Earth

Earth were one of the most original and creative groups in the history of rock music, even though perhaps none of their albums deserve to be counted among the masterpieces of rock. Dylan Carlson’s idea was to place the microscope on one or two elements of rock music and then amplify those elements to an extreme degree. What he obtained has little to do with rock music, but perhaps a great deal to do with abstract painting, with LaMonte Young’s stationary music, and with Einstein’s theory of relativity. These are in fact monotonous, dilated sounds that question our very notions of space, time, and movement.

Dylan Carlson formed Earth in 1990 in Olympia with two friends to imitate their hard-rock idols. Over time the sound concentrated on the sonic minutiae he liked the most (a riff, a cadence, a timbre) and soon “became” only those remnants. Fascinated by Indian music and by LaMonte Young’s experiments, Carlson discovered that by insisting on those elements, even hard-rock could lead to transcendent ecstasy.

The purely instrumental EP Extra-Capsular Extraction (SubPop, 1991) presented three monolithic and drowsy suites of distorted drones and heavy rhythms, which turned the Melvins into environmental trance, and Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music into classical music.
1 stubbornly repeated a Black Sabbath riff over martial, funereal cadences, gradually stretching it until it became a simple hum. From that grim ouverture one entered a world drenched in Gothic science-fiction atmospheres, the world of 2, with its extraterrestrial monster gait, and of the vast 3 (eighteen minutes), an occult ceremony complete with gong strikes that drags itself wearily through unspeakable sonic torments, once again letting the music exhaust itself little by little. Imposing and frightening, Earth’s sound magnified to excess what are normally instants of music (a riff, a distortion, a reverb) and proposed an unusual fusion of hard-rock and ambient music. The bassist Joe Preston then joined the Melvins, leaving control of the group to Dylan Carlson.

A Bureaucratic Desire For Extra-Capsular Extraction (Southern Lord, 2010) reissued Extra-Capsular Extraction and rarities from the same period.

2 (Sub Pop, 1993), i.e., the first full-length album, adheres to those principles. The quarter-hour of distortion in a Panzer-army timbre on Seven Angels is only a taste. The other two suites, Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine and Like Gold And Faceted, each last half an hour. The difference between one and the other is the difference between one “om” and another. These are mental states rather than musical compositions, brain waves rather than structured discourse. Unlike psychedelia, the grim and oppressive sound of these guitar duets seems to want to drill into the mind rather than expand it. Even crescendos are carefully avoided. Any emotion is redundant, even blasphemous. The grating drone continues to propagate identically for minutes on end, using a minimal melodic phrase as its vehicle. The third piece eliminates even that, remaining to float in a limbo two steps from La Monte Young’s eternal music.

Phase 3 (recorded in 1993 but released only in 1995, with only Dylan Carlson remaining from the original lineup) allows a glimpse of some light, if only through the fragmentation of the album into shorter and (relatively) singable tracks (Harvey, Lullaby, Song 4, Song 6), which, performed with different orchestration, could be new-age pieces in the way they caress notes and glide into celestial ecstasy. The album, however, is still anchored in the titanic scores of Tibetan Quaaludes (seven minutes) and Site Specific Carniverous Occurrence (eight minutes), both played with the intensity of a Glenn Branca symphony; but both push beyond the virtual sampling of historic hard-rock riffs, to borrow (the former) the grandeur of early King Crimson and (the latter) the psychedelic chaos of the Nice and early Pink Floyd; and both are nonetheless allowed to float within melodies rather than minimal riffs.
The experimentation does not stop here. Rhythm too is questioned, if it is true that the title track (twelve minutes) is nothing but a sequence of infrared guitar frequencies with no drums, and the even more immense Thrones And Dominions (fourteen minutes) is a cross between a Jimi Hendrix solo, a raga, and an avant-garde concerto.

Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons (SubPop, 1996) continues the group’s progression toward accessibility with eight medium-length tracks and sonorities that avoid the astronomical excesses of the early works. The guitars of Dylan Carlson (the principal composer, also on keyboards), Ian Dickson, and Sean McElligot draw instrumental scores that evoke transcendent atmospheres more than punch-in-the-stomach riffs. The effect is hypnotic rather than adrenaline-fueled. This album particularly highlights the quartet’s eclecticism, able to alternate very diverse and even antithetical styles. In general, however, the work is rooted more in the psychedelic tradition than in grunge. Introduction serves as the manifesto, with the heroic gait of its three chords in 2/2, repeated to the point of nausea, and with a tribute to the psychedelia of Pink Floyd’s A Saucerful Of Secrets when Dickson intones his vibraphone hymn (which returns in the final track, baptized Coda Maestoso In F Minor). This is only the beginning of a long journey across distant horizons of rock harmony, proceeding with the ambient raga of Crooked Axis, in the vein of Seefeel and Spectrum, and with the minimalist cycles of the Middle-Eastern figure of Charioteer. In the dissonant sonata Sonar And Depth Charge one even seems to hear John Cage’s prepared piano (or at least the most alienated Roger Miller). In this music the voice plays a very marginal role. The only true “song,” Tallahassee, attempts to popularize their harmonic system with a Kyuss-like pairing of lysergic melody and seismic jolts.

