The Oscillation – Untold Futures
The career of Demien Castellanos is a long, trippy and excellent one. Back in the 90s he was noodling at home in Cornwall on the Kyvu Tapes. High on variety, these cinematic tapes ranged from watery ambience, to pretty guitar shuffles, dreamy washes, meditative ragas, and nebulous drone. Now living in London and sometimes working under the name The Oscillation, more recent work has brought sci-fi soundtracks into the fold, abstract noise, heavy-hitting rhythms and hard psych riffs too.
A purposeful attempt to screw with your perception of reality, Untold Futures marks a return to the All Time Low label after several releases on the aptly named Cardinal Fuzz and Fuzz Club houses. It’s no small step forward either; it’s a giant leap into the uncharted for the artist.
Five deep explorations jammed out to a run-time of 45 mins total, the Gothic opener sets the tone with sacred chant and crunchy guitar dissonance, space-rock FX and laser-fired solos strangling the throbbing grind. An evil vocal slathered in reverb is borrowed from the Reid brothers’ most antisocial work, the bass undertow yoinked in turn straight from The Cure’s darkest moments.
The shadow of Robert Smith continues to hang over the next two missives also, “Forever Knowing” keeping things nasty with darkwave oscillations (natch), Castellanos’s go-to spidery guitar echoes of old conjuring a world of skittery whispers and pulsing industrial compressions. The first of two twelve-minute tracks, “Heart Of Nowhere” then hits like a Disintegration-era cover of some Joy Division hoot, but at half the speed and recorded in an intergalactic wind tunnel, ghostly moaning ultimately leading to astral ambience.
Going full kosmiche, the patient early exchanges of “Obscured” later get heavier and heavier, the pull of this black hole enough to blow the top of your skull clean off at you tip over event horizon. A more concise take on the same sound, “The Inner Void” attacks from the onset, churning motorik the backbone for gnarly wah and pedal abuse. It’s not the rock solid influences that stand Untold Futures apart; it’s the maximal combination of all things past, present and future all at once that open up a world of possibility.
Best track: “The Inner Void”
~Untold Futures is released October 15th 2021 via All Time Low.~