Way back in 2002, I was living in a dilapidated hole of a basement on the square in downtown Carrollton, GA that my friends and I so cleverly dubbed "The Space". The intention was to have it be a second-hand store by day, and a place for us to record and make noise at night. Eventually it just turned into me living in the back on a cot surrounded by trash and rats and tons of musical gear. I recorded noise and music every day back then, barely kept my job at the Corner Cafe, and might not've ever been happier.
"Mount Analogue" is a love letter to two of my favorite things: Bardo Pond and The Holy Mountain. It was recorded on one of these heady nights, me getting too stoned and creeped out in The Space all by myself. I remember recording the drums first, just thinking "keep playing until you can't anymore". I wasn't a very good drummer back then so it was quite the feat (in my own mind) that I kept a pretty consistent beat for 20 minutes. I tuned every string on my guitar to E, and just kind of layered and bounced and layered on my Tascam 4-track until everything became a kind of mush.
Ten years later, when Patrick Lowe, Josh Lamar, and I were playing a lot of shows as The Electric Nature, we played a version of "Mount Analogue" at The Earl in Atlanta, GA that turned out really well. I just sampled the open E guitar strum and we all played to that. People liked it! I was surprised.
Neither track has had an official physical release, though there was a 'Mount Analogue' double cassette album that was slated to come out in 2011 with a bunch of other recordings from that era that never got off the ground. So here ya go, friends. Please enjoy!
credits
released February 4, 2022
"Mount Analogue" recorded by Michael Potter at The Space in Carrollton, GA - Summer 2002
"Mount Analogue Live 2012" recorded live at The Earl in Atlanta, GA with Michael Potter (guitar/synth/effects), Josh Lamar (drums/sampler) and Patrick Lowe (bass/tuba) - Summer 2012
Both tracks remastered Jan 2022 by Michael Potter
Cover art by Lily Moresi, 2011
"Michael Potter, of whom you may know as the the distinguished gentleman behind the Garden Portal label, released today some of his own mind-melting soundscapes.
The original title track is a home-recorded lo-fi bedrock of slurring electric guitars, hypnotic drums and howling white noise that Potter created on a 4-track tape machine back in 2002. The piece sits firmly between the cosmic shoegaze of Spacemen 3 and the more brutal guitar attacks of artists like David Grubbs.
The other piece on the album is a live version of this sonic bedroom experiment, recorded ten years later with Patrick Lowe on bass and tuba(!) and Josh Lamar on drums and sampler. This version rips even harder and adds a little more nuance to the pummeling 20+ minute track.
Hearing both of these iterations back-to-back convinces you that this is indeed one of the best little known jamming pieces of the last 20 years. Perhaps Potter should continue revisiting this track live with different guest musicians who can add their own unique flavors and signatures to the mix. This could be the troglodyte head-smasher “Dark Star” we all need right now, so the release of this tape is beyond critical." -Keith Hadad, Record Crates United
"Unleash the hurricane and don’t bother bolting down the windows because this heady dose of blackened psychedelia is going to burn through any obstacle anyway. Twenty years on, this shrine to Bardo Pond and The Holy Mountain eviscerates. Thick soup guitar wreckage jumps to the front of the line over, pushed into the soil by sodden bass sludge. When those jams escape, though, and the signal is clear, it’s time to shred all the way to the sun. Hail." -Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis
Space rock jams get experimental and slightly evil with zoned out synths and wheezing guitar lines plus soft, sweet vocals. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 20, 2017
