Welcome to Sky Valley

Recording was finished early in 1993 and the album was first scheduled for January 1994. The band previewed the finished tapes at Foundations Forum 93 and gave "Demon Cleaner" to that event's sampler disc. Then on 11 November 1993 their label, Chameleon Records, abruptly shut down. Elektra, its joint-venture partner, picked the band up at once, and the record came out a year after it had been made. It is the first album with Scott Reeder, who had replaced Nick Oliveri in 1992, and the last with founding member Brant Bjork, who left the band shortly after the sessions ended. "N.O." was originally a song by Across the River, the band Mario Lalli fronted and Reeder had played in; Bjork suggested recording it as a tribute to them. The dry desert air of the sound and the grooves that stretch out over it have made this one of the records that defines stoner rock. The original CD grouped the ten songs into three indexed tracks with a hidden fourth; later pressings separate all ten. The running order here follows the separated form.