Pynchon Music: High Mountain Tempel

High Mountain Tempel is a California duo consisting of Eric Nielsen and Keith Boyd. Having played together in a college group called Blueberry Jam, they went their own separate ways for a spell, with Nielsen playing in Maquiladora, a psyche band that occasionally toured with Acid Mothers Temple, the masters of Japanese space rock. In 2004 they reconnected at an Acid Mothers Temple gig and decided to form a new band, High Mountain Tempel.

Described by Boyd as “ritualistic soundscapes for seekers, the sound of golden ashes from a dream,” the music of High Mountain Tempel defies categorization, a hazy fusion of psychedelia, ambient industrial, noise, space rock, and a kind of improvised ritual music descended from Father Yod and the Source Family. Obviously Acid Mothers Temple is an inspiration, but the spelling of their name points to Krautrock, particularly the more exotic flavors such as Ash Ra Tempel, Popol Vuh, and the early work of Tangerine Dream.

Dark, dreamy, and droning, the music of HMT evokes hidden interiors: forbidden monasteries of cold bronze and bloodstained stone; secret gardens where hashashim are rewarded, houris smiling through coils of opium smoke; the still-rumbling engine room of an abandoned flying saucer. And yet, there’s something curiously inviting about these soundscapes. While their vibe can be menacing, this isn’t haunted house music; there’s a constant feeling that submission brings peace—Rosemary cradling her baby, or a soundtrack for Shadow Over Innsmouth. Neither of these allusions is unwarranted: the occult, horror, and science fiction are important influences on HMT, especially the apocalyptic mythologies of H.P. Lovecraft, William S. Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson, and Frank Herbert. Eastern mysticism also plays an important role, as do home-grown cults, particularly the more benign varieties such as the Summit Lighthouse or the Source Family. The group blends these inspirations with a gleeful eclecticism and a deadpan sense of humor—they describe their San Diego studio as “The High Mountain Tempel Oceanic Lodge and the Leper Colonies of Arrakis.”

After releasing three albums as a duo, High Mountain Tempel expanded their lineup for their 2014 album, Gnosis. More traditionally psychedelic than their previous work, Gnosis includes some of the musical figures most inspirational to the group: Kawabata Makoto and Hiroshi Higashi from Acid Mothers Temple, and Isis Aquarian from Father Yod’s infamous Source Family.

I’d say that we’re both huge readers. Thomas Pynchon is one of those writers whose work is just an entire universe. You start out reading a story but suddenly you are inside the thought process of several other people and perspectives. You find things, lose them and, when you least expect it, find them again. Everything is a sign. Everything has meaning. Conversely, everything could just be a big cosmic joke or a sign pointing in the wrong direction. I was an English Major in school and even before college I knew that certain authors or books were keys to unlock various roads both mental and physical. I was blessed with a High School English teacher who gifted me Naked Lunch and On the Road in my Senior year. She said, “I want you to have these. Go ahead and read them. You might not understand them right now, but eventually you will.” THANKS AND PRAISES for cool English teachers! I think that the absurd humor mixed with a looming sense of doom (or that potential ripping open of dimensions) that runs through Gravity’s Rainbow is a feeling or awareness that Eric and I share.

I have always been deeply fascinated by left of center religious groups. In the pre-streaming days San Diego had great Public Access shows that would play late at night and early in the morning. I would always catch the Elizabeth Claire Prophet broadcasts as well as our local San Diego Unarius Society shows. I loved these programs. If you’ve never experienced the Unarius group….you need to. What I felt drawn to in Elizabeth Prophet was her tonality and chanting. There were these nasal, insectoid overtones and really wrapped themselves around my head. Additionally, I am always fascinated by how these groups evolve and devolve. We’re all human after all, and we bring with us our very human faults no matter how mystical or high-minded we might be. What came through to me from these groups was the many, many different ways that people find a way to experience the sacred. Without giving allegiance to any particular faith or sect I believe that Eric and I are people who in some way, shape or form are always trying to find a way to see God’s Face.

