Mycelium Music Volume I: "Pinedemonium Awakes"

by The Mighty Orchid King

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muschiosauro This sounds like my favourite prog rock albums from the late 60s to the late 70s and beyond played all together, all at once, one on top of the other simultaneously, and yet the result, rather than being total chaos, comes up as pure bliss to my ears. Beautiful, warm production and no trace of self-indulgency, just fresh, earthy, unique psychedelic prog rock stemming from musk and mushrooms to reach Douglas Fir heights. Favorite track: Bail Me Out.

Nerve Salad Simply one of the best prog/psych/folk rock albums I've heard in a VERY long time. If they continue with this fantastic mind-melting journey, they'll go far. I'm so glad I got to hear it, even so late in the game... it's pure gold. Grab ahold of something... this'll toss you around some.

TheEliteExtremophile Mycelium Music Volume I is an incredible album. From the first time I heard it, it absolutely knocked my socks off. The blend of prog, folk, and psych is carried out masterfully, and the gapless nature of this album makes it feel like the entire experience flies by. I’m very excited to see how this band spreads their spores in the future.

Full review here: theeliteextremophile.com/2022/10/10/album-review-the-mighty-orchid-king-mycelium-music-volume-i-pinedemonium-awakes/ Favorite track: Symbiomedome.

Dr. "Buzz" Frenzy (Matthew J Hesse) thumbnail

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
The limited eco-mix vinyl edition of our new album is made from coloured offcuts of previous vinyl runs. Reground and mixed together, the repurposed material produces a randomised run of ‘lucky-dip’ colour vinyl, ensuring each record is slightly unique.

