You tried pumping the pain away last week but it just didn’t work, you’re still depressed. The video of you ruining your cousin’s bar mitzvah keeps circulating online, and you just can’t seem to catch a break. After seeing a targeted instagram ad for ketamine therapy you think “sure, what the hell” and decide to give it a shot. Two weeks later you’re at a clinic ready for the procedure. After signing an alarming amount of paperwork the nurse leads you into a room at the end of the hall. She explains how it works and puts the needle into your vein. You ease on the clinic-supplied eye mask, turn on your playlist, and fall deeply into introspective orbit as the ketamine starts working its way into your bloodstream. What’s the first song on your psychedelic therapy soundtrack?

This Week: Ketamine Infusion

Low Sun

Hermanos Gutiérrez

song

artist

contributer

Alica

Disko Crew's Picks

Prologue

Ichiko Aoba

Fire Temple

Bobby Krlic

Lostmyhead

A Letter From Home

The 1975

"Blue" Gene Tyranny

Ma Holo

Sun Araw

Andrew

Kay

Mandi

Spencer

Tallon

Planet Caravan

@jesus_padilla19

Community Highlight

Black Sabbath

LOW SUN - HERMANOS GUITÉRREZ

Alicia's Pick:

Mandi's THOUGHTS:

This is a fantastic song to soundtrack your Mind Palace because it feels like you’ve been transported somewhere. I love this as your pick, Alicia, because it feels like that transported place would be the Baja Desert, which is so illustrative of how I see you: our coastal cowgirl, Cali-rooted, (half-)Mexican trailblazer. Khrungbin’s rise has paved the way for a lot of Latin-inspired, acoustic psych guitar music…. Is that the right description? However the fuck you would describe the genre of this stuff, you know what I mean. Anyways, it’s great to see new artists pop into this space, would love to explore the inner machinations of my mind to this for sure.

Now I’ve never done ketamine, but I am very familiar with the desire to use music to transport you to a more relaxing space.

To my friends, I jokingly call my relaxation space my “Mind Palace.” Mind Palace is most often frequented early on a week night where plans for the next day are vague. I pop a gummy, hit play on something soothing, and get work visualizing my dream home, wardrobe, and life via Pinterest. It’s silly but I love it.

While my “Mind Palace” playlist is extensive the gem I always look forward to has to be Low Sun. As I plan my dream casita nestled in the hills of New Mexico the slow, deliberate strumming and distant melodies of this song create a soundscape that feels both expansive and intimate- much like I hope my dream life to be and dream scenarios are. Hearing this song is like watching a golden sun melt into the horizon. This song is the physical embodiment of Spanish tiles, soft sheets, and the smell of earthy Spanish botanicals… which basically sums up tranquility in my mind and exactly where I’d like to be transported to via ketamine trip.

PROLOGUE BUT ACTUALLY THE ENTIRE ALBUM WINDSWEPT ADAN - ICHIKO AOBA

Andrew's Pick:

Kay's THOUGHTS:

I was totally about to write about how this would make my ketamine trip feel like it was narrated by a siren, until I actually finished reading your writeup lol. This would be such a great album to soundtrack the entire experience, I love how organic it all feels—not just in the environmental sound samples, but in her understated choices of instrumentation. It all harmonizes so beautifully, I would feel like I’m looking at the moon.

Doing ketamine at the club is lame as hell. Real ones know that the true way to enjoy it is to rail a line and go sit outside quietly and look at the moon or a really cool tree or something. That’s why, if I were embarking on a psycho-spiritual journey by way of injecting horse tranquilizer into my veins, I would want to soundtrack it with music where the presence of nature is deeply felt.

I immediately thought of Windswept Adan, which is one of the most beautiful albums I have ever heard. It is so gorgeously textured with birds chirping, waves rushing in and out, rivers flowing, tall grass swaying… all carried by Ichiko’s haunting, siren-like harmonies. It was really hard to narrow the album down to one song but I think the intro “Prologue” works for this playlist and expresses the lush texture I love so much from the album.

I had an out-of-body experience seeing her perform this live last year, and I was stone-cold sober. Imagine the wisdom and insight I could glean listening to this in drug therapy. Maybe I could finally forgive myself for

FIRE TEMPLE - BOBBY KRLIC

Kay's Pick:

Mandi's THOUGHTS:

I was never laughing…… in fact, I was scared from the beginning. This is great music to Experience some shit to, in a daunting but admirable sort of way. I think right around the time you’re describing in 2021 was when we were living with our third musketeer/other roommate (shoutout Gabby), but for some reason Gabby and I were gone for several days, and we left you at home alone with the cats. When I returned I asked what you’d been up to while we were gone, and the answer was that you’d made a really cool new art piece and taken several tabs of acid to Figure Some Shit Out. That answer in 2021 was admirable to me in the same way that this song choice is; You are much stronger and less fearful than most.

Now, before you ask, “Jesus Kay, did you really pick a song from Midsommar?” Yeah yeah ok WAIT. Just hear me out.

