“You know when you have a really weird vivid dream and it sticks with you like glue?” Ambrose wrote in an Instagram post. “One day I came into the studio and Stu was trying to write one of them down. He kept banging on about this paradise called Magenta Mountain that he had seen but none of us believed him. Every day since then he’s been still trying to convince us all that it’s real and one day he will. We’re gonna get there, oh yes, we’re gonna get there.” “Magenta Mountain” is the synth-led second track of the band’s twentieth album Omnium Gatherum, and tells of a journey to a monolithic, paradisiacal magenta mountain in a post-apocalyptic world. While one of the travelers believes that the mountains are real, the others don’t and doubt them, only to be proven wrong in the end — at least spiritually. The lyrics directly reference “Anamnesis”, and “Blue Morpho” and are sung by Stu, Joey and Ambrose. With its catchy hooks and danceable electronic instrumentation, “Magenta Mountain” has become a fan favorite which has been taken to new heights live, especially with its epic guitar solos.
The first mention of the song was on August 27th, 2021 in a post about Jason Galea’s video for Butterfly 3000’s “Ya Love.” It reads “Magenta mountain rollercoaster, shot on infrared film.” The video does indeed feature a magenta mountain with a roller coaster on it, but the reference would go unknown for some time.
According to the liner notes, the song was played by Ambrose (vocals/percussion), Cavs (drums), Cook (guitar/synthesizer), Joey (vocals/percussion/synthesizer) and Stu (vocals/guitar/synthesizer/keyboard/bass/percussion). The notes also state that, while it was mixed and produced by Stu, the song was recorded by both him and Cavs. Sessions for the song can be found in The Making of Omnium Gatherum, showing Ambrose recording his high vocal parts. To tease Omnium Gatherum the band took to Twitter and tweeted emojis that represented the song’s titles. “Magenta Mountain” was represented by a purple circle and a mountaintop. It was guessed by @_Space_Turtle, who posted the band’s reference for Galea’s video. The song was released as part of Omnium Gatherum on April 22nd, 2022.
The song debuted on 2022-03-05 at The Return of the Curse of Timeland festival in Naarm (Melbourne), and was one of three songs to make their first appearance that day (the other two being “The Garden Goblin” and “The Dripping Tap”). A music video of this debut performance was directed, edited and filmed by John Angus Stewart and uploaded on March 29th, 2022 — featuring actor John Dimoulas as a security guard who walks the camera through the crowd. Dimoulas would also appear in the music video for “Black Hot Soup (DJ Shadow 'My Own Reality' Re-Write).” In its live form the song isn’t too far from its album counterpart, except for one major upgrade: a massive solo at the end by Stu. When asked in a Reddit AMA why the solo never made it to the album, he said “We recorded the song first and the idea for a gtr solo didn’t come about til we started rehearsing for it live. I like that they’re different tho!” Since its appearance at the Timeland festival, “Magenta Mountain” has appeared reliably in the band’s live synth exploration segments.