Mokotow Turns Solitude Into Sound on 'Tales From Lonely Mountain'

Photo by Jennifer Pelczynski

Tales From Lonely Mountain, the latest release from Mokotow, belongs firmly in the second category. It’s not loud, not rushed, and definitely not chasing algorithms. Instead, the record unfolds like a quiet document of presence, four songs that feel less like performances and more like moments preserved before they disappeared.

The project actually began back in February 2010 inside an attic studio at Baby Viking Mountain. The space was barely assembled. There were no racks of instruments, no elaborate gear setups, just a standing Fender Rhodes, winter pressing against the windows, and the first snowfall softening everything outside. That environment became the blueprint for the record.

Every track on Tales From Lonely Mountain was written and recorded the same day it was conceived. No revisions. No returning later to polish things up. Whatever the strongest take was at that moment stayed. It’s a creative rule that could easily fall apart in the wrong hands, but here it becomes the album’s entire emotional architecture.

The opening piece, “From Above,” captures that first day almost like a field recording of a feeling. The Rhodes floats through warm, reflective chords that feel suspended somewhere between relief and quiet wonder. There’s a subtle joy to it, the kind that appears when you realize a space, or a moment, finally belongs to you.

Then “Memory Lane Lullaby” shifts the lens inward. It’s the most openly nostalgic moment on the record, gently circling memories of Mokotow’s father and the strange emotional math of looking backward while time keeps moving forward.

“Carousel Blues” introduces the album’s most hypnotic structure, built around looping progressions that mirror life’s cycles. Seasons repeat. Patterns repeat. People repeat their mistakes. Near the end, a faint vocal slips through the instrumental haze: “round and round and round we go.” It lands less like a lyric and more like a quiet truth.

The closing piece, “Midnight Mass,” might be the most cinematic moment on the record. The Rhodes slowly converses with itself before dissolving into an actual summer night, insects humming, airplanes crossing the sky somewhere far above. The track doesn’t so much end as it fades back into the world it came from.

For years, these songs quietly existed in a publishing agreement with BMG, occasionally surfacing for sync opportunities while largely remaining unheard. When the rights eventually returned to Mokotow, the record finally found its moment to exist publicly.

And fittingly, it won’t live only as an album.

The project will be accompanied by a visual exhibition opening March 21 at The Roscoe Collective in the Catskills, where sound, landscape photography, and film intersect. One of the exhibition’s art films, Fog in the Valley – Carousel Blues, further expands the album’s atmosphere into visual space. The record’s cover photograph, captured by photographer Noah Kalina, echoes the same quiet seasonal solitude the music inhabits.

Mixed by Jeff Berner, who is also co-producing Mokotow’s upcoming record, Tales From Lonely Mountain, marks another step in an artist who has constantly shifted forms: electronic producer, band frontman, solo songwriter, film composer, and founder of independent label Heeled & Heavy Records.

Through all those evolutions, one thing has stayed consistent: a refusal to chase spectacle.

Instead, Mokotow’s music leans toward something rarer in modern listening culture; stillness. And when you finally give them the quiet they were written in, Tales From Lonely Mountain reveals itself less as an album and more as a companion piece for moments people usually rush past: snowfall, late nights, memory, and the strange comfort of sitting still long enough to hear your own thoughts again.

You wrote and recorded each song the same day it was conceived, with no revisiting or edits. What did that creative rule unlock for you that traditional recording processes usually bury?

At the time, I was also recording with a band. That process was long, however, collaborative. I was learning a lot, new instruments, how to sing, and studio work. It was dense and sometimes painful. This was the opposite. It gave me an unfiltered release. Whatever I felt that day, I captured immediately. It felt like there was a small religion inside that Fender Rhodes or maybe inside me, and I was just trying to let it out. It was liberating.

Tales From Lonely Mountain was written in 2010 but is only being released now. How did your relationship with these songs change over the years, and why did this moment finally feel right to let them exist publicly?

I’ve listened to these songs for sixteen years. It’s a favorite, maybe because it was private. No pressure to market it. Friends and visual artists connected with it. Noah Kalina, who photographed the cover art, felt it too, which meant the world to me. It sat on my hard drive quietly with his Catskills photograph on the cover for years. After the pandemic, living in Sullivan County and meeting Dan Hayes, it all aligned. The visuals, the music, and the place clicked.

The record feels less like a traditional album and more like a preserved atmosphere. Were you consciously trying to capture a place and moment in time rather than build a conventional musical project?

Not intentionally. But the attic studio gave me that isolation. I’d imagine other spaces, deep forested nature, places that felt similar. Years later, I ended up living there. One track, “Midnight Mass,” intentionally captured the summer night air by recording its sounds for ten minutes straight at the end of that song. But otherwise, the record was simply shaped by isolating myself in that space.

Your career has moved through several identities: electronic producer, band frontman, solo songwriter, and film composer. How did each of those phases shape the sound and restraint of this record?

I was building a live band then, all energy outward, and this was the opposite. I think of music like cinema; no one limits themselves to one genre. This is just another part of the spectrum. Artists have many faces; this was one era.

The album is paired with a visual exhibition at The Roscoe Collective. What does the visual element add to the listening experience, and how do you see landscape, sound, and memory interacting in this project?

The record always felt like a soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist. I’d listen during first snowfalls or moments of reflection. Visual artists like Dan Hayes or Noah Kalina can deepen that feeling, or redirect it. That’s why the exhibition excites me. People may find the music through the visuals or vice versa. It’s a loop between landscape, sound, and memory.