Black Mountain Take On The Future

Source: ChartAttack.com Staff

Posted: 03/03/08 5:52PM

Filed Under: Music

(CHART) -Stephen McBean was sick when he got on the phone in December, but he was more than happy to talk. It's been a while.

Black Mountain's In The Future was released in late January, almost exactly three years to the week that the group's self-titled debut came out. It's no insignificant amount of time, but it's not like the group have been sitting around doing nothing.

McBean, Amber Webber and Joshua Wells toured with their other group, Pink Mountaintops. Bassist Matt Camirand put out two Blood Meridian albums, and Wells and Webber also released a record under the Lightning Dust moniker. But they all came back together with keyboardist Jeremy Schmidt last year to work on what would become a truly epic piece of rock 'n' roll, In The Future.

ChartAttack: In The Future came out almost three years after your debut. When did you start working on the LP?

Stephen McBean: Pretty much the bulk of it was done last winter. We had done a little bit before; we used a couple scraps from that, but we weren't really happy. We kind of just decided to not rush making another record just for the sake of having one out. We wanted to come at it while our hearts were there and we knew it would be fun. I guess we were burnt from touring. And we had a bunch of songs, but we didn't really have the main scope of our idea for the next record, which was to make an album, like a double gatefold sleeve album, which we ended up doing, so we're happy about that. Hopefully it's worthwhile. But just kind of in the old sense of it, you know, maybe in a bit of protest for the whole iPod thing, but just in the way where if you're not getting the cover art and lyric sheet, you're not getting the heart of the piece. Anyway, we had songs, but the songs weren't quite coming together in the right way. It just sort of seemed like a live set. But as usually happens at the last minute, a few more peculiar ideas popped up out of weird sources. One was, I was at my parents' house in London, Ontario, watching a documentary on the West Side Story soundtrack, and that was pretty inspiring. So I kind of dove back into my vault of Venom records and a couple of funny little things came out of that. We had a couple of good jams where we just pressed record and some good things came out of that.

What did you extract from the West Side Story documentary?

It was actually on Leonard Bernstein, so it was on all his different things, but specifically it was "Evil Ways," that kind of came from one of those '50s knife fight cha-cha-chas. People always talk about writer's block, but either you're creating or you're not. And if you're not, I don't know if it's a block, but you have to stimulate yourself in a different way for a bit. Some people say, "Oh, we don't listen to anything when we record." But you analyze a lot of different things and get all nerdy with recording techniques. So I think we went in with about 18 or 19 songs, and then we stayed at the Hive for like two weeks. We left a couple of times to shower. I think the first couple of nights we came home, but then it was like, "Why don't we just stay here," because it's not like we were staying in a shed. It's got heat, it's a nice studio with comfy couches, it's got a bathroom — no shower — but it has a kitchen. But it was a good plan because it really came about in a good way. You know, we'd have middle of the night, too drunk on Jameson and maybe a little bit of that "green stuff" revelations. They may have been utter bullshit, but at the time they seemed like a godsend and kind of spurned us on to where we needed to go next.

Three years is a long break between records. Did you feel any pressure when you were recording the album that it had to live up to the debut?

One of the hardest parts was when we had everything recorded and mixed, sequencing and dropping — we dropped eight or nine songs — that was the hard part. There are some songs that we left off that were definitely more in the pop vein of some of the stuff on the earlier record, "Modern Music" and whatnot, that vibe. But that's why we brought in John Congleton to mix it, because we knew how we would mix it if we'd done it with [audio engineer] Colin [Stewart] as a band. But with Congleton, he took it way further than we could have imagined. He would kick us out of the room for four or five hours until it was basically pretty much done, so we'd come in with fresh ears and hear it and make comments — "My guitar's too quiet," and all that shit. He did a pretty fabulous job. The thing with him was, because he'd done a lot of hip-hop, that kind of intrigued us because of the whole drum and bass element of our band.

How did "Stay Free" end up on the Spider-man 3 soundtrack?

[Producer] Dave Sardy. Matt knew him from a long time ago when he played in a band. They played a show together. They kind of knew each other. He was a fan of the Black Mountain record. He got put in charge of putting the soundtrack together, so he got to pick the bands and bring them down to L.A. to record one song. I thought it was funny at first, but then I was playing a show in L.A. with Pink Mountaintops and I went to his studio to meet him, his home studio. And I was just looking around and drooling at all the stuff there. So at the last minute he emailed and said, "Yeah, we're booked at Sunset Sound," where all the Doors records and the Prince trilogy were done, Purple Rain and stuff. So we were like, "Awesome." We had a bunch of songs and we sent him a bunch of demos. He's kind of known for his big rock sound; I'm not familiar with a lot of it, but he picked an acoustic song. At first we were kind of like, "Huh?" But it was really fun. Especially just 'cause it was one song, in there and out of there, to work in there and out of there, to work in that kind of atmosphere. For that song, he was definitely "the producer." It's all about his ears. He just came in after a bunch of takes and said, "That's the one." We said, "OK, you sure?" He said, "That's the one." "Cool."

What's up with Pink Mountaintops?

We're gonna probably do a bit of recording around [this past] Christmas. Usually when I start recording, I have a plan to finish it as well. But this time I think I'm just going to have a plan to start and then work on it, as opposed to rushing it.

Black Mountain's Canadian dates:

• Feb. 29 Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rossa w/Bon Iver and Quest For Fire
• March 5 Toronto, ON @ Lee's Palace w/Bon Iver and Quest For Fire
• March 27 Winnipeg, MB @ Pyramid Cabaret w/Ladyhawk and Nordic Nomadic
• March 28 Regina, SK @ Distrikt w/Ladyhawk and Nordic Nomadic
• March 29 Saskatoon, SK @ Amigo's w/Ladyhawk and Nordic Nomadic
• March 31 Edmonton, AB @ Starlite Room w/Ladyhawk and Nordic Nomadic
• April 1 Calgary, AB @ Warehouse w/Ladyhawk and Nordic Nomadic
• April 2 Kelowna, BC @ Habitat w/Ladyhawk and Nordic Nomadic
• April 5 Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom w/Ladyhawk and Nordic Nomadic

—Noah Love

Must Read?

0 %

0 %

0 VOTES

SHARE