Holy Mountain Records: S&G

haha search & "D" obv.

unifying element: have you ever seen jodorowsky's the holy mountain?

s: blues control, lichens
g: mammatus, lesbian

search and gestroy

That Cherrystones comp is pretty rad. I need to hear more releases on this label. Blues Control sound right up my street

I like that Wooden Shjips record. The inital copies (maybe still floating around) had an extra cd of the first two singles as well. I'm also in the boat of "need to find more on/about this label."

s: six organs 'dark noontide', cloudland canyon/lichens - 'exterminating angel', blues control, davis redford triad - 'mystical path of the number eighty six'

Mammatus(esp 1st album) and Lesbian are really great. I prefer the other Blues Control stuff to their Holy Mountain album.
Great label though! Wooden Shjips are also great.

Oh yeah Davis Redford Triad are awesome!

S: The self-titled Mammatus album, Residual Echoes "Phoenecian Flu And Ancient Ocean"

i second wooden shjips & lesbian

Oh yeah Davis Redford Triad are awesome!

definitely, especially ewige blumenkraft (and steven wray lobdell's solo album is worth hearing, folky instrumental stuff). plague lounge, davis redford and six organs were the first ones i heard and it seemd almost impossible for them to do wrong at the time. lately i feel like quality control's slipping a bit, though. lesbian and mammatus both seem like token loud bands or something, not really very interesting to my ears.

suishou no fune = japanese drift-psych, echoey and kind of obscure sounding. triangulate it somewhere between kadura, keiji haino, and, i don't know, flying saucer attack's live album.

zdrastvootie = i don't really remember much about them, they were kind of proggy instrumental stuff. discordant and a bit wacky on their first album.

baseball astrologer = some guy ranting and doing odd spoken word/poetry over crude davis redford triad tracks. i don't recall for sure whether this was on holy mountain.

aufgehoben album they put out is just insane and a little bit scary.

and then there's OM...

yeah, Steve Wray Lobdell's solo record (Automatic Writing By The Moon, I think) is my favorite thing on this label, with Dark Noontide a close second. Also both Davis Redford Triad releases (and I think they have an even newer live one called Code Orange also).

oh yeah I forgot my very favorite release, the Sufi Mind Game "Shango"/'Grozny" 7". This was Steven Lobdell's band before Davis Redford Triad, a monster duo with ex-Hitting Birth drummer David Parks. They also had another great single on Stomach Ache and a couple of tapes that I sure wish I could find ( I have one). Most people know them from a Bananafish comp that they were on.

and lest we forget there is a great Ghost single on Holy Mountain also, "Holy High"/"Filament", the A-side is an earlier verson than on Hypnotic Underworld. So Search those two for sure.

JW moved himself and his label to Portland. Just like everyone else in America.

I like the 2nd Mammatus record more than the 1st one (which seems to put me in the minority).

Equal props to Lesbian. They rule!

isn't the sufi mind game stuff supposed to be rereleased imminently? that stuff is pretty great. (also 2nding the ghost single, i forgot about that.)

man I sure hope so RE: Sufi Mind Game. That would be a nice side effect of the label's seemingly higher profile and (assumedly) increased resources for reissues.

Z O D I A C S ! ! !

zodiacs album, currently choking used bins everywhere.

mammatus struck me as "all the right pedals on all the right settings, but there's really nothing there." I haven't heard the 2nd album, though.

I'm really enjoying the Shining Path album - great Rallizesian guitar jams. Ditto Blues Control and Wooden Shjips.

Holy Mountain's got some sweet stuff, but I tend to jockey for Tee Pee (for Drunk Horse and Entrance, mostly), and Kemado (for Danava mostly). Dunno why exactly, maybe Tee Pee and Kemado seem more accessible?

I think you may be right, sometimes the stuff is a bit more poppier. Tee Pee does have some great stuff though. I think the last Titan was on that.

mammatus struck me as "all the right pedals on all the right settings, but there's really nothing there." I haven't heard the 2nd album, though.

ibid. Tried hard to like that 1st Mammatus album, but never made it. Almost sucks that the opening minute is so damn great. Everything after is such a letdown.

