For the 390th edition of the IA MIX Series we are thrilled to share a deep dive into jazzy neo-noir ambience from American producer Jacob Long, aka Earthen Sea.
Currently based in New York City, Long is a DIY lifer, with over twenty years dedicated to Earthen Sea’s wide range of sounds from long-form noise and drone recordings, minimal dub techno, and ethereal ambient experimentation. Long spent his early musical years in the Washington, D.C. hardcore group Black Eyes, before heading to San Francisco with bandmate Daniel Martin-McCormick to work with Damon Palermo on Mi Ami.
While all three members branched off into their own solo electronic projects (Ital/Relaxer for Martin-McCormick and Magic Touch for Palermo), Long’s work as Earthen Sea originated in the early 2000s. It began with longer experiments in drone and ambient before morphing into the icy dub techno many came to know from releases on Kranky and Lover’s Rock.
Recent LPs, such as 2024’s Recollection, have veered to ambient, dub, and jazz-influenced tracks that consistently deliver the goods. For his mix, Earthen Sea offers an exhilarating combination of gamelan recordings, jazz, and dub techno. You will find it an ideal companion for your morning coffee or a night drive through empty, foggy cities. We also got to catch up with Jacob and learn about reuniting with Black Eyes, how recent live sets have incorporated saxophone driven drones, and his life-long love of skateboarding.
Interview by Jason Cabaniss
"The overall vibe I feel from the mix is kind of a floating untethered feeling. It might be one of the things that ties together some of the many types of music I enjoy."
Hi Jacob, thank you for taking the time to create this mix for Inverted Audio. Would you take us through the concept behind the mix and what vibe you sought. When, how, and where was it recorded?
My pleasure and thanks for having me. For this mix it took a while for a sort of idea or concept to come together. I started thinking of the mix when I was listening to the music on my phone on shuffle while traveling this winter and I saved a few songs that struck me but I didn’t really see any sort of connection between them other than feeling like they individually had a vibe I was feeling.
A few months later I sort of was doing a similar thing in my kitchen at home while making dinner and sort of quickly I saw how to connect things. Or at least a starting point of tying things together. It wasn’t really conscious but I feel like I found a through line between a few different kinds of sounds that have been important to me in last number of years. I guess the overall vibe I feel from the mix is kind of a floating untethered feeling. It might be one of the things that ties together some of the many types of music I enjoy.
In terms of making the actual mix, once I felt I had enough tracks and had an idea of how to start it I put the rest of the songs in a playlist and moved them around until I had a pretty solid idea of how to move through the different sounds I wanted to include and then I built the mix in Audacity and went through and tidied up the transitions after giving a quick listen through.
We are big fans of your most recent album, ‘Recollection‘. Can you tell us about its creation, and how the project’s sound continues to evolve?
Thanks so much. Most of the songs that ended up on Recollection started off being made pretty quickly after Ghost Poems was made and they were largely made using the same process as those songs. I used various forms of these new songs for live sets in 2021/2022.
At a certain point I wasn’t really happy or didn’t see a way to take them from the kind of sketch form they were into being complete songs, so mostly I stripped them down to some ambient loops and then recorded some electric piano playing over those loops. From there I chopped up those new piano recordings and started to build “new” songs over the ambient loop foundations based on these new chopped piano samples.
From there I mostly either made new drum tracks or used very skeletal versions of the drums I had to overdub baselines and/or percussion/drums on top. Once I had all that in place I finished things with the same style of live dub mixing I have done on most of the records I have made recently. I’m not really ever aware of consciously trying to evolve my sound its more that each batch of songs presents a new puzzle for how to get them to a place that I am interested in or happy with and what to do to make that happen.
I will say that I was excited to play bass guitar and a variety of live drums/percussion on these songs (even if some of that ended up getting chopped and used more as samples). Really felt like that combination of live and programmed gave things a different feel that I was very happy with.
