” says O’Malley. “I felt like I could hear it clearer in that abstract distortion and saturation. So we’ve continued on.”
“Whenever we play as a duo, it’s somewhat nostalgic,” says Anderson. “I didn’t know that there was another path forward from that. It turns out there was, and that’s what we were really excited about capturing on the recording—the development of what the duo had become.”
“The fundamental ideas of the ensemble instrumentation were all there in the distortion.”—Stephen O’Malley
Anderson brings up the idea of shoshin, a Zen Buddhist idea that celebrates having a beginner’s mind for all things in life. In the context of the band’s post-pandemic creativity, it suggested embracing the joy he felt in the first days of the project, such that the entire process—playing as a duo onstage and in the studio, focusing only on his friendship with O’Malley—felt like an embodiment of shoshin. The two of them felt joy, but they also felt newness, and explored it. That’s why they decided to create a new album: to document this unexpected expansion.
There was little creative preparation to be done; songs would be captured in the moment as living, breathing things. Both Anderson and O’Malley have Model Ts stashed around the world, from Los Angeles, to Paris, to Amsterdam. The 100-watt heads all have different personalities, insists O’Malley, not least because of the different voltages between American and European power supplies and how the transformers respond. They shipped Anderson’s collection—including Marshalls, Fenders, Hiwatts, Soldanos, Ampegs, Oranges, and, naturally, Sunns—from California to Bear Creek, and rented cabinets in Seattle. Wood placed mics everywhere: on each speaker of the 4x12s, around the room, even outside the room. In another area, smaller combos—including a Fender Champ, Deluxe, and Twin—were used for re-amping and running tape effects on solos. The variety of perspectives allowed Wood to sculpt the mass of distortion and create the record’s cavernous spatial signature.
Anderson relied on an Electro-Harmonix “Civil War” Big Muff, paired with his Pro Co RAT, and the band’s own signature pedal, the EarthQuaker Devices Life, to generate his guitar’s pillowy, bottomless low-end across the record. He likens rediscovering the might of the Big Muff, after all these years, to smoking pot or having sex for the first time. “That’s kind of the shoshin concept, too,” he notes. “Playing with the joy that you had when you first started playing, and trying to get back to that. That can be applied to many different elements, including combining a Big Muff with the RAT circuit.” O’Malley, meanwhile, has used the same ZVEX Super Hard On since 1997. Beginner’s mind, indeed.
During a performance at Le Guess Who on November 6, 2025 in Utrecht, Netherlands, Anderson (l) and O’Malley make an offering to the old gods and goddesses of feedback, surrounded by their bandmates—their Sunn Model T heads.
Photo by Claire Alaxandra
Growing up, Anderson remembers seeing the Melvins in their early days, and the physicality of their gigs’ over-the-top volumes moved him. “That’s why I would follow them around like the Grateful Dead,” says Anderson. The same thing happened when he saw My Bloody Valentine in the early ’90s. “Of course you can hear the music, but to feel it in your bones, that was just something special,” he says. “I had a connection there that I got really addicted to. You can’t really get that on a recording, right?”
Part of the reason the band’s new record is self-titled is because it evokes the feeling of Sunn O))) at its most elemental: Anderson and O’Malley, together in a room, making electrifyingly loud compositions with their electric guitars. When the band first began, they weren’t concerned with playing live. Inspired by that mammoth wall of sound, the idea was to simply get in a room with as many amps as they could manage, get high, and play music together. When they caught on to the physical aspect of the project, they began to think about taking it to the realm of live performance. But that’s not an easy thing to do: The logistics of transporting and operating multiple 100-watt stacks are sticky, and even if you figure out how to do it, there are few venues willing to host such a performance. If a club can’t accommodate Sunn’s backline, or if they require acts to abide by a decibel limit, the band won’t play. (Anderson knows their backline is a lot: “It’s a mountain,” he says.) That can cross out certain cities entirely, but it’s non-negotiable. The volume is part of the band.
