Beardos on the Mountain

Ghost Note - Holy Jungle

Amon Duul II - Kismet (Pilooski edit)

Ozo - Anambra

Giorgio Moroder & David Bowie - The Myth

I would love to explain in detail why a post titled this way with these songs is necessary and appropriate for this blog, but it should be so blindingly obvious by now that I won't waste both your time and mine. Into the breach:

1. 'Holy Jungle' is a new jam from Golf Channel Recordings, the New York label with ties to Whatever We Want and No Ordinary Monkey. It's the most beardo thing maybe ever. Here's my review of it on Resident Advisor. You'll note one of the comments says "What a pompous review! This record is FUN!" to which I would reply here, yeah, that's why I called it the most beardo song ever made. Sounds like fun to me, come on. Basically the track sounds like shamans clanging a bunch of metal together in collective narco-religious trance. And it samples Jodorowsky's 'Holy Mountain' where the guy unloads the cosmic myth of the nine immortals who rule the world from the mountaintop. 

2. 'Kismet (Pilooski edit)' is a whirling dervish Tibetany folk-psych jam by German space rockers Amon Duul II that's been cut for maximum hypnosis by the Dirty Sound System's beloved re-edit master Pilooski. The guys from dirty have seriously good taste, and I think they know it. Disco edits are a straight-up subgenre at this point, and the dirty crew stays really one step ahead and to the left of the rest by digging the deepest and the weirdest. 

3. Anambra by Ozo is a super-deep afro-cosmic commune jam from 1976. 

It's one of those stunning tracks that always sounds good with everything. It's so mystically narcotized, it could be a Popol Vuh jam. Loft disco impresario David Mancuso apparently plays this alot at the very end of the night. Classic wizard disco.

4. The Myth is from the Cat People soundtrack, and is easily Anambra's twin. In addition to singing on the single "Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)," Bowie intones wordlessly over ominous hand-drum atmosphere from Giorgio, an instrumental version of the single's intro. Could easily be a Berlin-era ambient outtake. It occurs in the film when they explain the foundation myth behind the cat people, who are an ancient mystic race. It's worth mentioning here that the Christian apologist Origen claims Joseph's patronymic was Pantheras, as his father Jacob was called Panther. 

Holy Mountain

Opening scene to Cat People, with vocal version

Bonus: Aguirre: The Wrath of God - Opening Mountain Awesomeness

Taking Transylvania (by Strategy)

JOHN CALE & TERRY RILEY - THE IDES OF MARCH

From John Cale & Terry Riley's collab LP, The Church of Anthrax. A monster storm of two pianos and two drums, a testament to free rock improv, a track I hold dear and which, as you'll see, has everything to do with hiking in Romania.

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I am down from the mountain. Much could be said about this. I know that I was there, I can prove it, I have images in digital. I and my colleague Alex spent a week in the Fagaras mountains in Romania. This is how these mountains appear through the eye of Google Maps.


View Larger Map

A trip initiated by a 3am drunken handshake over pierogis in the East Village, and borne to success by two friends who are both essentially adventurous, dumb and lucky. I have no urge to recall the details of the mountain mission here, for rather obvious reasons. In the absence of the sort of insightful, witty account the reader might expect from these pages, let me instead recommend perusing an online photo album. The further curious are encouraged to buy me and/or my travel partner beers in order to hear all the tales.

Taking Transylvania (by Strategy)

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I thought a great deal about what track to post that would link up with the mountains in the most satisfying way. I thought about Popol Vuh and Sunno))) and these things. Then I realized that the best way to mirror this mountain mission would not be to soundtrack it. Instead:

"The Ides of March" is a really fantastic example of improvisation, and reminds us how group music improv becomes a sort of utopian model for social relationships. Because it's all about negotiating and exercising your own freedom in relation to those around you. This is the politics of the thing, that you are free to do whatever you want, play however you want, but you're constantly affecting and affected by the decisions of others, there's a constant dialectic of freedom and limitation. Successful improv in music is a beautiful example of people getting along together, and it's not unlike the kind of exchange that can be practiced between two friends, especially two friends on a slightly bold, quixotic excursion, who are able to trust one another in their own freedom, and who by virtue of their respective decisions grant the other the chance to first become free. I've played improv-based music with Alex for several years now, and I can't help but think that seven days in the mountains was somehow..playing music by other means.