Residual Echoes Reverberating Across Europe.

Touring off their new full-length, Middle Path, Residual Echoes are taking their far out sounds to some far out lands.

9/17    Praha, CZ @ 0 0 7
9/18    Pardubice, CZ @ Festiva Mûsto Na Kole
9/19    Leipzig, DE @ UT Connewitz
9/20    Mutiov, CZ @ Dílna
9/21    Potsdam, DE @ Black Fleck
9/22    Tilburg, NL @ Incubate Festival
9/24    Paris, FR @ La Cantine
9/26    Lyon, FR @ La Triperie
9/27    Genoa, IT @ Garage Lessismore
9/28    Verona, IT @ Villa Zamboni
9/29    Maribor, SL @ Pekarna
9/30    Ljubljana, SL @ Menza Pri Koritu
10/1    Budweiss, CZ @ Ostinato Festival
10/2    Pilsen, CZ @ Bizár Bazár
10/3    Hradec, CZ @ Králové @ klub ã.p.4
10/4    Sosice, SK @ Tabacka
10/5    Brno, CZ @ Boro

Blues Control Australia & New Zealand Tour Poster.

Daniel Higgs July Residency At Zebulon.

Starting today Daniel Higgs will be doing a month long residency at Zebulon Cafe in Brooklyn, NY. Each Monday night performance will feature a different cast of special guests. Scheduled dates: July 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd & 30th.


Zebulon Cafe Concert: 258 Wythe Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211

White Manna Busting Out Of The Redwood Curtain.

In support of White Manna's new Self-Titled album on Holy Mountain the band will be playing a batch of West Coast shows.

6/13    Manila, CA @ Manila Compound   w/Ensemble Economique
6/15    Oakland, CA @ Vitus
6/16    San Francisco, CA @ Bender's    w/Carlton Melton/Glitter Wizard
6/21    Portland, OR @ Dante's w/Carlton Melton/ Glitter Wizard
6/22    Seattle, WA @ El Corazon    w/Fungal Abyss/Carlton Melton/Glitter Wizard
6/23    Bellingham, WA @ The Shakedown    w/Carlton Melton/Glitter Wizard

Purchase CD, LP or MP3 download HERE.

Swiftumz Live.

Swiftumz live at the Hemlock Tavern January 7th 2012.

Future Shuttle "Fog Spelunk" Video.

Future Shuttle - "Fog Spelunk" from Haunted Internet on Vimeo.

"Fog Spelunk" off the Water’s Edge 12" released Aug 30th via the Holy Mountain label.

Order HERE.

Blues Control Show This Wednesday.

Yoga "Encante" Video

Yoga - Encante from Kevin DiTrapano on Vimeo.

W. Shjips Decade's Best According To J. Cocker.

Myth-maker, snappy dresser and the king of music quality control, Jarvis Cocker, listed Wooden Shjips S/t as one of the decade's best 25 albums in Rolling Stone. JC's best song list along with tons of other rock celebrities' lists can be viewed HERE.

Jarvis + Shjips = Fillmore Freakout Jam!

It was a wild evening at the Fillmore for the Wooden Shjips. Not only did they open up for Jarvis Cocker but they were called out for a freakout jam at the end of the night. Holy Shjit!

Blues Control Practice Space Session.

Russ and Lea of Blues Control filmed at their work stations for ViceTV.

Dos On Dusted.

Doug Mosurock reviews the Wooden Shjips' third full length (second proper album) on Holy Mountain for Dusted.

".... Especially when the center cut, called “Down By the Sea,” marks a milestone – over 10 minutes of rip-shit, stanky caveman beat, the second half of which is occupied by guitar solos so blistering it could be Japanese. It’s the consistency you remember, yet you’re still wondering how they got there at the end, even though so little has changed about the song. It’s a very strong encapsulation of all their strengths. And it could have been a single..."

Read full review HERE.

Onna Press.

Wild hermaphroditic cover art or not, Holy Mountain's reissue of obscure Japanese 80ies band, Onna, has been generating some serious attention:

Volcanic Tongue - "One of the reissues of the year."

Blastitude/Blogstitude - "...I suggest that instead of going out for dinner tonight, you give that $20 to Holy Mountain instead, it'll get both the 7" and the CD..."

Blog To Comm - "As for now this is a strong contender and proof once again that even here in 2009 one can make like it's 1976 or even 1962 if one tries hard enough."

