Day 10: "One Minute Science" - Sunna (2000)

It's possible that I might not be giving this blog post the full attention that it deserves, as I'm in the middle of judging a Netrunner tournament with 28 players as I write this, so if my thoughts seem more fractured that usual, it probably means someone has done something illegal which requires my attention.

Fortunately, today's album is both fairly obscure and has a relatively simple story attached to why I own it!

listen to me here

Fun factoid - I've been calling this album "One Minute Silence" for 16 years.  It was actually called that in the header of this post until my eyes communicated with my brain insistently enough that the word I thought it was, was in fact a completely different word.  It's amazing the tricks your mind can play on you.

This is another album in my collection I own entirely on the strength of one song.  

But I need to a little background first.  I've been a fan of professional wrestling since the mid 80's.  I remember watching Wrestlemania V on what became Sky TV (but was BSB back then) when we lived in Poland for a few years because of my Dad's job.  I became hooked on the larger the life personalities and ridiculous gimmicks, and part of my Saturday ritual involved watching Saturday Superstars in the every week without fail.

My strange addiction to Professional Wrestling is one of those things which never quite went away.  I still find it as compelling as I did back then, though for entirely different reasons.  It's a weird and fascinating business, and for everyone who says "but you know it's all fake right?", I can't help but wonder how they can enjoy Game of Thrones, or Breaking Bad, knowing the outcome is pre-determined.  And if you can't be amazed at the skill required to do what those athletes do 350 days a year (generally) without hurting themselves and each other, I don't get it.

Anyway, that's not much about music, so let's veer back in that direction.

When you're a young nerd who loves wrestling, and you want to be part of that world, but the idea of going to the gym and getting diesel doesn't really fit with your schedule of video games and drinking, fantasy wrestling was the next best thing.  What started as a series of kind of write-in fanzines where people created alternative wrestling persona and wrote about their exploits in a kind of collaborative storytelling exercise with a very specific slant, blossomed online into what became known as 'e-Fedding', basically allowing people to share and post ideas faster than the Royal Mail would allow.

It was right up my alley;  I heard about it, did some cursory research, and found an eFed accepting applications (as really each Fed could only accommodate so many players before it became unwieldy).   I spent some time thinking about my wrestling alter-ego, and when I was accepted, began playing.

I won't bore you with the details of my wrestling fan-fiction throughout the years, but my experience eFedding is why I own this album.  I'd heard "Power Struggle" on late night MTV one night at D's house, where we'd regularly stay up till 2am watching MTV and playing card games together.  It had everything that (in my opinion) made for great wrestling entrance music - an instantly recognisable intro, a driving beat, and a kind of natural cadence to it that felt like you could choreograph some kind of entrance to it.  Because I wanted to use it for my wrestling persona online, I had to hunt down the album, rip the Mp3 off it, and post it to the forum I was using.

On re-listening to it, I'm really surprised by how much I like it.  With the exception of "Power Struggle", I don't think I've heard any of the other tracks on here more than once or twice, and for an early 2000's rock album, its surprisingly different and original.  There are no nu-metal tropes here, and there's an interesting use of electro synths and samples in here along with the guitars which feels like it was ahead of its time in the era of nu-metal in which is was birthed.  The vocals are also clear, emotional, wistful and aggressive as appropriate for the song.  It's honestly a bit of a hidden gem, if this kind of weird rock-electro fusion from 2000 is your kind of thing.

Sadly, thing's aren't looking great for Sunna (of whom this is their only album on Spotify);  they released a second album after an eight year hiatus which I had no idea existed after a lineup change, with a third album released in 2011, and a fourth had to be crowdfunded for release in 2013, never a good look.

Maybe its true that true artists aren't appreciated in their own lifetime;  I certainly didn't, and its only now, seventeen years later, that I'm considering giving their debut album a real chance to show me what it's made of.