Just turned up some copies of the limited edition vinyl version of this dronier-than-thou live platter from the legendary rifflords.

Ah, Earth. We've watched this legendary iconoclastic dronemetal project evolve from the lumbering amplifier mantras of their 90's catalog into their current incarnation as a kind of windswept, glacially-paced Americana post-rock that has been captured on Earth's amazing Hex and Hibernaculum albums. When the reissue of Sunn Amps And Smashed Guitars materialized in 2002, Earth revived itself from years of hibernation and hit the road with guitarist/mastermind Dylan Carlson being accompanied by drummer Adrienne Davies for a tour of the US and Europe, and this 2-track album from 2005 documents a set of in-the-moment performances from Earth from when they cruised through NYC in September of 2002. While some may have been disappointed in the fact that, at the time that this was released, the only new Earth that we were getting at the time was in the shape of live releases, like the Sunn Amps reissue, that doomed release on Autofact, and this particular platter which came out shortly before Hex did. I definitely wasn't complaining though...as a matter of fact, both Sunn Amps and this album are two of my favorite recordings from Dylan Carlson and company - live, his sludgy, leaden dirges really sprawl out, and there is an uncontrolled, electrical quality to live Earth that I really dig. Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword opens with "Dissolution III", a nearly 15-minute solo jam with Dylan strangling his guitar and melting down into a Quaalude feasting, stumbling free-dirge that went down at the WNYU radio station. Sorta sounds like Derek Bailey with massive metal amplification. Then it's off to the title track, a monolithic hour long dirge from a performance at the Knitting Factory, with Davis propelling Carlson's grooving, hypnotic riffage with spare, heavy drumming. This is more like the kind of stuff that Earth was doing on the Pentastar album, heavy and dirgey but really catchy and trance inducing too, a darkly evocative riff winding over and over and around ringing open chords, somewhere in between Tony Iommi and a Crazy Horse jam but slowed way down and basking in a subterranean glow. This disc is an excellent companion piece to Earth's studio catalog, with what is probably the longest Earth jam ever committed to disc!