*Colour of pressing may vary from photo*

Includes unlimited streaming of Mycelium Music Volume I: "Pinedemonium Awakes" via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Prologue (A Spore In The City) 00:59	lyrics	buy track
Our tale begins before they were the Vagrant Marching Band When they were working in the towers vanquishing the land When suddenly there opened up strange possibilities That everything they had assumed was their reality Was nothing more than stories told to keep them civilised Return to Normal!
2.	Return To Normal 03:38	lyrics	buy track
I’m subsumed, I’m consumed By a network of cables and colours, digits and light In my dreams there’s no screen But when I feel fluidity the warning is amplified Return to normal I don’t think I’ve had enough What about you, would you like to Return to normal? There’ll be room for all of us If you help me swim across (Nefarious deeds!) Apologies, we are receiving interference Hear strange things leaking in There is a code somewhere that is always just out of reach These echoes seem to grow And invite us to places so maybe the walls were breached? If I fall someone will take my place I let new worlds spin into my orbit but there’s no space Spill my coffee on the keys But still I’m swimming in the data stream If this all has to fall so do we Return to normal I don’t think I’ve had enough What about you, would you like to Return to normal? There’ll be room for all of us If you help me swim across Our systems used for nefarious deeds The internet was made here, it's our technology Hand us the map then quickly look away We can cut up the cables and destroy the charade Toss my phone into the Lea Regret it later so I jump right in The dirty river pulls me upstream
3.	Bail Me Out 05:32	lyrics	buy track
What if the world knew how to tell you so? I think I've found another piece of the puzzle In the river, why do you struggle so? Just lie back and let these feelings wash you away If there's peace in all of this, I'll have it all My shoulders ache uncontrollable These obsessions will one day turn to dust Those economic agents with hours to fill Under the motorway I have become a reach So languid and twire, the world rushes over me And if only the rumbles above could cease Like in my dreams my limbs are estuaries Bail me out again Bail me out again We keep on dreaming of getting away But to another hopeless place Maybe we just left it too late Pour me into a more eternal state We keep on dreaming of getting away But to another hopeless place Maybe we just left it too late Pour me into a more eternal state Bail me out again Bail me out again (There's nothing wrong with me) Bail me out again Bail me out again
4.	The Ancient Bliss 03:01	lyrics	buy track
I’m waiting for the world to swallow us it never stops 'Cause we go in and out like broken clocks that interlock I’m at three, you’re at nine and in the middle of the night I have another vision of the girl from the river Guide me to the ancient bliss so deep It’s an undying pit, I can throw my friends in We walk in and out of timber trees all in a line The salvage rhythms of our sustenance now monetised Amidst the ruins that are left, a mushroom nursing in your breast Our endless footsteps surely are unearthing the magic Guide me to the ancient bliss so deep It’s an undying pit, I can throw my friends in Guide me to the ancient bliss so deep Maybe just caught between my wakefulness and sleep So let me unfurl into the morning Open the floodgates and keep on walking We cannot live like vagrants forever But all these endless miles are noble endeavours Guide me to the ancient bliss so deep It’s an undying pit, I can throw my friends in Guide me to the ancient bliss so deep It’s an undying pit, I can throw my friends in
5.	Two Trees Tangled Together 03:20	lyrics	buy track
Two trees tangled together forever Two trees tangled together forever Unprepared by our simulated lives There is the potential for the sublime Whenever we leave these concrete boundaries All these ideas seem somehow connected Two trees tangled together forever We roam the endless wastes which they have left On these ancestral routes I unravel And understand that we’re infinitely Related, friends and equals in the wild Two trees tangled together forever I don’t have the words I need To feel the flight of the golden eagle I don’t have the words I need To feel the flight of the golden eagle And learn its poetry But I felt something lift in me Hearing the bells ring in blue cathedrals Those whispering harmonies
6.	Wild And Running Free 00:34	lyrics	buy track
I’m wild and I’m running free Hit in the face by a tree I know that something’s happening to me Rewired now I’m noticing Strange offerings from underneath I know the elms are listening to me
7.	I Found My Mycelium Man 00:37	lyrics	buy track
I found my mycelium man! Mycorrhizal dreams in his hands I felt something lift in me Tasting the fruit of the mushroom kingdom
8.	Anastomosis 01:51	lyrics	buy track
My mind is quick Million years just passing out the window Open my lips Tastes like sugar in the morning, infinite dawning Use it I never had a chance to Infuse it I never had a chance to I am the truth Boundaries dissolve I’m unbridled I am boundless I am diffuse Invisible string carefully tied round your grand designs Use it I never had a chance to Infuse it I never had a chance to We colonised Mountain sides and woke the sleeping earth in splendour And we provide We are gods humble and powdery, feeding your family
9.	Symbiomedome 03:53	lyrics	buy track
Symbiomedooooooome Microbrew my mind, ferment my brain Until I heed your lessons Our network of light cannot sustain All of these modern blessings Lichenise my eyes and drift away On winds carrying your spores We build our societies again Extracting your metaphors  I want to take you to my Symbiomedome  I want to take you to my Symbiomedome Symbiomedooooooome Dig down in the dirt And let me put your coat under the stairs Make yourself at home in the Symbiomedome Our endless marching meant nothing to them They wondered when we would start to do something They could not read the protest in our feet no I chart a course through old pine Symbiomedome Untramelled by the bloodlines Symbiomedome Come in closer We’ll offer our hand but here be warned You might find us macabre Liberate the land, the placid world We turned to technicolour. Do you understand? You’re only borrowing it from the future. Dooooooome Dooooooome
