Sunn O))) Map Their Influences in Amoeba ‘What’s In My Bag?’

The long-running Amoeba Records “What’s In My Bag?” series thrives on detours — artists rifling through bins and pulling back the curtain on the records, books, and artifacts that shape their sound. The latest episode, featuring Sunn O)))’s Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley, doesn’t just reveal personal taste. It quietly maps a sonic world where blues, free jazz, raga, and Japanese court music all converge at the amplifier’s edge.

The duo begin with John Lee Hooker’s No Friend Around and Bill Orcutt’s Music in Continuous Motion, two choices that immediately widen the lens beyond their amplifier-worshipping reputation. From there, the expected pillars appear — Venom, Ornette Coleman, John and Alice Coltrane — but so do lesser-canonized figures like electroacoustic composer Beatriz Ferreyra and experimentalist Joshua Abrams. The selections refuse to sit inside genre brackets: a raga album by Shivkumar Sharma, Hariprasad Chaurasia, and Brijbhushan Kabra sits next to Gagaku Suites, a collection of traditional Japanese court music. Gil Scott-Heron’s A Legend in His Own Mind and the latest Exodus record share space with Rosalía’s Lux, an album whose pull among heavy and experimental listeners continues to grow.

The appearance arrives as Sunn O))) prepare for an October run of live shows behind their recent self-titled album. No direct commentary is needed; the bag itself does the talking, sketching a map of sustained tone, cultural memory, and pressure.