Taiwanese funk and psychedelic project Mong Tong 夢東 is one of the many musical undertakings of brothers Hom Yu and Jiun Chi. Their latest album Mystery 秘神 combines their love for vintage transcendental rock sounds with an obsession over local occult mythology in what is a strangely transportive and well-rounded record. I have no means of measuring the distance between the possible points of triangulation of the secret sources of knowledge they employ and the specific sounds I am hearing, but the shifts in mood and overall pacing of the record still manage to craft a compelling narrative; even though there is not a single original word spoken during the entire trip. That's ok; sometimes the mind sees what the eyes can't and hears what the ears ignore. You don't have to gaze into the enigma of the album to appreciate it as it's more than pleasing on a purely aesthetic level as a foggy amalgam of the guitar styles and personality of Takeshi Terauchi and Iron Butterfly. Although, imagining yourself descending the steps of an ancient temple to do battle with disembodied horrors in order to retrieve a magic iron box that can be used to trap a usurper sorcerer who is terrorizing a kingdom can certainly add a layer of intrigue to the experience of the album... if you're open to that sort of thing, that is.
