Earth have become drone veterans. They have been involved in the style for over 17 years, cataloguing the exploration of heavy doom, sedate rock, arcane spaghetti-western style country and purring gospel. They stray from vocals and in fact everything guitar music has come to stand for. Sounds are thoughtful with a powerfully steady arc, taking influences from colossal riff bands like Sabbath, Melvins and Flipper as well as repetition experiments in the vein of La Mont Young. Better known label mates Sunn O))) originated as tribute to Earth, referencing the Sunn O))) amps the band formerly used to obtain it’s loud, feverishly heavy tone. After several line up changes and other complications the band stands as a 4 piece with Dylan Carlson on guitar, Adrienne Davies on drums, Steve Moore on keys, trombone and Don McGreevy on bass.
“Umm…we have to do some laundry, do you want to come with us and do the interview there?” Adrienne Davies asks me.
I first meet Dylan Carlson on the street outside of Berlin’s Lido while he lights a cigarette. It’s rainy and surreal. He nods his ball cap with a short hi and goes back to scanning the street for a taxi. His eyes are an intense cross between rat and hawk. Adrienne stands beside him, somehow raw, yet motherly and sweet. We get into a taxi and Carlson takes charge in directing the cab driver in the broken German he says he kind of remembers from high school. The cabbie drives us over the Warschauer bridge and into Friedrichshain, where we look for a Laundromat. He drops us off and we cross several lanes of traffic and tramline. When we get inside there are hippies, students, and no laundry soap. Adrienne volunteers to go get some, I tell her I’ll go too.
“Don’t forget fabric softner.” Carlson reminds us.
In the shop, Adrienne and I make small talk and bad jokes about the unrecognized products on the brightly lit shelves. Her accent rings slightly American South. In the lineup we talk about their rare and insanely complete Sunn O))) record collection.
“We’re saving those for a rainy day”. She tells me sounding stoked. She seems pretty stoked in general, easy going.
When we return, the Laundromat has emptied.
There are only high powered fluorescent lights and the steady thrashing hum of 8 united washing machines. I can’t even guess how many dryers, but you could fit 2 people inside while you watched them whirl through the oculus window.J: Tell me where you got the name for the record for starters.
DC: That came from the bible story Samson and Delilah, and there’s also a folk song about the story. There’s a British syrup company called Liles and that’s their logo, bees with a lion’s skull…there’s kind of a number of influences of that idea.
J: Have you heard anything about the bees in America leaving their homes and dying off?
DC: Yeah, they’ve completely abandoned Seattle.
AD: Dylan’s guitar/amp tech said that Seattle has one of the highest sound wave cell phone interferences…
J: Right, yeah it’s something to do with sound and electromagnetic…apparently bees just won’t go anywhere near mobile phones because the waves they put off fucks up their ability to orientate themselves…
DC: Kinda like how we fucked up the whales with all the sonar. They can’t project their songs as far anymore so their communication among pods has been reduced. They can’t convey information about mating grounds and stuff and they don’t travel as far...
J: That’s sad…
DC: I don’t own a cell phone, so… (laughs)
J: What made you decide to write a sequel to Miami Morning Coming Down?
DC: The sequel comes more from…it’s not necessarily that they’re the same musically, it’s more like I get a feeling from playing it that’s similar, you know it’s not a cut and dried sequel. The original Miami Morning was a darker version and then part 2 was more of a happy ending.
AD: And if you listen to the guitar lead, that melodic structure…I hear a real similarity, maybe not technically, but the refrainy weird ending, the noodling guitar part is similar to me.
DC: Miami Morning 1 was the last thing I ever recorded before the vanishing act so it’s a going away thing and the other one has this…coming back.
AD: The new one is more hopeful.
J: The whole record is more hopeful…it’s looking up into the light.
DC: This album was different where Hex had an idea, where as this one we did the music first and then I had to go back and arrange it for the record and that’s when I started to see that it had this darkness to light cycle, and usually I’ll have tons of titles and this time I had tons of music and not enough titles.
J: I could play that record for my parents and they’d probably dig it, or at least understand, whereas Hex…you know my Dad loves country, but I couldn’t see him understanding.
AD: My mom didn’t get it either. I played her Hex and she’s a big country fan, I was like “Mom you’re gonna like this it has pedal steel, and this one has banjo and” she just went
“oh, that’s nice honey”…but for Bees she said it sounded like real music. It’s very adult for us…
DC: We were going to call it “Earth Grows Up” [everyone laughs]
J: Did you feel any outside influences to make something more accessible?
DC: This was interesting because Hex had the themes with the Cormac McCarthy book and it was an anti statement…like I’m not doing what I did before…a real against the myth kind of thing.
AD: Yeah, what Earth isn’t anymore…
DC: It’s a band record. It’d be me and her and Steve Moore jamming and working on stuff before the studio…
AD: Steve Moore played a big part in this record.
DC: Before, I hired people to come flesh it out, but I’ve been playing with these people for a few years and now its a community thing as opposed to a solitary thing.
J: What’s the last thing that you found the drone in?
AD: I think country music.
DC: This is an argument we have all the time. Everyone in the band hates this band…and I love them and she hates them…
AD: Oh no, you brought it up...get ready…here it comes.
DC: …but The Grateful Dead.
AD: Dylan has a little secret love affair with the Grateful Dead that I just can’t get behind.
J: I dated a dead head for a while...
DC: I blame my mother.
J: So the Grateful Dead were the bridge for you?
DC: The single for Darkstar…live it was totally this improv but they did a single of it that was a B side to something and it starts out with banjo and tambora and it goes into the chord progression and they had to fade it…I admire them because their business model is against record labels, and as well they considered the fans part of the whole experience rather than like ‘We’re the band’ and everyone was important…and then also I like the fact that they played the songs differently every night…
J: Yeah, those are all great things…what’s exciting about music.
