��First released as a deluxe cassette-only album on Black Horizons that has since gone out of print (we nabbed some of the very last copies), and followed by a gorgeous, ultra-limited CD that just came out on Caribou People / La Delirante, Common Eider, King Eider's latest album Earth Liver has gained a bit of acclaim over the past few months among fans of heavy avant-rock, and for good reason - this is some really mesmerizing stuff, a mix of droning experimental guitar textures and dark ethereal drift with moments of stunning beauty and bone0-crushinf heaviness hidden within its abstract sounds. The Bay Area band features a number of recognizable names from the modern psych/drone/experimental rock scene, including George Chen ( 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, Boxleitner), Gregory Hagan (Grale) and Rob Fisk ( 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, Badgerlore, Common Eider, King Eider, Deerhoof), and the craft a kind of gorgeous grim chamber-drift and lush improv on this album, a sound shot through with moments of crushing heaviosity that had me scrambling to stock this album as soon as I first heard it.

�� From the very beginning, Earth Liver is awash in a haunting, mournful atmosphere, starting off with the slow-moving fog of gorgeous violins that drift in on opener "On A River Of Blood, In A Boat Made Of Skin", the sound somewhat reminiscent of the darkened chamber music of Gy�rgy Ligeti or Arvo P�rt, slowly growing into something even darker and more ominous as lush choral voices creep in and streams of distorted guitar rain softly upon the group's almost apocalyptic ambience. You can hear the band's admitted black metal influences in the distorted tremolo riffs that appear, stretched across the dark drones like delicate metallic filigree, their fragile buzzing alight over the softly swelling strings. Utterly gorgeous. The second track "Mounds" mines a similarly muted metallic heaviness, opening with swells of heavy distorted guitar-groan, slow skybursts of scraped string buzz and grinding drone, an almost Fushitsusha-like axe-ritual that's gradually joined by more of those beautiful fractured choral voices, the sound swelling and fading off, leaving stretches of almost total silence between each slow burst of sound, becoming strangely meditative as the track continues to unfold. Those choral voices have something of a liturgical feel, like dark hymns adrift in endless shadow. Things gey even more minimal on "Hands Of Soot" as the band release droplets of soft guitar among cascading female vocals, lush angelic moans falling from the heavens, the sound deeply sorrowful and slow-moving, a kind of funereal slowcore creeping languidly through fields of barely-there guitardrift and eerie minor key melody.

�� Then there's the song "Child", which begins with another cluster of voices (this time male), drifting through clouds of echo, a soft lament sung over a simple descending chord progression on the guitar, the sound wrapped in cloudy reverb, sorrow-filled and dreamlike. And then it suddenly crashes into crushing metallic heaviness, that same riff now blown out and massively distorted, the drums crashing in with all of their might, transforming this into a breathtaking metallic dirge, not quite doom, but definitely intense and crushing. And it shifts back and forth between that dreamy spacious ambience and the heavy metallic crush, the heaviness dropping back out as those voices and scraped guitar notes drift by, the song heaving itself into oblivion, burning away until all there is that lone guitar blurred into a string of notes tumbling into blackness.

�� The closer "Amnesia" is a song that had previously appeared on a limited-edition 12", added here as a bonus track. It's just as gorgeous and grim as the rest of the disc, opening up with sparse piano notes lilting beneath those cooing, reverb drenched voices, that liturgical, hymn-like feel in full effect here as well. The music is again joined by those achingly pretty chamber-strings and mysterious percussive noises that creep in from the background, bits of cymbal shimmer and random rumble turning this into an almost free-jazz like splatter of subdued clatter that, along with the stretched horn-like drones that float high above the band, gives this a different feel than the rest of the tracks, while still just as eerie and otherworldly as the rest of the album. It's like some lovely, shadowy mix of Arvo Part and doom-laden folk, bursting with surges of metallic crush.

�� Both the CD and cassette versions of Earth Liver are beautifully crafted art objects: the CD edition comes in a full color gatefold sleeve that has been overprinted with metallic gold ink, each disc hand printed with the Common Eider, King Eider sigil, and is limited to one hundred fifty copies.