070796LIVE (Autofact, 2005) is a limited-edition live album. Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword aka Dissolution III (Troubleman Unlimited, 2005) is also a live album, and shares one colossal track with the previous one. Both are disposable. Legacy Of Dissolution (No Quarter, 2005) is a remix album. Also disposable.

Hex Or Printing In The Infernal Method (Southern Lord, 2005), was finally a real release, the first studio album in nine years. Dispensing with the excesses of distortion and amplification, Earth embraced a melancholy Ennio Morricone-like atmosphere (via a crisp guitar twang and an arsenal of instruments), instead of the usual Black Sabbath funeral, and folded their apocalyptic instrumental tides into less harrowing structures. The music is impressionistic and descriptive instead of being expressionistic and destructive, but it rarely reaches the pinnacles of drama of their past albums (notable exception the evocative Mirage, Dylan Carlson in excelsis).

Hibernaculum (Southern Lord, 2007) re-recorded some old Earth compositions in the Morricone-ian style of Hex, notably the 16-minute version of A Plague of Angels. Basically, Earth produced a remix of their own music.

The Bees Made Honey in the Skull of the Lion (Southern Lord, 2008) was a follow-up to The Hex in the same "light" vein, but less fragmentary. It further focused on melody and dynamics, adding guitarist Bill Frisell to the mix. and allowing keyboardist Steve Moore more freedom. Catatonic guitar notes sculpt the funereal blues of Omens and Portents I - The Driver, a towering monolith that hardly changes at all during its nine-minute course. Miami Morning Coming Down II is the most daring piece: a minimalist pattern of piano a guitar is detonated by huge guitar twang and gospel organ and the organ remains the surviving sound at the end of the internecine slaughter. The gothic march of Omens and Portents II - Carrion Crow is the product of a triangular geometry between the cascade of guitar tones, the steady drumming and the confused mass of reverbs in the background (including piano). The jams stretch out for eight or nine minutes, taking their time to forge an identity. Unlike in the past, though, they transcend the funereal method to actually achieve a sense of life. The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull (a slow-motion carillon with piano and sitar) and Engine of Ruin even display a guitar melody. And just accelerate Hung From The Moon to obtain a gentle serenade. If Hex was Earth's country album, then Bee is their blues/gospel album. The new sound of Earth owes more to Ennio Morricone's soundtracks and Calexico's atmospheric roots-rock than to Black Sabbath.

Radio Live (Southern Lord, 2009) documents a live performance.

Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light I (Southern Lord, 2011) continued the progression (or regression) towards an even more introverted and atmospheric sound, not even remotely related to their doom-metal. Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light II (Southern Lord, 2012) is an appendix to the previous album, a bit too monotonous after the lethargic drum-less and atypical overture His Teeth Did Brightly Shine.

Dylan Carlson launched Drcarlsonalbion with Edward Kelley's Blues (Tapeworm, 2012), containing only two colossal jams, Edward Kelley's Blues for field recordings and guitar and Drunk On Angelspeech, an esoteric sermon for guitar and mellotron that constitutes an intriguing experiment on trance and noise but goes on far too long; and with the "folk" album La Strega And The Cunning Man In The Smoke (Latitudes, 2012), featuring vocalist Teresa Colamonaco of Screaming Tea Party and fellow guitarist Jodie Cox. Drcarlsonalbion's third album Gold (2014) was a film soundtrack: 24 atmospheric distorted guitar melodies that hark back to Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young but with country-ish overtones.

Earth returned with Primitive And Deadly (Southern Lord, 2014), whose main novelty was that it added vocals to a couple of tracks. The trio this time featured Carlson, drummer Adrienne Davies and bassist Bill Herzog of Sunn O)))). The album opens with the ritualistic esoteric heavy doom of Torn by the Fox of the Crescent Moon, perhaps a way not to scare old fans away. Then it boasts Mark Lanegan wailing like Neil Young in the slow-burning blues jam There Is a Serpent Coming, which sounds like a slow-motion version of Cream. The voice of Rabia Shaheen Qazi, oscillating between ethereal and hymnodic, does a more intriguing job in the ten-minute From the Zodiacal Light, but the music is little more than a waltzing version of Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child. The second instrumental, Even Hell Has Its Heroes, displays an Ennio Morricone-ian fascination with martial pace, funereal bells, and assorted fatalistic nuances. The melodic element is even stronger in Rooks Across the Gate, thankfully with minimal vocal contribution by Lanegan, that ends, again, in a funereal march. The Earth is no longer flat.

Earth's guitarist Jodie Cox joined Sex Swing for their second album, Type II (2020).