(Oblique Italy)
A pioneer of both drone
and ambient metal, Seattle musician Dylan Carlson has also shown
himself to be a capable writer of interesting and innovative heavy
music. Beginning his career with inspirations like early metal groups
such as Black Sabbath and the Seattle music scene and groups like The
Melvins, his main band Earth has, over twenty five years, developed
and pushed itself into more varied sonic territory, especially over
the last decade since their return from a hiatus caused by Carlson's
drug addiction.
Gold is the
first foray into soundtrack work for the Earth front man for a film
of the same name. It comes amongst a productive time for Carlson,
shortly before the release of his first solo album, funded through
Kickstarter, and a new Earth album, both due before the end of the
year. The film follows a band of German settlers, traversing the
western frontier in hopes of striking gold on Canada's west coast. A
familiar story unfolds, where the often environment and those that
inhabit it become the main obstacles for the travelling group.
The twenty four tracks,
titled Gold I through to Gold XXIV, that make up this soundtrack
exists in a lonelier space to Carlson's usual work with Earth. Many
of the tracks just featuring a single guitar, an effective
representation of the vast and empty North American wilderness.
Sparse percussion is used like punctuation for the riffs as splashes
of cymbals pass by like clouds or a bass drum hits like distant
thunder.
Whilst this isn't
metal, the music does bare the hallmarks of Carlson's main project,
Gold I establishes a guitar progression that reappears throughout
Gold with slow tempo pentatonic riffs and a thick and
carefully constructed guitar tone that crackles and splits like the
dry ground under an oppressive sun. It does explore some of the
directions that Earth has taken over the last decade, with the sound
sun-baked country and drawn-out Morricone melodies dominating,
twisted into a much more minimalist form.
The vast slide guitar
chords of Gold VII ring out and echo like their being performed in a
valley, it's the most identifiabley “western” moments on the
soundtrack. Gold XII echoes about like an demo from the heyday of
psychedelia, wah pedal-soaked guitar jams that sound lost and
wandering. Some tracks barely hang around for more than thirty
seconds, filling in the gaps between the longer tracks with soft hums
of feedback and low drones rattling away, swathed in reverb.
Fans of Carlson's work
should know what to expect from Gold for the most part, the
thick and warm guitar sounds but the stripped down approach creates
something a little different, for creating a lonely and vulnerable
sound that could crackle and fall apart. There is something powerful
that rings out in these singular riffs and isolated chord
progressions, familiar styles that feel somehow other placed on their
own with a result that is much more evocative than you'd expect from
it's simple approach.
