大象传媒

Misconceptions abound when dealing with Earth. They attract a crowd generally split between the devoted faithful, and the morbidly curious. They are the kind of band whose output turns a certain kind of music fan into an obsessive, slavering over every drone and tone, single-minded in their pursuit of the heaviest sound ever heard. But on the other hand, thanks to main man Dylan Carlson's involvement in the death of Kurt Cobain (Carlson bought him the shotgun), the grunge faithful always seem to pop up at the gigs as well. Either way, it leads to an unusual crowd, and one is never sure quite what to expect from a band like this.

After the rapturous praise that greeted their performance in the Black Box last year, expectations are high for this smaller, more intimate setting. It falls to Kasper Rosa to kick-start the evening with their expansive and intricate take on post-rock, that most maligned of genres. If one was to highlight a problem with post-rock as a genre, it would almost certainly be that it tends to veer into formulaic territory, endlessly repeating the same trick over and over again. Kasper Rosa are prone to this, but are savvy enough to inject enough of their own personality into the music to prevent it becoming stale. A doomy and apocalyptic mood clings to their music, conjuring images of a blood red moon hanging over a desolate wasteland. There are moments were they come very close to transcending the limitations of the genre and staking out some new territory as their own, but this nascent band still need a bit more time to find their feet.

Our appetites whetted, Stebmo take to the stage and begin playing some of the most alienating music imaginable. Consisting of Steve Moore and Don McGreevy on electric piano and drums respectively, both are members of Earth, and seem incredibly grateful for the opportunity to play before the headliners (i.e. their own band). Peddling an infuriating muddle of jazz fusion sounds, this becomes stale very quickly. Despite having a surfeit of interesting ideas, the execution of this particular side-project appears to manifest itself in the shape of pointless noodling, which goes on forever and ever and ever. It's an endurance test, and even the hipsters at the front who start off appreciatively nodding quickly tire of this abrasive and punishing racket, the life visibly draining out of them.

Eventually, it's over, and a collective sigh of relief is breathed as Carlson and Adrienne Davies join their bandmates on the stage and prepare themselves for what is to come. And this is where the misconceptions really become apparent. In their original incarnation, Earth were purveyors of impossibly heavy and impossibly slow drone, taking the blueprint sound of early Black Sabbath and bringing it to its logical conclusion. But that was over fifteen years ago, and times have changed.

The Earth of today create shimmering and beautiful soundscapes, notes hanging in the air for all eternity while the world turns slowly behind them. The pace remains the same, with the shifts in the music having the same effect as tectonic plates grinding against each other. This wordless music has a voice all of its own as interlocking melodies shift and slowly wrap themselves around each other, the glorious repetition creating a world entirely of their own making.

To the uninitiated, it may just seem like Carlson and his band are slowly trudging through the same sequence of notes for far longer than is necessary, but Carlson is a master of this kind of thing, and every sound we hear is carefully placed in context, creating a mesmerising whole. It's hypnotic and beautiful and time seems to stop. Creeping dread and the wonder of creation seamlessly sewn together, Earth truly are a force of nature, the noise they make vibrating endlessly into the night.