The Black Angels

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“Even by the nonstop-rock standards of 2008’s SXSW festival, it was weird to see a band that seems to live on ultraviolet light, out in broad daylight, making rippling-tremolo drone on the lawn of a downtown Austin restaurant. But local tripsters the Black Angels bring the aura of mid-1966 – the drilling guitars of early Velvet Underground shows, the raga inflections of late-show Fillmore jams, the acid-prayer stomp of Austin avatars the 13th Floor Elevators – everywhere they go, including the levitations on their second album, Directions to See a Ghost (Light in the Attic). Mid-Eighties echoes of Spacemen 3 and the Jesus and Mary Chain also roll through the scoured-guitar sustain and Alex Maas’ rocker-monk incantations. But he knows what time it is. “You say the Beatles stopped the war,” Maas sings in “Never/Ever.” “They might’ve helped to find a cure/But it’s not over.” Even so, this medicine works wonders. "

Rolling Stone
Fricke’s Picks
By David Fricke

stephanie bailey – drums & percussion
christian bland – guitar, drone machine/organ
kyle hunt – keyboards, percussion, bass, guitar
alex maas – vocals
nate ryan – bass, guitar
adam demetri – visual arts: 16mm projections & psychedelic oils

Since Aristotle, man has organized his knowledge vertically in separate and unrelated groups—-Science, Religion, Sex, Relaxation, Work, etc. The main emphasis in his language, his system of storing knowledge, has been on the identification of objects rather than on the relationships between objects. He is now forced to use his tools or reasoning separately and for one situation at a time. Had man been able to see past this hypnotic way of thinking, to distrust it (as did Einstein), and to resystematize his knowledge so that it would all be related horizontally, he would now enjoy the perfect sanity which comes from being able to deal with his life in its entirety.

It is possible for Man to alter his mental state and thus alter his point of view (that is, his own basic relation with the outside world which determines how he stores his information). He then can restructure his thinking and change his language so that his thoughts bear more relation to his life and his problems, therefore approaching them more sanely.

It is this quest for pure sanity that forms the basis of The Black Angels.

-Tommy Hall

turn on, tune in, drone out…