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SOCIETY LISTEN TO THIS RELEASE VIA BANDCAMP BELOW
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LIMITED EDITION BLUE VINYL LP HOUSED IN FULL PRINTED 350GSM SPINED OUTER SLEEVE WITH BLACK INNER & DOWNLOAD CODE A LIMITED AMOUNT OF MAIL ORDER COPIES CAME WITH AN EXCLUSIVE BONUS CD-R ALBUM ENTITLED 'CROOKED UNDER MOONLIGHT'. THIS CD-R WAS ONLY AVAILABLE AS A PACKAGE WITH THE LP AND LIMITED TO APPROX 150 COPIES (NOW SOLD OUT)
ORDER VIA THE WEBSHOP OR BANDCAMP SITE (IF STILL AVAILABLE)
LP Tracklisting :
A1. Can You Levitate? (7:08)
A2. Ascent To Godhead Part 1
(Godhead / Going For Refuge / The Celestial Mind)
(16:01)
B1. Electric Bou Saada (14:35)
B2. Ascent To Godhead Part 2
(8:53)
Blurb :
Fleetwood psychonauts return
with their second album of 2017. Whereas ‘Zen B*****d’
was a re- imagining of ancient songs from the back
catalogue, ‘Ascent to Godhead’ consists of brand new
compositions improvised in the studio. No Hawkwind-esque
generators are to be found which are synonymous with the
space rock genre.
Instead we have a calamitous
howl more reminiscent to the Birthday Party than to Gong.
Earthling Society’s unique song writing abilities remain
however; where no song starts and ends the same,
constantly morphing into something new. Jazz and eastern
rhythms are at the forefront of ‘Ascent to Godhead’.
Taking inspiration from Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Far East
Family band, Tidori Takada amongst others.
This is no hippy claptrap from
the sunshine playroom, it’s an album that ties your
brain in knots, and oozes spiritual meaning.
Also included is the long lost
garage rocker ‘Can You Levitate?’ Recorded in 2009 and
only unearthed earlier this year. Proving that earthling
Society were belting this stuff out long before the
current psych scene with it Elevators’ call to arms and
Butthole Surfers splashdown.
All compositions by Fred Laird
except Godhead Part 1 by Kim Allen / Fred Laird / Jon
Blacow
Recorded, mixed and produced
by Fred Laird at Shugden Jan – March 2017
Except ‘Can You Levitate?’
recorded at the glass factory winter 2009.
Mastering by Chris Hardman at
CH sound
Artwork by Persistent Offender
www.markhebblewhite.co.uk
Earthling Society are :
Fred Laird - Guitars, vocals,
electric tanpura, recorder, bouzouki, Buddha
box and lap steel
Jon Blacow – Drums, Tablas
and Percussion
Kim Allen – Fender bass and
fretless bass
With
Mike Seed – Tenor Sax on
‘Godhead Parts 1&2’
Luis Gutarra – Bass on
‘Can You Levitate?’
THE BONUS CD-R 'CROOKED UNDER MOONLIGHT'
Crooked Under Moonlight'
Bonus CD-R Tracklisting
1. Babylon Grove (15:08)
2. Pomegranates (4:44)
3. Ritual in Bou Saada (9:51)
4. Sunshine Radiation (5:54)
5. Jerusalem Highway (5:01)
This bonus 'album' was only available direct from the label and was limited to approx 150 copies packaged together with the LP only
REVIEWS
Pretty much the number one
band for truly psychedelic music these days, Earthling
Society are also pretty prolific. Granted, previous
release Zen Bastard was a re-recording of older
songs, so to counteract that we now have an album of new
songs, mere months later. You could maybe forgive them for
any drop in quality but on the basis of Ascent To
Godhead, they seem to be on a bit of a roll.
Not that Earthling Society
have ever released anything subpar. They’re not that
kind of band, and main man Fred Laird keeps a steady ship
through not just Earthling music but also the many
offshoots. It’s led to a body of work which is somewhat
of a maze, this time there is no exit though, it’s a
place to get lost in. Added to this body is now Ascent
To Godhead which may in fact be there most out-there
album yet and their crowning glory.
