The Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Holland, a gathering point for stoner and space-rock bands, has been celebrating the extended and improvised riff for nearly a decade now. Its influence spreads far and wide across the space-rock fraternity, showcasing everyone from the genre defining (Hawkwind, Monster Magnet, Litmus) to the most obscure European and American outfits. In the latter category we’d have to place San Diego trio Earthless, whose fortuity it was to fill a slot unexpectedly vacated by the 2008 festival’s headlining band.
Formed in 2005, the whole raison d’etre behind Earthless is the distorted, elongated mind-journey that comes trucking out of the industrial space-freighter end of space-rock. It’s a sound which Earthless drummer Mario Rubalcaba describes as “Heavy, Loud, Sonic mind melt,” a miasma of repetitive droning from the drums, and Mike Eginton’s driving bass lines, juxtaposed with the crackling fire of Isaiah Mitchell’s guitar. As this double CD recording of their Roadburn set demonstrates in what is notionally marked as four instrumentals but is really one massive head-trip, what they lack in cohesive direction (and it’s fair to say that none of this particularly goes anywhere) they make up for in the sheer guts of their sound.
Tee Pee Records
Earthless Myspace Page
Formed in 2005, the whole raison d’etre behind Earthless is the distorted, elongated mind-journey that comes trucking out of the industrial space-freighter end of space-rock. It’s a sound which Earthless drummer Mario Rubalcaba describes as “Heavy, Loud, Sonic mind melt,” a miasma of repetitive droning from the drums, and Mike Eginton’s driving bass lines, juxtaposed with the crackling fire of Isaiah Mitchell’s guitar. As this double CD recording of their Roadburn set demonstrates in what is notionally marked as four instrumentals but is really one massive head-trip, what they lack in cohesive direction (and it’s fair to say that none of this particularly goes anywhere) they make up for in the sheer guts of their sound.
Tee Pee Records
Earthless Myspace Page
No comments:
Post a Comment