Harry Sword's 'Monolithic Undertow' Explores Drone Music from Ancient Rites to Modern Metal

Harry Sword's book 'Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion' examines humanity's enduring fascination with drone music across millennia. Published by White Rabbit Books at £20 in hardcover, the work traces sustained sound from ancient Greek Dionysian rites featuring aulos pipes to contemporary acts like Bongripper and Sunn O))). Sword connects Byzantine chant, Alice Coltrane's Vedantic cassettes, Black Sabbath's blues, and The Velvet Underground's doom-clouds through this sonic thread. He describes drone as maximizing belief's intention and evoking astral worlds, while also noting its presence in Neolithic Malta's Oracle Room through archaeo-acoustics. The 1960s incorporation of sitar drone into Western rock involved psychedelics like LSD, which Sword argues creates its own drone by disrupting the frontal cortex and blurring time. Though omitting online music phenomena like YouTube's slowed Justin Bieber tracks, the book emphasizes physical experiences: Sunn O)))'s distorted guitar walls and Bongripper's live performances enhanced by hydroponic weed. Sword ultimately frames drone as folk music and a tool for personal liberation.