highspire

Aquatic 2x vinyl with new 5 song EP has arrived Shelflife Records

Embarrassing photos time! 30 years ago today at a small university in Pennsylvania, Kutztown, me (EJ) & Alex, started playing music together. According to Alex. I cant remember that far back 🤣

We've played in 5 or 6 bands together over that time. But Highspire has always been our main collaborative band.

These photos are from our first band together, known as Intro to India. I cant say that we were very good back then. 🤣

But we were trying! To blend our love of shoegaze, madchester, britpop, etc together as something. Which was massively unpopular here at the time.

But, took us on, on their Lounge label at the time. As part of the Psychedelphia scene  of the late 90s of the time. Which they figurehead. And encouraged us as being pretty young back then.

We transitioned from ITI into highspire in 1999. And the rest is whatever. 😂

But, 30 years with anyone, especially musically, is something not many ever achieve.

So, cheers to us. Gotta celebrate s**t like that cos it really is not common. And  thankful to all who have supported and encouraged us over the past 30 years. A

The light is you. 🙏🏻🤘🏼

Mind Your Mind V1 LP, shoegaze dream pop compilation with all profits going to Mind a UK based mental health charity.

When asked and thinking about it, we thought our song You Don’t Think You Matter was the most apropos to submit. A bit surprised and honored for it to be chosen as the lead off track on Volume 1 of the 3 vinyls.

Curated by Tom Leonard Shane Speed and shorediverecords the compilation has 31 shoegaze dreampop bands from around the world. The digitals are available via Shoredive's bandcamp. And the comp is broken up over 3 vinyls also via Shoredive’s site.

Nice one! 🙏🏻🤘🏼

With Aquatic finally getting a vinyl release, guess it’s a good time to give some back story behind it.

Before Clairerecords even put out our first album Your Everything in 2004 (a German label called Alison Records put it out in Europe first in 2003), we had already stopped playing live.

This was due to a variety of reasons. But mainly that I (EJ) moved from Philly to Lanc PA after getting my apt robbed of my custom Rickenbacker 370 along w/ tapes of demos. & Alex moving to NYC.

For the next 4 years, we played in various neo-psych bands, including one together for 3 years.

In 2008, we were asked to join an Australian neo-psych band called the Morning After Girls. As we got along well with them & complemented what they were doing.

Before a US tour with the Warlocks summer 2009, & West Coast tour with Asteroid 4 after, I watched a doc called the Cove. About the industry of hunting dolphins. It won the Academy Award for Best Doco in 2010.

And it kinda haunted me during those tours. And in a weird way inspired me. So when we got back 2 months later, set to work on songs loosely based around that idea arc.

We recorded everything ourselves. The only other person on it was Martin, one of the TMAG founding members, singing a track. All totally DIY. Lofi.

Which is why the remastered version Shelflife is putting out on vinyl was sorely needed.

For photo art, asked our boy Blake to look through his photos. As he always seemed to have awesome photos.

In a set from a trip he took to a boardwalk town in Delaware, he had this photo of a fiberglass dolphin on top of some store.

I’m like that’s the cover. Under the idea of what if all dolphins were hunted to extinction, and all that were left were replicas, like dinosaurs in a sense? Obvs not hunted, but you know.

A fake dolphin with the backdrop of blue being the sky instead of water? And the irony of calling that Aquatic seemed perfect.

We released Aquatic on our own imprint label, Reverse Reverb Records. On CD only which was norm at the time. Sold at TMAG shows.

So we are super chuffed that it’s now reality, thanks to Shelflife Records

A couple examples of the remasters on this  Aquatic vinyl release. Glacier original vs now, Standing on an Empire original vs now.

Also some different photos in the gatefold that our mate Blake Monahan took when he took all the photos used in Aquatic so many years ago. He shot the cover and it all.

When Shelflife Records initially came to us, it was for this. Aquatic. But we sent them some demos of new material, Crushed album, and we’re like what ya think about this new album idea?

So Aquatic got put aside for that to happen for a bit. But has been in the works for years now.

With the 5 song ‘Take A Drive With Me’ EP, brings this Aquatic release up to 16 songs. And keeping it all in the Aquatic era of 14-16 years ago.

Pretty cool. Presales again are up on ours & Shelflife Records Bandcamp pages. Cheers!

Outage be damned slowing our roll, let's go 🤘🏼

Aquatic & Take A Drive With Me EP (Deluxe), by highspire 16 track album

Around 16 years ago we released Aquatic.

This IG page basically started as stories documenting how we started. During the pandemic. Cos, that was a weird time. No one knew what was going on or gonna happen.

But we stopped around when we first went on hiatus. 2003, post a tour with Malory, Resplandor, Stellarscope, & Skywave.

We were already on hiatus by the time our first album, Your Everything, was even released in America in 2004. On the legendary Clairecords label.

 Because at that time, no one really gave a s**t about shoegaze. And it became discouraging spending all our time for years trying and being repelled by clubs and low turnouts. This is before social media mind ya.

Basically a community of the other 200-300 bands worldwide doing it. And some OG fans that kept up on the few places available like the old shoegaze.co.uk forum and places like that.

Being in our early 20s, we needed to move on with our lives. Get jobs, start families.

Me (EJ) & Alex played in some Neo-Psych bands around Philly and NYC instead for some years. One together for a few years which gave us an excuse to hang out on weekends basically.

Then in mid 2008, we were asked to join Australia Neo-Psych band the Morning After Girls. Which we really couldn’t refuse.

And we’d fly around doing gigs & fests with them. Our first full tour in TMAG was with the Warlocks in 2009. And then a West Coast tour with Asteroid after that.

When we got back from that, we set to work on Aquatic cos had some time off. Just the two of us. Recorded in my house. DIY.

And basically went on hiatus again, besides a tour in 2013 playing some of these songs. And didn’t even know that Philly became some sort of shoegaze hub after we released this, ironically.

But, we are still proud of this record. So HBD to that. Little back story. Cheers! 🙏🏼🤘🏼

That time of year for “best ofs.” But how about album art?

We finally were able to share some new music for the first time in 15 years this year. With the help of Who released 12 songs of ours this year, via 10 on our newest album Crushed, and an extra 2 tracks on the Gloria 7”.

Everyone likes what they like musically. That’s cool, that’s natural. We absolutely love seeing the music resonate & be appreciated with those who share that line of musical communication.

But we try to match the artwork to our music as best as we can. And take pride in that too!

The Crushed album art is a painting EJ did, and sold (unfortunately) to help fund the making of the album. Which, Shelflife in their wisdom, suggested that it should have transparent print. To keep the aesthetic. Unless turned to the light to catch the text.

The Gloria 7” is a photo of Pennsylvania’s “most haunted statue”: Augusta Bitner’s grave in Lancaster PA City Cemetery. Where we are technically based. With other elements from graves in that cemetery worked in.

We are beyond happy with the music, as we always just make music we want to hear. That's it. But we are also grateful that Shelflife helped us in realizing the artwork that go with these releases.

Much love to all you during the holiday season. See ya in the new year 🙏🏼🤘🏼