“I enjoy the aspect of danger, and I feel like a lot of that has been removed from art and music and film,” says Anderson. “I get it, I understand health and safety, but it also sort of bothers me, because then you’re taking that away from people. There are things that can be done to protect yourself. You’ve taken away that choice and that ability for people to experience it. It’s really loud, but it’s not a painful loud. It’s nearly all low end and low frequencies. There’s not that high, ice-pick, piercing sound in what we do. I equate it more to a warm bath. We’re not trying to damage people’s hearing. It’s not this aggressive moment at all. I understand why it could be interpreted that way, but that’s not the case. To me, the music is very soothing, and I’m grateful that people have gotten that and connected with it.
“It is overwhelming, and to be immersed in that, it does have this kind of comical angle to it sometimes,” Anderson continues. “Oftentimes, Stephen and I will laugh and say, ‘This is insane and amazing that we’re in this right now!’ I think that in itself is a reason to celebrate. It has this kind of celebratory atmosphere to it.”
“I enjoy the aspect of danger, and I feel like a lot of that has been removed from art and music and film. I seek out things that have that edge to it.”—Greg Anderson
Anderson is pictured here lifting aloft his main instrument of worship: a goldtop 2005 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe.
Photo by Claire Alaxandra
Greg Anderson’s Gear
Guitar
2005 GibsonLes Paul Deluxe goldtop with black DiMarzio P90 Super Distortion pickups
Amps
Mid-’70s Sunn Model T
Sunn 2000S
Sunn 1200S
Ampeg SVT “Blueline”
Effects
Pro Co Turbo RAT (with LM308 chip)
Electro-Harmonix/Sovtek “Civil War” Big Muff Pi
EarthQuaker Devices White Light
EarthQuaker Devices Life Pedal
Aguilar Octamizer
Ernie Ball VP JR
4-way splitter box
Anderson notes that he and O’Malley have always delighted in pushing the boundaries of their own expectations, to the point of deleting them entirely. That attitude is one of the keys to their longevity. “It sounds cliche, but I keep saying it over and over again, and it’s true: It’s about being open to different possibilities and ideas,” Anderson explains. “That’s why we’ve sustained, and that’s why it continues to be interesting. Every single band in my life that I’ve been involved with had an ending point. But Sunn O))) has transcended a lot of that.”
“Over time, each person grows in innumerable ways and transforms, and their tastes transform, their perception transforms,” says O’Malley. “It’s like you’re constantly shedding possible versions of yourself.” When you rewatch a film that you haven’t seen in five years, it might mean something entirely different to you. “I think that’s one of the strengths of our music, and the longevity of it, too: the openness to not only changing things, but changing the point of view of what it is.”
Onstage, O’Malley turns sound into a physical force with his Travis Bean “Deo Dei” TB1000A.
Bright Onion Active Splitter Pedal with Phase Switching
ZVEX Effects Super Hard On
So what exactly does “openness” mean? For Anderson and O’Malley, it’s throwing out the “rules” for being a band. They don’t practice; soundchecks before shows are the closest thing they have to rehearsals, and Anderson admits that he despises conventional “band practice.” He casts the idea of practice in a different light. For he and O’Malley, it’s not about strapping on their guitars and going over ideas together. While they were in Illinois to attend a celebration of life for longtime creative collaborator Steve Albini, the two of them went swimming in Lake Michigan. Being present together, at the memorial, going for a swim—that was practice. While they worked on the new record, they took plenty of hikes together in the Washington woods. “That’s our band practice,” says Anderson. “Hiking in the woods.” It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that communing with their surroundings, being present in their bodies, is central to their creative relationship.
“If I remove the word ‘band’ from ‘band practice,’ it makes more sense,” says O’Malley. “It’s the practice of being together. Music is about relationships and interaction.”
O’Malley continues. “I’m not saying going swimming gives me riff ideas, but when you’re in the waves, it’s quite immersive. Being in Illinois, to celebrate the life of a great master who also happened to be a friend, and then taking time to have pleasure by engaging with the ancient lake, it’s pretty powerful.”