Surprisingly it starts off
with another old song, ‘Levitate Me’. A song
originally written in 2009, this full on glam stomper that
takes everything great about MC5 and The Stooges and wraps
it up in a celebratory vision of glorious space-rock, is
the perfect follow on from the Zen Bastard album.
It’s also the closest you’ll get to normality so cling
on to it while you can as things get very weird from now
on.
There’s always been a strong
streak of free-form jazz and Sun Ra running through
Earthling Society music and ‘Godhead pt1’ continues
that tradition. A rambling tribal dub infused track, it
meanders through your brain causing all manner of doors to
open. Drifting from jazz to dub, with raging guitars one
minute and calm ambience the next, it’s almost difficult
to call it music in any traditional sense. It’s true
psychedelia, the kind that gives you a high without having
to take drugs.
Where ‘Godhead pt1’ lays
claim to that lost festival slot at 4am, ‘Electric Bou
Saada’ takes leave of the planet altogether as it’s
swirling beginning becomes the moment when you finally
cross over into some higher plain. It’s an intense freak
out after the relative steadiness of ‘Godhead pt1’
with both parts becoming one in the journey to where-ever
it is that Earthling Society are taking you. It’s a
fantastical out of body and mind experience, best
experienced loud through headphones.
‘Godhead pt2’ brings us
slowly back down to earth although you feel irreparably
changed by what you have been through. It’s an almost
spiritual movement, although the only Godhead here is the
one you meet within your mind, not some mystical alien
being up in space. That search for an higher plain of
psychedelia is reached and you can never be quite the same
again. If music is experience then this is the kind that
can alter your way of thinking. It should come with a
warning that only true psych heads need apply but that
would spoil the fun for those wishing to dabble.
If you have ever had or shown
any interest on psych then you need to experience
Earthling Society. There is nobody quite like these for
making music to truly take you out there. A phenomenal
release from the best psychedelic band around.
ECHOES AND DUST
Regular readers may have
noticed that this is not a website that necessarily
features every release by a band. This is because I try to
cover as many bands as possible, and that means that I
sometimes have to leave out albums by groups who I have
previously covered, not because they are poor, rather that
I struggle to find new things to say about them. There are
few notable exceptions to this, which the ‘band cloud’
to the right of the screen will attest.
One such band is Earthling
Society, who I first came across with their Riot Season
release ‘England Have My Bones‘, and since then have
come to appreciate as an act who are always willing and
able to pull out a surprise or two with every album. This
is because each release has a different feel to it, As a
result following the band is never boring. More than that,
its always fulfilling.
Part of this may be that the
order of the records they release is not always the same
as when the music is written, a good example of this being
‘Zen Bastard‘, released earlier this year on Drone
Rock Records, which was a cracking re-imagining of earlier
compositions.
Now comes a release that is
something of a combination of the old and the new, again
from Riot Season, which shows both how the band have
developed their sound, and how Earthling Society founder
Fred Laird has evolved his ideas over the last few years.
It also showcases just how long this band have been going,
long before the current interest in psych music had been
re-kindled.
The album opens with a
recently found track from 2009, ‘Can You Levitate?’,
which is a real rocker of a number… as heavy and out
there as anything the band have done in recent years. It
is true that set against the rest of the album this track
is much more raw, less subtle and nuanced, yet it has an
immediacy to it that works well as an album opener and
manages to set the rest of the album in context. One this
you mustn’t do, though, is to hear this track and make
your mind up about the album on that basis. Well this is
an Earthling Society record, so you’re not going to do
that anyway, and anyway all the tracks here are linked
through Laird’s ongoing spiritual search… a key strand
in the band’s output.
The other three tracks on the
album make up a suite of music that have a real flow to
them. Starting of with ‘Ascend To Godhead Part. 1’. A
fantastically long and meandering track which you
immediately get as having a strong Indian influence with
the sound of a harmonium dominating the early part of the
number before so hard guitar and jazz influences come in
as the track settles into a rhythm around a tabla beat.
