When music has a certain dangerous allure

Sometime in 1693, a well-to-do English playwright named John Dennis set out on a tour across the European continent. Of all the sights he took in, the snow-swept Alps left the deepest impression.

In a letter, he described his journey through the mountains as a "pleasure to the eye as music is to the ear" and "mingled with Horrours, and sometimes almost with despair."

Dennis' contrasting emotions sparked an aesthetic concept known as "the sublime" — a commingling appreciation of beauty and peril as present in untouched nature. The sensation is humbling: A mountain is sublime because its beauty can kill you.

Seattle music is the same way. Not all of it — as previously reported here, much of the current sound is "pretty, pastoral and mellow." But there are a few bands that play a sublime sort of rock, lofty, gorgeous stuff, thematically aligned with nature, possibly capable of crushing the life out of you by tension or by volume.

Mamiffer, for instance, is the new project of Seattle pianist Faith Coloccia. Enhanced by local metal-meisters from Helms Alee and These Arms Are Snakes, Mamiffer's music describes vast midnight vistas swept by lightning and loneliness, all via piano, guitar and drums, plus unorthodox non-

instruments like glass jars on a tile floor, field recordings of the freeway and backward-looped melodica.

The band's second-ever performance is Sunday at the Rendezvous (with House of Low Culture and Hemingway at 10:30 p.m.; $8). Mamiffer is celebrating the upcoming release of their Hydra Head debut, "Hirror Enniffer."

"The words are rearranged English so that the sound of the word when it's said invokes a meaning," Coloccia says of the album title and band name. "It's not the actual word itself being the definition but the sound of the word, the way it's said or how the grouping of the letters look when it's read."

There is beauty in Mamiffer, tempered by mystery and maybe a little sorcery. Guitar gleams, bass broods, strings mourn, inexplicable sounds gust through the background. A stark, patient intensity reigns. Taken in its expansive-yet-concise 35 minutes, "Hirror Enniffer" realizes a specific intent.

"Hopefully, it will invoke something like the other mind, which isn't just the normal daily mind to humans," Coloccia says. "Other mind — it's just a different way of thinking, a breaking of a conventional pattern in daily life."

If Mamiffer is a desolate wilderness, Earth, the influential rock band started by Dylan Carlson in 1990, is a volcanic eruption. Back then, Carlson was best known as the guy who bought the shotgun Kurt Cobain killed himself with; today, Earth's first full-length — released on Sub Pop in 1993 — is considered the origin of "doom drone," heavy-duty rock built on skull-rattling volume and sustained riffing.

In their recent work, Earth — who play Sept. 19 at Vera Project and open for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at Showbox SoDo Sept. 23 and 24 — take a more melodic approach. "The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull" (2007) is a form of power meditation. Glacial riffs climax with epic torrents as vicious as they are exquisite. There's a certain peace in its violence.

Perhaps most illustrative of Carlson's visionary take on heavy music: Last June, Earth toured with sultry alt-country chanteuse Jesse Sykes as opener.

"There's all different kinds of beauty that are possible in life and in music," Carlson says. "A lot of bands that try to be heavy just concentrate on volume and noise, whereas you can do all that stuff and still be melodically oriented. I think a lot of people think of beauty as a saccharin melody or something like that. I've never quite felt that way. Beauty in music can be a profound experience."

Another must-see show this week is tonight, when the Seattle chapter of the Paul Green School of Rock performs at El Corazon. Featuring local kids ages 8-18, this group just blew the stainless-steel doors off EMP during Bumbershoot. Tonight at 8, they play the music of the Sex Pistols and the Ramones at El Corazon; all ages, $10 advance, $12 door.

Jonathan Zwickel: wickelicious@gmail.com