Gibson proudly announces the debut of the Sadler Vaden SG™ Standard, the first-ever signature guitar for acclaimed guitarist, producer, songwriter, and longtime member of Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Sadler Vaden. Inspired by Vaden’s road‑tested 2005 Gibson SG Standard, this new model brings the sound and character of his most trusted instrument to players everywhere. Vaden’s original SG, discovered in Memphis, TN, and gifted to him by producer Paul Ebersold after his band suffered a devastating gear theft in Philadelphia, became the anchor of his sound for nearly two decades. It is the guitar he continues to rely on nightly with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, and its voice and feel form the foundation of this new signature edition. The Gibson Sadler Vaden SG Standard is now available worldwide at authorized Gibson dealers, at Gibson Garage locations, and on www.gibson.com.
“There’s going to be a certain amount of people that are fans of me and the band and want it as a collector’s item, but aside from that, I really wanted to have something out there that’s a great instrument,” says Sadler. “That’s what that guitar means to me. My SG was a gift to me, to keep things going, to take on the road—it’s a tool. What I hope is that someone buys this guitar—whether they are a fan of me and the band or not—and they pick that thing up and are like, ‘This is a great guitar! This sounds good! I can take this on the road and in the studio.’ It’s a workhorse guitar. Say a producer in Nashville needs an SG, and they pick that thing up; this thing will do anything they want it to do. I wanted it to be an inspiring guitar.”
Sadler Vaden’s musical journey has been defined by versatility, taste, and an unshakable commitment to great songs. Before joining Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Vaden came up through the Southeastern rock scene, touring heavily with Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ and honing the style that would make him a sought‑after collaborator in Americana and rock circles. As a producer, he has shaped celebrated albums for artists including Morgan Wade, while as a solo artist, he has released critically praised records that showcase his sharp songwriting and expressive guitar work. Throughout his GRAMMY®-Award-winning career, the SG has remained a constant companion and a defining element of his sound onstage and in the studio, in addition to his solo work across four albums: Radio Road (2012), Sadler Vaden (2016), Anybody out There? (2020), and the recent Dad Rock (2024).
Read the brand-new Q&A with Sadler Vaden on the Gibson Gazette, watch his interview on Gibson TV about the Gibson SG Standard HERE, and check out the GRAMMY® Award-Winning songwriter’s unique take on songcraft as he chats with Gibson Gear Guide Channel host Dinesh Lekhraj HERE.
Modeled carefully after Vaden’s own 2005 SG Standard, the Sadler Vaden SG Standard features a solid mahogany body with the iconic double‑cutaway silhouette and the pronounced bevels that make the SG both comfortable and unmistakably bold. Its Natural Burst gloss nitrocellulose finish is precisely shaded to match the matured, slightly darkened look of Vaden’s original guitar. A mahogany neck carved to his preferred Rounded profile is paired with a rosewood fretboard featuring 22 medium jumbo frets and acrylic trapezoid inlays. The headstock carries a mother‑of‑pearl Gibson logo and crown, while a Graph Tech® nut and Vintage Deluxe tuners provide reliable, stage‑ready tuning stability. A personalized touch appears on the two‑ply truss rod cover, which bears Vaden’s initials in place of the standard SG engraving.
The new model features chrome‑plated hardware, including an aluminum Nashville Tune‑O‑Matic™ bridge and matching aluminum Stop Bar tailpiece, ensuring precise intonation and full adjustability for any playing style. Its five‑ply, full‑face “batwing” pickguard houses a set of Sadler Vaden Signature humbucker™ pickups with exposed zebra coils and Alnico 2 magnets. The neck pickup delivers moderate output with warm, vintage‑leaning clarity that responds beautifully to volume changes, while the bridge pickup provides higher output with Patent Applied For‑style punch and midrange focus designed to cut through a live mix without sacrificing body or depth. Each pickup is controlled by its own volume and tone knobs topped with black Top Hat reflectors, with a traditional three‑way toggle switch offering a broad range of tonal options.
