The words "improv rock" can inspire anxiety. Properly appreciating King Crimson, for example, takes a level of concentration not everyone can summon. But Seattle drone-metal band Earth has kept it simple - and heavy - for 17 years, experimenting with liver-quivering guitar tones that soothe like a couple Klonopin stirred into a warm Bud.
Earth's 1991 Sub Pop debut, "Extra-Capsular Extraction," set the genre's pace, making minimal and moody as legitimately metal as fast and complicated. The legendary "Earth 2" followed, stoking the bowls of stoner-rockers Sleep, Japanese shredders Boris and Sunn 0))), a onetime Earth tribute band that went on to found Southern Lord, the label that's now home to all things doom and drone.
To frontman Dylan Carlson, Earth has as much in common with Scottish pibroch bagpipers or Japanese gagaku players as it does with its longhair brethren. "I view it as a continuum," he explains. "The drone has been used by musicians back into antiquity. It's a way of doing things."
In the late '90s, Earth disappeared for a while. The band's well-received 2005 return, the country-inflected "Hex (Or Printing
in the Infernal Method)," moved Earth's sound away from heavy distortion.
"When I was a kid, my favorite way to listen to music was driving in a car," Carlson says, recalling a childhood cross-country move set largely to the Allman Brothers Band. "I've always liked landscapes. In instrumental music, there aren't words to tell a story, so I tried to find ways to imply that kind of landscape."
A tour with Sunn 0))) brought Earth to the flannel faithful and a new generation of heshers. "We're bigger together than either of us would be separately," says Carlson. "And lest you think you're 'making it,' there's always that show with 30 people to give you a more realistic picture." "I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to play to these fans," says Carlson. "People seem to be interested in what we're doing next, and not just hearing 'Earth 2' over and over." Well, maybe just "Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine," for a quick 27-minute encore.
--Shauna Miller (Express, July 2007)
