Music Of El Topo - Shades Of Joy

Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo is one of cinema's most delightfully baffling head trips. Half spaghetti western, half delirious peyote-frenzied spirit vision, it truly defies classification. Jodorowsky himself composed the soundtrack, a subtly psychedelic (and surprisingly pleasant) combination of Mexican folk motifs and restrained atonal textures. John Lennon once stated that El Topo was his favorite movie; he enjoyed it so much, in fact, that he released its soundtrack on his own Apple imprint. What we have here is not the soundtrack itself, rather, its an artifact direct from 1970's burgeoning counterculture that somehow manages to make El Topo and its legacy even stranger. Shades Of Joy, a California-based psychedelic rock/jazz group tangentially connected to Jerry Garcia, recorded Music Of El Topo in 1970 as a sort of tribute to the film that doubtlessly provided them with many nights of stoned entertainment. What's puzzling about this album is how unnecessary it seems - a jazz/funk/fusion remake of a soundtrack in which the most prominent instrument is a wooden folk flute? Think I'll pass, thanks. But it's truly to Shades of Joy's credit that this album has held up so well over almost four decades. Quite frankly, it still sounds fuckin' spectacular! Shades Of Joy, led by the multi-talented Martin Fierro, weave around tunes and musical signals and motifs from the film, interspersing the flutes and acoustic guitars of the original soundtrack with furious bouts of jazz-fusion improvisation. The two most dynamic pieces here are also the most satisfying: "The Desert is a Circle" and "Flute in a Quarry" are jazz-funk monsters. "The Desert is a Circle" in particular is a dynamite masterpiece: sample-worthy breakbeats abound, and the band stretches out to its limits, all the while retaining the same pastoral Mexican-esque feel of the film's original tune. "El Topo's Dream" is another hot one, and though it doesn't have the groovy frenetic pulse of the two aforementioned tracks, it turns a simple folksy melody into a heroic march that's psychedelic in its scope. The rest of the tracks are more laid-back, settling into the kind of easygoing funk that was a staple of underground films in this era. For a virtually unknown band to rework such a singular piece of musical art in such an unexpected and colossal way is, to my mind, one of the most underrated accomplishments of the early '70's.

Too much perfection is a mistake.