Every Sadler Vaden SG Standard is shipped in a brown hardshell case and includes exclusive extras: a Sadler Vaden trading card, unique stickers, and a custom guitar strap. Built for players who value expressiveness, reliability, and character in equal measure, this guitar brings Sadler Vaden’s tone, formed over decades of touring, recording, and refining, to musicians everywhere.
What an empty calendar teaches you about yourself.
Here’s what happened in my so-called professional life in the last 30 days: A lucrative TV gig fell through, my three weekly club dates expired, and the one online session I booked stiffed me after I spent five labor intensive hours on their crap track. This may sound like complaining, but it is not. These are the standard professional musician/entertainer landmines we inevitably encounter while navigating this career path that has no path.
For most Americans, you are what you do. So when a musician is all rig, no gig, it hits you on a deep level that leaves you waking up at 3 a.m. wondering, who am I? What am I doing with my life? Should I do something else? Where can I get money?
I’m reminded of the 2010 Joan Rivers documentary,A Piece of Work. In one poignant scene, Joan looks at her book (calendar) replete with empty dates and says: “If my book ever looked like this, it would mean that nobody wants me and that everything I ever tried to do in life didn’t work and nobody cared and I've been totally forgotten.”
Joan Rivers is widely regarded as one of the greatest comedians of all time. She was a trailblazer for women in comedy, breaking barriers in the 1950s and ’60s when stand-up was male-dominated. She became the first woman to host a late-night network talk show (The Late Show with Joan Rivers, in 1986), won a Daytime Emmy, a Grammy, and was nominated for a Tony. You’d think that after that much success, Joan could calmly coast with plenty of dough and accolades to carry her through. But there she was at age 77, still terrified of not working. She needed the gigs for validation, a lifeline. Maybe that’s what it takes to be a legend.
Musicians and entertainers are like puppies: Give us nothing to do, and we chew on the couch, poo on the floor. For me, music is more than a paycheck. It’s therapy, meditation, medicine, my always-there-for-you friend. Take it away, and the quiet exposes how messy the rest of life can get.
Yet the old truth holds: This too shall pass. Everything shifts—gigs, chops, the economy, even mountains. Grip too hard for permanence, and you suffer. Embrace the flux, and yeah, it’s unnerving at first. But it’s also freeing. Nothing left to clutch so desperately. Let it go.
“For me, music is more than a paycheck. It’s therapy, meditation, medicine, my always-there-for-you friend.”
The Buddha broke it down like this:
Problem: Life is unsatisfactory—there’s always something off, something we resist.
Cause: Clinging, craving, attachment (the fearful, greedy kind).
Cure: Release the grip—suffering fades.
Treatment: Train mind and heart (the Eightfold Path).
It’s not about snuffing desire—good ambition or kindness is skillful. It’s dropping the obsessive hold that breeds turmoil. Zen teachers point out that pain and our personal likes/dislikes will always be part of life and never fully disappear. The real problem comes when we keep demanding that reality change to match what we want or avoid what we don’t want. When we stop fighting what’s actually happening and simply accept the present moment as it is, we naturally feel more at ease and peaceful.
That’s what clicked during the 2020 quarantine. For the first time as an adult, I wasn’t hunting for work. After decades of muscling doors open, the world slammed them shut—and forced me to sit with no control. It was terrifying, then strangely liberating. I learned to breathe in the pause.
Staying zen is calmly accepting whatever comes. That’s why music hooks me—it drops me into pure activity, mutes the world’s chatter, lets me dissolve into the flow.
A younger me in a dry spell would’ve spiraled like Joan Rivers: catastrophizing nonstop, convinced the apocalypse had arrived. After years of white-knuckling through slumps, I’m finally easing up. I play for the joy of it, try to learn something new, but mostly I lean into whatever the day brings; ride my bike, watch movies, hang with family and friends, take long walks, enjoy quiet mornings with coffee and no agenda.
