I can still vividly remember the day that my friend John Whitson came to over to the house, excited about a new record label that he was starting. He dropped by unexpectedly one afternoon with Snipehunt Magazine editor Kathy Malloy and experimental guitarist Steven Wray Lobdell in tow. Kathy’s magazine at the time was the freshest most experimental music and lifestyle rag in the Northwest, while Steven’s seminal artcore psyche-rock band Sufi Mind Game was terrorizing the city’s venues with their German inspired brand of improvisational noise. This was Portland Oregon 1994, where it seemed like everyone you knew had either a fanzine, a singles label, a noisy indie band, a series of chapbooks for sale, lived in a shared art space, was homeless, or all of the above. John and I met each other two years before at Roundhouse Records, my friend Peter Genest’s highly curated vinyl shop on SE Hawthorne. We were both equally enamored with Royal Trux as well as Tony Conrad, and talked for an hour at that first meeting about psychedelic music and obscure artists we liked. We soon started having late-nights listening sessions at my house, heavy musical and art discussions over weed and Barley Mill Ale, while John expanded my mind with Fushitsusha, Table of the Elements, Flower Travellin’ Band, Ptolemaic Terrascope, obscure 70’s Ohr & Brain German albums, Jim O’Rourke, and loud dirgey obscure improvisational music. Though I was slightly hip to some of it, the sessions were an avant-garde music finishing school to me at the time. He also turned me onto the films of Werner Herzog as well as Alejandro Jodorowsky, the inspiration for the name of his new record company that he would launch in 1995, Holy Mountain Records!
By the time I left Portland the next year, John had already released his first Ghost 7″ as well as a kick-ass Sufi Mind Game single. He also left puddletown soon after for San Francisco to pursue the label full time. We lost touch for a bit but reconnected on the internet a decade back. I loosely followed the label and his releases throughout the past thirty years, particularly blown away by Six Organs of Admittance, Wooden Shjips, Blues Control, and Mammatus. I have even sent over live sets and demos from my own psychedelic bands in an effort to try and get John to sign them!!! I love Holy Mountain Records! It’s an understatement to say that I am highly impressed with John’s career as a highly unique musical curator. About a month ago completely out of the blue, John contacted me to send over a few boxes of Holy Mountain archives that I have missed along the way. The sealed vinyl and CD’s he shipped have been in full rotation daily here at my house. It’s a diverse collection of far-out sonic gems that many of you may have also missed, so I’m here to sort through it with adjectives so that you may so inclined to also check it out! Although, if you want a real sense of where these records are coming from, check out the hype stickers or the website descriptions of these albums for some real rock-scribe-porn!
The first thing I picked up from the stack he sent was OM’s seminal Doom album “Variations On A Theme“, an absolute stone classic, which I’d heard about without hearing. It’s droney, heavy, and beautifully long-winded with spiritual lyrical themes. Melvins meets Blue Cheer styled bass-lead duo dirges…you can’t go wrong! “Annapurna” is cinematic darkness. It was made with two freakin’ instruments, three if you count the vocals! Like Sleep ( because they are ex-members) except more sharply focused. Knowing John’s musical taste as well as his business acumen, this record being signed to his label does not surprise me in the least! Perfect after being up for 32 hours unmedicated!
Zomes cover art and center labels reminded me of early 80’s Factory Records with it’s beautiful esthetic, stark design, and complete lack on any information. Thanks be to the insert! Helmed by ex-Lungfish multi-instrumentalist Asa Osborne, it’s a phenomenal psychedelic library of sonic emotions, moving from electronic to guitar dirge to Krautrock space to minimalist anti-pop. I found myself very compelled to play this LP over and over, which I did. It caused me to drift off into deep thoughts and meditations enough to keep it on the turntable one afternoon while working. It has that Faust Tapes vibe which I still seek out in music. Highly recommended!
Magafauna by Yoga is an entirely different beast all together. Lo-fidelity riff-heavy psyche-out drug music. Am I playing this at the right speed? Was this recorded at a rehearsal on a Realistic omni-mic inside of a traffic cone? Is this an sound/art project? Either or/neither nor, it’s just brilliant noise that drifts from cinematic soundtrack to full-on bad acid trip. Heavy muddle. I fucking love it. Proudly sitting alongside Yeti and Yes in my collection. Which in itself is a great thing.
James Ferraro’s tropical drone masterwork “Discovery” is really two side length tracks, “Clear” and “Discovery”, compiled from earlier Holy Mountain CD’s. And we are all the better for it! Mild midrange repetitive drones, which sound like manipulated electronic works put through a post-production blender then reassembled under a cloud of mysterious static. Very slow moving, almost loops at times, yet this unfolds like a telescopic pole upon repeated listenings. Fans of drone and avant-garde situationist psychedelia will dig it surely.
I’ve never heard of Baltimore’s Crazy Dreams Band but they MUST have been a late 70’s synth-led acid-pop New Wave freakbeat unit that released two out-of-print albums back in the day but somehow missed the reissue train of the 90’s, right? “1977” is over the top druggy noisy madness in five distinct movements. The female vocals are both out-of-focus yet sharply right up front, as insane organ melodics pulsed through bombastic rhythms fight for control with the background. “Nightcrawler” is the minimalist highlight for me here. Utterly mesmerizing record!
The beautiful packaging of Aufgehoben‘s masterful “Fragments of the Marble Plan” does not prepare one for the ear-drum assaulting warcore that ensues throughout it grooves. But then, looking back after listening, the dislodged broken mathematically-graffitied Roman stones actually fit this sound very well: call it fractured archaeology rock. It’s always been here before and remains. And it will NOT let you forget what you are listening to and will also make you check your stylus as well as volume levels a few times. This is what noise music is supposed to sound like to me; unsettling, jarring, and completely foreign. More please?
Now then…I found a MASTERPICE. “The Voice of Seven Thunders” immediately hit me right in my third eye, with chiming British folk 12-string guitars, warm fuzzleads, bongos, tambura, tribal tom-toms and pure psychedelic vision. It’s like a lost record from 1968 that has finally found it’s way into the light of day, which when played immediately opens up the listener to a beautiful world of universal peace love and harmony, all channeled through a Roger Mayer Fuzzface. I was immediately HOOKED, and played it nonstop over coffee. Or as I wrote to John, “Jesus H Christ in a chicken basket. Hallelujah! I am listening to the greatest album I’ve never heard.” Enough said? You NEED THIS RECORD IN YOUR LIFE, dear readers.
“Chocolate Gasoline” 12″ from the sublimely loose The Shining Path is quite the free electric affair. Pulsing off-kilter electronics, bongos, and analogue synths mingle with monster movie melodies that sound as if they were produced at a Love-In. Sinister percussion comes from the shadows while heavily medicated voices textural slide in and out of the sonic consciousness. And if you accidently play this at 33 instead of 45, spirits will take over your room and chase you out the window. Again, HIGHLY recommended.
More Holy Mountain music in Part 2 and 3, coming soon…in the meantime, go buy some physical media!
Dancing in the Moonlight of our Existence 
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