Review & Full Album Premiere: Carlton Melton, Turn to Earth
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on September 29th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Carlton Melton release their new album, Turn to Earth, on Oct. 6 through Agitated Records, ahead of beginning a European tour on Oct. 11. And if they’re carrying boxes of records over to sell, they’ll have their work cut out for them with the 80-minute double-LP, which offers 11 tracks intermittently but not desperately space rocking while feeling their way into other heavy psychedelic elements while they go, whether that’s drones, jams, the bits of Earthless-esque rippery in “Cloudstorming” or “”Vanquished,” the Sleep riff in the former and the hints of Easternism in the latter, those two acting as respective departures from each other, themselves, the droning launch of the album in its eight-minute title-track just prior and the New Age texturing in “Cosmicity” immediately following the side flip.
“Cosmicity,” which eventually brings guitar into its 12-minute synthy drone-out, is the second of four landmarks on Turn to Earth but the first to really reveal the way the album is built. “Turn to Earth” itself, at eight minutes, is the longest of the three songs on side A, and its ambient, sometimes minimal approach is well suited to being an intro, even with its extended runtime. “Cosmicity” and the 10-minute “Unlock the Land” open sides B and C, while the repetitive space rocker “Mutiny” caps side D and is over 16 minutes long. These extended pieces — Carlton Melton, a band who digs in, digging in — give Turn to Earth all the more opportunity to immerse the listener, and especially with aural variety on a per-song basis that might be emphasized by “Cosmicity” giving over to the two-minute manipulated percussion jam “Canned Head,” those longer-form works are a chance to get lost in the songs and see where you end up.
There’s a build in the drums on “Turn to Earth” as well, and so the forward motion of “Cosmicity,” patient as it is, doesn’t arrive without preface. The centerpiece of the album as a whole, “Sundering” is a highlight for its bright fuzz tonality and the ’60s psych chic lent to it by virtue of the organ, its Californian nature affirmed by the wah and noisy freakout that ends it, cutting suddenly to “Unlock the Land,” which is immediately quieter and stays that way for about seven of its 10 minutes. A complement perhaps for the title-track, it functions similarly on a gradual forward build and is a trap for the mind without leaning on a hook, or, say, vocals at all. “Roboflow” follows with its krautrock beeps and bloops like it’s 1978 and we’re all living on Mars (which we would be if Nixon hadn’t won earlier that decade) and “Last Times” unfurls itself with a majesty, not so much doing something radically different in laying out a procession and building around it, but bringing the drone, drums and bluesy guitar together in a way that’s more jam than experiment and feels warmer for that.
Slow swirl grows louder through “Last Times,” but Carlton Melton — guitarist/synthesist Rich Millman, synthesist/guitarist Anthony Taibi, bassist Clint Golden, drummer Andy Duvall, here working with Phil Becker as producer — are setting up the pairing of “Migration” and “Mutiny” on side D, and the keyboard-driven “Roboflow” into the warm water of “Last Times” is what lets them do it. In “Migration” — another shorter, three-minute inclusion, almost there lest anyone feel like maybe they’ve got the band figured out, and that’s part of the fun — they synth has a kind of warning sound buried in the mix of the second half, and that’s fair enough for the launch happening in “Mutiny,” which burns its way upward on guitar for the first two minutes before the drums hit into the backbeat.
And does that backbeat stay even as the song progresses along an increasingly-noised outbound wavelength, scorching all the while. It starts to come apart after about nine minutes in, but it’s freakery long before then, and the remainder is Carlton Melton finding their way around some breakout drumming and heavier riffing, a consistent backing drone (might be organ), and generally apocalyptic vibing, the latter two of which hold for the duration. This last of Turn to Earth‘s anchor tracks isn’t really trying to summarize the record prior — though its building structure does represent a fair portion of it, especially but not exclusively among the longer songs — but is pushing deeper into a kosmiche reality, a total head trip for total heads, round peg in the square hole of planet Earth. This is not necessarily a new place for Carlton Melton to reside; one imagines them quite comfortable in a NorCal wyrdo palace with the protection of a rainforest of spiky pot leaves to keep what most people regard as reality at bay. Not likely to reflect their actual circumstance, but it should give you some idea of the level of ‘dug in’ they’re working at.
