Hesius Dome manages to seamlessly merge genres in a way that doesn’t ever appear like it was ever the intent. Over the course of five albums and a number of singles as Hesius Dome, Australian producer, engineer and musician, Simon Polinski (Paul Kelly, Yothu Yindi, Ollie Olsen etc) seems to find a netherworld where ambience and rock music can coexist quite happily. In my review for his third album Travel Bug, I’d suggested that he had a ‘penchant for melding amorphous synthetic swirls with desert highway guitar,’ and I stand by this statement.
This four track EP doesn’t see a massive departure from this formula, and that’s despite the mixing and performing presence of Melbourne based Post Rock / ambient producer Garagee, who also offers guitar. As always the music is lush, evocative and ridiculously well produced. There’s a real non urgency to this music, everything hits right the way it should, where it should, without the need for manufactured pyrotechnics. Perhaps the word is calmness, which is strange to think about being a positive when referring to rock music, but here it’s positively reassuring, and anyway this is not really rock music. There are electronics, wisps of ethereal vocals, and everything from kalimba to saz in the mix, suggesting a fourth world potential that never really eventuates.
As always its difficult to pin down what precisely this music is. Electronic post rock? Ambient campfire songs? Piped muzak for an adventurous spa retreat? It’s not really the point, rather Hesius Dome feels so much more about floating away within the lushness, and putting that part of your brain away, and just letting it all wash over you.
