From The Vault - Cotton Mather’s ”Kontiki” With Magnet Classics Podcast From Ep. 1268 (4/20/2023)

Welcome to another episode of How Did I Get Here? From The Vault! Today, we go back to episode 1268 on April 20, 2023 for a special collaboration with Magnet Classics Podcast. Magnet Classics Podcast host Hobart Rowland and I talk to Cotton Mather songwriter and frontman Robert Harrison about their classic album Kontiki. I hope you enjoy our conversation with Robert about this amazing album. I sure did. Below are my original notes from the show.

Hello and welcome to a special How Did I Get Here? and Magnet Classics Podcast collaboration episode where we talk all things Kontiki with Cotton Mather frontman, Robert Harrison! Over SXSW, Magnet Classics Podcast host, Hobart Rowland and I sat down with Cotton Mather's Robert Harrison to talk about their 25 year old classic album, Kontiki, from where the band was when he started writing, to recording it to touring with Oasis in the U.K. in support of it. Listen to Kontiki HERE. Check out Magnet Classics Podcast HERE or wherever you pod. Thanks to Hobart and Robert for this enjoyable chat and Magnet for the collaboration. I hope you enjoy it. I sure did. Below are Hobart's notes on Kontiki.

"Initially released with a whisper 26 years ago on a tiny Houston-based label, Kontiki is one of the great lost albums of the ’90s. Working out of his house and a friend’s place in the Texas Hill Country, Cotton Mather’s Robert Harrison recorded then deconstructed songs he’d once assumed would get a more conventional rock-band treatment. Tools included an ADAT, a four-track cassette recorder and a two-track DAT machine. The result is one of the catchiest “experimental” albums you’ll ever hear. Tracks with odd titles like “Camp Hill Radio Operator,” “Homefront Cameo,” “Aurora Bori Alice” and “Vegetable Row” offer equally strange and cryptic lyrics set to overtly hummable melodies. Conceived in a virtual creative vacuum, Kontiki ranks among the best power-pop albums of all time. A quarter-century later, it still sounds utterly timeless—yet weirdly current." - Hobart Rowland

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