Boomkat Music - " You can hear where bands like LSD March and Suishou No Fune might have taken some cues from Onna's flailing guitar sound - sprawling loosely and impressionistically across the studio recordings while those thudding machine rhythms instill some sort of orderliness."

Aquarius Records - "Tons of folks were sufficiently wowed by Onna's lone 1983 7", thankfully reissued from oblivion and drooled over a few lists back. There was just something about Onna, we couldn't quite put our finger on it, but that record was just so mysterious, a completely mesmerizing slice of lost history. Out of nowhere came this highly evocative work of melancholy psych rock with pulsing drum machines and floating Japanese vocals, sounding like nothing else you might hear from 1983, or 2009 for that matter. Adding to the confusion was almost zero information about Onna, leading listeners to make their conclusions free from any tangible facts. That changes with the arrival of this mindblowing 10 song retrospective, but just barely..... Accompanying the album are a few photos of the androgynous looking band members and some examples of Miyanishi's astounding, grotesquely erotic art. These images seem just as integral to Onna as their music, but unless you speak Japanese, you will probably be left scratching your head. There is no doubt that Onna created some challenging music, but what you get out of this album depends on how much you are willing to put into the listening experience. There may be no easy answers, but some things are better left as is, and in the end Onna's music is powerful enough to live on, in spite of its obscurity."

Shjips Considered An Essential Download By Q Mag.

Sandwiched between Peaches and X-Ray Spex, Wooden Shjips' "Fallin'" is tagged by Q Magazine as one of the Top 50 essential tracks to download for May.

Wooden Shjips' 7.2 Review On Pitchfork.

References to Alan Vega, Krautrock, Terry Riley, even Devo. The Shjips scored a right on P-fork review.

".........Dos goes a long way towards re-igniting Wooden Shjips' fire. Sonically, its five songs aren't as exploding or abrasive as earlier work-- in fact, this is the smoothest-sounding Shjips record so far. But taut energy courses through most of the album's 38 minutes. Bassist Dusty Jermier sticks to variations on the bouncing line he used to fuel the band's first insta-classic, "Shrinking Moon For You". His chugging loops are like a whip-crack, revving the band through their 1960s-licking garage tunes with the momentum of a hurtling 18-wheeler...." Read full review here.

Daniel Higgs Interview from Stereogum.

Photo by Alissa Anderson

Andrew W.K. and Stereogum dish out some questions and get some cosmic answers from the indie rock metaphysicist Daniel Higgs.

Stereogum & Andrew W.K. Interview Daniel Higgs

Tomorrow night (3/17) at 11PM, we offer the third installment of our ongoing Tuesday Sessions at Santa's with Spencer Sweeney. This time we're happy to present a night curated by Matt Sweeney (Chavez, Zwan, longtime Will Oldham collaborator, etc.). He's wisely chosen legendary Lungfish (etc.) frontman, tattoo artist (and straight-up artist), writer, and Baltimore favorite son Daniel Higgs with one-time Lungfish bassist and current Human Bell, Nathan Bell. Both men are set to do solo performances with accompaniment by special guests. You can check out the flyer at santospartyhouse.com.

Growing up, Lungfish was one of the most important bands in my musical cosmology: The Dischord crew that tapped into something incantatory with a questing, spiritual, and (most importantly) punk poetry via an awesome, raga-like minimalism that Higgs has followed into his excellent solo material, where he's shifted his focus to long-neck banjo, jew's harp, and fried/crusty atmospherics. If you're unfamiliar with the man, check out just about any Lungfish album, but especially Rainbows From Atoms, Talking Songs For Walking, Pass & Stow, and (maybe not considered as highly by most) Sound In Time. As far as the new solo works, I really love Ancestral Songs. (Also see Metempsychotic Melodies and the instrumental Magic Alphabet.) We figured we should expand upon all this Higgs excitement by asking him a few questions. Andrew W.K. is excited as well, so he also queried the great bearded one.

From AWK: I first saw Dan Higgs perform as the singer for Lungfish in about 2005. I had never heard the music before, but I heard the band name for many years. Matt Sweeney demanded I had come see the show, but he wouldn't tell me anything about Lungfish other than that I would like it. I've always trusted Matt when it comes to music, but nothing could've prepared me for the power of the performance that night. When Dan Higgs and the rest of the band kicked into their first song, I thought, "This is cool-- what a great vocal phrase!" Then they played another song -- I thought, "Wow! Another amazing riff!" After about four more equally life-changing songs, I was almost passed out in a state of shock and joy. I had never heard better music in my life. And witnessing Dan Higgs on stage was like rolling up a hill with a snowball in each hand! Since then, I can safely say that seeing Dan Higgs and Lungfish perform that night changed my life for the better. - Andrew W.K.

