On a rainy Sunday night in Richmond,Seattle Drone legends Earth were set to play the final leg of their first ever Australian tour. As I entered the venue,it was clear that this was a gig for the outcasts and diehards,also known as musicians.Opening up the night were local band 'The Margins'.Never heard of em either.Curiously,all the members of the band opted to sit down.for the duration of the set.Effect laden and experimental,The Margins played a set filled with textural voids and some strange rhythmic patterns.I even picked up on a gear junkie bassist playing with a slide.Interesting,and certainly a fairly intimate performance,but I wasn't blown away.
Next up was a girl by the name of Bonnie Mercer.Now a lot of soloists don't do much for me,and I really wasn't sure what to expect.Bonnie took to the stage and instead of chords and melodies,she unleashed the doom,all on her own.With biting feedback,and gutteral growls,I simply do not understand how that girl got so much low end out of one little guitar!
Playing one 20 minute instrumental drone piece,reminiscent of a scaled down Sunn 0))),Bonnie Mercer had a fast filling band room captivated perfectly,using only drones and noise.Good stuff.
However, no one was in any doubt that the huge crowd assembled was here for one thing and one thing only.To catch the inventors of drone,and in my opinion,one of the most continuously ground breaking bands going around. Earth are a strange part of the Seattle explosion,whom I have covered
here, and never before in their 21 years of defying any kind of norm have they visited our shores.The band took to the stage to a huge roar from an attentive band room,all so excited they could hardly speak. Frontman Dylan Carlson has clearly taken a hard road in the business,evidenced in a man aged beyond his years. He and his partner,drummer Adrienne Davies were joined by a mysterious man on bass,whom I believe is relatively new to the band.Much like a UFO flying overhead,Earth were a captivating rarity from another place.In between sets,
no one uttered a word.You could hear a pin drop through out the entire venue,as Earth played through an intimate set that spanned their entire career.Given the varied nature of their discography, and the 're-birth' if you like around 2006,one wouldn't have expected the mixed bag of Earth tunes played through the night.Everything from a long,drawn out,dis jointed version of 'The Bees Made Honey In The Lions Skull',to the the repetitive,yet purely thoroughly evil 'Ouroboros Is Broken',and the strangely tuned 'Tallahassee',played in a very different manner. The band had some new arrangements of old favourites, some medleys of previous tracks (brilliantly transitioned I might add) as well as some new material,a track titled 'Badger'.
Earth,in this 3 piece incarnation were much grittier, and dirtier than the recent studio recordings,and I felt having at least one of the many instruments included on the studio recordings could have added a lot.Some Piano,or Cello to add some character to the drone,but I guess Australian tours are not the most convenient to do.Seeing Adrienne Davies method of drumming live has put much of her studio work into perspective.She plays with an exact timing,bringing her arms up and around,much like a conductor leading an orchestra,and landing with exact precision and dynamic variation,which counter balances the continuous drone of the guitar.I particularly liked Dylan Carlson's introduction to 'Old Black': "some say it's about a guitar,but we all know it's actually about a cat".10 minute drone song about a cat-right on.
After playing a lengthy set,the band were more than happy to oblige the cries for an encore,whipping out another 20 minutes of medley/down tune freak out jam to end a set with class and dignity.
With new material,and the promise of a return visit within another 21 years,hopefully next year,the Sunn is shining brightly on Earth as an Australian favorite.