To wit, all the way. Carlton Melton are an exploratory band, and their work maintains that aspect no matter what a given song is actually doing in terms of structure, tone, or arrangement. This is the band’s own interpretation of psychedelic music, rather than a style they’re playing toward, and the difference of their bending it to fit them instead of bending themselves to fit it is palpable here. ‘Bent’ might be an operative word for Turn to Earth as well, since the album seems to find its own particular angle in terms of point of view. If a listener is familiar with their past work, this aspect is recognizably Carlton Melton, and if you don’t know the band, you will by the time the 80-minute existential milling machine is done turning the big rocks in your brain into little pebbles of lysergic joy. They are now and have been for some time a good case in the argument that psilocybin cures depression.
You can stream Turn to Earth in its entirety on the player below, and I suggest that you do. Give the album some time to wake up and flesh itself out at its own speed. If your head is in mania-mode, go for a couple deep breaths as you dive into the title-track. Euro/UK tour dates and order link follow.
And please, enjoy:
Bandcamp link: https://meltoncarlton.bandcamp.com/album/turn-to-earth
CARLTON MELTON UK/EU TOUR OCTOBER 2023 –
Oct 11 – GHENT, BE – @ Kinky Bar
Oct 12 – LONDON, UK – @ Strongroom Bar w/ Black Helium and Psychic Lemon
Oct 13 – GLASTONBURY, UK – @ King Arthur w/ Dead Otter and Thee Crow
Oct 14 – HEBDEN BRIDGE, UK @ The Trades Club w/ Dead Sea Apes , Dead Otter and Waka(dj set)
Oct 15 – GLASGOW, UK @ Ivory Blacks w/ Nebula, The Cosmic Dead, and Lucid Sins
Oct 17 – SALISBURY, UK @ The Winchester Gate
Oct 18 – BRISTOL, UK @ Crofter Rights w/ Sonic Jesus and Stereocilia
Oct 19 – MARGATE, UK @ Bar Nothing
Oct 20 – ANTWERP, BE @ Trix Desert Fest
Oct 21 – AMIENS, FR @ Secret Show
Oct 23 – ANNAY LE CHATEAU, FR @ Bristrot Culture
Oct 24 – ROUEN , FR @ Le 3 Pieces
Oct 26 – ZWOLLE, NL @ Hedon w/ The Warlocks
Oct 27 – AMSTERDAM, NL @ OCCII w/ Sex Swing
Oct 29 – PARIS, FR @ La Maroquinerie e w/ The Warlocks
Phil Becker (Terry Gross, Pins Of Light) contributed drums and percussion to a few tracks on Turn To Earth, recording the album at El Studio in San Francisco. With Becker at the helm, the synths have become more prominent (“Cosmicity,” “Roboflow,” “Migration”) and the tone heavier on the doom (“Cloudstorming,” “Unlock The Land,” title track): several moments could even serve as background music for epic dark fantasy films like Conan the Barbarian, Fire and Ice, or Heavy Metal.
Tracklisting:
A1. Turn to Earth (8:12)
A2. Cloudstorming (5:07)
A3. Vanquished (7:03)
B1. Cosmicity (12:39)
B2. Canned Head (2:09)
B3. Sundering (5:01)
C1. Unlock the Land (10:31)
C2. Roboflow (3:38)
C3. Last Times (6:19)
D1. Migration (3:01)
D2. Mutiny (16:34)
Carlton Melton is: andy duvall – drums/gtr; clint golden – bass; rich millman – gtr/synth; and anthony taibi – synth/gtr.