DC: Yeah and I understand that a lot of people don’t like them, but I think they don’t like the lifestyle of the fans more than the actual music. Especially after they got big in the 80’s and all the frat boys put on tie-dye. But they’re one of the few models of improvisation in rock over a continuous period. The albums were signposts to make the label happy, but where they really lived was live.
J: There’s an LSD symposium in Switzerland in a few weeks and Albert Hoffman is speaking there. He’s 102 years old. Alex Grey is speaking as well…
DC: I love his work, man. Hopefully someone breaks out their store of original Sandoz…
J: Why do you suppose this kind of music is getting a spiritual reaction from people?
DC: To me it seems like it’s because it’s against the trend of the world. Everything is about instantaneousness, digital…everything’s chopped up and jerky with this constant stimulus. Hopefully we create a space where that’s not there, where time extends and there isn’t this constant barrage…our songs have this delayed arc to them rather than lick after lick after lick…hopefully it’s this space where everyone can get together.
J: Do you have any rituals or tentative activity that helps you get there?
DC: Not really. There’s not enough time before the show…we have to do laundry. It’s more like it happens on stage.
Adrian gets up to check on the laundry because she’s worried about her vintage western shirts getting snatched.
J: Do you still work on the side? I read an interview around Pentastar where you talked about needing balance to appreciate your practice time.
DC: Yeah, I still have a day job. Earth basically pays for itself. There was a quote from Robert Fripp that I really like where he was saying as a musician the only reward is music and all the other stuff that comes out of it is extra. If you can make a living at it that’s cool that’s gravy, but if you start putting that first it’ll destroy it. He even goes so far as to say a professional musician’s job is business…so if we want to move the music forward, then don’t be a professional musician. I have no head for business anyway…luckily I have a few people around to help me out on that. Especially since I don’t have a computer or internet, no cell phone…
Adrian returns.
J: What have you learned from touring with Sir Richard Bishop?
DC: How to do it smaller (laughs). I’m envious. I wish we didn’t have to get this…
AD: Big dumb rock show?
DC: Yeah, the trailer and…I want to reduce the equipment…
J: What?! When I looked at the stage today I thought whoa, there is nothing here. 2 amps, a kit, a trombone and of couple pedals…I was like where is everything?
[more laughter]
DC: I keep wanting to get sparser but the music seems to get fuller. It gets depressing with all this logistical suff…
Right now I’m just trying to make a small impact on the world while touring.
AD: Are you serious? [laughing] You mean like dumping our instruments on a boat…like Dave Mathews…?
DC: Well no…hopefully it’s a big impact on someone musically, but like less of an impact gaswise…but I still won’t play an acoustic guitar.
AD: And I won’t play a small kit. [more laughter]
J: Do you guys have any juice about the Hex record?
AD: I’ve got some juice about Dylan Carlson.
J: Oh yeah?
AD: He has a twin brother…
J: Does he ever stand in? Do you ever use him for weird practical jokes?
DC: He’s not identical.
AD: You two would be fucking with me all the time….
DC: The wind chimes are off our porch. We had real Native American rattles…
AD: Yeah, that stuff was hand woven with beads and stuff and I was playing that…
J: Where’d the image of Bloody Bill come from?
DC: From a book about Jesse James, it was about how Jesse James was one of the first kind of terrorists, you know it was for a political cause, leading a Guerilla life against the Federal government, and he had secret confederate guys in the government protecting him and…
AD: [sarcastically] We want more confederate folklore attached to Earth…
J: I heard that a lot of people used to say they were him after he was dead…
DC: Yeah, or his descendants…there was a lot of that as well.
AD: Bloody Bill had cool blues eyes, you can’t really tell from that photo…but we were looking at old style photos of babies…it was dead outlaws or dead babies…we decided to go with the outlaws…
Adrienne Davies
J: Tell me a bit about your drum history.
A: In school band I played the snare and I was the only girl in whole drum section. Then I forgot about it for a long time. I started playing guitar and I was really into that but it never came naturally so I gave up and then drums fell back into my life and I went with the “getting as good as I could without trying” and then I decided to put the work in and a couple years ago I started getting really into theory and timing, you know to be more expressive. But I was always worried that I’d lose my voice and I didn’t want to sound like every other rock drummer. I’m on the teeter totter of learning as much as I can but losing that beginner’s open eye quality to it.
J: I’ve heard you called the slow metronome.
A: Drummers always ask how I play that slow…playing faster like punk rock or whatever I find my minds not in it…I can do without thinking…but when I do it slow I have to be in a kind of trance…and so focused and keep your heartbeat slow…it’s really hard to play below your heartbeat.
J: Did you just say that you use your heartbeat?
A: Yeah kinda, with your breathing. A lot of drummers do accent drumming where their’s like 1 2 3 [she immitates a November Rain fill with her mouth] dat dat dadoo.
I do a lot of groove…I know that word sounds dumb…but I try to keep with a groove even when it’s really slow. We try the songs faster and slower when we practice, but a song will tell you where it should be. Dylan’s melodies tell you where it wants you to be. In Prague there was this totally wasted chick yelling between every song “Play faster, play faster”. We were like ‘hey lady, you’re at the wrong show’…and then it became the slowest set we’ve played in a long time, just to be antagonistic….we made it extra slow for her.
Earth played Ouroubourous as their encore for Berlin. It was elegant and loud.
† “How was the interview?” Steve Moore asked me over a joint afterward.
“Surprisingly comfortable…even kind of cordial.” I said. “They where really cool.”
“Yeah, Dylan and Adrienne are amazing. People can really change after they’ve been clinically dead for 5 minutes…[laughs]”
-Saint Jesua
