The $5.98 E.P.: Paradise Lust

Day of Glad

A humble offering to the best of the authors of music. Horns, drums, strings and music from instruments that utilize the electron to put together sounds, will delight the listener, or maybe disgust the listener, but hopefully not so. A humble work from a great admirer of the best authors, those past and present, and hoping for the future of music. A tribute to those contributing to good music, music unlike most of what most people listen to today everywhere in the world. The best of the authors of music will save music. Here is to the future music, and to a great music future. 



To the Best of the Authors of Music

Amaro Cacao

Experience

T.B.T.V.B.B.S.M.E

The Beneath the Velvet Beach Bunker Siamese Mermaids Experience

This Fog - XITX and Arcachata

A musical depiction of this man's 2021.  Enjoy.

2021 Seasons

On May 10, 1996, three officers of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Tsewang Samanla, Dorje Morup, and Tsewang Paljor, were part of a six-man expedition to reach the summit of Mount Everest.  Delayed and facing a storm, the three decided to disregard orders and press on while the rest of the team turned back.  Around 18:00 the climbers radioed their expedition leader back at base camp to inform that they had reached the summit.  While credited with summiting, whether they actually reached the summit or not is to this date debated.

These two songs wouldn’t exist if not for the irony surrounding the perishment of one of the climbers, Tsewang Paljor.  The irony is that Paljor became famous not in life but in death and simply because of the fact that his lifeless, frozen body, which no person or entity cared to remove from the side of the trail for at least 19 years, ended up becoming a landmark and reference point to climbers, his humanity reduced to an almost comical nickname stemming from the mountaineering boots on his feet and their bright yellowish-green color.  A Google search today of the keywords “Tsewang” and “Paljor” brings up, as the first result, a Wikipedia article entitled not “Tsewang Paljor”, but “Green Boots”.

“Jefe de condestables Tsewang Paljor, parte 1: Ascenso y muerte” is my reflection on Paljor’s resolve to climb, then the climb itself, then the summiting (or the thinking they had summited), and finally the descent and the exhaustion, confusion, and acceptance of defeat that probably came with it and the probable realization of impending death that frozen night as he lay curled up on his side, donning his brightly-colored mountaineering apparel, under a crevasse at the side of the climbers’ trail at 28,000 feet.

“Jefe de condestables Tsewang Paljor, parte 2: Fiesta en Leh” is an imagination of a summer day that Tsewang could have enjoyed as a young adult in his hometown’s capital, Leh, with friends and perhaps one or two love interests at hand.  An experience he might have remembered about during those few final minutes of his life.  

About the song names:  That isn’t me trying to be the most righteous of the lot.  Like, “look, I even include his military rank before his name, while everyone else just calls him ‘Green Boots’.”  I’m not trying to be judgmental or pretentious.  In fact, up until the last few minutes the songs were going to be called “Helado en altura 1” and “Helado en altura 2”.  “Helado en altura” translates roughly to “Ice cream at high altitude”, and is a pun because in Spanish “Helado” can also mean a frozen person, animal or thing.  So, for the cover artwork, I literally searched for frozen corpses in snow-capped mountains.  Not necessarily with those keywords.  And happened on Green Boots.  It was like the third result.  But ultimately, I felt it would be in bad taste to be so literal and use the pic and do the pun and all that.  In a way, the song titles are an atonement for my previous intentions.  And a pair of songs to honor a man who found very little dignity in death.  Some may point out the old adage that there “is no dignity in death”.  I’d say as so much else in life, that it’s a matter of degree.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and above all listen.  I hope you “get” the songs, and above all, enjoy them.  (No pun intended with “above”.)

Note:  from the information I had access to on the World Wide Web, Paljor’s body has not been officially identified or removed to this day.  However, it was last reported seen in 2015.  Its current location and state is, to the best of my web knowledge, unknown.

