Earth Room's self-titled debut has been described to me as alternatively "ambient" and "drone." Maybe I'm just ignorant (the most likely explanation) but they sound like a straight-up jazz band to me. A jazz band with some transcendental and kosmische-y qualities, but still a jazz band. The album units the talents and insights of players Robbie Lee, John Thaye, and Ezra Feinberg, whose respective exhalant phrasing, pummel, string-tugging, and electronic conjuring solidify and forcibly channel a plangently tranquil slipstream of distinctively physical and reassuringly fictile sound. Completely improvised, the performances evocatively succeed in anchoring your sense of being in the present tactile stratum of your surroundings while towing your consciousness through peculiarly meta-sensational ferments and a mirror-tension tempest, introducing you to cogent and idyllic organisms, who function as conversational interlocutors, omni-dimensional guides, and cosmic confidants. I'm dead sober while listening to this album and yet, I'm experiencing a sensation as if my skull had a zipper attached to the back and someone was carefully drawing down the tab and unsheathing my brain like it was a ripe piece of fruit. The phenomenon is just as chilling and delicious as such a description would imply. Not too shabby for an act whose formative raison d'etre was to provide ambiance for a beanbag lounge in Bushwick.
