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The Obelisk Questionnaire: Daniel Taylor of Cold Blue Mountain

Posted in Questionnaire on May 25th, 2023 by JJ Koczan

Daniel Taylor of Cold Blue Mountain

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Daniel Taylor of Cold Blue Mountain

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

I’m the drummer in the band Cold Blue Mountain, but I’ve also been fortunate enough to be able to contribute by playing keyboards on the records we’ve made. And for the newest stuff we’ve been working on and will be recording soon, I even got to help out on a couple guitar parts, so maybe now I’ve risen to the level of Drummer+.

Growing up, I never played drums, never owned drums, never really even thought about drums. I took piano when I was a young kid and picked up guitar when I was a teenager, and my bands in high school were me playing guitar or piano; even the first real band I played with in college I played guitar. But I quickly realized that finding a drummer was the hardest part of starting a band and being 19 and wanting to be in cool bands I figured I should probably learn how to play drums. So I started playing drums in a punk band which was definitely a good starting point, and once you become A Guy with Drums in a college town like Chico, you are automatically a drummer no matter your skill level. So from then on I’ve always been a “drummer” who occasionally dabbles in other stuff when I can, and thankfully Cold Blue Mountain is a band where there is a lot of opportunity to add some fun layers with organ, piano, and synths, which really make up some of my favorite parts of some of our recordings.

Describe your first musical memory.

It’s not technically my “first” musical memory, but I really feel like it was my first musical “a-ha” moment. My dad had an old nylon string guitar laying around the house but coming from the piano it seemed like a pretty daunting thing to even pick up, like with the strings and the frets and all of that. One day I was just sort of fucking around with the open strings and I realized that you could play the opening riff to “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica–which was still sort of a new song at that point–just with the open strings and it was like a light bulb went off: “Holy shit the music on the radio is just this?” It was the first time I had really considered that the rock bands I was listening to weren’t necessarily creating these extremely challenging, master-level works of art, and it made me instantly dive into guitar by learning the first position chords and trying to figure out any song that came on the radio.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Cold Blue Mountain organized and mostly pulled off a full US tour in the first part of 2015 following the release of our second album on Halo of Flies that sort of felt like the payoff for a lot of years of sort of putting all the pieces of the puzzle together slowly. We had really lucked out with getting our first record pressed on vinyl by Gogmagogical Records and getting some decent press here and there and had been touring up and down the West Coast as much as we could fit in one -or two-week stints. We recorded the second record without really knowing what we were going to do with it but it worked out that Cory at Halo of Flies said that he would put it out on vinyl so we wanted to do something a little bigger to really get the most mileage out of what was, to us, a pretty rad situation getting our new record out on a really badass record label. So we booked a pretty bonkers tour that went all the way from California to New England and back down and around, sort of a big circle across the majority of the country.

Of course, January and February in a lot of places is absolute shitting snow so we had a lot of hairy drives and ended up breaking down once or twice and not making a hand full of the shows. But so many of my favorite shows ever were on that tour. We got to play Saint Vitus in Brooklyn, we played an awesome in Milwaukee with Cory from Halo of Flies’ band Protestant that was packed to the absolute rafters; we played a show on Super Bowl Sunday in Des Moines Iowa during an absolute Blizzard and there was actually not a single person there except for us and the people working and it was such a bizarro-world type of feeling. And for me personally, I had semi-quit my job and ended up quitting it completely by the end of the tour so a month in a van freezing and stinking and eating way too much truckstop dried fruit was incredibly conducive to the sort of transitional state I was occupying.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

There were several times on that tour, I mentioned above, where the whole idea of trying to play shows or present your music to the world in the classic DIY fashion by driving around in a van and showing up to some house or some warehouse and having zero idea what you were going to find seemed like maybe not something that was really worth doing. I mean the good shows were good, and some of the bad shows were good too, in their own way. But for me being 34 years old at the time and loading in gear in freezing snow to play for a handful of people at some guy’s house and sleeping on a wood floor you ask yourself “how much do I really want to do this?” But it’s been a lot of years since then and we are still doing it, to a lesser extent, so the answer to that question must have been more yes than no.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

I think it leads to more or less the same place as artistic regression leads: a realization that the process of change, either for better or for worse, is always ongoing. I don’t know if that’s just the answer of someone who has regressed or at least never progressed far enough to realize some sort of artistic epiphany, but it seems like even most of the people who are making art at the highest level are either strangely unconvinced of their own greatness or are striving to be whatever it is that they feel like is better than what they are doing.

How do you define success?

