23/06/2025
TALES FROM LONELY MOUNTAIN
by Mokotow
First single “Carousel Blues” out July 18, 2025
Fifteen years ago, I recorded four songs on a Rhodes piano—over four nights in an attic.
There was no plan, no production schedule—just the act of writing and recording in a single sitting, capturing whatever lived in that day’s undercurrent.
These songs became my companions, returning with the seasons.
I never released them.
But I played them often.
Through winters and life’s many changes.
On good days, and the ones that needed quiet.
They became part of my own private score.
Now they’re ready to be shared.
‘Carousel Blues’, the first single from Tales From Lonely Mountain, arrives July 18, 2025. The rest will follow, one song per season, alongside long-form video meditations filmed with in the forests and valleys of Livingston Manor and beyond.
By the end of the cycle, they’ll form a single visual album—a continuous listening space to immerse, reflect and find a sense of solitary solidarity.
These recordings have remained untouched since 2010. Mixed by in Brooklyn, mastered by and wrapped in visuals by and this record is a time capsule of minimalist restraint and release.
When I first imagined this record, I pictured it living somewhere in the wilderness of the Northeast—surrounded by tall trees, fog, and a little solitude. I never expected to later find a home in the grounding, humbling, and re-energizing landscape of Livingston Manor. But life, like these songs, tends to find its way.
Here’s what wrote when it briefly surfaced on all those years ago:
“From minor keys to yearning melodies, songwriter Mike Mokotow has painted what could be described as a soundtrack of nostalgia... A very impressive sound palette of ambience, darkness, loneliness, and light. The sparseness of it all is haunting, sticking with you, painting a vivid picture of stark black-and-whites, continually striving to hold your attention... an exercise in therapy and immediacy that proved to be a compelling soundtrack for a nonexisting film.”
or even quiet company someone else didn’t know they needed
