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Mount Eerie announces second album of 2012, Ocean Roar out this Sept.

By June 14, 2012No Comments

Companion album to Clear Moon

Mount Eerie – “Pale Lights” (excerpt) by forcefieldpr

Mount Eerie is having a big 2012. The month of May saw the release of the critically celebrated Clear Moon which sold out the first pressing almost immediately. June through October are full of shows all over the North American continent (more details on that soon). Constant new singles and reissues fill the summer. It’s perfectly timed that the dark counterpart to Clear Moon is being released on September 4th.

Ocean Roar is part two in a pair of new Mount Eerie albums this year. It acts as a counterpoint to the soft synth walls and landscape pondering of Clear Moon, presenting the opposite of that album’s clear glints of awareness: a total wall of blue-grey oceanic fog, a half remembered dream of a trip through dense old growth hills to the gnarly winter ocean, in the middle of the night, decades ago. This album is the audio equivalent of the blanket of thick dark water vapor that covers the Pacific Northwest for most of the year, revealing only brief glimpses of illumination.

For over 13 years Phil Elverum has been releasing beguiling records, first as the Microphones and since 2004 as Mount Eerie. The thread has sometimes been challenging to follow, meandering into weird EPs and live experiments, but there have always been punctuations of cohesive sound and idea, made giant; The Glow pt. 2 (2001), Mount Eerie (2003), Lost Wisdom (2008), Wind’s Poem (2009), and now Clear Moon and Ocean Roar.

After all the world-touring that followed the release of Wind’s Poem, Phil Elverum spent 2 years establishing a new recording studio, “the Unknown”, in an old de-sanctified church in Anacortes, Washington. These 2 new albums, Clear Moon and Ocean Roar, are the first Mount Eerie recordings to be released from the new old space. The giant wooden room is audible.

Ocean Roar is perhaps more experimental than the average album. Calling these things “songs” only loosely applies. These are closer to studies in sound, attempts to alter the way the brain experiences its surroundings after being subjected to endless chords, repeating note flurries, stretched drones. It’s “psychedelic” in same way as seasickness or vertigo. Warmth and distortion, burning driftwood, 9 months of rain.

Tour Dates

06/17 Olympia, WA Northern 414 1/2 Legion Way
06/18 Portland, OR 4321 SE Hawthorne (2 shows, early & late)
06/19 Portland, OR Valentine’s
06/20 Seattle, WA 20/20 Cycle (2 shows, early & late)
06/21 Vancouver, BC Rickshaw Theatre
06/22 Nanaimo, BC TBA
06/23 Victoria, BC The Fifty Fifty
06/24 Bellingham, WA Make.Shift Art Space
07/13 – 07/15 Anacortes, WA 1st Anacortes Unknown Music Series
08/24 – 08/26 Rochester, WA Helsing Junction Sleepover


Mount Eerie
Ocean Roar
(P.W. Elverum and Sun)
Street Date: Sept. 4, 2012
Formats: Digital, LP
Theme: fogdream/obliteration

1. Pale Lights
2. Ocean Roar
3. Ancient Times
4. instrumental
5. Waves
6. Engel Der Luft (Popol Vuh)
7. I Walked Home Beholding
8. instrumental

Links: Official Site//Twitter