About Black Mountain
Black Mountain is a Canadian psychedelic rock band from Vancouver, British Columbia. The band is composed of Stephen McBean, Jeremy Schmidt, Adam Bulgasem, Amber Webber, and Arjan Miranda. Since forming in 2004, Black Mountain has released five LPs, Black Mountain , In the Future , Wilderness Heart , IV and Destroyer ; two EPs and a number of singles, mostly on the Jagjaguwar label.
Stephen Gordon McBean , was born in Vancouver and grew up in Kleinburg and Sidney . As a teenager he became interested in music and became part of the local punk-rock scene in Victoria. He formed his first band, Jerk Ward, in 1981. in 1984, the band recorded a demo that was re-released in 2009 as Too Young To Thrash. The band evolved into Mission of Christ who recorded a split 7-inch in 1987. Two years later the band broke up and McBean moved to Vancouver where he started the band Gus. They released two singles, a split EP and an album The Progressive Science of Breeding Idiots for a Dumber Society . The band gave McBean his first experience with extensive touring and he later described the experience as a "bit of noise, bit of Melvins, funk, the Amrep stuff that was going on then. Lots of screaming. Lasted four years".
In 1996 McBean asked drummer Joshua Wells to join his band Ex Dead Teenager. By 1999 it had morphed into a duo of Wells and McBean as Jerk With a Bomb. They signed with Scratch Records and Jagjaguwar in the US, and released three albums: Death to False Metal , The Old Noise and Pyrokinesis . The latter featured Amber Webber of Dream on Dreary on vocals.
While McBean and Wells were still performing as Jerk With a Bomb in 2003, McBean began to demo material that included the song "Black Mountain". At the start of 2004, the two began working on the demos under the same name with contributions from Webber, bassist Matt Camirand and keyboard player Jeremy Schmidt. They recorded the eight track, self-titled debut album during the first half of the year. McBean would later describe the change as "it was almost like a release. I mean, I loved Jerk With A Bomb, but it got to a point where I was done with it, I was through with that part of my life".
The first release under the new name was a split 7-inch with Destroyer that featured the song "Bicycle Man". The album was released through Scratch Records in Canada in December 2004, while Jagjaguwar put it out a month later. The band toured around North America and Europe, while in June the 12-inch single "Druganaut" b/w "Buffalo Swan" was released in the US. In August 2005 the band opened for Coldplay on their Twisted Logic Tour for three weeks, with their final opening in San Diego. In the same month the album was released in Germany through City Slang Records.
A vinyl single was released in April 2007 named "Surrender Sound Session: Unkle vs. Autolux/Black Mountain" with a remix of "No Hits" on the B side.
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