But, as the track title suggests, this is not so much a
song and a journey with different movements mapping out
the spiritual path that is being enacted here. Hence,
there is a mid-section that is slower and more considered,
the chants and wisps of sound perhaps marking out an
encounter with manifestations of the unknown. Either way
it is beautiful and meditative, as the sitar sound
dominates… The track the comes back to the tabla beat
and to an end of sorts that is as mysterious as it began,
although most definitely leaving the listener in a
different place altogether… which is what ritual does.
In contrast to this
contemplative track ‘Electric Bou Saada’ is a more
upbeat, in many ways a jazz/ rock hybrid which could be
horrific, although here it is handled very well. I would
say that the basic structure of this track is a jazz one,
the drumming really shaping and configuring the beat.
Around that though there is real evidence of why, for a
number of people I know, Laird is becoming one of the key
guitarists in the psych genre…such that it is. The
soaring work here, in some ways reminiscent of that which
he performed on ‘Zen Bastard’; and certainly as I’ve
witnessed in some recent live performances, suggest that
he is growing in confidence and ability. Then ten minutes
in the whole thing changes, as if some great revelation is
encountered. Out goes the screaming chaos, in comes order
and melody… this transformation is one of those that the
band always seem to make work in a way that you would
think would be incongruous, but weirdly isn’t. The other
thing to say here is that while this track is very
different to the two on either side of it is evidences how
Earthling Society can keep a theme going through very
different musical styles.
Which brings me to the track
being premiered here, ‘Ascent to Godhead Part 2’. For
a split second you think it’s going to be a reprise of
‘Part 1’ before the screaming brass and vocal smack
in…an utter catharsis of Laird yelling ‘freedom’
over and over again. This feels like an purge, a release
from the ties that bind… a letting go… an outpouring
that is his own emotion and drama. It is only when the
guitar kicks in at three minutes that you feel that there
is any control to the track as the whole band freeform
their way to an as yet unsure conclusion. It is usually
the case that you’re not sure where Earthling Society
tracks are going… in this case you feel as if you just
need to cling to it and trust the outcome, which is what I
suspect the band are doing as well. Gradually this trust
is repaid with the sort of comedown that enables you, the
listener, to begin to relax. This first time I heard this
I felt my body loosening up in a way I rarely get with
music… trust repaid.
As far as I’m concerned
Earthling Society have done it again. Here is an album
that manages to confound expectations, and deliver
something that is significantly different from the
previous release, exploring new and familiar musical areas
and genre. Again it is the way that these influences are
melded together that make the album special and while the
inclusion of a track from eight years ago doesn’t fully
cohere with the later work here it does provide evidence
of a continuing path of consciousness by the Laird and in
no way detracts from the new material. Rather it
underlines the increasing maturity of the band’s output.
With this album you get to rock out, think, wonder and
experience; and that surely is the Earthling Society way.
PSYCH INSIGHT MUSIC
For their second album of
2017, Earthling Society open with Can You Levitate?, a
poppier tune than any on their recent collections. Still,
this is hardly of radio-friendly length, and they do
eventually lay into some harsh psychedelic guitar in the
second half of it. If anyone’s then still in any doubt
about their commitment to space rock, they’ve included a
full-length extra CDR with initial mail-order copies,
which’ll doubtless have evaporated by the time this goes
to print.
The band’s dedication to the
legacy of Alice Coltrane, as demonstrated on 2014’s England
Have My Bones, is also underlined. There’s some
beautifully languid jazz vibes on the first part of the
title track (the two parts finish either side), complete
with brain-scratching saxophone, set over horizontal
Eastern instrumentation.
The second act then opens
forcefully, with the squall of Electric Bou Saada, which
later settles into an evocation of North Africa (further
expanded upon on the CD-R), underpinned by lithe bass. To
finish, the sax returns in a John Zorn style, squealing
away over torrid note-troubling, before fading into a
palate cleansing synth coda.
Earthling Society continue to
show that they understand psychedelia from any number of
angles. Seek them out, buy the records, book them, assist
their ascension.
RECORD COLLECTOR MAGAZINE
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