EarthBound, known in Japan as Mother, is a role-playing video game series created by Shigesato Itoi for Nintendo. The series started in 1989 with the Japan-only release of Mother (planned to be released in North America as “Earth Bound”) for the Famicom, and was then followed up by a sequel, released in North America as EarthBound for the Super NES in 1995, and followed up again 12 years later with the Japan only release of Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance in 2006. Itoi stated in an interview that the name “Mother” was greatly influenced by the John Lennon song “Mother”.
About the EarthBound trio it was damn difficult to dig out useful informations, although I find them on Facebook, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and YouTube. It seems they are an Australian band and probably “The Tales of EarthBound” it’s their debut album, as they declare, “a conceptual journey through a mystical musical land called Cleftopia.” Actually, this is a simultaneously familiar and refreshing adventure around several very famous and recognizable rock themes with a great combination of rock, funk, jazz and blues elements. Incredible talented musicians, great instrumentalists. All of them.
Joe Jeremiah – Keys, Jon “Oshy” Ooi – Drums and Jonathan “Menjeed” Mengede – Bass manage to twist in and out and back again some great themes and tied up together several different songs and at the bottom line it’s sound brand new, fresh and their own. Some things were out of my knowledge, I wasn’t able to identify precisely the source, but almost every passage sounded familiar. I’m still thinking of “Simple Bloom” and its tango flavoured aroma.
“Joe Jeremiah plays the piano and a ton of other key related instruments, spilling onto the sonic sphere of society a wave of musical madness. Supporting Joe like a solid young steed of the low end kingdom, Menjeed is the band’s bassist and spiritual mentor, often dropping jaws and blowing holes in heads with his skills and sheer style on his rumbling beast of a bass guitar. Oshy completes the ensemble, his sharp perception and downright disgusting sick drum beats rip holes in the space time continuum.
Together this team of unlikely heroes plan to unleash their creations on the world through their debut album, “The Tales of EarthBound” and an accompanying Youtube miniseries showcasing their sounds to the worldzors!” (stolen from their Facebook page)
“Stampede of Teh Gaintzors” it’s a very dramatic and groove oriented song smoothly balancing between jazz and funk, efficient opening, make you listen, but not really revealing of what’s really coming in your way.
“Electric Desert Walkers” sounds like a fromtal collison of Carlos Santana with Al Dimeola’s “Alien Chase On Arabian Desert”.
“Smoking Skies” brings back the fameous The Stranglers hit from 1977 “Peaches” from their ravenous album “Rattus Norvegicus”. Awesome idea and re-interpretation, re-integration and disintegration simultaneously, nice use of the original elements to build up a quite different “thing”.
“Blue Town” set the fire on s AC/DC “Whole Lotta Rosie” and push it into another dimension, very creative reiteration of the original rock song with a powerful groove and jazz, funk and blues flavours.
“River Green” delivers some 0’s feels like disco vibes, really fun actually.
“Molton Fury” reminded me of Black Sabbath. It might be strange, but sounds like a hurricane, thunders and all the furious metal arsenal, but merged into the sound and of jazz and funk.
“Lady in the Clouds” it’s one of my very favorites songs. Gentle, still tensioned and dramatic, familiar, but simultaneously quite mysterious. It’s killing me that I do not managed to recall from where it’s sounds so familiar, but it doesn’t really matter, I love it!
“Flight of Teh Gaintzors” starts with a tasty Queen aroma then smoothly shifting into something which have a strong Guns’N’Roses flavour (Estrange) mostly because the very Slash fueled guitar solo. Simply killer!! Probably one of the best tracks from the album, my favorite for sure. It’s groovy and beautiful, nicely layered and perfectly build-up.
Well, although you can grab it even for free (“name your price”) from their Bandcamp page, this is an album and band which definitively deserves our support! Pity, trying to dig out something more about them, I did not find one damn review, but dozens of blogs and sites with links to download for free the album from the file-sharing sites. I will repeat till I die, if we do not support real artists by buying their creations, soon we will only left bitches like Adel to listen to. And man, she’s fat, but not funny! 😆
EarthBound @ Facebook
EarthBound @ Bandcamp
EarthBound @ Soundcloud
EarthBound @ YouTube