ANDREW W.K.: Have you thought that music could be defined as good or bad? And even if it could be, is all of it still "music" and therefor valid?

DANIEL HIGGS: Music can be defined as True or False, with authority, as it is perceived into the psycho-spiritual-architectonic construct, that is, the unique orientation and vantage of the listener (the musician is a listener). True music may behave as though False -- False music may behave as though True. And True music may become False, False becomes True. I can say more another time.

ANDREW W.K.: Have you defined yourself as "an artist" or "a musician"?

DANIEL HIGGS: Artist and Musician are ways of concisely describing integral aspects of my Vocation, my immediate Pathway.

ANDREW W.K.: I've heard a lot about your amazing work as a tattoo artist. Do you think tattoos give power to those that obtain them?

DANIEL HIGGS: Tattooing is an unclean practice, left-hand -- easily abused.

ANDREW W.K.: Do you have powers?

DANIEL HIGGS: I have powers as dictated by the limits of my immediate human incarnation, that is, limitless powers in combination. I am a power, as are we all. This plain fact should humble one, prior to exaltation in The Lord.

ANDREW W.K.: When you've written your vocal melodies and lyrics, have you written them with the music, or away from the music, only using words and thoughts of music?

DANIEL HIGGS: The lyrics arrive with a seed-melody. Instrumental melodies arrive in Truth and Counter-Truth, weaving. Please consider a type of melodic movement in a stream of images.

I asked Higgs more specifically about tomorrow night, then a bit about present-day Baltimore and the future of Lungfish

STEREOGUM: What can we expect from your and Nathan's set next week? Songs from the recent solo albums? Some long-necked banjo and jaw harp? Maybe you and Nathan will revisit a Lungfish track or two? Any of Nathan's compositions? Human Bell?

DANIEL HIGGS: The show on Tuesday, as i imagine it coming down, will consist of Nathan Bell playing banjo, and perhaps trumpet, performing some composed pieces, improvised pieces, music-pieces, with accompaniment by a variety of other musicians. For my part, I will sing while playing banjo etc. Nathan and I might present one song from a new body of banjo and jew's harp duets that he and I stumbled upon in January.

STEREOGUM: There hasn't been a new Lungfish album in a few years. I guess the band's not officially active, but it seems like you guys have never officially broken up either. Any plans for new work at some point?

DANIEL HIGGS: There are presently minor Lungfish stirrings ... no way to know what comes of that.

STEREOGUM: Baltimore has become a destination for a generation of younger music listeners. As a member of one of the area's formative bands, am curious what you think about Baltimore's current musical landscape.

DANIEL HIGGS: Baltimore is a Magic Garden.

Why The Guitar Solo Still Matters - Dusted Reviews Adam Payne.

Dusted Reviews
Artist: Adam Payne
Album: Organ
Label: Holy Mountain
Review date: Mar. 6, 2009

Residual Echoes head instigator Adam Payne deviated from his band’s reckless psych whirlwinds to deliver Organ, an album surprisingly full of power pop, balladry and crisp riffing. The comparisons to various rawk this’s and that’s are gonna fly like pies on a Three Stooges skit, so we may as well get a few of ‘em out of the way. Straight ahead opener, "The One After Eyes" suggests anything from the Only Ones to Thin Lizzy to the Raspberries. "In Hell,” piano and all, begins as an inspired-but-loose Muscle Shoals outtake before settling into bouncy pop.

A listener steeped in rock residue from the past 40 years is going to hear any number of bands tucked into this little record, but that has less to do with Payne’s lack of originality and more to do with guitar rock being something that’s simply been done and done and done. Yet, when it’s done as good as Payne does right here, comparisons mean little. For six songs and 36 minutes, Organ hones in on guitar pop’s core before stretching it out, chomping on chords and spitting out flurries of notes that remind one, ala Dinosaur Jr., why the guitar solo still matters. Just listen to "Never See You Anymore,” which earns the guitar climax Payne peels off toward the end.

The same can be said for the album’s instrumental centerpiece, "Incidental Arrangement." Awash in sputtering suggestions of riffs, it slashes its way uphill, finds its center and then chews on chords euphorically, repeating variations on its theme, surrendering to its own pulse before speeding up again. It’s simply one of the finer examples of electric rock and roll orgasm these ears have heard in a while, and gives the rest of Organ all the excuses it might need to matter.