Our readers may not be aware that Earthen Sea started in the early to mid 2000s. What are the origins of the project and how did you first approach solo compositions while playing in bands?
Going back to high school I’ve been making solo recordings (on cassette 4 track back then) for pretty much as long as I’ve been in bands. It’s always just been a separate outlet for other kinds of music that I’m interested in that the bands I was doing weren’t exploring.
When Earthen Sea started I had just moved across the country and started playing with a great group of people doing some out there experimental stuff but coming from really actively working on music in bands for a number of years I just wanted to be making more. So it basically started as another bedroom 4 track thing.
"In working by myself I definitely like to plan things but try to keep it as open and improvisatory as possible in terms of how I work."
Over that first period of time it morphed through some various instrumentations and looping (keyboards, violin, guitar). That was pretty active for a year or two. Then I started playing in a couple of bands again and that started taking up much of my time so it took a backseat again mostly until after I left the band I was in at the time (Mi Ami) and again after leaving a group that was so active and taking so much of my time I realised I really missed working on music so intently so I started really focusing on making solo music again and one thing led to another and I’ve kept it going since then pretty consistently.
I’ve always approached making solo music rather loosely. Since its almost always been a multitrack recording based thing I usually just start laying down one layer and then I jam along with that layer until I have a part I like, then I try to record that (often coming out somewhat different than what I was planning to do) and then just keep adding layers until its finished. In working by myself I definitely like to plan things but try to keep it as open and improvisatory as possible in terms of how I work.
In 2023 your old band Black Eyes reunited for a short tour. What led to the reunion, how was the experience, and do you all have any plans to continue playing or to release new music?
I have to admit the reunion took me a bit by surprise at first. My bandmate Daniel was the one who proposed the idea, at first of just getting together and playing and seeing how it felt. The idea being that 2023 was the 20th anniversary of our first album’s release and it would be cool to celebrate that even if it was just the 5 of us getting together and playing that music.
Anyway, things went well and the ball kept rolling so we put together a handful of shows in 2023 and early 2024. We took the rest of last year off from playing and wrote a handful of new songs. I’m typing this answer as I’m getting ready to head to DC to practice for a weekend of shows we have at the end of March 2025.
We have some more plans for later this year and early next year. We are about as active as a band as we can be with 5 members living in different parts of the country and various adult responsibilities but it has been really great to be back playing and working on music together.
The pandemic slowed down music scenes around the world. How has New York fared since venues reopened? Are you getting out to as many shows, and have audiences returned to pre-Covid levels?
I have to admit that my personal show going has definitely slowed down since things reopened. But it does seem that things are as active as ever here. It seems that venues coming and going is a constant here (Covid related or not) but it doesn’t seem like there is any lack of night life/shows here but I may not have the most hands on perspective on that.
Having started playing in bands and touring before the rise of social media, what are your views on it in relation to being a musician as far as promotion, touring, and connecting with other artists and fans?
Being old enough to have booked shows when you had to call someone up on a landline and/or using a dialer from a payphone (ha)….it certainly makes some things much easier. I have to say for myself it’s generally a positive thing but I’m also in a position where I can interact with it in whatever way I want and I don’t have to do anything with it that I don’t feel like I want to.
But in terms of sharing what I want to with fans and connecting with other artists and opportunities to play shows it’s been pretty great for me. But I also feel lucky I’m not in a position where I have to actively push it or really make it “work” in whatever that would mean these days.
"The process for making a record with Kranky is great. I work on songs/recordings and when I have something I think is finished I send it over and for the most part from there they’ve been happy with what I send over and they take care of all of the physical details of making it."
What is your current studio set up? Do you have any favourite instruments or pieces of gear?
My studio setup (which is where I happen to be sitting at the moment) has been pretty consistent for the past number of years. A few pieces of gear have come in and out but mostly the last few records I’ve made have been in this space/on this setup.
