Magic Mountain

Andy Cairns: «The sun was belting down outside the practice room.
It was afternoon and we’d been working on Exiles all morning. We had to start
again for new stuff, as I said earlier, from scratch
I think, with hindsight, we all wanted to be outside and opening the door to
let in air (and the glorious vista of people walking in the summertime) was
probably a bad idea
I started playing harmonics and sluggishly we stirred ourselves to something
resembling intent. Within a moment the ghost of Battles, Steve Reich and Neu!
was wondering was it already opening time
When the piece had come to a halt we suggested that we should just jam,
improvise and keep the finished results. Roll, see what happens.
The initial take was a fortunate accident, sounding exciting but really long
We decided to add an intro. The timing of John Coltrane’s „Giant Steps“ welded
to a stoner sludge to appropriate the title we’d taken for the piece from
Thomas Mann, „Magic Mountain.“
Trudging uphill to find vistas
The ‘vistas' were all recorded by Mr Gill
The Battles, Steve Reich harmonics (counterpoint)
The New Order jangle
The drone, the Underworld inspired ‘rave kick-off' bit
And the aforementioned Coltrane/Sabbath/Eiger Sanction fest
It was edited to the morsel you hear on the album. There is a longer version,
be afraid…»