We continue our look back at the classic albums of rock lore with Mountain and its 1971 album, Nantucket Sleighride. Mountain was a rock band that formed in 1969 in Long Island, New York and consisted of vocalist/guitarist Leslie West, bassist and vocalist Felix Pappalardi, keyboardist Steve Knight and drummer Corky Laing.
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THE BEST PINK FLOYD SONGS OF ALL TIME is an interesting proposition. Mainly because we tend to think of Pink Floyd as the definitive album rock band. So, THE BEST PINK FLOYD SONGS OF ALL TIME as a feature seems in appropriate. But once again think of THE BEST PINK FLOYD SONGS OF ALL TIME list as an introduction to Pink Floyd and perhaps that makes it more palatable.
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Cardiff rockers Excellent Skeleton return with a new single, “Stop Waking the Sun”, that reflects its deep dive into Psychedelic Rock territory.
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Background
Comet Control were formed in 2013 around the time Toronto band Quest for Fire announced their breakup. The band includes two former members of Quest for Fire – Chad Ross, on guitar and vocals, and Andrew Moszynski, on guitar – as well as Nicole Howell, on bass, Jay Anderson of BIBLICAL, on drums, and Christopher Sandes, on keys.
Background
Black Mountain is a Canadian rock band from Vancouver, British Columbia. The band is composed of Stephen McBean, Amber Webber, Matt Camirand, Jeremy Schmidt and Joshua Wells. They have released four albums and eight singles.
The psychedelic rockers turned dance pop sensations make their first headlining appearance in Singapore on Thursday, 21st April 2016 at the Star Theatre.
Photo Credit: Katie Hovland
Gotta hand it to Chicago’s Treasure Fleet, not only did they release two albums within six months of each other in 2012 (the excellent Future Ways and Cocamotion), the band also expanded their horizons by producing a film – Sun Machine – which premiered last year at London’s prestigious Raindance Film Festival.
The soundtrack, available for pre-order now and out February 10th on Recess Records, is a timeless sounding psychedelic rock opus that might very well have been produced in 1969 for all we know! The music of Treasure Fleet is an absolute joy for classic pop-rock (The Who, Pink Floyd) lovers and will definitely appeal to fans of like-minded indie rockers Temples, Pond and Tame Impala.
Thankfully, Isaac Thotz (singer-songwriter) was cool enough to share with us everything (and we do mean EVERYTHING) we needed to know about Treasure Fleet and Sun Machine. Set your controls for the heart of the sun…
What is the motivation behind playing music that some might (erroneously) consider ‘dated’?
What’s funny is I don’t even think of it like that. I remember being a kid in the 80’s and the popular music that was coming out then, I didn’t like the tones and the production, and so I thought contemporary music sounded very dated, just like 70’s haircuts and brown plaid couches looked very dated to me then. And looking back now that music still does sound dated. But that’s always the case in art and pop art that people are going to trend toward certain conventions as a fad. Today there are conventions in popular music and underground music that sound very dated to me. In mainstream pop music, certain inflated acoustic drum and guitar tones are in. Anthemic choruses are in. In underground rock excessive unnatural reverb on vocals is in. In hip hop spastic hi hat sampling is in. Those sorts of production choices all sound very “dated” to me right here in the moment. In terms of our music sounding of a different era, I just have my natural biases and preferences. I like 90’s hip hop drum beats and tones better than today’s. I like the Beatle’s song structures. I like the four piece rock band arrangement. I like the mellotron. I don’t mind trashy rock drums, but I dislike poor singing. I love harmonies. Those are just my own personal biases. But then to get to the motivation of how we want to produce our music-I think we just want it to sound “timeless”. I think there are bands that try to sound much more of a particular era than we do-most often it’s the current era. We don’t approach it like that. Rather, we like to try and make something where people will hopefully go “when was this made”…”where were these guys from”. There’s definitely a starting point from which we’ve taken ideas, basically it’s been from the start of rock and roll. But that’s just a starting point, and we’ve always tried to pull ideas from all eras since. If some of those ideas seem old, it’s because they are. But others are very contemporary, and as I said, the goal is to make the whole thing seem timeless at some point out in the future.
The Flaming Lips are coming back to Singapore! Four years ago, the Lips thrilled us with a wildly psychedelic show but omitted to play a single track from my favourite Lips album – The Soft Bulletin. Well, hopefully, the band can remedy this in December at The Coliseum! Tickets go on sale this Monday (20th Oct) 10am at http://tickets.eventclique.com/thegathering.
… still there’s more …
