Apparently, Earth Ball are from British Columbia, but to hear them play, you’d think that’s wrong. Perhaps even inappropriate. To hear them play, you’d make up some sunbaked armpit in the California desert. One of those non-towns unincorporated at some point in the last forty years, both built up and ruined by land and/or resource speculation. A place untouched by those celebrity ayahuasca wellness retreats the Burning Man one percent are always going on about. A place almost entirely run on gennies. There’d be a bar – barely standing – and in it you’d meet checked-out, off-the-grid guys called The Dipper and Lizard and Other Lizard. It’d be a fun hang but for the constantly simmering potential of grievous bodily harm. To hear them play, you’d think this is where Earth Ball might jam every Tuesday, loud as anything, with only a handful of perma-fried locals to bear witness.
But that’s not the case. Weirdly, Earth Ball’s heavyweight, improvisational, repeat-o-skronk was birthed in a nice place to retire called Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Colonised, it’s not so old. Dating back to the mid-19th century, “discovered” at the turn of it, although it had been inhabited by the Snuneymuxw First Nation for thousands of years before that. Long story short, resource rights were taken, and it became a coal town. When the mines closed in the mid-20th century, lumber became king.
The point of all this, I suppose, is like that California non-place, Nanaimo has been wrung out, too. Built on the violence of extraction and expropriation. So, really it’s not such a strange origination point for Earth Ball after all. Seems to me, improvisatory records like their latest LP, It’s Yours – those fully committed and entirely lacking in artifice – can only come from a place that’s been thrashed and cashed out in one way or another. These are albums that sound like seeped-in, bone-deep histories – an only occasionally comprehensible slurry of the bad and good, the weird and fucked – being spewed out onto wax as pure, uncut feeling.
Over It’s Yours’s six aggro excursions, you’ll be singed by corrosive feedback, come at sideways by belligerent drums, honked at by a renegade sax maniac, and relentlessly rumbled by seismic fuzz bass. Pretty much pummelled from start to finish. There will be no “proper” songs to speak of – just ruthless repetition and grotty grooves and cacophonous noise. You will be yelled at by someone called Isabel and another called Jeremy. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll seriously, seriously dig it.
Maybe I never fully got over hearing Oneida’s ‘Sheets Of Easter’ way back in 2002, but there’s something about being repeatedly battered – sonically speaking – for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes that is unbeatably life-affirming, blissful, practically euphoric. Musically, it’s as good as it gets, and It’s Yours delivers in much the same way. The thing about longform psych like this is that no matter how brutal or intense it sounds, it’s not antisocial or misanthropic or nihilistic. Most of all, it’s not unfun. How could it be? These are communion songs, songs for the gathered collective. Songs in search of. In search of some cosmic truth maybe, or experience, or maybe just a feeling. Or maybe it doesn’t even matter.
Look, have you ever played with an Earth ball? Ever seen one? There’s one on the cover of this album. They’re huge, soft, inflatable globes, basically. When I was a kid, we had them in school. Every so often, they’d bring one out during gym class. For us kids, the thing was a bit intimidating at first, but once we figured out how to get it bouncing as a group, we’d have a hoot both knocking around and getting knocked around by the humongous sphere. Of course, there was that exciting, omnipresent sense of chaos and the potential for disaster. There was always a chance that the class would end in tears and a trip to the nurse’s office. We loved the Earth ball, but I’m not sure what – if anything – it was supposed to teach us. Anyway, Earth Ball couldn’t have picked a more fitting name.