I don’t know when the last time you watched Midsommar is, but I need you to completely divorce this track from the scene where they burn the boyfriend alive in the bear skin at the end of the movie and just…… listen. With your eyes closed.

It is such a phenomenal composition, brimming with all intensities of emotion that takes you through a whole journey just on this one track alone. Bobby was COOKING on this score. I think if you were really trying to dig up some shit with ketamine therapy, this just might be the track you need. Granted, this is definitely not the song I would choose to open with, I’d probably want to time it to be right around the peak of the experience.

Back in college, I would cycle through various movie scores as background music to work to in coffee shops. I vividly remember hearing this come on, as I was sitting on the patio of Jupiter House on the Denton square. It was a couple of weeks before graduating, and I was finishing up one of my final projects. It brought to a head this visceral feeling that this era of my life, of being in college in this walkable area with all my friends and peers in this lovely house, would soon be coming to a close. That life was going to change. That violin melody toward the end, and specifically the choral note that comes in at 7:36, brought tears to my eyes, and still does every time I listen to this song. There’s something so cathartic about that moment—like bursting open, like falling apart—especially as the notes get more dissonant and you hear those cascading strings like they’re plummeting to earth in the background. It’s full of beauty and of grief.

I think that part of healing and therapy is knowing which things you have to burn or leave behind—sometimes, whether you want to or not—and maybe this is a song to evoke that. I already reserve it for when I need to plumb my emotional depths, so I can only imagine the addition of ketamine would amplify it all the more. So there, you can stop laughing now.

LOSTMYHEAD - THE 1975

Mandi's Pick:

SPENCER'S THOUGHTS:

THE 1975 GOES SHOEGAZE (NOT CLICKBAIT)

Mandi, I don’t think you have bad taste, I think our opinions just differ the most. For whatever reason I’m a 1975 skeptic, but every single song I’ve listened to of theirs I’ve enjoyed. This was no exception. I really enjoyed the production and the slow hazy intro.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to start actively enjoying instrumental songs. I’ve done a lot of introspective work to find out why I have, as Spencer would put it, bad taste. However, I've traced this one issue back pretty clearly; I fell in love with songwriting before I became a musician. Songwriting and singing were what I primarily paid attention to in all the music I listened to until I started playing in a band, so music without lyrics was a null concept to me until fairly recently. I’ve since learned to appreciate the value of an instrumental track for the way it communicates feelings without words, which has the power to be so much more powerful than lyrical songwriting.

I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It was an incredibly defining album for me as a 16-year-old. For as much as I obsessed about the album, I almost always skipped the instrumental tracks because I didn’t have lyrics to connect to. By the grace of god and my mother, I got to see this album’s tour twice, which affected me in the way that I think summer bible camp has to religious children; it gave me a sense of meaning and purpose to my serotonin-starved brain at the time. When The 1975 played “Lostmyhead” at the live show, it was the first time I could feel the emotional swell and build of an instrumental song as the vibration of it rocked through my body. It was a song that I had consistently skipped for years, but in that moment, it changed everything for me. I definitely cried. I found myself going back to that memory for years, and often found myself listening to this track very intently to channel that same feeling. When I can immerse myself back into that moment of being at that concert, it feels like sinking through a big, enveloping couch and falling right through the middle into space, which is exactly what a ketamine trip feels like (or so I’m told). The crescendo ending of the track feels like the heartbeat in your ears while breaking through into a brand new world, before discovering the undisturbed reality of whatever lies on the other side; it's exactly how I want my psychedelic journey to feel.

A LETTER FROM HOME - "BLUE" GENE TYRANNY

Spencer's Pick:

Tallon's THOUGHTS:

I don’t even know where to start with this one. It’s 25 minutes and it goes so many different places that it's hard to sum up. I’ve always loved this song ever since you showed it to me, and it always makes me teary eyed. It’s really incredible how many unique sounds they pack into this. I love love love those angelic choir vocals they bring in every now and then. Such a smart decision to keep them totally dry rather than soaking them in verb.

Unfortunately, I’ve never done ketamine. I thought it would be funny to try it for the first time so that I could write this prompt, but I’m scared of drugs. From what I’ve heard of IV ketamine usage as a treatment for depression, it is a warmth over your body paired with a sense of sleepy dissociation. If I really wanted to drift off I would put on the 25-minute ambient spoken word epic “A Letter from Home” by “Blue” Gene Tyranny.

“Blue” Gene Tyranny played for The Stooges back in the day and recorded several albums that were just piano, but in 1977 he put out this record, Out Of The Blue, which is an avant-garde folk-pop masterpiece. The final song on the album, A Letter from Home, features a woman reading a rambling letter addressed to Gene. The letter starts like someone catching up with an old friend but it becomes looser and more abstract as it goes along and enters very philosophical territory. Over this spoken word monologue there are ambient sounds like train noise as well as odd instrumentation and piano sections. It sucks you in from the start and builds a strange and beautiful world. Listening to it and really trying to focus on the music is a truly transcendent experience in the same way a Terrence Malick film is transcendent. Your mind starts to wander and the words evoke your own looser feelings as you journey into unknown places. I can only listen to this every so often because I don’t want to wear it out or make it less powerful. I believe this song would be the perfect accompaniment for a ketamine infusion session… I’m sorry for picking a song that’s longer than an episode of Modern Family, I know this is going to ruin the playlist.

