Black Vinyl. XKatedral, in collaboration with La Becque Editions, announces a new album from Stephen O'Malley, co-founder of SUNN O))). Les Sphères (effondrez-les) presents two long-form compositions for pipe organ, performed by O'Malley alongside Kali Malone and Frederikke Hoffmeier. Recorded on Christmas 2021 at Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Switzerland, the album captures Les Grandes Orgues, an instrument of extraordinary lineage: Scherrer (1777), Walker (1867), Kuhn (1995). Three centuries of organ-building converge in a single mechanism, and O'Malley treats this accumulation of craft as collaborator rather than mere instrument.

The compositions derive from Les Sphères (effondrez-les) Phases I-V, a suite O'Malley created for Belgian/Swiss choreographer Cindy Van Acker. The title's imperative, "collapse them," suggests both architectural dissolution and the shattering of celestial spheres, those Ptolemaic constructs that once enclosed the known universe. O'Malley's organ work enacts this collapse in slow motion: sustained tones that seem to press against physical limits, harmonics that accumulate until the air itself thickens. For listeners familiar with O'Malley's guitar-based practice, the transition to pipe organ represents less departure than distillation. The concerns remain constant: duration as compositional parameter, volume as sculptural medium, the body of the listener as resonating chamber. What changes is the source. Where electric guitar requires amplification to achieve these effects, the pipe organ generates them mechanically, air forced through metal and wood, physics made audible without electronic mediation.

O'Malley's career has consistently refused boundaries. Beyond SUNN O))), KTL, and Khanate, his collaborations span Scott Walker, Alvin Lucier, choreographer Gisèle Vienne, authors Dennis Cooper and Alan Moore, Peter Rehberg, Fujiko Nakaya, Jim Jarmusch, and Jóhann Jóhannsson. He has worked with experimental music research centers including IRCAM, INA-GRM (Paris), and EMS (Stockholm). This breadth reflects not dilettantism but a coherent investigation pursued across multiple domains.

The presence of Kali Malone and Frederikke Hoffmeier extends the collaborative dimension. Malone's own organ works have established her as a leading voice in contemporary sacred minimalism; Hoffmeier, performing as Puce Mary, brings a sensibility forged in industrial and noise contexts. The three performers find common ground in the Lausanne organ, their individual histories absorbed into collective breath.

Mixed by O'Malley at EMS, Stockholm, with additional mixing by François-Xavier Delaby and Tristan Mazire in Paris. Mastered and lacquer cut by Rashad Becker in Berlin. Pressed at Optimal, Germany.