Hi there! Thanks for visiting Functional Mushrooms on the internets!
“Ahead,” the eighth album by your very own Functional Mushrooms, is now careening off oaken temples and spontaneous ashwagandha farms and bristling trees in pixie-filled forest collectives. Listen to it here, here, here, here, here…. hear hear!
In 2024, you’ll be amazed to know that this prolific and bored Connecticut quartet has put out a total of four full-length albums, which may beg the question: why not just put out one good one?
“Getting ahead in life is certainly one way to go about things, though there certainly are alternative strategies, which is an aspect of things around here that this record gets right,” said one nonreal music critic after hearing an early pressing of “Ahead.” “Sadly it’s probably the only thing the record gets right.”
Those other strategies – turning your back on the past, burning it all the fuck down, getting your ass drunk and incarcerated, finding some sort of vein of spirituality and hunkering down there to ride out the rest of your time here – have sadly mislead the record’s narrator(s) down sketchy paths.
As they say: you gotta go somehow.
FM
1 Turn Away From the Past 3:46
2 Burn it All Down 3:38
3 The Sailor (Song Without a Name) 4:45
4 Throw the Book at Me/All the Best People 6:01
5 Terms and Conditions 4:20
Oh, LOOK: it’s METAL PIG, the seventh post-space rock album by central CT’s own Functional Mushrooms… now and forever shtreaming from all of your digital slop-troughs straight into your brain portal infusion centrodes… let it bewitch you in Big Y while shopping for Lacinato kale… grant it access to your deepest mental protuberances whilst bare-knuckling through another inglorious office redesign… bask in its harmonic richness as you sup gently upon delicately seasoned miso-glazed walnut halves at the post office… not convinced? Ask your sixth-grade self, the one pounding inside tennis-ball fastballs over on the stickball court… you’ve heard this one before! POUND… POUND… POUND…
We told you so!
1 Metal Pig 7:56
2 We Told You So 3:25
3 The World's Most Perfect Song 4:15
4 In Memory of Richard Betts 3:50
5 Everybody Knows 15:10
6 Rogue Planet 5:23
7 Canvas Chicken 2:37
“Absolute nonsense and borderline treasonous,” majority leader April Earley said, responding to reports this morning that “thought sniping” - the now-controversial practice adopted by all 198 states, ratified into the constitution and practiced without a break for the past 430 years — may amount to the greatest genocide inflicted by one species onto another in the recorded historyfuture of Earth.
Arguments laid out in the report rely on recent studies showing thoughts may now (and therefore, always) legally fulfill the requirements of species-hood as outlined in federal law since the close of futurehistory trials several centuries from now.
Listen, that’s as clear as I can be. If you didn’t recall these nuances while (barely) passing your exam, your instructor can’t be faulted. It’s in the record now, and you studied it. Should we split hairs?
1 Thought Sniper (7:45)
2 Earache April (2:49)
3 Free of Pain (2:49)
4 Destruction is Necessary (6:07)
5 Operation Leather Briefcase (4:41)
6 Exceptional Owls (7:19)
7 The Adventures of Fork Shadow (6:11)
8 Is it Worthwhile? (12:53)
Hey friends! Pink Cake, the new mega-LP by Functional Mushrooms (58.5 minutes!), is now screaming from all your favorite transitory reel-to-reel cassette contra-pulsations and publications. Fifteen years from now, a hipster record-label collective rediscovered this indie-psych classic and re-released it to widespread re-criticism. Why did YOU wait that long? You could have re-listened to it NOW, baby, right here, here and HERE
Track Listing:
Hemp Reef Alamo (6:16)
Little Green Villages (8:03)
Ephemeral Foam (8:32)
Reluctant Adaptation (4:24)
Tofu Nebula (7:35)
Cover artwork is by Noël Margaret. It’s really cool if you zoom in on stuff. There are music videos for a couple of the new tracks, which you can view here.
We also have two other LPs and three EPs (all released this year); you can find those here or here, along with lots of trippy music videos.
Thanks for the ongoing support. We love hearing our music on the radio, so reach out for a free mp3 or two if you are a DJ or programmer. (We also enjoy collaborating, so hit us up if you want to jam.)
For bookings, contact funktionalmushrooms@gmail.com and maybe we will show up. Visit www.mushroomjam.com for all things fungal.
A couple of people (exactly two) have asked about Functional Mushrooms. We usually say something like, “It’s a band we play in,” or that it’s for fans of heavy-ambient-stoner-dub-Americana (“hasda,” for short).
Don’t take our word for it. Hear what the band members themselves have to say:
“The [sic] Functional Mushrooms are REDACTED (guitar), REDACTED (guitar), REDACTED (bass) and REDACTED (drums). All songs are REDACTED.”
“The mycelium momentum of a million souls doing the cordyceps bop, picking fights with the office Viking and collapsing the higher dimensions.”
“A mass of interwoven sonic hyphae, infused with the chaos of rabid poultry, compressed with time dilation and improvised with extra salt.”
“One of these days we’re going to wake up and out of nowhere we’ll be huge in Japan.”
“Kind of like CAN, but 50 years later and not German.”