Pengo - climbs the holy mountain
- Artist: Pengo
- Title: climbs the holy mountain
- Format: CD
- Label: Carbon Records
- Price:
$8.00$4.80 (40% sale) - Catalog ID: CR22
"a document of Pengo‘s 5th live performance ... The performance consisted of a live musical accompaniment to the first 31 minutes of Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s film The Holy Mountain. The first 31 minutes of The Holy Mountain are without dialog. This is the section of the film they chose to play along with. This portion of the film is also considerably less linear then the rest of the film. This perfectly suited Pengo‘s music making aesthetic. The only thing constant is continual change. There are recurring symbols in the film that pass by so fast that they are almost subliminal to the viewer."
Reviews (5):
La Folia
The bizarre cover photos give no clue to the music genre, although first guess would be a cross between progrock and dark ambient. It begins with small instruments and percussion, almost like an Art Ensemble of Chicago performance from Paris 1968, and indeed it is a fine thirty-minute free improv performance in Rochester, NY, by Jason Finkbeiner, John Schoen, and Joe Tunis. - Steve Koenig
Blastitude
Ah, but what do Pengo sound like? On here, they come off as one of the more accomplished contemporary bands playing in that style I'll call The New Ominousness. Alot of noise/psych/improv artists play in this style. I think it mostly comes from AMM and MEV, which came from Webern and Stockhausen. On the rock side, it comes from the thousands of bands that have been influenced by the Doors, Velvets, Sonics, and Stooges. (The one-chord riff of The Doors' "The End" is sort of the ground zero for The New Ominousness.)
Buddyhead
Unfortunately, this one kind of went over my head... which is actually why I respect it. This album is pengo's fifth live performance, a performance accompanying the first 31 minutes of Alejandro Jodorowsky's film, "the Holy Mountain." Without the visuals in tact, it is somewhat difficult to really get a feel for this, or even enjoy it for that matter. me being a score composer dork, it starts to make more sense to me once the music reaches it's halfway point (and it's climax) at 15 minutes. i admire this and consider it to be art. but i honestly do not recommend it unless you are a severe film nerd or you meditate. - Kathleen Catastrophe
Arthur
Pengo are from upstate New York, and for some reason we usually think of them as being associated with a somewhat brutal form of post-industrial freeform noise-hunch and/or bass-heavy ass-rumblage. And yeah, they still do that, but on this new LP, A Nervous Splendor (Haoma Recordings) they visit all kindsa other space, as well.
There's good avant-psych formulating, passages of free-jazz honk, answering machine messages, mock ethnological field recordings, and even semi-folk-swabbage in a vein that would appeal to fans of the Sun City Girls.
That all these shenanigans emanate from inside a great cover design, swiped from the BYG Actuel series, is only icing on an already rich cake. - Byron Coley
Nashville Scene
Holy Mountain / Show Preview - Kinds of the Rochester NY noise scene -- larger kingdom than you might suppose -- this three-man ensemble most recently recorded a pulsing, clanging suite to accompany the wordless first 31 minutes of Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky's surreal odyssey The Holy Mountain. There's no word on whether the footage will accompany the group's show at Springwater, but without Jodorowsky's assaultive visuals of deformity and exploding frogs, the piece unfolds on CD as a sonic squall that swells, rages and recedes -- a recipe for a potentially mesmerizing live show. Adept at instruments ranging from zithers and amplified sheet metal to Tibetan prayer bowls, Pengo headline a five-band bill of electronic experimentation and drone-rock that includes one-man Toys R Us-noisemaker Radio Shock, Breathmint label chief Mat Rademan's band Newton and Nashville's own Tan As Fuck and Banjoland, both featuring former members of the New Faggot Cunts. (Oct 24, 2002) - Jim Ridley