It’s been long rumored, but now we can confirm some details about Mount Eerie’s second full-length release of 2012. Titled Ocean Roar, the album will serve as the counterpoint to May’s Clear Moon (TMT Review) and will be released September 4 on Phil Elverum’s P.W. Elverum & Sun label.
Like Clear Moon, Ocean Roar was recorded in the new studio Elverum and company built in an old church in Anacortes, WA, following extensive touring to support 2009’s Wind’s Poem (TMT Review). Based on an excerpt from a leaked track titled “Pale Lights”, this release is going to feature the Sturm und Drang that usually bubbles up on Elverum recordings, yet was mostly absent on the contemplative and pretty Clear Moon. The press release lays out what to expect thusly:
[Ocean Roar] 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.
That sounds pretty spectacular. Leave it to Phil Elverum to point out what was missing from his first very-well-reviewed album of 2012 by releasing what should be its equally awesome evil twin four months later. Leading up to the release, Mount Eerie will be touring the regular stomping grounds of the Pacific Northwest, no doubt lulling audiences into peaceful reveries before conjuring up mountainous squalls all in a single evening. Be there or be square.
Ocean Roar tracklisting:
01. Pale Lights
02. Ocean Roar
03. Ancient Times
04. instrumental
05. Waves
06. Engel Der Luft (Popol Vuh)
07. I Walked Home Beholding
08. instrumental
Dates:
06.17.12 - Olympia, WA - Northern 414 1/2 Legion Way
06.18.12 - Portland, OR - 4321 SE Hawthorne (2 shows, early & late)
06.19.12 - Portland, OR - Valentine’s
06.20.12 - Seattle, WA - 20/20 Cycle (2 shows, early & late)
06.21.12 - Vancouver, BC - Rickshaw Theatre
06.22.12 - Nanaimo, BC - TBA
06.23.12 - Victoria, BC - The Fifty Fifty
06.24.12 - Bellingham, WA - Make.Shift Art Space
07.13-15.12 - Anacortes, WA - 1st Anacortes Unknown Music Series
08.24-26.12 - Rochester, WA - Helsing Junction Sleepover
• Mount Eerie: http://www.pwelverumandsun.com
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