Everything has its season. To everything, turn, turn, turn. The calendar blanks out, then fills again. The phone goes silent, then rings off the hook. In the quiet between, I remember: My sense of self doesn’t vanish when the gigs do. It just gets room to stretch, to root deeper beyond the spotlight.
The guitar’s still here, patient as ever. It never ghosts me. And right now, that’s plenty.
Jack White has announced plans for a wide-ranging 2026 headline tour. North American dates begin July 10 at Washington, DC’s The Anthem and continue through a two-night stand at Atlanta, GA’s Coca-Cola Roxy on November 20-21. Highlights include two-night runs in several cities, including Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, and Miami Beach. Support at Toronto, ON’s RBC Amphitheatre on July 14 comes from microtonal space-time voyagers Angine de Poitrine. Additional special guests will be announced soon.
White and his band will also cross the Atlantic for a series of shows in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including two-night stands at London’s Hammersmith Apollo (August 25-26) and Dublin’s 3Olympia (September 1-2). Vault presales and Artist presales for all newly announced North American, UK, and Ireland dates begin Monday, April 13, at 10 am and 12 pm local time, respectively. General on-sales follow on Friday, April 17, at 10 am Local.Also, it was announced earlier this week that White will be performing a surprise show at this weekend’s Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, CA, set to open the Mojave Tent on Saturday, April 11 at 3 pm, a slot that featured Ed Sheeran, Weezer, and Arcade Fire in previous years. The newly announced dates further an already stacked slate of international headline dates and top-billed festival performances in both Europe and the United States.
The upcoming tour schedule follows last week’s premiere of two fiery new songs, “Derecho Demonico” and “G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs,” available now via Third Man Records on all DSPs and streaming services. Black 7” vinyl is on sale atthirdmanrecords.com and Third Man shops in Nashville, Detroit, and London. Black 7” vinyl arrives at independent record stores worldwide later this week.
Last weekend also saw White and his longtime live band – Patrick Keeler (drums), Dominic Davis (bass), and Bobby Emmett (keys) – offer up electrifying performances of both songs during a landmark sixth appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. On Monday, White paid a very special visit to CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he sat down for an extended interview that included a recitation of his original poem, “Just Suppose to Juxtapose,” from his recently published new book, Jack White Collected Lyrics and Selected Writing Volume 1.
Produced by White, “G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs” and “Derecho Demonico” mark the recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee’s first new music since 2024, a year highlighted by the release of his critically lauded sixth studio album, No Name. The acclaimed collection was honored with a 2025 GRAMMY® Award nomination for “Best Rock Album” – White’s 34th solo-career nomination and 46th overall, along with 16 total GRAMMY® Award wins. No Name includes the consecutive #1 U.S. radio hit singles, “That’s How I’m Feeling” and “Archbishop Harold Holmes,” the latter of which is joined by an electrically charged official music video starring legendary actor and renaissance man John C. Reilly as the ecstatic, impassioned titular character, now boasting over 3.2M worldwide views via YouTube alone.
October 2025 saw the official publication of Jack White Collected Lyrics and Selected Writing Volume 1, available now atthirdmanbooks.com, Third Man physical storefronts, and booksellers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Edited by Third Man Records co-founder Ben Blackwell, the landmark new anthology features never-before-published poems and writings by White, rare and exclusive photos, and new essays written especially for this book by Blackwell, award-winning, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-nominated poet Adrian Matejka, and award-winning, Detroit-based filmmaker and writer dream hampton. It also compiles lyrics from both White’s solo recordings thus far, as well as his acclaimed work with The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather, and other collaborations.
