Sir Richard is not the chattiest of fellows. There are various reasons for this. One is the fact that all of his solo guitar music is instrumental, and therefore he doesn’t even have a microphone pointing at him. Secondly his instrumentals are so long that he doesn’t have many gaps between songs to fit much chatter in. In a 45 minute set, he only plays about 4 songs. Finally, I would imagine that his profuse facial hair might impinge his speech. In this last respect, he fitted in well with the crowd for Earth at the Underworld (the gig having been moved from Dingwalls because of the Great Fire of Camden of 2008).

Sir Richard’s music is not the easiest to categorise. If you imagine Dick Dale taking rather a lot of psychedelics and deciding to set out on a career playing lengthy blues tracks, you’d be somewhere near the money, but still not quite there. He doesn’t seem over-endowed with a lot of all-out rawk ego, but he can coax an electric guitar into making some remarkably hypnotic sounds that skirt on the outer edges of prog-rock, but done with a very lo-fi ethic.

If I’m being honest, 45 minutes of lo-fi experimental improvised psychedelia is probably enough for most people, and certainly for me, but a glance across the crowd shows them to be focussed entirely on Sir Richard’s guitar meanderings and in the quieter parts of his improvisations, you can almost hear the sound of beer being sipped between extensive facial hair. The fact is that the man is very good at what he does. Making lengthy guitar extravaganzas intriguing is a rare skill.

Whereas Sir Richard’s music is best described as hypnotic or, perhaps, fascinating, the music of Earth themselves is summed up better with the single word ‘dull’ or maybe ‘plodding’. When you find yourself part of a musical movement that is described as ‘Drone Rock’ it might be time to give up the good intentions and find a job in McDonalds. Not, unfortunately, for the heroically hirsute members of Earth.

The front man, Dylan Carlson, is probably best known for buying Kurt Cobain the shotgun he used to shoot himself. You shouldn’t judge him badly for this, however. I mean, who of us can truthfully say that we haven’t bought lethal weaponry for a drug-addicted, depressed friend of ours? Exactly. No, what Carlson should be judged badly for is the excruciatingly tedious band that he has founded and insists on inflicting on the unwary.

This review first appeared on Twisted Ear.