Interview: Earth Tongue 'Dungeon Vision' New Album & Tour

Well met, yon weary traveller. Earth Tongue's new album Dungeon Vision is finally here — a blazing triumph of guitar / drums heavy psych doom-fuzz, manifested into our reality by the Berlin-based Aotearoa duo of Gussie Larkin (Mermaidens) and Ezra Simons. Produced by Ty Segall, out today via In The Red Records and accompanied by an ensorcelling self-directed new video for 'Orbit of a Witch', fans are encouraged to head along to Earth Tongue's nationwide release tour starting tonight to nab the limited vinyl edition of Dungeon Vision plus highly covetable merch. Gussie Larkin met up with UTR scribe Chris Cudby at Tāmaki Makaurau's Coffee Pen café earlier this week, for an in-depth chat delving into the world of Dungeon Vision. Crank up the full album and read onwards...

UnderTheRadar proudly presents...

Earth Tongue - Dungeon Vision Album Release Tour

Friday 13th February - Turner Centre, Kerikeri w/ Bandwidth Riot*
Saturday 14th February - Double Whammy, Auckland w/ Sulfate
Sunday 15th February - Last Place, Hamilton w/ Sulfate
Thursday 19th February - Pearl Diver, Dunedin w/ Pesk
Friday 20th February - Space Academy, Christchurch w/ Mental Joy, Ride on Supersound DJs (all-ages, 6pm)
Friday 20th February - Space Academy, Christchurch w/ Ride on Supersound DJs (sold out)
Saturday 21st February - San Fran, Wellington w/ Dateline, Flying Nun DJs*

Tickets on sale HERE via UTR
*Tour tickets and info at earthtongue.co.nz

Chris Cudby: I've written waaay too many questions. 

Gussie Larkin: I've brought the record by the way, to show you. There's a special edition that you they can only get from us, on Bandcamp and at the shows. (We've) been waiting for it to arrive.

The metallic embossing!

It's amazing yeah. How good is that? The regular one is just the artwork.

That's such a lovely photo of you both in the back.

The back could almost be the front.

Did you have a conversation with Lily (Paris West) about the artwork, about what you were thinking of?

Initially it was a mood board, Ezra and I put together of images that we liked. There was a lot of paintings on there, not necessarily album covers. That was kind of the starting point. She gave us so many different concepts, rough ideas of subject matter. The final cover is actually pretty close to one of the initial sketches. This big face. It feels like a lost Japanese psych record to me, or Eastern European or something.

How's the rehearsals been going?

It's been good. We had two dedicated days at this place called The Chapel, in Puhoi, which is where Troy Kingi records most of his albums. It was really nice because we stayed there. So we were just like Earth Tongue bootcamp, rehearsing and doing admin. It's sounding really good.

We're not playing the whole album, but we're playing like seven or eight songs off it. And some songs that we haven't played live yet. For Auckland, we're jazzing 'Ritual' up just a touch with an eight person choir. Chelsea from SKILAA, she notated all the parts. She's got a crew of really great singers — Liz is one of them, Jasmine from BEING.

There's so much sonic diversity locked within what can look like a minimalist setup with Earth Tongue. How did you hone in on the umbrella idea of Dungeon Vision?

I think vocals were a huge driver of the sound for me, for my songwriting. A few of the songs I started with the melody. 'Body Of Water' is one of them. I wanted to capture this almost old timey folk melody. It was really just me playing around and not really expecting that it would work for Earth Tongue. The vocals are such a big part of this record, there's so much singing.

We wanted to put my voice forward more, as a sort of varied range of singing. Rather than this more robotic thing, that we're known for and that is also on the record. That was kind of a starting point.

I did have an audio mood board as well. It was a lot of songs that I had a aspiration to be like, but I didn't really know how to create it with two people. With songs like 'Body Of Water', it's got quite a groovy of bass line, it's got acoustic guitars. It's not really a live song. But it captures this mysticism that I think is really important to the album.

Because you are also filmmakers, the visual potential of your songs seems like a big part of Dungeon Vision. I hear you sing and I'm visualising things in my mind.

We both do that while we're writing as well, because we have given ourselves the freedom from the start to make up stories and characters while we were writing. We kind of had these characters in mind that were in this medieval setting. It was not really intended as a concept album, but these sort of settings and characters kept coming back. We're not too attached to that, that was just like an "inside the brain" aid to create the worlds, while we were writing. We're always thinking visually as well.

Once we finished this album cover, we kept listening to the music and looking at the album art. It actually changed the way I interpreted the music. I hope that that's what it will do for other people.

How do you reckon being based in and touring Europe helped inform the shape of the record? Like we don't have many castles in Aotearoa.

Yeah that's true. I was definitely influenced by the environment and the history. We wrote most of the album in December and January in Berlin, 2024 / 25. It was really cold. It was snowing. There's not a lot to do, it's pretty depressing. And actually, our rehearsal space is kind of in a cellar, it feels like a bunker with no windows. I think that definitely helped with the world building.

How much of the album was defined before you brought it into the studio in LA? What did Ty Segall bring to the table? You were recording live to tape?

Honestly, we were not as prepared as we wanted to be. There were a lot of gaps going into the studio... there were a lot of lyrics that weren't written. Some songs structurally completely changed. It was a very fast moving record, because we had five days in the studio to do the live tracking. This is always our style, we're still changing all the lyrics while we're actually recording. We both had our the lyrics on our phones, so we were changing them in real time — because we actually record our vocals at the same time, but on different mics. It really helps lock in with the harmonies.

