Tuesday, February 5, 2008  10:28 am 

Holy Mountain

20jazzfunkgreats watched the digitally restored version of Holy Mountain at the cinema last night and thoroughly enjoyed it in a holy fuck how did this film get made (cheers John & Yoko), and holy cow thank Jodorowsky this film got made, on top of

The Christian imaginery, gas-mask clad troopers carrying around the crucified corpses of skinned dogs, a Christ made of bread rising into the sky carried by colourful balloons, transvestite priests and obese centurions, birds flying out of the wounds of the dead, toad conquistadores laying waste to iguana toads and their pyramids, the tiger faced breasts of a hermaphrodite showering milk over a fashionista, the thief giving birth to a midget, electronic devices that make it possible for dead priests to conduce their own funerals, a Grace Jones style Amazon covered in Hebrew tattoos, shit being transformed into gold through alchemical processes, creepy man from the end of Don’t Look Now lookalike sitting on top of a tree covered in chicken corpses, and brandishing a scimitar, for Christ’s sake as depicted in a crucifix shaped knife, retrofuturistic prostitute climbing up a snowy mountain accompanied by a chimpanzee that can sit on the lotus position, hands sprouting flowers and tigers on a leash

And many more things that 20jazzfunkgreats wouldn’t have been able to come up with even in the worst recesses of a fever induced hallucinatory binge, on top of this tour de force of amazing set-pieces shot grandiose, garish and colourful, the film bypassed hippie New Age bullshit to an unexpected extent (see its indictment of crappy stream of conciousness poetry and LSD as a gateway to enlightenment, or the way in which arms manufacturer designs ‘rock and roll weapons’ that youths can use to fight the man, ha!) with the deranged precision of a silver dagger heated in the furnaces of the sun going through brains made of mush and the worms inside them. And in that sense it contains that amazing kernel of light that 20jazzfunkgreats considers true psychedelia, or an awareness of the co-existence of multiple realities, and a corageous attempt at grasping the most beautiful, enthralling or mysterious ones out there through a diversity of means, as a first step towards understanding at a deeper level what goes on around us, and being able to create and share our own visions, turn them into reality, and now kids, that is a sort of immortality isn’t it?

You live forever in the world you create for others to explore and build upon.

This can never be a solipsistic endeavour, and perhaps that’s the reason much of the psychedelic stuff we dig you can dance to, the appeal to movement cracks open the cryptic nutshell creating new conduits for communication. Same with the Holy Mountain, I think of its deluge of esoteric references as beautiful tools and techniques and toys and keys through which doors are opened and the story is told, Jodorowsky’s turns them into images which impact conscious and subconsciousness making us see the world anew, or perhaps seeing a new world, and that is a trick of magic, and that is art too.

Alejandro Jodorowsky and Don Cherry- The Tarot

Another thing I really like about Jodorowsky’s work is how you can tell he loves his comic-books, just check out the imaginery, the martial arts, the training at the Master’s castle, the which is but Batman’s cave redecorated by Frida Kahlo, the progression, it’s all pure hero journey with a psychedelic twist. What about the desert gunslingers at El Topo? Don’t they make you think of video game boss fights (check The Savage Word for an excellent comparison between Jodorowsky and Suda51, responsible for Killer7 and the only game that makes me wish I had a Wii (fuck Mario), not that I’m not getting obsessed with Portal)

All of this does very well agree with 20jazzfunkgreats mythical ethos & background, or don’t we remember fondly that discussion with one Lord Nuneaton Savage at stupid O’clock in the morning about which X-Men would every member of Sonic Youth be? (make a guess about what we thought!), that’s what we dig and that’s the way it is presented to us, so we go even more bonza. In a way you could say that we are comic book sci fi RPG nerds who happen to love music, more than the other way around, we aren’t cool at all.

Anyway, we have decided to, following the example of the master, leave you today with wicked tunes from another couple of psychedelic hero squads guardians of the strong and fierce flame inside which they are consumed and nurtured, to be fair we should put up nine, one for every immortal represented by a cards of the Marseilles Tarot, but then that’s a a mission for true wizards, we accept volunteers!

It makes sense for us to begin with Mexican outfit Los Llamarada (currently touring Europe, dates at Art for Spastics), whose powerful mix of lo-fi damaged garage rock, Chihuahua roadkill prog and fucked-up telepathic dronewave desert rituals seared through our flesh last year, thanks to DJ Rick for the introduction. In the b-side of their 7” ‘The Very Next Moment’ they cover Peggy Lee’s ‘I’m Sorry’ and manage to sound like teen age Sonic Youth spilling their desperate guts over the grimey black and white tiles of an empty roadside cafe somewhere in the North of Tijuana. At 7.30 AM.

They usually sound more psychedelic than this, I admit, but the tune is so awesome we had to post it.

Los Llamarada- I’m Sorry

Acid Mothers Temple are one of those ‘bands’ one could turn into a lifestyle, dedication and perhaps religion, they are so prolific, and their music has such intense metaphysical baggage that listening to them can be a bit daunting, in this way they remind me of other larger than life outfits such as say, Einsturzende Neubauten, Amon Duul or Magma. This might have to do with the fact that all of these are collective creative commandos rather than circumscribed ‘band’ units, which harkens back to earlier stage in the evolution of the modes of music production, as Ian Svenonius would say, and involve different ways of making music, and hence of enjoying it, which perhaps don’t agree so well with the Attention Deficit Disorder listening habits which prevail these days.

Having said this, and confessing that 20jazzfunkgreats has been a bit of a tangential witness of the Acid Mothers Temple’s shamanic trips, perhaps ignorant of the meaning of specific episodes inside the broader vision, we can say that last year’s Stone Women and Records is one of their most accessible efforts, they step out of the LSD drenched excursions into tye-died constellations of karmic love and whatnot to make an album of exhilarating free free rock full of interwoven melodies which sound strong and furious and beautiful in the way that most Math-rock types out there wish they would, Acid Mothers Temple are so far ahead (by looking back) they sound as if they came from a different dimension, but at the same time were situated very close to you, like William Niles Rumfoord ghostly image co-existing simultaneously in a spiral of space which stretches from the Sun to Betelgeuse.

Anyhow, the proof of the psyche is in the tripping, here you have a astonishing beautiful raga to enlighten these cold and bleak days of the winter, take care!

Acid Mothers Temple SWR- Mastering Master Builder

labels >> Acid Mothers Temple, Film, Japanese Psyche, los llamaradas, prog, xxjfg