Northern Alliance Theme Song / Stars Over Kabul

This one of the first things I ever successfully recorded. It ended up being so perfect as an instrumental I never even bothered to write words for it. 
I fucked around with music for a long time before I ever started writing songs myself. I mean, there were definitely songs I collaborated on but it was always in a band context (a jam band, even). I had a couple of half songs that I'd been carrying around for a year or so but it wasn't until the summer of 2001 that I got the 4 track - and that was what helped me start developing my ideas. I could do overdubs, and I could get a direct in on the keyboard, which I could never do with the boombox. So I started exploring beats and sounds and layering keys on top. I would use the backward tracks on the other side of the tape to create further weirdness. I made twenty minute long sound collages - most of them garbage - and plenty of shorter, more together, pieces, but this was the best of them. 
This is from the Fall of 2001, right after 9/11. I thought it sounded vaguely Eastern and foreboding, so I named it after the anti Taliban forces in Afghanistan who the news was saying would be our "in" into taking the country over with minimal hassle. The outro is one of those glorious tape accidents, If you've ever mixed with a cassette 4 track you know what I'm talking about. I think it's a reversed track from the other side of the tape but can't be sure - but it just fit so well it became part of a whole thing.