Earthless: 6 Things We Learnt About ‘Live In The Mojave Desert’
For twenty years, EARTHLESS have been making a name for themselves with their unique brand of intense and meandering psychedelic rock. Like so many bands we love, they got their big break at Roadburn Festival – and the California trio have gone on to release five studio albums alongside a handful of splits and live records. Their sound is familiar, but their execution is modern and precise.
Time is immaterial listening to EARTHLESS: seconds become minutes become hours when they play, and while there are plenty of jam-bands who aim at that kind of flowing, free-form approach, no one has perfected it quite like they have. It (almost) goes without saying that we’re all in the midst of a live music drought at the moment, and so we were delighted to hear that EARTHLESS would be appearing alongside NEBULA, SPIRIT MOTHER, MOUNTAIN TAMER and STONER (Nick Oliveri, Brant Bjork) as part of Live In The Mojave Desert – a series of livestream events brought to you by the California Desert Wizards Association. We spoke to EARTHLESS guitarist Isaiah Mitchell to hear all about playing in the desert and liquid lightshows.
The desert is not an ideal venue for bands
We all know about the legend of the Palm Desert Scene, which spawned the likes of YAWNING MAN, FATSO JETSON and KYUSS. Groups of like-minded bands would trek out into the windswept and sandy dunes to take psychedelics, smoke weed, and play their blues-infused hard rock at “generator parties” to small crowds at extreme volumes. You might not have considered just how difficult it is to bring a rock show out into the middle of nowhere, though. “For a start, there’s no cell reception. They actually sent us GPS coordinates, which we had to follow to the location. We had to be done by ten because of a sound curfew.” [Really? Out in the desert?] “There are residents around! People were kind enough to let us use the area, so it’s only right to be respectful. The main difficulty is the temperature. At night we were all wearing sweaters. My hands were seized up, I was fighting to get my fingers to do what I wanted! It’s discouraging. Listening back, I’m more on top of it than I thought I was.” It’s not the EARTHLESS’ guitarist’s first adventure into the desert, as he recalls: “When we were younger we’d go to specific parts of the desert, public land, and we’d have generators going and play well into the night. Nothing to do with the KYUSS thing! We had no affiliation with it, it was not on our radar, but we did that before EARTHLESS. Take some mushrooms and jam out in the desert.”
The livestream was inspired by PINK FLOYD’s Live at Pompeii concert
PINK FLOYD’s legendary performance at Pompeii’s ancient Roman amphitheatre is an outstanding document of their uninhibited psychedelic, progressive rock sound. The concert is notable for having not been performed to an audience, and it’s that template which event organiser Ryan Jones built upon for this livestream event – albeit it out of the necessity. “[Ryan] puts on the Stoned and Dusted shows out in Joshua Tree. He’s been doing that the last few years: desert generator parties, harking back to the old days of YAWNING MAN and KYUSS,” explains Isaiah. “He had the Stoned and Dusted shows set up anyway, but as it got closer to the day, we realised it just wasn’t going to happen. So he decided to do a Live at Pompeii-esque recording of these bands instead.” The result is a visual and spiritual tribute to PINK FLOYD’s landmark performance, which was formative for the EARTHLESS guitarist: “Echoes is one of my favourite songs anyway, but hearing that version? It was life changing.”
EARTHLESS are all about Japanese psychedelic rock and krautrock
Bands who play blues-driven psychedelic rock typically draw upon a small group of common influences – BLACK SABBATH, FLEETWOOD MAC, THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE – but EARTHLESS take their cues from further afield. “BLUES CREATION was big for us, and FLOWER TRAVELLIN BAND. Shinki Chen, too.” Japan’s role in creating psychedelic rock is often overlooked, but hard to understate. “Those really hit me over the head,” recalls Isaiah. “Then there’s German bands like CAN, Michael Rother [HARMONIA and NEU!], CLUSTER, AMON DÜÜL, ASH RA TEMPEL. There are deeper ones, too: there’s so much I don’t know about.”
Isaiah brought his beloved Echoplex to the desert
Guitar effects are generally built to take some abuse as they follow their owner on the road, surviving spilt beer and clumsy roadcrew. Some, however, were never designed to leave the studio. “It’s dusty in the desert, and your pedals are dusty after,” observes Isaiah. “I brought my Echoplex and I was really cautious with it. It’s a tape machine/delay,” he explains. “My dad had one as a kid, and I confiscated it! I loved the DEAD KENNEDYS growing up, and it’s all over their stuff.” Remember the surf rock sound of Police Truck? That’s the Echoplex in action. The continuous, sliding action of the delay creates some truly otherworldly sounds in the hands of the EARTHLESS guitarist, as you’ll soon hear. “It sounds like a spaceship taking off and landing. I’ve blown up four or five of them, but I’ve always brought another or got it repaired. There’s nothing that sounds like it, nothing is like a tape echo.”
Mad Alchemy’s lightshow is breath-taking
Lighting crew are often the unsung heroes of live shows, as they work tirelessly to pick out the action on stage and add some interesting visual dynamics to a performance – but then, not all lighting crew are like Mad Alchemy. You’d be hard pressed to ignore the stunning, swirling vortex of colour going on behind the band as they play. “They’re nothing but on the road, harder working than bands. First ones at the gig, last to leave. They rough it. It’s a lot of work,” Isaiah tells us admiringly. “Lance is a good buddy of ours. He’s a mad alchemist, that’s for sure. His gear? It’s a rig. Super high powered, and he used to just have the projectors, but now there’s a digital element too. It’s fucking art.” As the sun sets on the Mojave desert, Lance and his liquid projections pick out rock formations in the landscape, bringing colour and movement to match EARTHLESS’ relentless psychedelic jam. “It’s too psychedelic! I can be sober as hell and it still gives me anxiety. It’s huge. There’s enough light on me that it was ok, but in clubs it’s difficult to even see the fretboard.”
EARTHLESS have assembled a special, one-off set
A special occasion calls for a special set, and EARTHLESS came prepared – but not too prepared. “We did barely any practice – we don’t like to practice too much, it’s against the rules!” Isaiah declares. “We like to write, but no over-rehearsing, no wasting riffs. We like it fresh, it’s better to have that spontaneity.” The band are infamous for their extended, instrumental and semi-improvised live performances, so maybe it should come as no surprise that they just aren’t interested in playing their songs to death. “We were thinking a different set; something that we haven’t played, really, ever. Some of it we haven’t played in over fifteen years. It’s something a little special that makes our role in the whole thing more interesting, you know? There’s an old song that people seem to really love that we never play live.” Tantalising! And as though that wasn’t enough, we can confirm that a new EARTHLESS record is very much in the works: “We’re writing new music. That’s our goal right now. We’re hopefully going to record an album before summer but if not sometime soon. We’re close to having what we want.”
Tickets (for the remaining performances) for this special livestream series are available now and can be purchased here.
Like EARTHLESS on Facebook.