Day 210: Ataraxia – The Unexplained
The other day when I was listening to Plantasia I fell head over heels in love with Mort Garson’s sound. Then Apple Music auto played something immediately after and I thought now hang on a minute, this is the same sort of sound but thematically even more up my street, maybe I’ve discovered a new genre or some sort of a new style that I love — turns out that that’s not true, I just discovered more Mort Garson under a different name. That’s how I found The Unexplained by Ataraxia.
Album cover courtesy of Sacred Bones
Somewhere earlier on during this project, I talked a fair bit about how I don’t like being scared but I love being spooked, or maybe a little bit unsettled or perturbed, but in a fun way. I don’t like horror films with gore and jump scares, but I love old horror films where there’s maybe something spooky lurking in the shadows or some sort of a funky monster that’s wreaking havoc around the village, preferably made before the 1960s, please and thank you.
Similarly, when it comes to music, I don’t like horrorcore or death metal or any sort of “and then we’ll kill and rape all the ladies in the land, let us describe it in detail”-type of music, I’m just bored of the fetishisation of violence against women and I don’t find it entertaining. I haven’t ever actually found music that tickles the same part of my brain as a fun spooky film, until The Unexplained.
Released in 1975, the album was Mort Garson’s only release under the name Ataraxia, and it was subtitled Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult. It features Mort Garson’s whimsical synth grooves and his musical interpretations of various mystical topics, like astral projection or tarot or sorcery, but with a light-hearted and spooky approach. It’s occasionally a little bit eerie, but never to a degree where you couldn’t very easily listen to it by yourself in the dark without getting even a little bit spooked.
That’s what I think I find so charming about it, it leans so heavily into the fun of topics like these. The whole album sounds like what I imagine plays in the background when the three fun dorks from X-Files hang out and hack into government databases, or maybe something that’s playing in the background of a PS1 game. The standout tracks for me are “Déjà Vu”, the first track I heard that made me fall in love with it, as well as “Cabala”, with its fun, spooky organ run.
I will 100% listen to this again, I’m whacking a fair few songs onto my Halloween playlist and the next time I fall into a Wikipedia hole of researching things like swamp monsters or alien abductions (happens weekly) I will absolutely be listening to this. And then imagining I’m hanging out with the dorks from X-Files, I love those guys. 9/10.