Sunna's Sobering Minute
By Peter Gaston
CDNOW Editorial Staff
Modern-day Israel often perplexes the Western world. A tiny strip of land no larger than New Jersey serves as a spiritual epicenter for three of the world's major religions, two of which -- Jews and Muslims -- wage daily battles, both physical and political, over its hallowed soil. Around the time of the Gulf War, the future of Israel once again stood in the balance.
That's about the time Sunna's Jon Harris journeyed to the Holy Land. Like many Westerners, Jewish or not, Harris landed at a kibbutz, a communal setting where residents work together and share the wealth equally, but he never quite acclimated himself to the collective vibe. "I'd work for vodka," he says. "Fuck all to the money."
Instead of finding his niche on a kibbutz, Harris began to examine the dynamics of the Israeli situation, perhaps through the bottom of the bottle. "When someone would try to get across the border from Lebanon, and all the fucking spotlights would come on, and fucking 12 helicopters would fly over," Harris recalls, "we used to just sit up on top of our place drinking Goldstar [an Israeli beer], just watching it all go off. It was really mad."
Harris began to see the Israeli landscape more clearly. Young Israelis, serving their mandatory military service, were faced with mortal danger on a daily basis. "It's really a waste seeing young kids walking around with guns and all that, and seeing things like a 'No Hand Grenades' sign, you know, signposts with a red circle with a hand grenade in it and a line through it," he says. Harris had discovered his muse.
"It was that trip that really made me realize that I had something to offer lyrically," he says. "After five months of being there, I was like, 'Fucking hell, I'm gonna go home and get a band together.'" Not a bad idea, considering he almost got booted from the country for an alcohol-induced brawl in a local disco.
After his return to England, Sunna (the Arabic word used to describe "desirable" acts within the Muslim faith) became Harris' outlet to describe his Israeli observations, which are far from thinly veiled on the band's debut, One Minute Science. "Power Struggle," the throbbing first single, and the brooding and melancholy "Preoccupation" specifically speak of the paradoxes involved in Israeli life. "I'm Not Trading" finds Sunna layering buzzing guitars and Harris' raspy vocals -- which recall a whinier Layne Staley -- atop a distinctly Middle-Eastern rhythm.
Surprisingly, this light-industrial rock comes from Melankolic, the label owned and operated by trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack The deal originated with one of those "right place, right time" music industry stories.
"I was working with [One Minute Science producer] Neil Davidge on a couple of my tunes in a studio in Bristol when the Massive guys came in, and I didn't even know who they were, didn't recognize them," Harris recalls. "They sort of walked in to have a listen to our tunes and asked who the producer was." Later, while working on Mezzanine, Massive Attack enlisted Davidge and Harris to contribute. Pleased with the results, they recorded the Harris-penned "Reflection" as a B-side to the "Inertia Creeps" single.
Sunna will open for the Maynard James Keenan project A Perfect Circle through September, and "Power Struggle" can be seen accompanying an invisible and devious Kevin Bacon in the summer thriller Hollow Man. The plan is simple: Attack American audiences like those helicopters on the Israel-Lebanon border. "I can't wait, man," Harris says. "It's gonna be wicked."