Filed under: Album bios

Earth 2 is the debut full-length studio album made by the band Earth, released February 3rd, 1993 on Sub Pop Records. It featured the founding duo of Dylan Carlson and Dave Harwell with Joe Burns on percussion on the final track of the album, “Like Gold And Faceted”. Earth 2 was a composition the duo originally played live with a drum machine on the first two tracks.

At the time of the album’s production, Carlson had been reading about La Monte Young’s music, who he discovered through The Velvet Underground and Terry Reilly. He was inspired more conceptually by Young because of lack of access to the actual music. More directly musical influences for the album were King Crimson, Slayer, and other minimalist composers. Carlson said in a lecture at Red Bull Music Academy that he liked the idea of a band taking one cool riff and repeating it slowly over-and-over instead of moving on to the next part right away. Stuart Hallerman, the album engineer and owner of Avast! Recording Company, said one of the stated goals of Earth at the time was to out-Melvin the Melvins.

According to Hallerman, Dave and Dylan already had a plan for what to do when entering the studio, likely because it was made with a low budget and limited studio time. They planned to fill an entire CD with music, which would add up to 75 minutes. It was also supposed to be one long track, but because of tape reels only being able to record for 30 minutes maximum, they split the album into three separate tracks.

Carlson later remarked that a lot of what they did was technically incorrect; the album was played “live” using their live gear, setting up mics for each individual speaker, which were run into separate tracks. Any unused tracks were overdubbed later. Background drone layers were played using EBows, and some parts were played manually over the riffs (noticeable primarily in “Like Gold And Faceted”). According to Hallerman, they would record one EBow track, retune their guitars, then immediately get to recording the next track. The album had a noticeable lack of drums because they didn’t feel like setting up their drum machine and wanted to have all their tracks available for guitar.

As for the album packaging, the album was originally released as a double album with clear vinyls. According to Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt, this was to grab the attention of collectors and those who appreciated high-concept projects. The cover art is a photo of horses in the Mongolian steppe, chosen from a book of stock photography as the original idea (a photo of a castle in Rajstan, India) was too difficult to get licensed. The text on the back talking about the therapeutic effects of the album was inspired by a series of meditational cassettes Carlson picked out at the record store he used to work at.

The album wasn’t a smash hit, but got its flowers later on, as it became known as one of the progenitors of the drone metal genre. Carlson has said that early adopters of the album were metal fans who liked the Morbid Angel shirt he can be seen wearing in the album’s packaging. Bands such an Sunn O))) and Droni Eye Omi have since cited the album as inspiration for their own work.

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