Earth
2 - Special Low Frequency Version

LA RECENSIONE

How to make a movie using only the deleted scenes. How to write a novel using only the discarded sheets thrown into the trash. This is the idea behind the music-making approach of Earth, which is evident even from the name they chose. Earth was, in fact, the original name—later discarded—of a band that would eventually be called Black Sabbath. A paradigmatic example for Dylan Carlson's band: making rock using only what conventional rock has always (in part) discarded: dirty and poorly sketched riffs, deafening feedback, whistling microphones, overdriven bass. Everything else—rhythm, melodic lines, emotion, communication—is abandoned.

Based on this concept of "negative" rock, "2 - Special Low Frequency Version" was conceived in 1993: a 73-minute improvisation divided into 3 parts. The first two, titled "Seven Angels" and "Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine" (15 and 27 minutes long, respectively) present a monotonous and obsessive hard rock riff that undergoes minimal, imperceptible variations as the minutes pass, while a nerve-wracking and hypnotic wall of feedback obscures the view like a thick fog, with just a few sparse bass notes further weighing down the sound. The last track—"Like Gold And Faceted"—completely abolishes any melodic line: no more riffs; for half an hour there is only a black stream of feedback that seems endless, while in the distance, a drum emits sinister, random pulses. But never a rhythm. It's as if Earth wanted to take hard rock and strip it of any dynamism, making it something immobile, inscrutable, and incommunicable. It's curious how in 12 years almost no one (including the writer) has ever noticed this work and Earth. Only the praises gifted by bands like Tool, Isis, and Mastodon have kept alive an underground cult that has come to prominence in recent months thanks to Sunn O))), Boris, Khanate, and a remix album by Mogwai, Autechre, and Jim O'Rourke.

The judgment on such a record is honestly difficult: "2 - Special Low Frequency Version" so greatly deviates from the traditional canons of rock that it is impossible to judge it by the same parameters used for any rock album. One can only appreciate the work for its extreme and radical originality (but not too much if one thinks of Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" and some live bootlegs of the Velvet Underground). Probably, one will need to wait for the aforementioned bands to mature to make evident the actual influence exerted by Earth on upcoming music; and probably one will also need to wait for listeners to acquire a critical language and appropriate parameters for the objective evaluation of this record.