Embassador Dulgoon – Hydrorion Remnants
There’s out-there music and there’s uncharted music. Posted with immunity to such far-flung corners comes Embassador Dulgoon, the Chilean multi-instrumentalist, Hydrorion Remnants a snaking caravan in his wake. Deeply trippy music that actually takes you on a journey, we arrive as does The Time Traveller into the putrid Morlock swamps of A.D. 802,701, a squelchy rustle giving way to mystic chimes, insect drone and reptilian squawking. Drawing back a curtain of vine and moss, a plateau that time forgot then reveals itself via soft-focus pulses, pan-pipes and effects so disorientating as to wonder if we’ve slipped straight off the face of the earth. A shuffling, frog-chorus bossa nova briefly reminds us of what once inhabited terra firma, before Holodeck library music bends the vibe like a gravitational wave.
Following in the footsteps of recent similarly watery releases on the Nonlocal Research label, a menacing drip and burble then begins to bubble through the ambience, graunching memories of industry past conjuring sensory deprivation pods set up in the sump room of your local aquarium. Edging into freeform art installation territory, we then drop out into disembodied keys and suffocating synth drones that lollop under twinkling skies.
Suddenly interrupting the insomniac daze comes the lonely parp of smoky brass alongside enigmatic bird-call, ethnic melodies cosying up to ayahuasca-fuelled stargazing, Atacama cacti throwing up tremulous mirages on the way to enlightenment. Yes, these are truly psychedelic aural landscapes so unfamiliar as to bring to mind Lord Melchett’s quip to Blackadder that: “The foremost cartographers of the land have prepared this for you; it’s a map of the area that you’ll be traversing [Blackadder opens it up and sees it is blank]. They’ll be very grateful if you could just fill it in as you go along.”
~Hydrorion Remnants is out now via the collaborative efforts of Psychic Sounds and Nonlocal Research.~