By Bruce Miller

La Otracina Vinyl Reviewed on Foxy Digitalis.

La Otracina "Blood Moon Riders"
Holy Mountain
Original post

The LP opens with a punch drunk rock epic that feels as fresh and ageless as the greatest Flower Travellin’ Band sides. A schizophrenic Mise-en-scène keeps you in swathed surprise for all of a rolling quarter hour. A primary set up of guitar, drums and bass play through and off each other with blissful psych surf-rock shapes. This is exciting instrumental rock that quakes the feeble ‘lounge’ musak of so many post-rock protagonists. Glorious arcs of guitar that wouldn’t feel out of place on an LSD March or Bardo Pond (circa Lapsed) jam abound with tireless creativity. Some of the sickest bass formations are driven by the fingers of Evan Sobel, without feeling trite or glam. The sun-drenched energy and unabashed bravado of this group’s sound has me on my knees, praying for summer evenings and crates of ice-pearled beer.

The pace dissolves to an ambient tremble as you feel a sense of relief after the chaotic primary chunk of sound. Eventually flange guitar sounds echo and search your psyche with drifting moments in a fade-out - always hoped for but never quite realized in some of the greatest psych outings of the late 60’s. This is continued into the third movement, and then tranced upwards with a classic pounding drumbeat under bird-like guitar and liquid bass. Some incredibly contorted squeals are heaped upon a relentless percussion. Then all explodes into a head swaying bliss-out that tumbles with a damn groovy bass line and heart wrenching lead that will have you punching the fuck out of the air!

The final track is drenched in slides of experiment feeling like a lost Ghost classic. Reverb drenched hypnotica is jumpstarted after a few minutes with another killer riff that demands body spasms. The ability to shift so comfortably through various styles and tempos, gives this band the right to embrace and deliver post-rock as a term to be proud of. 8/10 -- Peter Taylor (12 February, 2009)

Aufgehoben's Free Rock Intensity Reviewed In The Wire.

When the distinction between noise and sound is blurred to such an uncompromising degree as it is on Khora, we're left alone in the middle of the storm without compass or maps. Each moment of this music hurls a new question into the squall. Where do the shadows end and solid objects begin? At what point did horror and ecstasy become indistinguishable? If this is the sound of disintegration or corrosion, how far are we into the process? If we're beyond half-way, does this mean we're actually listening to something new emerging from the debris? Aufgehoben's free rock operates at a level of such apocalyptic intensity that it's all this enfeebled listener can do to alternate between cowering behind the sofa and reeling off the kind of purple pontifications that comprise this paragraph.

John Coxon (Spring Heel Jack) once described Aufgehoben as having been "edited into existence", referring to the fact that the group's albums, though based on improvisation sessions, result from a long process of hard disk surgery overseen by drummer Stephen Robinson. But just as his massively overloaded constructs initially allowed the Brighton based quartet to discover their musical identity, so their emergence over the last two years as a live outfit has left an imprint on his processes. There is a stronger sense of a group presence on Khora than on their previous four albums, and while Robinson still delights in subjecting the source material to the most punishing indignities of distortion, that same material nevertheless asserts itself as the main agent in determining the character and direction of the finished composition.

It's also noteworthy that the album culminates in the unedited half-hour track "Jederfürsich", in which Gary Smith's guitar notes peel off like stripped paint, two drummers flail away on kits that sound like their on fire, and monumentally bloated low-end electronics hoover up the detritus. Like solarized video footage, the music's movement and contours are recognisable as proceeding from the natural world, but only just.



Aufge' have one live performance planned for this year. The band will be playing the Hokaben Music Festival (93ft East venue on Brick Lane) in London on Nov. 8th.

Blues Control Video.

The story goes that NYC designer/animator Tara Sinn randomly took it upon herself to make this sweet video using an excerpt of Blues Control's 'Boiled Peanuts'. It's roughly two and half minutes of Robert Palmer references, cats lip-syncing to guitars, space ballerinas, and other wild amazements.





Upcoming live shows:
09/30 Albany, NY @ Valentine’s
10/01 Montreal, QC @ Le Divan Orange (w/ Psychedelic Horseshit, Pink Reason, Sic Alps)
10/03 New York, NY @ Cake Shop
10/12 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s (w/ Dead C, Pink Reason)
11/12 Brooklyn, NY @ The Charleston