Ty, his main contribution was definitely having a really strong sense of what the drums should sound like. We'd shared a few references, a lot of the references being his own music. It's the kind of recording we wanted is the sort of thing that he records himself.

It's a very natural sounding recording. I found that a little challenging at the start, because I think our ears are so used to things being brighter and crisper. That's the way that music production has gone. His style is just so much more muted and organic sounding. I think that's why it sounds like a live record as well. And no click... we mixed it analogue. All on the desk. You can't make any little changes, that's it. Which is also very challenging.

All these strands of folk and heavy psych (prog as well), it all adds up to metal for me. I was interviewing a metal artist recently, who was feeling quite superstitious about manifesting the demons he was singing about. But those kinds of occult symbols can of course be metaphorical, and can be very positive. Have you ever experienced any strange resonances — with what you've been singing about and things happening in your own life?

No, but maybe I need to be more observant. I'm just in my own fantasy world. I feel my life is pretty dull compared to what's going on in the songs.

I'm mildly disappointed but also happy to hear that.

Ezra's Mum is I would say a very spiritual person. She has these cards, a deck of cards. We've been staying up there, so we've been pulling a card every day. Not Tarot. Each one is a single word — it might be like "magnificence". Then it's got this sentence that's like, "You're beaming with light." "Don't let anyone get you down." I'll dabble in that sort of thing.

I'm not superstitious, but... we like manifesting actually. When we had we heard that there was a possibility that In The Red were interested, we had this chant for like weeks. Just at any random point we'd be chanting, and it happened. We've done that a few times, had a chant.

So there is power here. You have these songs, what might be traditional Earth Tongue heavy pummel mode. Then you've got these interesting changes from that, with 'Body Of Water' which you mentioned, 'Living Hell' which is one of my personal favourites, and 'Harvester'. I really liked the line, "Seeing the evil and drinking it in", which reminded me of looking at social media.

There's definitely a bit of that. The lyrics you you could really interpret it as into our modern times. There's so much evil, horrible shit going on. There's no real message in that song. It's just like, it's all a bit shit.

In the YouTube comments for your video for 'Dungeon Vision', there was a funny comment that Ezra made about each of your styles in Earth Tongue. Ezra said, "She goes fancy. I wear a band t-shirt and a cap." But in your brand new video for 'Orbit Of A Witch', Ezra is wearing chain mail! Does this represent a new evolution Earth Tongue?

I mean, how could you resist the chain mail if it was just sitting there? Two weeks ago, we got a message on Facebook from a guy saying, "Hey, I run the New Zealand Stage and Screen Combat School. We have all this medieval stuff, costumes, props, weapons. If you ever want to use any of our performers or do something with us, let us know. So we were like, yes, definitely. In a very quick turnaround, we shot this video there. It's a treasure trove of fantasy sets. They had all those dungeon walls and the blocks painted pretty much exactly like the 'Dungeon Vision' video. He was a really cool guy.

How do you reckon growing up as part of Aotearoa's live music community, informs your own approaches to making and performing music?

I think the main positive thing growing up was not having a sense of being a big, successful musician, because I didn't see any of that, and I didn't really have a sense of the music industry in New Zealand. I think that creates really unique bands, the fact that we don't really have these scenes that you can get really stuck in. That's what I've seen in Germany in particular, even in Berlin, I've seen there's these niche genres that have a lot of bands that sound the same. I think that's so great we don't have the population to create that.

(Growing up in Wellington) I had my own friends who were making music, I was just going to their gigs and house parties... of course we had Camp A Low Hum. When I was in high school, I knew about it but I wasn't allowed to go. I knew that there was this cool thing. Eventually when I got to go, I was like, woah this is a whole new world of freaks. Also having things like Newtown Fest and CubaDupa, nowhere else has that long, creative city history. That definitely inspired me.

You're definitely inspirations for younger musicians in New Zealand. What advice would you give to any young, ambitiously minded local artists?

Now I would say to remove as many distractions as you can when you're trying to work on your music. I feel that was way less of a thing when I was first writing music. Put away the phone. Stop putting so much information into your brain. The times that I've done that is when I've had the best ideas. The biggest thing for me has been collaborating with other people... I love bouncing ideas off other people. I think it could be really lonely if you're trying to do everything by yourself. If it works for you, write some songs with your friends.

You've got a tour, in New Zealand but then all these other places. What can local fans look forward to?

The choir in Auckland. Playing new songs, a few songs that we haven't played live before. We're trying to give a good sense of the album. We're also going to have a giant bat in Wellington. Abe (Hollingsworth) is making a giant bat on the stage with red eyes and smoke coming out of its mouth.

What's next for Earth Tongue once your Aotearoa tour wraps up? You're on tour with Ty Segall in Australia and later in the year later you've got the Feld of Vision II festival?

Yeah. When we get back to Europe in March we're touring with this band Hällas. We're supporting them. They're Swedish, they call themselves "adventure rock". They just put out a new album... crazy band. They wear capes. Ezra just did a music video for them recently. Then we're going to the US. We're playing Levitation, big festival in Austin. It's a bit of a bucket list. Just trying to survive, that's what's next.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

'Dungeon Vision' is out today via In The Red Records.