So it’s thirty years since the release of Earth’s drone metal masterpiece 2: Special Low Frequency Version. Five years ago on its 25th anniversary I wrote what I thought about that record and its influence here: Earth 2: Special Quarter Century Version. But, this being the slowest of music genres, obviously they took another half a decade to get round to doing a re-release and remix album. In fact not the first for Earth, as 2005’s Legacy of Dissolution remixed a wider selection of the band’s cuts but still included two versions of Earth 2’s middle track. 2.23: Special Lower Frequency Mix has five remixes of the three tracks from Earth 2 by The Bug (doing two), Robert Hampton (Loop), Justin Broadrick (Godflesh etc) and Brett Netson (Built to Spill).
Opening the record is The Bug’s reworking of ‘Seven Angels’, with guest vocals from grime artist Flowdan. It’s a striking choice, since the original album seems so far removed from the human voice or, in a way, from anything on the scale of normal human music. But of course it makes total sense for The Bug, working as he does in the sparse and heavy territories where the farthest expanses of metal, industrial and noise are visible from the outer reaches of sound system culture. The track bounces along ominously, decrying sufferation under false media narratives and political corruption (an impossibly heavy topic right now) over a skittering, booming snippet of Earth’s track.
Robert Hampton’s effort is remix as refraction, where everything is completely recognisable from the first instance of the recordings, but also rendered strange and unusual, with new details and perspectives offered. Instead of the utter relentlessness of the original, it provides a shifting tour around a nebulous, dream version of a house you knew well a long time ago, at times with sharper edges looming out at you, at times murkier and darker. Turning the volume up to an appropriate level on this one made gloomy clouds gather and it started to rain outside.
Then we have more or less what you might expect from Justin Broadrick’s take on ‘Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine’, a slightly polished sheen and some pneumatic sounding percussion to highlight the machinelike, rusty monstrosity of the riff, still pummelling away down a mine or something after decades of work. It’s reminiscent of another early Earth track, ‘German Dental Work’, with its thin, snappy drums over the gluey distortions.
Next is another take on the same track by Brett Netson, and this time the task of the remix becomes rendering the same piece in a slightly different format. It feels like a sculpture in resin, you can smell the oily blackness, as if the shapes of the moving chords could sag and melt slightly if encountered on too hot a day. Again, a new ear on something familiar.
Eventually it’s time for The Bug again, with ‘Like Gold and Faceted’, this time with a taut twangy-ruler beat introducing a piece that turns more introspective, drifting around the ponderous theme in more electronic colours, but still with a grainy wash that pays homage to the prickly distortion of the originary piece.
The Bug’s bookends move furthest from the source material but are both intriguing and atmospheric, while the three in between provide opportunities for contemplating aspects of the original. New angles from which to view the monolith, new translations of the ancient text.