Success for me would be an ability to accept the outcome of something forever. There is a famous list of rules for living that Jack Kerouac wrote out at some point that I have, for whatever reason, reproduced using single letter ink stamps on the front head of my bass drum. And there are a lot of very beat writer nuggets in there like “blow as deep as you want to blow” but one of my favorites is “accept loss forever.” And I think that the idea of being able to just accept something that happened good or bad in its final form forever is probably one of the most beneficial things you can do, in any circumstance, including when taking an honest look at whatever you have done on an artistic level.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

So far, I have managed to watch every episode of all 10 seasons of the television show The Curse of Oak Island and it is honestly one of the most painful things I do on a regular basis.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

I have an idea for an extremely quiet band that plays very subdued, rigorously melodic instrumental post-rock, with no build-ups, no distorted guitars, nothing like that. There is a band called The Six Parts Seven who used to do the sort of thing I’m talking about and it’s really something I would like to do before I’m too old to play in bands anymore.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Art is the great equalizer. Anyone anywhere can make and appreciate art out of whatever is around. In that sense art is the most universal language, even more so than math, at least in my opinion, because it takes the principles of math, ratios, shapes, etc., and makes them into something that even a child can understand has meaning.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

I’m hopeful that during my lifetime there is some disclosure about the true nature of UFOs, UAP, whatever people want to call them. Maybe not a complete explanation, because maybe that’s not even possible, but at least a fuller sharing of existing knowledge about what maybe these things are not. Much to my own dismay, I have never personally experienced ANYTHING mysterious or paranormal, although I’m certainly open to the idea. If the guy who owns Skinwalker Ranch is reading this, I’m ready to come visit any time.

https://www.facebook.com/coldbluemountain
https://www.instagram.com/coldbluemountain/
https://coldbluemountain.bandcamp.com/

Cold Blue Mountain, Lost Society Demo EP (2016/2022)

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Cold Blue Mountain Rock the House in Video for “Branch Davidian Compound”

Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 5th, 2013 by JJ Koczan

Having recently relocated myself, I’ve been paying closer attention than I otherwise might (that is to say, “any”) to how people choose to decorate their homes, what’s on the walls, etc. I think an understated inclusion to any living room might be a heavy-as-hell NorCal five-piece. You know, to add a little bludgeon to the decor. It’s like feng shui, only crushing.

Though not for nothing, but that’s actually a pretty nice house that Chico, California’s Cold Blue Mountain are working so hard to raze to the ground in their new video for “Branch Davidian Compound.” It’s got a back yard, a French press for coffee, even an elliptical machine, not to mention the nifty ceiling fan that vocalist Brandon Squyres is in danger of getting his hair caught in as he headbangs. I’m sure whoever the owner is will be sorry to see it go, since I’m sure there’s no way the foundation could withstand Cold Blue Mountain‘s tonality and still hope to be up to code. You’re never gonna pass inspection after that big slowdown, no matter how much smoking tai chi you do in the yard.

I’m all for a video with a sense of humor, and obviously Cold Blue Mountain Squyres, guitarists Will McGahan and Sesar Sanchez, bassist Adrian Hammons and drummer Daniel Taylor — have that working in their favor. “Branch Davidian Compound” was the opener and among the most striking impressions left by their 2012 self-titled (review here), which was released on Gogmagogical Records, and as a way to get acquainted with their specific brand of pummel — somewhere between post-metal brutality and the rawer-throatedness of sludge, but all dissatisfied with itself and probably blaming you for it — the clip makes a rousing introduction to the violence that ensued on the album.

“Branch Davidian Compound” was directed by Michelle Camy. Please enjoy:

Cold Blue Mountain, “Branch Davidian Compound” official video

Cold Blue Mountain on Thee Facebooks

Cold Blue Mountain on Bandcamp

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On the Radar: Cold Blue Mountain

Posted in On the Radar on August 26th, 2013 by JJ Koczan

Though it could’ve come just easily from the side of a can of cheapshit beer, the moniker Cold Blue Mountain nonetheless evokes a sense of something big, covered in snow and unconquerable. It’s as though the members of the NorCal fivesome were boozing it up while trying to think of a name for the band and had an epiphany moment. Whether or not that’s how it went down ultimately matters little when it comes to taking on their 2012 self-titled debut, released on Gogmagogical Records, because the impression you go into it carrying is the same either way. Expect largesse and bludgeonry and you’ve got at least a beginning understanding of where the Chico-based group are coming from, although that’s by no means the limits of what the lineup of screamer Brandon Squyres, guitarists Will McGahan and Sesar Sanchez, bassist Adrian Hammons and drummer Daniel Taylor have to offer.

