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An array of dark ambient soundscapes, with the occasional gritty beat, for a city decrepit and abandoned, or a desert devoid of a good lawful life. Great music for living out your dieselpunk, post-apoc, robo-west, or ghost town fantasies.
Favorite track: Hell A.
Like master painters exploring a subject over a lifetime’s work, Kevin Martin and Dylan Carlson – The Bug and Earth, respectively – have each been mining and defining their genres for more than 20 years. They’re united by an interest in – really an obsession with – heaviness. They search for, examine and break the boundaries between beautiful and ugly, minimal and maximal, light and dark – but The Bug and Earth always make music that is heavy in the most thrilling of ways.
Earth, and its founding member Carlson, first appeared in the early ’90s, and came to prominence with their Sub Pop release "Earth 2". An exercise in SLOW distorted droning minimalist riffage, their debut was the blueprint for what Dylan coined at the time "ambient metal,” – a style still being pushed forward on his latest Southern Lord release "Primitive And Deadly.”
Kevin Martin's career spans the same timeframe. Techno Animal, Ice, God, Razor X, King Midas Sound, and of course the The Bug moniker. All of which explore(d) the fringes of experimental and heavy music. With his recently released "Angels & Devils" LP receiving high praise across the board, he once again put his sonic stamp on the here and now with his collaborators Liz Harris (of Grouper), copeland, Miss Red, Gonjasufi, Flowdan, Death Grips, Justin Broadrick (Godflesh/Jesu), and Warrior Queen.
These two uncompromising outsiders met via the visual artist Simon Fowler (Angels & Devils.) Simon arranged for Dylan to come to a King Midas Sound gig, but Martin’s trademark use of a powerful strobe light meant that the epileptic Carlson couldn’t enter the room. Undeterred, Carlson featured King Midas Sound’s music in a podcast, and the pair eventually decided to collaborate around “Angels & Devils.”
The anglophile Carlson had long admired Martin, and other British sonic experimenters like Spacemen 3 or Pentangle. In turn, Martin understood the genius in Carlson’s deconstruction of metal, and Earth’s boiling down of the genre to its core, elemental riffs. Martin saw that he and Dylan were both “wanderers,” and “misfits in the world we live in.” They were both huge fans of dub and the Velvet Underground, and they discussed how those influences could provide a combined template for something entirely new.
When they finally began to record, it quickly became apparent that the music they made together needed room to stretch out and “drone,” – to be its own thing. Two tracks eventually emerged, "Boa" & "Cold," and were released as a standalone EP, with Dylan's signature guitar sound weaving seamlessly around some of Kevin's most destructively heady bass explorations. Martin had decided to exclude those songs from ‘Angels & Devils’, as he felt “They had developed a singular life of their own, outside of the identity of that album.”
Ninja Tune asked The Bug and Dylan Carlson to perform live in LA around the label’s 25th anniversary, and Martin and Carlson took the opportunity to further the recording project in person. So The Bug vs Earth project holed up in Daddy Kev’s legendary LA studio, with DJ Nobody engineering, for two very long days. Those recording sessions have resulted in the masterpiece that is “Concrete Desert.” Inspired by J.G. Ballard’s urban dystopias, and the Californian dream capital’s sordid, fragmented underbelly, Martin says that the album is in some ways a Los Angeles-set companion piece to “London Zoo.”
The record’s beautiful, chiming melodies are like shards of sonic light, glowing in currents of heavy bass darkness. There are pulsing soundscapes, ambient pinks and whites, and irresistible grooves. This is music that grips you entirely, and catches you in its lava-flow – an astonishing, primal album of vast depth.
In making it, Martin decided to break from The Bug’s obsessive study of groove, tone and texture, and think more cinematically. The result is a wondrously visual album, akin to finding oneself wandering amongst the rocky red hills of the Californian deserts. In fact, he says, the album could be understood as reflecting a ‘mistrust of “Hollywoodisms,” and the shadow of Hollywood fantasy that looms large over life in LA, and the USA in general. “Dylan’s a master at amplifying the flavour of America,” he says, “but not the side we see in this Trump climate.” For Martin, the “American dream is like a nightmare under Trump” but Dylan captures the “best side of that dream, a utopian openess.” “I hear the writing of Cormac McCarthy in his music. His playing conjures deserts, and wide open spaces.’ In “Concrete Desert,” Earth’s sonic landscapes, its far horizons and vast spaces, are underpinned and propelled by Martin’s ear-worming rhythms and percussive genius.
With live shows for The Bug and Dylan Carlson planned for April 2017, this is just the beginning of The Bug vs Earth project. The record might be one designed to ‘document alienation,’ but one listen is enough to show it, equally, to be a brilliant meeting of two kindred musical souls.
The Bug is the only producer who can bring in the likes of Liz Harris (of Grouper), Copeland, Miss Red, Gonjasufi, Flowdan,
Justin Broadrick (Godflesh/Jesu), Mala, Death Grips, and Warrior Queen and make it seamless. End times need a soundtrack to prep for what's above and below, and this is it....more
supported by 105 fans who also own “Concrete Desert”
this is fucking incredible. the best thing ive heard in ages. The mixing is astonishing. Brutal yet so highly evolved. Long live Godflesh! emptyembassy
14 tracks of experimental electronic music released on floppy disk, one song per disk, from eco-conscious label Music for Commercials. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 18, 2021
David Ciampalini, founder of the Ambient-Noise Collective, bridges musique concrete with psychedelic soundscapes on his debut solo LP. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 16, 2021
Canadian troubadour Konner Whitney expands his creative horizons with a vulnerable-yet-venomous record blending rock and folk. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 10, 2021
supported by 84 fans who also own “Concrete Desert”
What a fucking glorious bummer this album is. The Moor Mother tracks on the first half are the sound of someone standing on the edge of the cosmic hole on the front cover. The second half of the album is the soundscape once they have jumped in. An all around fantastic mindmelt, especially the second half. Also - sounds great on headphones at 1am in the dark full blast. bcb723