from the LP Journey Into the Unknown, Ariola Records, 1980The title of this smoking hot post-disco album (more ‘disco’ than ‘post-’ I suppose) could have served as the designation for my recent sojourn into the Alaskan wilderness, and I can honestly say that the land up there looked like nothing else my eyes have ever seen before: lush wet forest blanketing every square inch of ground that’s above the water, mountains surging out from beneath sea level and rising at dizzyingly steep angles, the channels we cruised through looking as electric blue as the Caribbean, and icebergs the size of cars floating by in silence all the while. My better half & I took a helicopter excursion while in Juneau and landed on top of a glacier, which was the single strangest landscape I’ve ever seen in my life, feeling as if we had taken off from Alaska but disembarked upon the face of Venus or something; it was also our first time up in a heli and I would do that again in a second---it feels incredible. As my brief earlier post pointed to, the highlight of the trip for me was assuredly experiencing so much wildlife: bald eagles, seals, sea lions, puffins, bears, moose, and my two favorites: humpback whales and sea otters. It is truly a humbling experience to see whales in the wild, close enough to touch, working together and communicating in such a way that makes it strikingly clear how very cognitive and, indeed, mammalian they really are. The otters…well, what can I say, they stole my heart!! I don’t think I’ve made so many ridiculous noises in all my life, seriously, not even a litter of month-old Malamute puppies can elicit the “oooohs” and “awwwws” (and other random squishy / squeaky sounds that were falling out of my mouth on that boat) which those furry otters had everyone cooing. As for the crew Methusalem (nice name), I only know that they were German and most of the players have only this LP to their credit, but you wouldn’t know it from the tight-ass bottom end and the imaginative synthscapes heard here.