Jefe de condestables Tsewang Paljor, parte 2: Fiesta en Leh

Quick Ride

Stellar Lifetimes

Alhulumuqahron

The Doll Incidentals: A Slippery Slope

A Holiday Somewhere Else (reprise)

Thanks to two of the best instrumentalists in Panamá for helping me make this track happen:  
Roberto "Toto" Ruiz https://www.facebook.com/totoruizmusic/ on trumpet and Osvaldo "Valo" Jorge https://soundcloud.com/osvaldo-jorge-3 on drums.  Thanks too to the beautiful Florence Hill lending her spectacular sustained G's and E's on vocals.  Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed recording it and mixing it!
-A

Voice: Florence Hill
Trumpet: Roberto "Toto" Ruiz
Drums: Osvaldo "Valo" Jorge
Bass and sequences: Adolfo Samudio

Composed, mixed and arranged by Adolfo Samudio

To Dream Of Past Glories [SESSION VERSION]

80's Lament / Freedom [REMIX]

Christmas Morning Wonderland [REMIX]

In commemoration of the 20th of december, 1989, the day when the United States government invaded Panamá and ousted the country's military dictator, Manuel Antonio Noriega, the Government of Panamá recently decreed this date as a National Day of Mourning, to be commemorated yearly.

Panamá's citizens would do well not to regard this event in isolation.  Preceding the U.S. invasion, Panamá went through over 21 years of military dictatorship.  The dictatorship in turn was the result of years of questionable leadership and politics and a self-serving ruling elite and political class.

The way things are going today, almost 33 years later, it would seem these lessons were collectively not learned to the extent that they probably should have.
"Aquellos que no pueden recordar el pasado están condenados a repetirlo."
(Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.) 
-George Santayana

The song uses part of a melody by Avelino Muñoz and drags it across the entire length of the song.  The melody is part of a piece of Baile Típico, one of the main genres of Panamanian music, on which in turn the main theme of RPC, one of the country's regime-sanctioned TV stations during late 70's and 80's -- the heart of the dictatorship era -- was based.  The theme was thusly ever-present during those years that I was growing up and to me thusly almost synonymous with that dark yet wondrous time.

Los Años De La Dictadura [REMASTERED]

Plaza Nada is the pointless, useless meeting place for when all is gone, where there is nothing left, the dark, barren, cold, ashen, aftermath of obliteration.  A cross-project "collaboration" in the works.

Plaza Nada [DEMO]

We’re all survivors one way or another.  Welcome to the story of one of them.  

Yet another exploration into the coexistence of genres.  

Shun banality.  

Enjoy.

Song For Survivor Emma Curry

Music by Adolfo Samudio and Alexander Herzfeld
Lyrics and programming by Adolfo Samudio

Alexander Herzfeld - Guitars
Ricardo De León - Bass
Roberto "Toto" Ruíz - Trumpet

A nod to Aldous Huxley, Mike Wallace, and Sam Harris, whose voices I use on this track and whose ideas -- Huxley's and Harris', to be exact -- I mean, nothing against you Mike, but... -- helped inspire it.  I should also credit Desmond Morris for shaping my conception of primitive man and my understanding that we all, at present at least, are still no more than apes.  (Maybe some slightly more evolved than others, eh?)

Check out X.I.T.X.! https://soundcloud.com/user-760232283  (The E.P. posted there is so good, I rack my brains over why it's got so few listens!)

PS.  The story behind the drums on this one and the female vocalist are fun.  They're a nightmare, too, and may be published some day in some book I may write.

Enjoy!  Thanks for listening.
-AS

The Stone
Defenseless
I am naked, at mercy
Nothing
An off-thought of the gods under the stars
At the portal between naught and
Becoming

I took a stone from the ground
It became a weapon in my hand
I conquered it all with that 
Which I found

Fire gave way to a million thunders 
To light 
If ignorance is blindness 
The stone now has sight

Sight gave way to enlightment
True one
I can see further than you ever could 
No flesh
Once ape and stone now
Transhuman
----

The Stone - Arcachata, Reynor And XITX

Tune in controlled fury at the intersection between reverence and disdain.

In Deference to (indifference to?) the Seminal Works

LARD

"Let's change the mood from glad to sadness."
-Jim Morrison

Island Fun (single)

Island Fun

20230913

In Deference to (indifference to?) the Seminal Works:

1. Dancing (On the Tightrope Between Heaven and Hell) (5:11)
2. Glass Highway (9:17)
3. In Deference to (indifference to?) the Seminal Works (8:26)
4. Marcha a la mina (3:31)
5. Ax Bubbles (3:37)
6. Peristeria elata (12:11)
7. Mes de la patria (1:40)

In Deference to (indifference to?) the Seminal Works [FULL ALBUM]

Off of the upcoming album In Deference to (indifference to?) the Seminal Works.

