The journey into the mountains continues, but Part Two begins as though we have already reached the end. Boris opens the mix with “Farewell”, placing the listener inside an immense field of sound where departure feels unavoidable but its destination remains unknown.
A farewell can mark a separation, but it can also announce a crossing. Something familiar must be left behind before another landscape can appear. In this sequence, the mountains are not passive scenery or places to be conquered. They form a threshold between different states of perception: the everyday and the mythic, the visible and the imagined, the person we have been and the person who may return.
Far East Family Band’s “The Cave, Down to the Earth” turns the journey beneath the surface. Although mountains draw the eye upwards, their symbolic paths often lead in the opposite direction. The cave is an entrance into darkness, enclosure and inwardness. It is a place where normal orientation becomes unreliable and where the traveller must continue without the reassurance of a distant horizon.
Flower Travellin’ Band’s “Satori Part I” emerges from this subterranean passage with a sudden concentration of energy. Illumination is not treated as calm explanation. It feels forceful and destabilising, as though an established way of seeing must break apart before another can take its place. The mountain offers no simple wisdom. Its lesson, if there is one, arrives through exposure, disorientation and change.
After this intensity, Happy End’s “Kaze Wo Atsumete” opens the landscape again. The air begins to move. Streets, roads and open spaces return, but they are no longer quite ordinary. The traveller who has passed through the cave does not see the familiar world in the same proportions. What once appeared fixed now seems temporary and permeable.
Hitsujibungaku’s “Hikaru toki” brings light into that altered landscape. This is not the commanding light of certainty, shining down from a final summit. It is more transient: something glimpsed through cloud, woodland or changing weather. Its importance lies in the moment of recognition rather than in any promise that it will remain.
The centre of the mix becomes quieter and more attentive with Ichiko Aoba’s “Pilgrimage”. A pilgrimage differs from a journey made only for escape or recreation. Its meaning is created through the act of travelling: through repetition, fatigue, silence and encounters with unfamiliar places. The destination matters, but so does the willingness to be changed along the way.
Kikagaku Moyo’s “Dripping Sun” then dissolves the boundaries of this landscape. Rock, repetition and psychedelic movement give the journey a more fluid sense of time. The path no longer appears to run neatly from one place to another. It circles, expands and returns. The mountains become less like objects in the distance and more like an atmosphere surrounding the listener.
From here, the programme crosses into a distinctly uncanny region. MOKKAI’s “Ghost” introduces the suggestion of a presence that cannot be located. A ghost is something that has gone but has not disappeared. It may be a memory, an unresolved attachment or a fragment of experience that continues to move through the present.
Minami Deutsch’s “I’ve Seen a U.F.O.” shifts that uncertainty from the past towards the unknown. The mysterious object in the sky belongs to a modern mythology: technological rather than ancient, but still shaped by wonder, anxiety and the desire to believe that the world contains more than its accepted explanations.
The ghost and the unidentified object occupy opposite directions. One returns from behind us; the other appears from somewhere beyond us. Both interrupt the ordinary. Both make the familiar landscape feel suddenly larger and less secure.
With Ningen Isu’s “Namahage”, the mythic presence becomes more forceful. It is no longer an indistinct trace or distant light. It arrives with a mask, a voice and a demand. The figure belongs to the difficult boundary between wilderness and community, unsettling familiar order while also reminding it of obligations that have been neglected.
Such encounters are not comfortable, but myths rarely survive because they make us comfortable. They persist because they give form to forces that rational language cannot entirely contain: fear, instinct, judgement, transformation and renewal.
Osamu Kitajima’s “Benzaiten – God of Music & Water” changes the quality of the journey once more. After stone, caves, fire, ghosts and masked figures, the programme reaches flowing water. Music and water share an ability to move around fixed boundaries. They follow openings, carry memory and reshape the ground through persistence rather than force.
The closing track, Tenniscoats’ “Baibaba Bimba”, brings playfulness back into the landscape. Its lightness does not deny the weight of what has preceded it. Instead, it suggests that returning from the mythic world may involve recovering spontaneity: the ability to move, imagine and respond without demanding that every experience become an explanation.
Part Two therefore ends somewhere different from where it began. “Farewell” opened a space of departure; “Baibaba Bimba” leaves us in motion. Between them, the route has passed underground, approached illumination, followed wind and sunlight, encountered ghosts, strange lights, old figures and sacred water.
The mountain beyond the map cannot be reached by following directions alone. It appears when the familiar world becomes permeable and the imagination begins to recognise paths that ordinary attention overlooks.
We may not return with an answer. But the journey has changed the question, and perhaps that is enough to begin the descent.
Track Listing
Boris – Farewell
Far East Family Band – The Cave, Down to the Earth
Flower Travellin’ Band – Satori Part I
Happy End – Kaze Wo Atsumete
Hitsujibungaku – Hikaru toki
Ichiko Aoba – Pilgrimage
Kikagaku Moyo – Dripping Sun
MOKKAI – Ghost
Minami Deutsch – I’ve Seen a U.F.O.
Ningen Isu – Namahage
Osamu Kitajima – Benzaiten – God of Music & Water
Tenniscoats – Baibaba Bimba (feat. Tape) [2022 Remaster]
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