Love the Wooden Shjips stuff exactly as much as I'm told I should. Which is to say a lot. Love Blues Control, too, but maybe a little less than the world at large? Appreciation is less immediate, more cerebral. More than anything else, S Chasny's Dark Noontide. Fucking GREAT record, Chasny's best and maybe my favorite thing on the label that isn't by Om (Om being a given). And it's nice that they've made a home for Daniel Higgs

Agree that quality control is iffy. Once upon, I bought anthing with the label name on it. Now I listen close before I bite. There's too much great psychedelic noise out there to bother scraping the bottom of the barrel with the likes of Klangmutationen & Tivol. (Warning goes double for NotNotFun, and then some).

TeePee & Kemado aren't going for the same thing at all. Holy Mountain releases sometimes cross over with stoner rock, but they're more a free pscyh label with wide ears.

Tivol are great, I love Tivol.

This is why democracy does not work.

I have a friend who says Klangmutationen are his fave holy mountain band after Om.
I still haven't heard them though.

DANAVA are one of my favorite bands. They just play with more energy than anyone, and have compositions that defy the laws of accessibility. It's a band that shouldn't work, but does. Fantastic.

yeah, they're like billy squier fronting a hawkwind/maiden jam. and virtuosity that might be grating's softened by all the fuzz

The new album is a lot less fuzzy (in a good way). Get ready for horns and strings. It's an awesome step in many right directions.

hey, people that like danava! cool. every time i see one of their albums for cheap i feel like buying it and giving it to someone with taste. i need their new 7". anyone know the titles of the last two songs on their demo? there's a place you can download it online, there are two unlisted tracks you can download - one of them is on the album (title's probably the same) and the fourth one isn't.

mammatus struck me as "all the right pedals on all the right settings, but there's really nothing there."

^^^ EXACKLY RIGHT.

Agreed on Mammatus -- so near, yet so far. And it's really frustrating because The Coast Explodes is such a great album title/cover.

the mammatus art is awesome. and so are the song titles. but i feel like what they mean to do dudes like Titan do a lot better

like billy squier fronting a hawkwind/maiden jam

This is big!

Third or seventh or whatever to Danava greatness. And wish I could get on board with Titan, but the TeePee record didn't do much for me. Sounds awesome and the art is even better, but most jamz get boring long before they end. Maybe other stuff is better?

I would say I prefer the other Titan stuff to the TeePee album (which is still pretty good btw)

what have i missed by this label over the past year? are they ever going to put the sufi mind game stuff out?

downloaded the onna 7" but i haven't listened to it very much.

Julie Mittens?

i read they put out 2 James Ferraro albums too? right?

http://www.holymountain.com/artists/zomes/

I was just going to mention Zomes.

oh yeah, i heard zomes - good stuff. haven't heard ferraro (or the skaters), i guess i should?

after listening to the onna thing a few more times, i quite like it. early 80s "psych" with drum machine, kinda droning and slightly sad. sounds like they're starting the thread that winds down through kadura, up-tight, suishou no fune, etc.

oh and it also reminds me of P.L.O.'s last 7".

so one of the new things they're doing is a reissue of FRED BIGOT "mono/stereo," which is apparently the same dude as Electronicat. samples sound pretty good in a totally monotone way.

picked up the s/t shining path 12"

very much enjoying it, not what i expected actually, highly recommended if you're into PSF stuff like high rise etc

isn't the sufi mind game stuff supposed to be rereleased imminently? that stuff is pretty great. (also 2nding the ghost single, i forgot about that.)

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, December 3, 2007 8:44 PM (twelve years ago) bookmarkflaglink

man I sure hope so RE: Sufi Mind Game. That would be a nice side effect of the label's seemingly higher profile and (assumedly) increased resources for reissues.

― sleeve, Monday, December 3, 2007 10:26 PM (twelve years ago)

so bummed that this doesn't seem to be happening

I regret to have to share the news, as posted by his friend Dave Segal earlier today on FB and Bluesky, that John Whitson, Holy Mountain's founder and visionary, has passed on after some long-running health problems. A good guy who did a hell of a lot with that label, and more besides. I am grateful to have once spent some extended time with him in Portland for a day. He did the work.

aw man

RIP

RIP, an extremely cool label, and from what I've heard, an extremely cool guy.

Very cool guy indeed. I always remember how I first learned from him how he was a survivor of this terrible event:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_Mount_Hood_disaster

You'll see his name listed as one of the students who turned back at a certain point. He would be his own best judge of the impact it had on him, but I'd casually say from the outside that perhaps it did drive him to make the most of his time. He did so.

I didn't actually know about that.

It came up here and there from him, but not in any regular sense. You definitely could tell it was something that had marked him, at least.

Dave's wonderful extended FB post about John is now available for all to read.