Upset The Rhythm
EARTHBALL - Outside Over There LP
Highly recommended.
A Phantasmagoria of Improvised Psychosis.
Heavyweight psychedelic improvisers EarthBall are back with their third and most monstrous record to date. Born from the haunted basements of Nanaimo, Canada, the quintet thrives on spontaneity, shaping improvisation into jagged hallucinations and ecstatic eruptions.
Recorded live-off-the-floor in 2024 in Jeremy, Izzy, and Kellan’s basement, and mixed by drummer John Brennan, ‘Outside Over There’ is an album that feels both summoned and inevitable. Each track lands with uncanny purpose, as if uncovered rather than written. The opener, 100%, features a cameo from comedian and cultural icon Stewart Lee, who lent his blessing for the band to use a fragment of his stand-up. The album includes liner text by longtime comrade John Olson (Wolf Eyes). Olson describes the album in his unmistakable style:
“This eight-track odyssey unfolds like a dreamscape, where whispered incantations brush against the shadowy fringes of the cosmos, and wild, Cézanne-inspired rock anthems erupt like geysers of color in the midst of a western warm and wet rain storm… culminating in the sprawling eleven-minute masterpiece, ‘And The Music Shall Untune The Sky,’ aptly dubbed the Earth Crusher. A creation so utterly deconstructed and intertwined with the pulse of nature itself that if AI was called upon to conceive ‘Outside Over There’ anew, it would just spit back, “F.U. in Tree Font”. An enchanting invitation for even the flat-earthers to join the circle, if only just a little.”