Named after the opening sentence of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, High Mountain Tempel’s second album develops and refines the sound established on Pacific Sky Burial. Heavily-distorted guitars and theremins weave dense textures threaded with colorful foreground elements such as distant bells, mysterious prayers, incantations to gods dead and dreaming. Whereas the first album focused more broadly on mysticism and the passage of souls, A Screaming Comes Across the Sky—subtitled “The Faultline Scriptures”—is darker in tone, and is about transformation; or at least, the expectant moment before transformation, often violent: the turn of the Tower card, the end of an epoch, the collapse of an empire.

High Mountain Tempel’s attempt to immanentize the eschaton is structured as three long tracks, connected by sampled interludes and bookended by a ritualistic instrumental: “Mektoub,” the fateful Arabic phrase usually translated as “It is written.” Two minutes of gongs, bells, and cymbals, the bright shimmer of brass fades into an iron-gray twilight as “Dispatch 23 from the Kali Yuga” emerges from the gloaming. A soundscape of shivering guitars and deep-space electronics, the piece refers to the Hindu belief in the Deva Yuga, a cycle of four ages the universe moves through every 4.23 million years. Presided over by the demon Kali, the Kali Yuga is the last Yuga in the cycle, and is marked by strife and corruption. It is also the Yuga we currently inhabit. Every few moments a voice reverberates through the mix, electronically deepened and rippling into echoes: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” an obvious allusion to Shiva the Destroyer. The piece trades in many such allusions: the conflation of Kali the demon with Kali the goddess, the famous remark made by Robert Oppenheimer upon witnessing the Trinity atom bomb test, the V-2 rocket from Gravity’s Rainbow. The phrase “Dispatch 23” is likely a reference to William S. Burroughs. No stranger to praising ancient gods of destruction, Burroughs was fascinated by the number 23, an “enigma number ” later encoded into Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! mythos as the sinister number of chaos and Cthulhu.

Next is “Fluctuat Nec Margitur,” or “She is tossed by the waves but is not sunk.” The interlude begins as a swampy soundtrack populated by frogs and crickets. Soon we hear a gibbering religious chant, but what seems like phase-shifted glossolalia resolves into intelligible prayer: the sampled voice of Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the founder of the 1970s cult, the Church Universal and Triumphant. Settling along the border of Yellowstone National Park, the C.U.T. combined elements of Theosophism and Rosicrucianism with a “prepper” belief in the coming nuclear apocalypse. “Fluctuat” leads quite suitably into “The Ruins of the Empire.” As likely a reference to Philip K. Dick’s America as to any ancient imperium, the track is the most Kosmische on the album, whistling electronics and celestial harmonies reminiscent of early Tangerine Dream (back when they were exploring the galaxy instead of celebrating dolphins).

We depart the fallen empire to go “Swimming in an Ocean of Throats.” The name suggests a cult of assassins or thuggee, as does the sampled, subcontinental chanting. While it might be a benign call to prayer, the sinister title and musical underscoring suggest an outtake from the Rough Guide to Music from the Temple of Doom. A faint heartbeat leads us to the album’s namesake. The longest track on the album, “A Screaming Comes Across the Sky” is charged with tension and dread, its suffocating atmosphere reflecting Prentice Pilate’s famous nightmare at the beginning of Gravity’s Rainbow—a ominous buzzing, the chug and clack of underground trains, the sounds of a distant radio. But rising above this distorted labyrinth is the solemn chanting of Buddhist monks; a reminder we have never left the Tempel. This dreamy sense of bilocation is reinforced by the album’s outro, “Buotkem,” literally the opening track played in reverse. It’s a nice trick: like Pynchon’s “Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World,” the album offers the impression of an Oroboros, an infinite cycle, another turn of the Deva Yuga.

Oh, and one final word about A Screaming Comes Across the Sky—the CD itself is black, dead black, starless and Bible black, black on both sides! It’s a little thing, but makes the physical disc worth owning; a small piece of art in itself. Copies are shipped from Lotushouse Records, individually hand-numbered.

1. Mektoub (2:09)
2. Dispatch 23 from the Kali Yuga (15:22)
3. Fluctuat Nec Margitur (1:07)
4. Ruins of the Empire (10:40)
5. Swimming in an Ocean of Throats (1:04)
6. A Screaming Comes Across the Sky (16:37)
7. Buotkem (2:10)

Musicians
Eric Nielsen—guitar, Microkorg, theremin, space.

Keith Boyd—guitar, mandala drum, theremin, incantations.