Hammons and Squyres were formerly to be found in Seventh Rule Recordings hardcore-infused crushers The Makai, but Cold Blue Mountain are coming from somewhere much sludgier in terms of the overall base of influence. The self-titled, which comes on blue and white vinyl, on tape or in disembodied mp3s, begins with “Branch Davidian Compound,” and the oppressive tonality of the guitars is immediate. A dense recording by Scott Barwick at Origami Lounge in Chico gives a kind of claustrophobic feeling as Squyres switches between lower growls and higher-pitched screaming, gradually layering the two over a slowdown for extremity’s sake, but the low end is where the heaviness resides, and Taylor‘s drumming does a well in complementing. At 4:01, “Branch Davidian Compound” is the longest song on the album (immediate points), but it’s hardly a summary of everything Cold Blue Mountain get up to stylistically, as “Time Flies Like an Arrow” quickly shows with a brooding but tense guitar intro, hinting at not only post-metal ambience, but also some of the terra-worship that has become an essential part of the genre these last few years. They’re not country twanging by any stretch, and sure enough, the song takes off brutally around the halfway mark — the toms fill a break with a sound no less thick than any of the other tones presented — but it’s there underlying and it shows up again later in the piano of the finale, “MK Outro.”

Perhaps the most post-metallic of all in terms of its basic riff and structure is “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” which measures out a jagged rhythm in starts and stops for its verse progression and builds on them with post-rock noodling in a more open-feeling chorus, Squyres topping both with searing screams. There aren’t verses and chorus as such, but the parts fit together well one to the next, and lighter flourish in the guitar during a brief break stands as precursor to some of what’s to come on later cuts like “Lone Pine” and “Comatose,” though the subsequent “White North” does an even better job at that, making me wonder if perhaps multiple songwriters are at work in Cold Blue Mountain — the band’s interplay of the sonically dark and light being contrasting enough between tracks, despite the band having positioned songs well throughout. “White North” is short at 2:36, but though they don’t waste time in the material there or really anywhere else throughout the record, Cold Blue Mountain‘s tracks are in no way lacking presence, “MK Ultra” taking hold from “White North” with an ambient pulse that you could almost call psychedelic were it not so vehemently grounded. A build brings on more post-rock guitar and growling over a slow, nodding groove and a sudden switch to quiet noodling interplay between McGahan and Sanchez, soon to be accompanied as well by Squyres. The return to full-brunt is well announced, but still satisfies, and though “Dark Secret” tosses in some more upbeat metallized riffing in its midsection, the momentum of the songs is set by then.

That riffing in particular should stand out as something Cold Blue Mountain haven’t done before on the album when it arrives, and it’s a sequence that — though contrasted in the same song by a stretch of ambient echoing guitar and bass-driven groove — continues to be developed over the remainder of the album. “Dark Secret” also boasts one of Cold Blue Mountain‘s most satisfying payoffs; an undulating riff played out patiently and at a tempo so fitting its largesse as to border on the masterful. There are those who immediately shun screamed vocals. Off you go. I think they add to a track like “Dark Secret” a level of expression that clean singing couldn’t, and that, like everything else, a good scream has its place. Whether or not that place is over an upbeat, major-key bopper like “Lone Pine,” I don’t know, but it’s genuinely a take on Torche‘s style that I’ve yet to hear and for that alone I’m inclined to go with it. A slowdown offsets the initial bounce and once more Cold Blue Mountain‘s wall of riff nestles into a patient chug as Squyres meets it head on with noduled vocal cords. The subsequent “Comatose” — which is really the proper closer since the reprise “MK Outro” is just that — continues the lighter feel (though there’s still plenty of weight in the low end) the lead lines in the guitars reminding of the time Slow Horse took on Chris Isaak‘s “Wicked Game,” though at 2:31, the entire thing is shortlived, however satisfying its stomp may have been. Piano makes an already noted appearance on “MK Outro” with lines echoing out into suitably chilled atmospheres and Cold Blue Mountain finish by giving a sense of just how little of their overall breadth they may have shown their first time out.

Or hell, maybe that’s everything they’ve got, who knows? Somehow though, I doubt it. Cold Blue Mountain have plenty of familiar aspects in their sludge, post-metal and ambient take, but there’s a personality underlying that emerges on cuts like “Lone Pine,” “Comatose” and even “White North” that taken in combination with the rest provides a sense of individuality that hopefully the band will continue to refine as they move forward. Until then, their debut effectively blends atmospherics and tonal push so as to not necessarily rely on big riffs to get its point across, but certainly be able to capitalize on them when it so chooses.

Cold Blue Mountain, Cold Blue Mountain (2012)

Cold Blue Mountain on Thee Facebooks

Gogmagogical Records

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