On Why Mistakes And Ugliness Is Great

In this digital era, whereby audiences have largely been conditioned to embrace clinical fare, produced within an inch of its life and often deprived of humanity, it's refreshing to encounter a group undeterred by capturing a flaw or two on record. Instrumental psych-rockers Earthless are one such example.

"Mistakes are good," axeman Isaiah Mitchell emphasises. "Sometimes there's good mistakes and there's total trainwreck mistakes unfortunately… Good mistakes or accidents or whatever, that can lead you onto a different trajectory of like what the band's gonna do at that moment. I think it's awesome, and it is rock'n'roll. It's not supposed to be polished and beautiful. Mistakes are great, the ugliness is great."

"The record's nice, so you can clean your house and all that, spin it for road trips, but live you'll get the real experience."

This is a sentiment underlined since the band began taping their own shows in the mid-2000s. Mitchell muses that Earthless release live efforts about as frequently as studio ones. During their upcoming Australian trek alongside fellow riff-meisters Elder, they'll be selling vinyl copies of a set recorded at Brisbane's Tym Guitars.

Is the guitarist able to derive pleasure from listening back to these gigs, or does he tend to be overly analytical? "It depends. Some of the live recordings I haven't been a huge fan of, whether or not it's the actual recording quality or if it's actually the night and we were 'on' or 'off' with our playing. Some of them I'm not super stoked on, but there's other ones where I go, 'Wow, that's really good. That's something I'd actually put on and listen to, and enjoy it.' Even kind of pretend that it's not even us, it's just something that's enjoyable to listen to because I feel like it's in the zone. It was an 'on' night. Some stuff, yeah, some stuff, no. But the Tym Records one, I thought that was a really good performance, so I'm looking forward to hearing that on wax."

Australia has proven a happy hunting ground — their latest jaunt the trio's fourth time Down Under. "We might do a cover with some vocals involved, but instrumental usually. We have about a 45-minute to an hour-long song that is the main set. It's heavy riffs, it's loud, it's like Zeppelin and Cream and... yeah, we just like to go for a ride. A lot of improv, and it's fun. I think we're best listened to in the live experience more than on record. The record's nice, so you can clean your house and all that, spin it for road trips, but live you'll get the real experience."

Between straddling touring duties and the guitarist's job teaching music, fresh material is also indirectly in the pipeline. "We rehearsed a little bit ago, and we're working on a new record. We just have stuff for a new record, we're not intentionally working on a new record at the moment. But we're coming up with new stuff so we'll have stuff for a new record, but I figure in the early part of next year I'll go back down to San Diego and we'll try to come up with some more stuff. It'll be nice not to wait six years for the next record, like we did for the last one."