With “Earth Rod” it looks like Youngs and Paine have finally have revealed the full (to date, anyway) range of their colours across one release. There always seems to have been a ‘kinda’ fixed theme to their past collaborative drops on Sonic Oyster, here it’s a mixture of those styles. It’s possible when viewing/hearing the whole range here to see they’ve settled into a recognisable prescription for their consistent chemistry. With this duo there’s a thread that unites prog, 70s sci-fi TV, odd dubbery and (for want of a better phrase) ‘world’ musics. These amalgams see worlds fashioned as disparate as neon campfire meditations on “Back To Santos” and the raggedness in drone of the title track. “Earth Rod” is wanderings between the rural, the city’s dawn and the outer/inner worlds. 9/10 -- Scott McKeating (5 August, 2009)