Elevator - Light Is To Life As Dark Is To Death

This is a fake compilation intended as a primer to this criminally overlooked Canadian psychedelic group, Elevator. The song 'Wink' which kicks off this compilation, can be heard as the second of the three songs performed in the video. The video itself is actually part 2 of a 1998 3-part short film to which Elevator provided the soundtrack. About 4 minutes in, you will witness this band at the peak of their powers. The tracklist below is that of an imaginary compilation/retrospective record that I intend to curate, should I ever be asked to do so.

Side A
1. Wink (3:07)
2. The Change (2:28)
3. Thick Wall (9:54)
4. You're In A Deep Dark Hole (4:11)

Side B
5. Wait For Tomorrow (3:47)
6. Backteeth (4:06)
7. Rain (3:50)
8. I Wonder What Is Sane (2:12)
9. The Grip On Me (4:30)
10. Hurricane (1:49)

Side C
11. Every Channel (2:15)
12. Black (3:23)
13. Darkness --> Light (15:55)

Side D
14. August (4:31)
15. No Good Trying (2:51)
16. The Only See To Thought (2:19)
17. Deep Underground (2:21)
18. Where Does It End? (7:28)

Known to go under the names of Elevator Through and Elevator to Hell at various points, this band is the main spiritual organ of Halifax's Rick White. White was a member of Moncton, New Brunswick's indie noiseniks Eric's Trip in the mid-90's. Since then he's released an assortment of albums under various versions of the name Elevator, exploring his unique take on lo-fi psychedelic music. With some distribution with Sub Pop, ELevator was a near miss who never broke through in a major way due to being out of time. Truth is, they pre-dated the new weird America scene by about seven years, and whatever clout Sub Pop had was nullified by the fact that no one in independent rock music in 1999 was playing fuzzy lo-fi garage psych the way these guys were.

There is great range in White's songwriting. He conjures up droning walls of noise, clears rooms with fractious feedback onslaughts, intones sonic premonitions from beyond the galaxy, scales the heavens with acid-spiked guitar jams, and soothes the soul with enchanting astral minstrel's tales. Sadly, the band is no longer with us, apparently having called it quits some time after the last release I am aware of by these guys, 2004's August. (Rick White did release a similar album called Memoreaper under his own name in 2007 and has been playing with a re-formed Eric's Trip in the last few years) But because the Elevator discograpgy is so user-unfriendly, I've decided to assemble this imaginary compilation culled from the 4 Elevator full-lengths and 1 soundtrack EP I've found to act as a sampler for the uninitiated.

"Wink" kicks off the proceedings with a growling, overdriven bass line straight out of the 90's hard rock playbook and White's soon-to-be familiar self-hating lyrics, before exploding into a massive psychedelic guitar wrestling session that includes mammoth Bonhamn drum fills and unhealthy amounts of fuzz. The whole thing clocks in at just a hair over 3 minutes, making it a worthy counterpart to the Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog," Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen," Sab's "Paranoid," Led Zep's "Communication Breakdown," Mountain's "Mississippi Queen" and the MC5's "Kick Out The Jams," or just about any other heavy psych/proto-metal classic one-off you wish to name. The next track "The Change" is a curveball, a psychedelic rave-up with jangly guitar and White's sleepy vocals providing an apt comparison to the Brian Jonestown Massacre. These two tracks give an interesting account of the dichotomy inherent in Elevator's sound. When moved, White can make his band sound like anything he wants.

The 10-minute "Thick Wall" begins as droning, druggy wall of pounding toms and chords repeated ad nauseum before all drops out, revealing simply a pulsating bassline and strummed accoustic guitar. Feedback and what could possibly be a 12-string guitar rise and fall in volume and intensity as White gradually beings to intone his astral notions over a krautrock groove. Eventually all that remains is droning fuzz and some distant moans from White, who then simply brings the song to a conclusion with a gorgeous clean guitar passage which provides the song's only melody. Quickly subsumed by a pounding snare and bouncing bassline, "You're A Deep Dark Hole" is a song which displays all that Elevator do well, including White's soul-searching lyrics and ear for melody, combined with suitably wandering guitar leads bathed in atmospheric reverb over eternally droning Komische grooves.