MA HOLO - SUN ARAW

Tallon's Pick:

Spencer'S THOUGHTS:

My main point of reference point for Sun Arraw is the videogame Hotline Miami which features the song “Horse Stepping” as calm music in the interludes between all the brutal murders. That game rules! Anyway, this was really lovely and meditative. I assume the title “Ma Holo” is a cheeky reference to the Hawaiian exclamation “Mahalo” which means gratitude. This dude really loves taking normal words and changing letters around.

Sun Araw, specifically On Patrol, saw me through my absolute peak stoner era years ago. I found him randomly one day on Spotify and quickly established the tradition of getting absolutely dick high, closing my eyes, and drifting 50 feet into the clouds while listening to this psychedelic bastard. While I don’t smoke as much lately, I still come back to this as one of my absolute favorite ambient albums.

Sun Araw said he was very inspired by long takes in movies for this album and "Ma Holo" is a great example of it. It’s such an interesting writing style of taking one little riff and just LIVING in it for as long as he possibly can. Two fucking guitar chords and some bongos over and over again, yet it’s so easy to get entirely lost in the mesmerizing soundscape he creates. The song is 8 minutes long and it flies by so quickly for me. This is almost certainly (like most excellent ambient music) due to his FLAWLESS tone work. Every single piece of instrumentation is completely otherworldly. Spaced out drums, bizarre synths, psychedelic noodling. The main drum line is about the most normal sounding thing on here and everything else sounds like some crazy alien mumbo jumbo instruments ran through about 5 miles of effects pedals. I can’t tell you how impressive that it doesn’t become a disgusting muddy mess with how many crazy effects he has on so many things. It all blends and swells together like one great living, breathing, lumbering organism. I find myself taking very, very deep breaths listening to this.

Really great ambient music doesn’t feel the need to adapt to our fast attention span. It hooks you in and FORCES you to slow your thinking down to its pace, and appreciate every little sonic detail. This is only the intro track of the album, and he develops so many unique soundscapes throughout the rest of it. Sidenote: You couldn’t think of any other name that didn’t sound exactly like Sun Ra, the acclaimed experimental cosmic jazz composer?? What’s this guy’s next project? A classic rock band called “The Bleatles”??

PLANET CARAVAN - BLACK SABBATH

Community Highlight:

FROM JESUS:

This song makes me feel like im truly floating in space with my person. The drums here make it feel like in some sort of ritual, it makes me remember everything I’ve ever done. Sort of like dying and seeing your life flash before your eyes. This is why I picked it, listening to this on K would be life changing.

THANKS FOR LISTENING WITH US! STAY TUNED TO OUR INSTAGRAM TO FIND OUT THE THEME FOR THE NEXT MUSIC BOOK CLUB ☻

SUBMITTED BY @jesus_padilla19

WHAT WE LOVED ABOUT IT:

Y’all brought the HEAT for this week’s theme! We had so much fun getting to explore everyone’s suggestions and got to enjoy so much music from y’all.

"Plantaisa," submitted by @miinntyy was undoubtedly a standout. This track, being a long-time favorite of the Disko crew, Mort Garison’s album Plantasia was written with the intent to be music for plants. Utilizing the Moog synthesizer, the track percolates a sublime sense of joy pleasing to both plants and people! Making the track (and album) a perfect partner in a psychedelic therapy journey. “Moss Garden,” submitted by @marco_romo, was magical and transcendent in a way none of us were expecting from David Bowie. Even those of us who are fans of Bowie didn’t realize this song and album were co-written with Brian Eno, which perfectly tracks for the ambient vibe we were hoping to curate.

None of us were expecting such calming sounds from known guitar shredder Buckethead, but @ballinwallin21 really delivered a great recommendation. @gerritstapleton submitted “Good Morning” by Laxcity, which reminded us of the kind of lo-fi beat you would want to hear in a Minecraft iron farm tutorial. “Reverence” by Tritonal, as submitted by @ftnguyenn, is perfectly plucked from the speakers of a luxury sauna. Mandi's former boss/mentor sent her a carefully curated archive of amazing sounds for the whole team to study (shoutout Ben!) We listened and we loved all of it.

Our community pick of the week though has to be @jesus_padilla19’s “Planet Caravan.” We loved this for how unexpected it was to see a suggestion from Black Sabbath for this theme, and how pleasantly surprised we all were after we listened. The calm, lumbering bass line paired with the steady beat of bongos really lulls you into a different realm. We think it’s the perfect song to soundtrack a healing ketamine infusion therapy.

Check out the playlist: