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Earth the Californian Love Dream. If there’s ever a band name to put you off going to see that particular band, then here is most definitely one. The words Californian, Love and Dream conjure up images of stinking hippy-flavoured ‘communal’ psychedelia that have no place in our frightening post-post-modern epoch. Give us the gritty, sweaty, night time exhilarations that we so crave! And peculiarly enough, that’s exactly what they give us.
ETCLD seem to occur within their own warped, ultra-sonic dimension – there simply isn’t a contemporary band to compare them to. Neither art-punk posturing nor garage-blues balderdash, there is a sense of the psychedelic, but one of such skull-pounding intent that you can almost forgive the name. Hailing from the Midlands – just to mix the signals even more – they come on, longhaired and denim-clad, with a similar set-up to the Datsuns, i.e. the frontman Huw Costin is also the bassist, but all comparisons end there. What proceeds is the kind of sound that’s likely to give you a minor cardiac infarction, a thunderous hybrid of Floyd and Motorhead, underpinned by the most obscene amount of bass that still just isn’t quite enough, since Costin asks for ‘a bit more’.
Forthcoming single ‘In The Garden’ pulsates against a backdrop of undulating reverb, and is spurred on by acid-tinged harmonies that do as much to terrify as well as captivate. They stray into a form of heavy Television at times, such as the vividly named ‘Pink Pink Skin’, but the set is rooted in the love of weighty acid-swirling rhythms and, in fact, actual acid on ‘Easy’, a song dedicated to the substance. It’s ‘beautiful, beautiful stuff’ we are told. We are inclined to believe them.
Photo by Sakura Henderson