10.	Noble Battles 02:03	lyrics	buy track
Symbiomedome! Symbiomedome! They sing of noble battles old as time They still protect their castles with their lives But there are things that are so oft forgot I speak of course of orchid, elm and fox I am alive to possibilities And I the puppet master cannot die I am the all-seeing storyteller Lets animate in you the animal I don’t know of this England which they speak There are no coloured flags down in the deep No rotten generals, armies, nations, wars No citizens and no excluded swarms I sit atop a throne but in my head Mycelial whispers of all the dead Regretfully consumed through time to bring Eternal life and eternal suff’ring
11.	The Bowels Of Symondshyde 02:20	lyrics	buy track
Sepulchred council of the wild Dug in the bowels of Symondshyde We call it Pinedemonium The cult of the mycelium Who helpless watched as some were slain Then helped the others on their way While painting on the oldest trees A host of feeding galleries Got more than he had bargained for Devouring from the forest floor Our carnal forms discarded by The magic man head in the sky Our systems used for nefarious deeds The internet was made here, its our technology In the search for productivity Our medicines were mangled in your morning coffee A spot of indigestion came With all the trauma that decayed Forbidden cider from that tree Brought dreams of sumbiocracy Through the mycorrhizae he saw The suffering caused by the lord And now he is resolved to reap A common land for us to sleep
12.	Bold Reynard The Fox Speaks 01:09	lyrics	buy track
You know I grow tired of these lofty tones He seems to think he sits atop our throne Remembers how our world did fall like some Homeric warrior
13.	He Is Interrupted (Hallucinations?) 00:50	lyrics	buy track
I start to feel an affinity with these Temporary wildernesses All will be removed soon
14.	Bloodlust 02:08	lyrics	buy track
I’ll thank you to stop these interruptions What makes you think we’re hallucinations? Let me regain my train of thought They speak of tearing down ramparts But they know not of true bloodlust Without physical presence on this land What hope have we of reclaiming our might? We’re wudu spirits trapped in this limbo But none of them suffered my awful plight My freedom was anathema to man Open rebellion against the empire Those fazart hounds would never leave me be Sycophantic villeins content with a cell door Like Isengrim the Wolf, they tear me asunder Then brandish me the enemy of all mankind My endless footsteps surely were unearthing the magic Our endless footsteps surely were unearthing the magic
15.	The Magic Man's Castle 03:23	lyrics	buy track
You taught the sun to fly I wish I could too So I’m climbing your trees I’ll sleep the whole night through You told the sky to rain Trickles down to me Maybe if I try then I could rule the same Only myself to blame I see forbidden towers owned by overlords I see the orchid army sharpening their swords The first line of our advance is in time By your lifespans and hurried minds a crawl Led by the sylvan soldiers birch and elm Into the neighbouring fields we will sucker The Roman hands knew how to dance with us Their modern day progeny cut and slash No understanding of our underwood They fill on timber hauls of teenage pine You’re buying up the sky I wish I could too So I’m climbing your trees I’ll sleep the whole night through I could see a world of green When the screen went black Now out on these roads Feel free, the world is mine Chasing desire lines
16.	Orchid Kingdoms 01:43	lyrics	buy track
I need new kingdoms I will find them in The increasing pile of scraps All these specimens Are so resistant To the ecologies of man Meet at the edge of Wafarnachy We’ll turn this world to oaks and hornbeams I was hugging trees Before the hippies By a thousand years or more But I always need Epiphyte trainees Climbing towers and speaking spores Under the ground I am reclaiming Our common land once more sustaining I will outlive the Magna Carta I will outsmart royal pretenders
17.	Delivered To You By The Swine 01:29	lyrics	buy track
Micholitz on a burning ship Sent back for frontiers yet to be stripped Our magic makes them grab the knife John Laroche chopping down the ghosts But no hands can clone mycoheterotrophs My body is the bloodstained prize Delivered to you by the swine Are we unable to discern? Is this beauty reserved for men? I know your hiding place I seize it from your face Your creator lamenting learn What is concealed in the beauty we hoard? What is concealed in our reconciled words? Who is the agent of these rights? Delivered to you by the swine They preside and they underwrite The death of cosmologies and genocide Return us to the wuduwu The underground is breaking through
18.	Underground (The Elms Will Rise Again!) 01:20	lyrics	buy track
Our duty now is to burn Imperial myths and learn Mycorrhizal wisdom They use you subjugate and undervalue Now I’m ready to close my eyes Enter the forest time Underground Now I’m ready to close my eyes And let the dream subside Underground All this life we never get around To things that can’t be accounted for Now I’m ready to close my eyes Wait for the elms to rise From the floor
19.	Beating The Bounds 02:04		buy track
20.	Rule By The Best 01:17	lyrics	buy track
You accept the government cheques and exile All the ones who came here to escape Shutter falls so we forget all your past crimes Profits from your genocidal reigns It is a spell that we’re under You know they make the whole thing up I drew this world for all of us We accept the rule by the best inbred thieves And bow to barons, oligarchs and sheiks Now they claim to be the stewards of this land So when it burns we all know who to blame Our cultivations are undone And there is nowhere we belong It is a spell we must overcome
21.	A Great Green Trespass 02:41	lyrics	buy track
The first line of our advance is in time By your lifespans and hurried minds a crawl Led by the sylvan soldiers birch and elm Into the neighb’ring fields we will sucker Oaks and hornbeams extend their loving arms Knowing that soon all of this too will pass

