Good Morning (Black Album)

Elephant Stone puts our spin on the Doors' 70s classic LA Woman. Nothing will ever be the same again.
Out March 4th, 2014. Preorder NOW from itunes: http://georiot.co/cnH

Elephant Stone - L.A. Woman

Nevertheless - The Brian Jonestown Massacre

Title track from Kid Congo & the Pink Monkey Birds; Haunted Head album.

Kid Congo & the Pink Monkey Birds -  Haunted Head

The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Vad Hande Med Dem

Black Mountain - "Druganaut" from 'Black Mountain', out 6/23/15 via Jagjaguwar
Direct:  http://smarturl.it/blackmountain2015
iTunes:  http://smarturl.it/blackmountainitunes
Amazon:  http://smarturl.it/blackmountainamazon
Indies:  http://smarturl.it/blackmountainindies

MORE INFO: http://bit.ly/BlackMountain_10thAnn

It's only a cliché because it's true, but the greatest records are timeless. Black Mountain's self-titled debut album is just such a record, its roots leading twisting paths back into the past, while always sounding like 'now', like a future still to come. The work of a small collective of musicians operating from Vancouver, Canada, far from any industry buzz but firmly in the eye of their own storm of creativity, Black Mountain's debut album was, of course, a beginning, but it also marked an ending for Jerk With A Bomb, the group that preceded Black Mountain.

Begun as the fourth Jerk With A Bomb album, Black Mountain's debut grew from skeletal sessions cut by McBean and Wells. "We laid down the bed tracks, the guitars and drums," remembers McBean. "Matt [Camirand, bass] joined, and we changed the band name after a dream of how life could be different in the B section between Black Flag and Black Sabbath. Josh's roommate Jeremy [Schmidt, keys] was lurking about. We asked him if he wanted to add some synth bleeps or whatever. He came back with all these orchestrated keyboard parts, and we said, 'Oh, you should probably join the band now.'"

They cut the album at the Hive in Vancouver, recording in "a big cement room with a tall ceiling, nice boomy acoustics, lots of natural reverb," remembers McBean, "on an 8-track reel-to-reel tape recorder." During the sessions, these elemental first Black Mountain tracks found their true shape: the wry, giddy shuffle of "Modern Music," with its Roxy Music sax and Velvets-y chug; the epic, sky-staring riffage of "Don't Run Our Hearts Around;" the hypnotic, gracefully heavy groove of "Druganaut;" the joyful rush of "No Satisfaction;" the dark, powerful blues of "Set Us Free;" the mysterious murk of "No Hits." Here was a new classic rock, its reference points arcane and clear, its sound fresh, unfamiliar and irresistible.

The album's initial success saw the band take to the road, leaving their Vancouver enclave for stages across Canada, America and Europe. "It felt like there was a real explosion of excitement at shows," remembers McBean. "The first couple of tours, we kinda were pretty shambolic. We wouldn't write setlists, we'd just feel the energy in the room and call things out, jamming on songs like 'No Hits' and 'Druganaut.' It was a good time for live rock'n'roll: DJ booths were being transformed back to drum risers, people were digging 20 minute jams and there were bands like Comets On Fire and Oneida out there who we felt kinship with. I was into Faust and Amon Duul but had no idea of the scene of modern bands doing that stuff. And then we met those bands, and it was cool. And then we went on tour with Coldplay...and the adventures continued."
Their jaunt across the world as guests of perhaps the biggest band in the world right then is a tale for another time, perhaps: the start of Black Mountain's next chapter, and all that followed. For now, savour the compact, spacey brilliance of that cosmic, heavy and subtle debut album, expanded now with a raft of delicious bonus tracks scavenged from the Black Mountain Army archives.

Black Mountain - "Druganaut" from 'Black Mountain', out 6/23/15 via Jagjaguwar
Direct:  http://smarturl.it/blackmountain2015
iTunes:  http://smarturl.it/blackmountainitunes
Amazon:  http://smarturl.it/blackmountainamazon
Indies:  http://smarturl.it/blackmountainindies

Black Mountain

Druganaut

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Black Mountain - "Druganaut"

Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation – Horse Dance

In an era in which ‘psychedelia’ can often mean merely a grab-bag of influences from which wah-wah pedals and two-note riffs are dispensed as signifiers and signposts into a realm of easy accessibility as opposed to gateways to another dimension, it can be a rarity to come across a band who are genuinely fixated on creating alternate realities for the listener. Yet this is exactly how Stockholm’s Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation view their incandescent art, and it’s this sensibility that’s led to the kaleidoscopic spendour of their debut full-length for Rocket Recordings, ‘Horse Dance’.

“It’s a continuum that flows beyond here and now, and psychedelic music seems to be a really powerful way to unveil those deeper oceans of being that are our true home.” reflects Josefin, who forms half the core of the band with Fredrik Joelson. The last twelve months have seem a dramatic rise to prominence for The Liberation (who take their band name from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead) with their EP ‘Diamond Waves’ leading to shows in their homeland with Goat and Les Big Byrd, a nomination for a Swedish Grammy as best newcomer, and rapturously received appearances at festivals like Roskilde.

These adventures have set the stage for a spectacular movement into the unknown from their earlier work. ‘Horse Dance’ is a razorsharp collection of ditties that marry dreamlike radiance with hypnotic rhythmic drive, set alight by a prismatic experimental glow. It inhabits a realm in which a propulsive ‘60s-tinged pop song like ‘Sunny Afternoon’ can be elevated skyward with krautrock-tinged repetition, dub echo and analogue curlicues alike, and one in which a Broadcast-style mantra like ‘You Have Arrived’ can tap into a psychic lineage that stretches all the way from The United States Of America to Portishead’s ‘Third’. Yet whilst ghosts of the like of Laika, Cat’s Eyes and The Creatures may lurk in the darker recesses of these songs, this is a band paying no homage to bygone glories.

The Liberation cite a myriad influences in both their philosophical stance and their aesthetic, from 12th century iconoclasts like Milarepa to 20th century sonic voyagers like Catherine Ribeiro, and from Kandinsky’s abstract expressions of synaesthesia to the avant-jazz of Moondog. Yet at all times their transcendental extrapolations are married to icy and enticing melodic flourishes, making for a revitalising clash between the chic and the transcendental, and a sound as biting as it is beatific. “I definitely think that the human need for altered states - to see oneself from a bigger perspective - is a deep fundamental need” Josefin elaborates. “We’ve been deprived of access to our full nature by a restrictive system where altered states may be the ultimate taboo.”

With ‘Horse Dance’, Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation step into a world where all such restrictions and taboos are null and void, and this journey is already proving quite the spectacle to behold.

‘Horse Dance’ is released on Ltd colour vinyl, CD and DL on 6th November 2015

Josefin Öhrn & The Liberation - Take Me Beyond (Edit)

Grinderman - No Pussy Blues

The Dead Weather - I Feel Strange

Mohammed

from One Track Mind on Sacred Bones Records
http://sacredbonesrecords.com/releases/sbr089/

Nevertheless - The Brian Jonestown Massacre

Rémi TS Gonzalez

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