Meditative, crushing, overwhelming, immense, and immersive. Those are some of the adjectives I used to describe Earthflesh with when I covered the output over at our Weekly Featured Artist feature last month. And today, we’re beyond glad to be able to unveil the projects newest, massive body of work by means of premiering it over here, right now! So without further ado, take a metaphorical leap into Earthflesh‘s fresh aural trek going by the name of Walking With the Tide, from the player below;
Earthflesh is a one-man project authored by Bruno Silvestre Favez in Switzerland. To be clear, I prefer calling this entity built around a multitude of artforms a ‘project’ rather than a band, exactly due to its holistic nature spanning across both music and visual arts, with all their various connotations included. The project’s history only dates back two years, but during that time, Favez has created and released a plethora of material, mostly taking the form of elongated drones and harsh noise walls, with individual pieces more often than not constructing the entire release, accompanied with striking photography and artworks created by Favez himself.
Walking With the Tide is the latest effort in Earthflesh‘s ever-expanding discography, and dare I say, his most comprehensive and pervasive effort to date. Favez’s delivery has earlier on sought inspiration from literature and poetry, but this time the significant resonances came later on rather than being the catalyst for the piece. Khalil Gibran was a well-known Lebanese-born writer, whose classic work Sand and Foam from 1926, and more accurately the opus’ opening verses, gave further emphasis and meaning to this cathartic and hypnotic piece;
‘I AM FOREVER walking upon these shores,
Betwixt the sand and the foam,
The high tide will erase my footprints,
And the wind will blow away the foam,
But the sea and shore will remain,
Forever.‘
The 36-minute colossal work which will be issued via SHORT RUN INDUSTRIES on highly limited handmade CD edition as well as digitally via GATES of HYPNOS on October 29, as in this Friday, offers a lot to unpack and to chew on. Walking with the Tide is quite a unique release from the transformative artist, as it deploys dynamics in a way that feels fresh and brisk when taken into account most of his other works, that tend to stem from a more firm, positively monotonous and meditative places altogether. The ebb and flow of this song in particular is pristine, starting off with vinyl cracks and slowly evolving into robust, earth-shatteringly weighty drones that gather layers on top of them as minutes pass by, reaching its first crushing crescendo after the 13-minute mark, toning down to a more ambient mood, aesthetically repeating itself with another noisier portion, again easing out a bit, until reaching its final destination through ear pummeling cavernous textures. Abrupt end, few final vinyl cracks, and scene.
‘MAXIMUM VOLUME YIELDS MAXIMUM RESULTS‘