about

‘The planet will never come alive for you unless your songs and stories give life to all the beings, seen and unseen, that inhabit a living Earth—Gaia.’ - Amitav Ghosh, The Nutmeg's Curse

Welcome to Pinedemonium, an abandoned pine plantation ruled over by an enlightened but occasionally hubristic mycelium 'king' and populated by the spirits of hunted living things it has consumed. Dig down in the dirt and meet the ghosts of Reynard The Fox, (staunch anti-imperialist), The Elm Tree (nature's trespasser) and The Orchid (the original tree-hugger). Like in John Milton’s capital of hell, the spirits who dwell here have lost their paradise: the common land. But their omnipotent foe is capitalism and its many agents, and their sin is trespass.

The album forms the first volume of Mycelium Music, our attempt to create an entangled musical ecology, a universe of interconnected and flowing songs and stories modelled on the symbiosis of the forest. But as the pine demons imply on the track Symbiomedome, this is no pastoral idyll: 'we'll offer our hand but here be warned, you might find us macabre'. Sometimes the segues are smooth and flowing, sometimes they are jarring and strange. We want to take you on a musical journey as diverse and dizzying as the subject matter.

The concept sprung forth as an act of escapism in the deepest depths of lockdown. Constantly reminded that humanity's innovations and inventions had outstripped the generosity of our living Earth, we ran to the woods for guidance. Suzanne Simard's pioneering research on cooperation between trees made us wonder what an 'ecology music' might sound like. After reading Merlin Sheldrake's 'Entangled Life' the idea of mycelium music became even more intoxicating: the possibilities of this subterranean network seemed to reach out across time and space. Anna Tsing's structural biomimicry in her wonderful 'The Mushroom at the End of the World' became the literary model for what we wanted to achieve:

‘What follows is a riot of short chapters. I wanted them to be like the flushes of mushrooms that come up after a rain...they build an open-ended assemblage, not a logical machine; they gesture to the so-much-more out there. They tangle with and interrupt each other'.

What we discovered as we tried to think like a mushroom or flow like the River Lea is that performing these roles freed us of our inhibitions. Recording Reynard's tale in the studio became a wild improvised summoning of some strange vulpine energy; the music took on a life of its own. In this way we hope our record heeds Amitav Ghosh's call for artists to tackle the 'crisis of imagination' in the face of climate breakdown. By restoring agency to the more-than-human perspectives in our stories we remind ourselves of what is at stake beyond just our own survival. So, as Reynard sings, let us 'unearth the magic' in the land.

credits

released September 23, 2022

Written and produced by The Mighty Orchid King.
Recorded at The Bookhouse, Logue Audio And Various Bedrooms
Engineered by William Stephen
Mastered by Guy Davie
Artwork & Photos by Lucian Rich

Cast:

Jonny Bennett: Vocals, Drums & Percussion, Synths, Additional Guitar
Marcelo Cervone: Bass, Saxophone, Repinique, Vocals
Ian Davidson: Cello
Pete Martin: Trumpet, Vocals
Michael Rea: Guitar, Vocals.
William Stephen: Piano, Synths, Vocals
Martin van Heerden: Guitar, Vocals

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The Mighty Orchid King Saint Albans, UK

Musical wayfarers of a mushroom-prog universe.

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