Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra – Hang On to Each Other EP (2014)

At the beginning of the year, Godspeed You! Black Emperor offshoot Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra returned with a new record, Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything.
They’ll follow it up with a new EP, Hang On to Each Other, on April 29 on Constellation. The EP collects new versions of 2005 track Hang on to Each Other, from Horses in the Sky.
They are “not remixes really, but brand new recordings,” “coated in “glitter and shards of glass” and warped into “glorious dancefloor excursions,” according to a press release.
Silver Mt Zion offered a typically lengthy statement, in a press release, in which they refer to anarchist thinker Emma Goldman and explain that there is no irony in this dance music. They wrote: “It’s like that famous quote that Emma Goldman never said = “DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION”!

Somewhere around 1964 or thereabouts, we wrote a tune called “Hang On to Each Other”. Acapella mostly, with just a few chords on harmonium. Recorded the thing in the woods ’round a campfire = heady times.

The chords to that tune are like house music chords, and we figured we’d re-record it someday, thusly and EARNESTLY. 4-on-the-floor. Drum machines and arpeggiators. Pink lasers and grape-flavored smoke machines. Most important thing = No irony.

Because we love that kind of music, and impromptu dance parties too.

Guess it took a long time to manifest, but this past x-mas we finally rustled up the necessary gear and holed up in the snow to loop thee joyful noise = 808, Oberheim Two-Voice, bright yellow toy keyboard, low pass filter, auto-wah bass guitar, wooden drone-box, squeaky tape delay, broken oscillator, string machine, distortion pedal, and violin. No guitar.

We let the machines yell at each other until they were hoarse and wheezing. With a baby in her belly, Ariel Engle of AroarA did the kind of singing that we can’t, and we are thankful. Outside of the studio, the city was frozen, and thin tendrils of fine snow whisped across the ice like dragons.

We made this thing like a for-real disco 12-inch, for to give to d.j.’s to play because we live in the kind of town where some d.j.’s maybe will. Much respect and much love to thee sweaty dancers, and the lost ones, and the ones who fell away.”