Marcha a la mina

Listen on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/s2Y2EGEy98Y

Their Sunny Peruvian Funeral

A rearrangement of one of my older songs and rechristening (no pun intended) for the 2019 Christmas season.

The "Christmas Morning Wonderland" is the toy-and-wrapping-paper-covered living room landscape that's left as the aftermath of the thrill of the early-morning-present-opening-pajama-clad rush that some of us may remember having experienced as kids.  Might I add, were fortunate enough to have experienced as kids.

My cousin Joaco Morales, big guy, he dresses up as Santa and goes to neighborhoods where kids might not be so fortunate, and gives out presents.  People like that are true heroes.  But that's another story.

Me, just hoping to bring to others some wonder and maybe a little happiness through my music.  Some say my music is thought-provoking.  I'm proud of that.  Wait.  They do mean that in a good way, right?  I mean, that's a compliment, right?  

Right??

Anyway.  I'm rambling now.  Wait.  Actually, I started rambling at least 2 paragraphs ago.  I did, didn't I?

Yes, I did.

Happy holidays.

-A

Special thanks to my friend Trish Edwards for her comments on this song which inspired me to do this project.

Cover art featuring photography by Alan Light:  "Christmas, 1986" by Alan Light is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Christmas Morning Wonderland

In homage to that strange and wonderful time and place, nighttime Panama City, Panama between roughly 2002 and 2012.

A Big Cheery Decade
1. Costa Azul (0:00-0:42)
2. Next (0:43-2:12)
3. Wasabi (2:13-4:20)
4. Fisch (4:21-4:36)
5. Liquid (4:37-6:05)
6. Opah (6:06-6:54)
7. Sahara (6:55-8:13)
8. Madame Blanche (8:14-9:50)
9. Costa Azul (Reprise) (9:51-10:44)

A Big Cheery Decade

Demo version including acoustic and electric guitars by Alexander Herzfeld, vocals by Greta Antico, bass guitar by Ricardo de León, and drums by Matt Bilz.

In Between The Bars Jaunt [RAW DEMO VERSION]

I think this song is in a similar vein to two previous ones from 2019's IV: Overcoming August and Thank You.  And similar to back when I was writing OA, I've been going through stressful and painful personal issues in my life these past days and weeks.  Maybe some of the parallels are evident.
Also, the song draws from certain traits of last year's Year of the Hermit.
Enjoy!

Crazy Tree

Shun banality.
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The $5.98 E.P.: Paradise Lust now free on Soundcloud!!
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Megathanks and congratulations to https://soundcloud.com/utopiafade on becoming my 600th follower!!  Everyone, please do me a favor and check out his page!
Thanks again, Utopia Fade, and everyone else who's ever taken interest in my music.  You're all the best!
-A
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PLAZA NADA out today for us to ponder the complete and utter destruction of current civilization on planet Earth!
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New album "Bellatrix" now available on Bandcamp! https://arcachata.bandcamp.com/album/bellatrix
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https://youtu.be/UVIMSvlEWA0
Music video finally out for 2019's A Breach of Microscopic Fauna, Pt. 1:  In the Lab!!

Check out my reposts and playlists, dedicated to the best of the authors of music, many of you my followers and followees, right here on SC. 

Listen to the new album AMARO CACAO: https://youtu.be/20WSrXE7xwI

Arcachata:
Main alcohol:  Trumpet, Piano, Acoustic and electric guitars, Monotonal and polytonal vocalisations, Bongo, Drum kit, Bass guitar, Trombone, Synthesizers, Sequencers, Percussion.

Ingredients: 1 oz rock, 1 oz trance, 1 oz avant garde, 1/2 oz instrumental hip hop, 1/2 oz metal, 1/2 oz world, 1/2 oz prog, and a splash of traditional Panamanian folk.

Preparation: Add all ingredients into sonic mindspace filled with 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 00’s nostalgia.  Mix vigorously.  Strain electronically.  Stir gently.  Garnish with beats from the future.  Serve with some 20’s ghost whistling.

Drinkware: Store the lyrics away for the future generation.

ARCACHATA
Serving isthmian goth hop since November 2018.
Thanks for listening.
All music written and produced by Adolfo Samudio.

Arcachata

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