For your Friday listening pleasure, checkout the latest track released yesterday by the Missoula-based “Buddhist-rock” band darshan Pulse titled, “In The Garden Of Engen.”

The nearly 10-minute rock ballad is an ode to Missoulians for the Christmas holiday “inspired by recent happenings in the Five Valleys,” the band said.

“As life-long Missoula locals, we consider this track a unique holiday “thank you” to the man, the myth, the legend, who transformed a thriving working class community here in the Garden City into the gentrified nightmare it is today.”

The track art features the head of Mayor John Engen wearing a Santa hat with tentacles extending out in all directions. Each tentacle is labeled with issues associated with Engen’s nearly 15-year mayorship including “TIF” (or tax increment financing), “The Missoulian,” “Property Taxes,” and “Homelessness.”

The image is reminiscent of political cartoons depicting the omni-present reach of government bureaucracy and power. The acronym for the Missoula Redevelopment Agency (MRA) is written below his face indicating that Engen and the MRA are the center of a bureaucratic octopus.

darshan Pulse said they are not able to perform anywhere in Missoula currently because of the influence of entertainment and property magnate Nick Checota. “Unfortunately, dP cannot perform live at this time and after Checota’s choke-slam of the local music scene, there aren’t too many options remaining. But if we get together for the holidays again we might record another number,” band member RemBrandt Miller told Missoula County Tyranny.

The band has played mostly in-studio since the closing of Sean Kelly’s Public House, playing the final night the bar and restaurant was in business. He said they don’t typically publish jams, but the band felt inspired to publish the track because of the current “paranoid psychological climate” in Missoula.

“This was a pretty spontaneous occurrence. We’ve been more of a studio band since Sean Kelly’s Public House closed and don’t typically publish jams,” RemBrandt said. “But we felt particularly inspired by the electricity permeating Missoula’s increasingly paranoid psychological climate as of late.”

darshan Pulse has two studio albums out: “Panopticon” (2010) and “Olive Moksha” (2019)

Check out darshan Pulse on Soundcloud.