I have a mild paranoid fear that possibly Demian Castellanos has snuck into my loungeroom and scoured my music collection for all my favourite bits to take home and meld into this sprawling masterpiece. It’s got many of the things I love somehow genetically modified into a cohesive whole. The overriding atmosphere is one of psychedelia: Velvet Underground noise freakout ’67; Primal Screamadelics ’90; NEU! Motorik wave ’74; meandering Pink Floyd noodle ’68; Ride and Chapterhouse shoegaze blissout ’91; the massed reverberating intimacy of Mum ’01; Stereolab dronescape ’94. Add to that some dub production on acoustic instruments to make King Tubby proud, and the obligatory punk-funk-Gang of Four references and this is music coming at you from every direction.
Things are particularly ear catching when Castellanos talk/sings his simple melodies under a wave of effects and driving rhythms such as on ‘Violations’ or ‘Head Hang Low’. He can also ride a riff for all it’s worth, particularly with a distorted bassline as he does in ‘Gamelin Minscape’. After a barrage of various uptempo styles the album is rounded out with a handful of mellower, yet no less spaced-out, musical tracks, building to the final, 10 minute ‘Visitation (Exit)’ which revels in off-kilter delays, weezy synths, glockenspiels and pulsing bottom end. What is of particular note is that this album is the product of a single musician’s work. The traditional (rock) format of drums, bass and guitar are featured throughout in a remarkably ensemble sounding manner, overlaid with synths and production. It does sound like a band and it wasn’t until I MySpaced The Oscillation after a number of listens that I realised it was something other.
I have to confess to having a large amount of preconditioning to the sounds used in Out Of Phase but, if anything, that would make me even more critical of their use. While I can hear reverberations of the last 40 years in Castellanos’ work, this is undoubtedly his own music, a blend of influences put to good effect, not a pastiche of styles. I absolutely loved this album.
Adrian Elmer