JACK WHITE – LIVE 2026
APRIL
11 – Indio, CA – Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival †
MAY
30 – Sigulda, Latvia – Sigulda Castle
JUNE
4-6 – Aarhus, Denmark – Northside Festival †
12-14 – Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands – Best Kept Secret Festival †
18 – Lyon, France – Les Nuits de Fourvière
19 – Camaiore, Italy – La Prima Estate †
21 – Lignano Sabbiadoro, Italy – Arena Alpe Adria
22-24 – Zagreb, Croatia – INMusic Festival †
JULY
10 – Washington, DC – The Anthem
11 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
12 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
14 – Toronto, ON – RBC Amphitheatre (w/ support from Angine de Poitrine)
15 – Essex Junction, VT – Champlain Valley Exposition
17 – Boston, MA – MGM Music Hall at Fenway
21 – Indianapolis, IN – Everwise Amphitheater at White River State Park
23 – Chicago, IL – Radius
24 – Chicago, IL – The Salt Shed (Outdoors)
25 – Clarkston, MI – Pine Knob Music Theatre
AUGUST
21 – Almaty, Kazakhstan – Park Live Almaty †
22-23 – İstanbul, Turkey – Babylon Soundgarden †
25 – London, UK – Eventim Apollo
26 – London, UK – Eventim Apollo
28 – Bristol, UK – The Prospect Building
29 – Newcastle, UK – 02 City Hall
31 – Belfast, UK – The Telegraph Building
SEPTEMBER
1 – Dublin, Ireland – 3Olympia Theatre
2 – Dublin, Ireland – 3Olympia Theatre
18 – Cincinnati, OH – MegaCorp Pavilion
19 – East Aurora, NY – Borderland Festival †
20 – Richmond, VA - TBA †
24 – San Francisco, CA – Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
When it comes to reverb, very few pedal manufacturers have done as much to reinvent the category as EarthQuaker Devices has over the past couple of decades. The independent, family-owned company has a long history of opening new doors of experimentation for ambient adventurers with landmark pedals—like Afterneath, Dispatch Master and Astral Destiny—that have found their way to stages of every size the world wide.
Perhaps best described as a “soundscape generator,” Towers sends your input signal into a unique set of resonant filtered feedback networks to create a massive stereophonic expanse that’s rich in movement and atmosphere.
Towers is the type of reverb pedal that will sound incomprehensibly huge and haunting with all the settings maxed out, but it’s also the type of pedal that offers virtually endless possibilities for the users who take the time to explore its wide range of sounds. There’s something really special about the textures the pedal generates when its subtler settings are explored.
The sheer amount of possibilities is thanks in part to the pedal’s three distinct modes of operation. There’s a Manual Mode, which puts the player in charge of the filter frequencies and stereophonic movement. Then there’s Envelope Mode, where playing dynamics breathe and morph into ever-changing filter movements. Finally, in LFO Mode, the player surrenders control to a slow-moving oscillator that sweeps the filter frequencies and across the stereo field. And while anyone familiar with the brand’s history knows that Towers isn’t EarthQuaker Devices’ first or only reverb pedal, company President and Founder Jamie Stillman wants to ensure the market understands that Towers is a new type of reverb for the company and is by no means simply an evolution or fresh take on an existing pedal.
"I don't want people to think that we've redone the Afterneath, or that we've redone the Transmisser, or that we've redone the Astral Destiny,” Stillman explained, “Towers represents a linear progression of reverbs. It’s not an evolution of or update on any current or legacy device.”
Stillman is tight lipped when it comes to divulging too much information related to the secret sauce that gives Towers its unique voice, but did explain that the colorful, resonate movement that occurs in the reflections is created internally and isn’t the type of effect you could recreate with external hardware.
When it comes to the big questions most prospective purchasers ask themselves when trying to decide if they should buy a new pedal like “who is this pedal for?” and “would I benefit from adding this to my rig?” The answer is it’s really a pedal for any and every reverb-loving musician who is ready for something new. In the case of Stillman—the architect of Towers—it was something he wanted because he really loves having resonant filter movements in the tails of a reverb.
Ultimately, guitarists, synthesists, drummers, vocalists, and all other types of musicians in search of an expressive reverberant voice are encouraged to make a journey into the Towers, because all who do will be rewarded with massive resonate experimental reverbs, subtle expressive reflections, and a lifetime of ambient adventures.
