ALBUM REVIEW: Full Upon Her Burning Lips – Earth

Over their thirty years on this globe, EARTH have become known predominantly for experimental minimal instrumental music starting out with doomy drone with Earth 2 and progressing into a much lighter tone with 2008’s The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull and the most recent psychedelic, meditative and OM-like Primitive and Deadly in 2014.  Five years later and ninth studio outing, Full Upon Her Burning Lips, sticks to that light sonic minimalism but retains a dark and sexy edge.

This album is best digested and dissected as a whole, it is unapologetically EARTH but is much more stripped back, stripped right down in fact to just Dylan Carlson playing layered looping guitar and bass and Adrienne Davies on percussion and drums. Opening with Datura Crimson Veils, Carlson’s playing is vibrant but fuzzy and has a lazy dreamy feel, the repetition of the first few bars becomes almost hypnotic before the whole rhythm and tone changes to include a limited amount of atmospheric effects before slowing to a graceful crawl. Davies’ carefully controlled percussion kick in with gentle rhythmic cymbal splashes against complex but subtle slow-motion jazzy riffs and drumming.

Despite the simple feel, the album is peppered with intricacies which really showcases the talent of the musicians without the need for an overwhelming amount of effects. It’s a lesson in restraint and control and learning to appreciate that sometimes, simple is better. The overall feel is graceful and benevolent with a certain force driving the music forwards through a subtly undulating psychedelic kaleidoscopic soundscape with an otherworldly organic feel. Exaltation of Larks and Cats on The Briar follow in the same vein but also have a looser jammy improvised feel when Carlson drifts off on a tangent seemingly lost in alluring and snaking riffs. The Colour of Poison twists the dreamy notes into something more nightmarish with jarring guitar squeals progressing into a march through to a gentler but still a little dark Descending Belladonna.

Stand out tracks are She rides an Air of Malevolence which has a slightly off discordant tone to it with on ominous foreboding atmosphere and indeed reflects the name of the track itself.  Growing weirder and wobblier towards the finale before flowing into a subtly darker witchy, seductive and loose undertone on Maiden’s Catafalque. Lighter notes are once again added into the darkness in An Unnatural Carousel and Mandrakes Hymn then the final track, A Wretched Country of Dusk, brings the album to a gentle meandering climax.

EARTH have become known for that repetitive carefully controlled entrancing and subtle rhythm that might require patience for some, but is also a great relaxing listen to unwind to at the end of a busy day or to ride off into the sunset. Full Upon Her Burning Lips may appear a little too simple at first, but further listens will reveal it to be more entangled and complex beast than first suggested, as more dissonant and harmonic details and nuances reveal themselves and that is what makes this album such an intriguing listen.

Rating: 8/10

Full Upon Her Burning Lips is out now via Sargent House.

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