Black Mountain

Thursday, April 25, 2013 (8:00 PM - 2:00 AM)   |   Club Dada 2720 Elm St. Dallas TX

Black Mountain
Tactics Productions Presents
Black Mountain
The Besnard Lakes, Suuns



Black Mountain doesn't have a creation myth, or not exactly: "Most of us were found standing 'round parties wearing similar T-shirts or shoes and nodding our heads to something cool on the stereo," Stephen McBean explains. "Others were heard from behind walls but never seen 'til years later. You share a smoke, do a shot then end up in a van together for what seems like the rest of your life."

In the late 1990s, Vancouver wasn't particularly renowned for its raucous, all-encompassing psych-rock scene. "Just like everywhere else, Vancouver's music scene has had its 'up' years, followed by its 'down' years," Matt Camirand says. "When a city is in a musical honeymoon everyone goes to shows, more places start having shows, more people start bands, etc. Soon it's too much of a good thing, people begin to take it for granted and eventually it all dies out like the dinosaurs. I think when Black Mountain started, Vancouver was near the end of a musical honeymoon."

That lack of sonic spirit, however disheartening, led to a certain kind of aesthetic freedom. It helped birth a sound swampy, psychedelic, ecstatic, wild unlike much else in the indie-rock universe. "The complete indifference here to rock music in general at least at the time of our formation, it's a bit different now made us completely unselfconscious about what we were doing," Josh Wells adds. "Nobody gave a shit, so we weren't making music for any people in particular."

From those dank basement parties, Black Mountain came together organically vocalist Amber Webber was borrowed from another outfit and recruited for a 2003 tour, Jeremy Schmidt, Wells' downstairs roommate, was assimilated based on the strength of his "solo synth-scape/space rock," which according to Wells, "blew their minds" and churned out a handful of striking lo-fi recordings. In 2005, on the strength of those tracks, Black Mountain signed to Jagjaguwar and released its acclaimed eponymous debut. "The band was really just being born during the making of the first record," Schmidt says. A follow-up, In the Future, arrived to critical adulation and copious Devil-horning in early 2008.

A little over a year later, Black Mountain's third LP, Wilderness Heart, was built on the west coast of America, in part at London Bridge Studios in Seattle, but predominantly at Sunset Sound, a former automotive repair shop in Hollywood that began as an outpost for Disney (songs for Bambi, Mary Poppins, and 101 Dalmations were laid to tape there) before it went rock n'roll, capturing tracks from The Doors, Ringo Starr, the Rolling Stones, and more. L.A. with its tacos and sunsets, starlets and hills and post-Deco kitsch was a considerable inspiration. "Just being under the influence of one's surroundings, as we were while recording in L.A., had a tremendous impact on the process and the way we play. Consequently, the LA sessions have a free and summery vibe. The Seattle sessions, made in the grey, rainy environs that we're used to up there, have a chillier, more claustrophobic feeling," Wells explains.

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Thursday, April 25, 2013 (8:00 PM - 2:00 AM)
Club Dada 2720 Elm St., DallasTX


Map of 2720 Elm St.

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