Black Mountain

On June 23 of this year, to commemorate its tenth anniversary, Black Mountain, the world's greatest rock band, will re-release their self-titled debut album, expanded with bonus tracks collected from the band's archives (such as the demo below).  The band is touring Europe right now, but here's to hoping they tour the US this year, including Atlanta, in support of the reissue.

This album has a personal significance to me above and beyond anything the band ever intended or could have known.  In 2005, I was caught up in discovering and downloading music off of the internet, everything from 70s prog rock to Pete Namlook's electronic albums, from volumes and volumes of jazz reissues and "complete" sessions to all manners of world music to all my favorite punk and New Wave artists.  I was listening to music like crazy, but in all of my downloading frenzy, I had lost touch with new music.  I was only downloading the stuff that I already knew, until one day I came across a post titled "Five Best Recordings of 2005" and realized that I hadn't heard of any of the artists.  Spoon?  Metric? Bloc Party? Who were these bands?  I didn't know, so I downloaded one album by some band called "Black Mountain," and it changed my life.

I eventually downloaded - and enjoyed - all of the albums, and realizing what I had been missing out on, vowed I was not going to let myself fall behind the times again.  And all that it took was one listen to Black Mountain.