Live Review: Divide and Dissolve Shake VIVID Sydney

David Byrne wrote a jaw dropping review of Seattle drone metal band Sunn O))) about 20 years ago. You can’t find it online but it featured in Best Music Writing 2006, a collection of works that I would thrust at friends and strangers I’d met around a plate in a kitchen on the right side of 7am.

The writing style was stream-of-consciousness, very Gonzo.

Divide and Dissolve – ‘Provenance’

A few lines really stayed with me: “The band form a semi-circle around Marshall speakers and one by one enter wearing monk’s robes.”

I can’t remember every sentence but it builds to this: “I think about Jesus’ dick and Mary’s cunt.”

Byrne concluded: “This is theatre.”

Going into tonight’s performance [Melbourne doom duo Divide And Dissolve at Sydney’s Metro Theatre as part of the vivid live 2025 music programme] the blasphemous couplet is ringing in my ears. How will I review a doom metal act where each song is more a movement than a traditional four minute verse-chorus-verse vibe?

By channelling David Byrne, dipshit.

My plus one is an ex-girlfriend from London backpacking days.

We’ve spoken once in 20 years and exchanged only a handful of messages in that time but there is an undeniable bond.

We both now have a life partner we love and two daughters.

When I suggest out-of-the-blue she join me for a junket dinner at Luke’s Kitchen and then a show because it will be fun and weird and there will be an odd dynamic she jumps at the chance:

“I’ll take the frisson and free meal vibes.”

It helps she loves heavy music.

We meet cute, relive a few (read: many) forgotten stories of outrageous Old Blighty adventures and head to the show.

Vibes are high.

Led by Black and Cherokee composer Taikaya Reed, the stage is bathed in drifting fog and Lynchian red lighting.

Reed is joined by percussionist Scarlett Shreds who she calls “Literally the best drummer in the world, I’m not being hyperbolic.”

Things are about to get loud.

I notice a discarded earplug on the ground.

Might need that later.

Reed starts by playing some neo-classical notes on her soprano saxophone and looping them. Everyone is transfixed.

I think of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle films.

I think of Mrs Murphy my Grade 2 music teacher who was obsessed with the recorder and once brought a leech into class to show us how it could suck puss out of Sarah Pryor’s wound.

I think of my gorgeous daughters sleeping serenely in their beds 863 kilometres away.

Reed picks up her guitar and plays some ominous yet hopeful notes and really – I mean really – lets them ring out.

We thoughtfully sway to the aural assault.

Shreds drums bombastically and beautifully.

They lock eyes with deep affection; a two-person hive mind.

I think of John Bonham and Mo Tucker.

I think of how Reed and Shreds must have serendipitously found each other after original member Sylvia Neill left the group in 2022.

I think of all the misogynist 70s rockers who hit the tubs in a similar way and reflect that tonight Shreds is effectively taking that power back from those cockstars.

I think of my little brother Tom getting tinnitus at a Metallica concert.

I think of seeing Primus in the rain at Offshore Festival in Torquay in 2000.

I think of bongs.

It’s getting very loud. Like, apocalyptic.

I’m three metres from one of the speakers.

My ribs rattle and my shins shiver.

I would be experiencing gooseflesh but the hairs on my body seem too in awe to prick up. I pick up the lone(ly) earplug, dust it off, scrunch it up and jam it in my left ear.

It deadens the sound coming out of the nearest speaker and my arm and leg follicles muster up the courage.

My gig buddy and I nod in mutual appreciation.

This is theatre.

“I flew 30 hours to be here,” Reed says, her voice soft and melodic.

The silence after she speaks is deafening.

The contrast between playing and chatting is so pronounced I think about how their sound divides a room then dissolves that tension.

Reed was Melbourne-based but now I’m not so sure.

She has a transient air of no fixed abode.

This flightiness feels like the opposite of what Divide and Dissolve represent.

The project has a specific purpose: to dismantle white supremacy, call out racism and protest against colonisation. It’s an uphill battle and that’s why this VIVID Festival show feels potent.

Case in point: “They were so horrible (at customs). I went through once, then twice. Again and again. Then they gave me a fifth check,” she says with a dismissive, what-the-actual-fuck tone.

“There’s so much going on in the world, so many intense experiences. I’m always talking about Indigenous people up here and the aggression that white supremacy and colonisation contains,” she says.

“We need to use all our power to change. This music is about how we can change.”

Reed picks up her axe again and plays some Sabbath-esque guitar chords.

I think of Scott Morrison receiving a King’s Birthday honour for “eminent service to the people” and “leadership of the national COVID-19 response”.

Give me a break. King Dick more like it.

Reed speaks to us again about another micro-aggression: being in a cafe and having a numb foot and overhearing an old racist white lady sounding off then accidentally kicking her chair.

“I don’t care that my feet kicked her chair, twice! The second time was on purpose.”

We whoop and cheer. Fuck that lady.

There is a lot of love in the room, magnified by the sparse numbers. Everyone here feels part of the solution.

Reed herself has said their latest album Insatiable is about the themes covered above and something a little unexpected: love.

“The next song is called ‘Loneliness’.”

Re-enter the inquisitive saxophone, those cathartic drums and a feeling of triumph over adversity.

My date and I don’t need to give each other a look — we both know the three word review.

This is theatre.

Mikey Cahill attended Vivid Festival as a guest of Destination NSW.