The hub is my Mac running Ableton. I have that running into an old 16 channel Mackie mixer with a number of fx units to do live dubbing/etc for my mixes. I also have the space here to have a drum kit setup, practice saxophone and also paint here as well on the other side of the room. I’m really lucky to have this kind of space in the city here and I try not to take it for granted.
My favourite pieces of gear are probably either my Dub Delay pedal that I found when listening to some reggae mixes on YouTube (I have one that is just an unlabelled red box) or my Furman Sound Spring reverb rack. My old band in San Francisco had one of these and I searched for one of my own for a little while. It is definitely noisy and a fairly aggressive reverb but it just has a certain character that I really love.
I saw a recent live performance where you mixed saxophone with drone pieces. It reminds me of your early Earthen Sea work. How did that new set up come about and does that hint at a direction for future recordings?
So I hadn’t played saxophone probably since around the time of the first year that Earthen Sea was a thing (basically I played the first year after I left DC but when I moved to San Francisco in 2006 I had stopped playing). So because Black Eyes was playing again I had to teach myself to play again and as soon as I started playing I really fell in love with playing it again.
At some point after I had been playing for a little while Daniel booked me for a night that he books here related to the festival he puts on (Dripping) and he suggested I try out something longform using the saxophone. So I developed that set for that performance (and then a 2 hour performance at the first Dripping festival).
Since then I have been using that as the basis for my recent live performances. So far I haven’t recorded it but do have it in mind to try and do some recording later this year so we’ll see what comes of that.
Kranky has been your longtime label. How did you first connect with them? Would you shed a little light on the process from bringing in your new work to seeing it out on vinyl?
My memory here is a little fuzzy but at some point around 2015/2016 it was mentioned to me either by Thomas (Benoit Pioulard) when I played a show with him or by my friend and former bandmate Damon that they would be interested in hearing some demos. So I sent some of the songs I had been working on over and the ball started rolling.
The process for making a record with Kranky is great. I work on songs/recordings and when I have something I think is finished I send it over and for the most part from there they’ve been happy with what I send over and they take care of all of the physical details of making it into a record.
You mentioned in an interview a few years ago that you’re an avid skateboarder. What’s your history with it and are there any new tricks you’re working on?
I don’t know if I’m working on any new tricks per se….I feel more and more like I’m working on maintaining what little I can do. But there is a new(ish) skatepark (I always still think its new but I think it opened like 2 years ago now) nearby that has a nice sized bowl so have been working on just trying to get better at riding that. So trying to get over there a couple times a week. But really just being able to go out and roll around and hang out with friends is the best and about all I’m hoping to get out of it.
What are your musical plans for the rest of 2025? Any new material we should keep an eye on or live shows?
So far the only plans are a few shows I have coming up this spring in NYC and hopefully to do a little traveling on the east coast later this year. There are a few things possibly in the works beyond that but nothing solid yet. Don’t have any new recordings made yet but am hoping to work on some of that later this year as well.
Photography by Debbie Tuch and Jacob Long
- SOUNDCLOUD
- MIXCLOUD
- APPLE PODCASTS
TRACKLIST
1. Gamelan Son of Lion – Circular Thoughts [Folkways]
2. Tomoko Sauvage – Jalatrarangam Revisited [Aposiopèse]
3. Setting – We Center [Paradise Of Bachelors]
4. Aaron Leaney feat. Guy Thouin – Bhairav [Astral Spirits]
5. Asher Gamedze – If It Rains. To Pursure Truth [International Anthem]
6. Lifted – All Right [Peak Oil]
7. Andrew Pekler – Sleepless [~scape]
8. Purelink – Blue [Peak Oil]
9. Ekkehard Ehlers – Plays John Cassavetes 1 [Staubgold]
10. Microstoria – Endless Summer NAMM [Thrill Jockey]
11. Tatsuya Nakatani and Assif Tsahar – I got it bad [Hopscotch]