Neil Young Posts Mysterious Sound Collage Online
Neil Young currently is streaming a 38-minute audio collage of music on his official website, although when the recordings are from, who plays on them or what they are called is not clear. The music includes a long-running instrumental jam and an alternate take on the Young and Crazy Horse classic, ‘Cortez the Killer.’
Those recordings are paired with video footage of the mixing board and tape machine they are being played back on, close-up shots of vintage guitars, tube amps, lyric sheets and other visuals from what we presume to be the studio at Neil’s ranch in La Honda, Calif., although that’s just an educated guess.
The Neil Young fan site Thrasher’s Wheat initially suggested that the recordings could be from the unreleased Young-Crazy Horse album ‘Toast,’ which has been called “perhaps one of the most under-estimated and deceptive Crazy Horse records of all time, with many songs originally discarded, and then re-recorded with Booker T. and the MGs.”
But the site later retracted that, noting that it is in fact “two jams of old songs (‘F—in’ Up’ and ‘Cortez The Killer’).” We recognized ‘Cortez’ immediately, but didn’t realize the other was a version of a song from the 1990 Young-Crazy Horse album ‘Ragged Glory.’ Both are loose, marathon-length jams with lots of guitar interplay and instrumental texturing.
So, while it’s not the unreleased Young record people were initially hoping for, it’s still a nice little surprise to wake up to on a Saturday morning. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, take a seat, direct your browser to NeilYoung.com and listen in as Neil takes you on a sprawling sonic adventure, complete with some visuals that would make an audiophile who’s interested in the recording side of things very, very happy. Enjoy!