"Wait For Tomorrow," another one of my favourites from the "Such" soundtrack, opens Side B with possibly the band's most memorable chorus and some deliciously sludgy bass and thunderous toms. "Backteeth" is a slow-moving crusher complete with lumbering riffs and fuzzed-out stoner rock leads. The delicate acoustic passage which opens "Rain" is quickly obliterated by a ragged garage rock stomp that eventually degenerates into a floating sea of cosmic nebulae reminiscent of A Saucerful Of Secrets-era Pink Floyd. " I Wonder What Is Sane" is a fast driving rave-up featuring vortex shifting studio panning and unhealthy amounts of distortion. If you've made it this far without being bothered at all by the muddy recording quality, kudos to you. Very few do. "The Grip On Me" brings the volume down a bit, but not the intensity. A muted Hammond organ and White's skyscraping electro-fuzz guitar provide the song's highlights as it oozes dread and darkness before exploding into a stately march across the finish line. Side B ends with Hurricane, a gorgeous and almost sadly brief acid-folk ditty from the Eeireconciliation album. This beautiful tune blossoms and then whithers into atonal noise in under 2 minutes, its brevity a knowing nod to the transience of life.

"Every Channel," a classic Elevator rocker, opens side C with wild biker rock solos and riffs, and burns full throttle for just a shade over two minutes before fading into the bleak darkness which announces the arrival of "Black." The suffocating dead air hiss of the track soon explodes into a vicious psych thrash freakout similar to a paint-huffing Acid Mothers Temple. White's ethereal vocals pan all across the speakers and then abruptly cut out to reveal the monster title track to 2002's Darkness-->Light album. Probably Elevator's most momentous (and certainly their most monolithic) achievement, this 16 minute behemoth comes on first like Confusion Is Sex-era Sonic Youth's aggro-noise punk before eventually sinking everything into its unspeakably driving bassline. Frantic drumming keeps the pace up while White's galactic intonations about life, love and death are run through all manner of sonic manipulators and effects pedals. By the 4 minute mark, all pretense of a structure has left the song, as only a muddy blend of white noise and crossing sine waves remains. Eventually the rhythm section returns to the fore, delivering an "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"-esque tour de force that eventually dovetails into feedback strains and snatches of musique concrete mixology. Voices, chimes, strings, found sounds and various other instruments and noises are treated and manipulated, running riot across the soundscape. Eventually, after an urgent bass and drums pummeling, the track finally returns to earth with a return to the speed freak garage burner that opened the album. One final burst of atonal noise concludes the tracks before being sucked back up into the heavens. The listener's third eye has been squeegeed of all perception save that of the cosmic persuasion.

Finally, side D opens with the title track from 2004's August probably the band's most accessible record, due to it's (relatively) well produced and clean sound. The track is a raging slab of hallucinogenic acid-spiked garage rock which later gives way to backmasked vocals and tape loops. Followig it are a trio of songs from 1999's Vague Premonitions. "No Good Trying" is a grungy midtempo rocker that sports some nifty sound effects in addition to its ferocious Bonham-esque drum barrage. "The Only See To Thought" is another fuzzy banburner which storms through a jumble of drum fills and fuzzed out power chords (notice a theme here?) before crashing and burning. "Deep Undergroud" emerges from a fog of formless noise to groove on a solid bass vamp and display more of White's sonic shamanisms and guitar worship. Even if you can understand what he is trying to say, just ignore the lyrics, as they are mostly spacey and metaphysical imagery or strident exultations to drugged states of expanded consciousness. More important here is the sound, which in this case invokes waves churning, thunder crashing and supernovas erupting. "Where Is The End?", the aptly-named finale, does not so much end the record as bring it full circle, remaking the Ouroboros whole and stretching onward into sonic infinity as an infinite loop of propulsive drumming, flesh-searing lava-bass and chiming feedback. Rather than bothering to write an ending to the song and finishing up, White simply lets the tape run out on the track. For all I know, these guys could still be in there jamming on this thing.

So there you have it. This thing will probably never be a reality, and if you are going to the trouble of listening to all these songs in the order I prescribe, you should probably just listen to the full albums, starting with any one of the ones I took this material from. Incidentally, I got started with Elevator when a friend played me Darkness-->Light a couple years back, but really any one will give you a good indication of what they are about. Enjoy this wonderful set of Canadian music, and happy travels!

Note:
Tracks 1 & 5 are taken from the 1998 EP, Soundtrack To The Film, "The Such."
Tracks 2, 3, 7, 14 & 18 are taken from the 2004 LP, August.
Tracks 4, 12 & 13 are taken from the 2002 LP, Darkness --> Light.
Tracks 6, 10 & 11 are taken from the 1997 LP, Eeireconciliation.
Tracks 7, 9, 15, 16 & 17 are taken from the 1999 LP, Vague Premonitions.

At last count their discography includes nearly two dozen releases, including 7" singles, EP's, Mini-LP's, cassettes and live bootlegs, as well as a self-titled LP which I have been unable to locate. Factor in at least a dozen or so soundtrack and compilation appearances, and you can rest assured that what you see here is just a small sliver of what the band has produced.