The never-ending journey inside the mind of Demian Castellanos has reached a new peak. A meditative yet chaotic track that’ll challenge your senses. Discover new depths in The Oscillation’s new single: “Heart Of Nowhere”. A glimpse of what can be heard in his new full-length album: Untold Futures.
It is a great day today, my friends. A fresh start, new beginnings, and with it, new music. But first, let me welcome you back to this humble blog! I hope you’re safe, great and having a good time in this challenging days. Now, back to the case.
“Heart Of Nowhere” is the new single by our dear friend and musician/composer Demian Castellanos. If you don’t know by now, he has a facility to create music that reaches deep into the subconscious and takes his listeners into meditative and altered states of mind. You can read all about him and his past single right here: Forever Knowing.
Starting with slow-fading bell hits that linger until becoming the foundation of the track, “Heart Of Nowhere” explores once again meditative states with low bass notes, screeching guitars and echoing drones. Full beat drums give movement, while oscillating synths make waves and give pass to soft, cold pads. As it continues to grow, the ever changing track slowly but steadily advances into an elevated climax that reminds us of The Future Sound Of London.
As it reaches its peak, the culminating climax starts to dissolve piece by piece, until only chaos is left. Soft bells, creature-like sounds, and spooky ethereal ambience tell the end of the story. I mean, wow, man, WTF.
This track is only a demonstration of what Demian has in store for us in his new album: Untold Futures. Which by the way is freaking awesome and once again counts with the collaboration of great musicians like Jem Doulton and Thurston Moore.
“The Oscillation’s continuing journey into the centre of the mind and beyond shows absolutely no signs of slowing down.“
As if it weren’t enough, the track comes with a 360º VR video on Youtube, by the hand of Julian Hand, where chaos, fire, distortion and the digital matrix converge into one to give the track an even more immersive experience.
Once again I had the fortune to speak with Demian a little bit about his new single and album. You can read our conversation right here, only on Less Than 1000!:
MDZN: Hi Demian!! It’s my absolute pleasure to welcome you back to our blog. Congratulations, as always, for such an outstanding work! I’d love if you could tell us a bit more about the process of the creation of this single. It seems to me that a lot of composition and sound-tuning work was done for this single only.
Demian: “Thanks Iñaki. This track I was really trying to find the line between music and vibration and frequency. It’s a pretty rocky album overall but I really wanted to blur the lines between heavy psych rock and pure sound. With Heart Of Nowhere I remembered this thing I learned about Stockhausen around the time he made Kontakté and Gesang Der Jünglinge. I can’t totally remember but it came to mind as it’s something I’ve explored a fair bit in the past, but wanted to really go for it where the song would disintegrate into sound and noise. He divided sounds into 6 categories and said that every sound could fit into one of them. It was something like “wood” “metallic” and that there was some way of then finding commonality between various sounds.
I don’t like to get too sidetracked by the intellectual side of things but it’s really interesting. For example the synthesizer on certain settings can go from a tone to a weird percussive sound that ends up sounding a bit like a drum hit or whatever...“
MDZN: It’s funny you mention “disintegrate”, cause that’s exactly how the song sounds to me by the end of it. A disintegration into noise and even animal-like sounds! I’ve had the pleasure of listening to your new album “Untold Futures” and its truly an amazing experience, would you care to tell us more about the album’s title and ethos behind it?
Demian: “Ah cool, I’m glad that comes across. Yeah also animal and nature noises, I’m interested in the area between electronic and acoustic sounds… I remember in Colombia sitting in the jungle listening to these massive toads that made the most insane music, sort of frog techno.. it really stuck with me!
There’s quite a lot of questioning going on with the album that gives a feeling of openness so I wanted something that reflected that. With the unknown comes more possibilities than if everything is known which is a positive thing. Light out of darkness etc… and with that in mind with this album I wanted to explore all the difficulties I was going through at the time which is why I found it a hard album to make, but I’m glad I persevered with it as it needed to be done if I was gonna make something genuine.”
MDZN: So, Demian, I know you have a natural incline towards experimentation and are always searching for new ways to give the listener a mind-bending experience, taking them to meditative states inside their minds. Do you feel, with this album, that you’ve achieved your goal of reaching altered states through audio stimulation? Is there a sense of “This is it, this is what I’ve been looking for”, or is there still the craving for more?
Demian: “Ha yeah I try my best! Personally I don’t think I’ve ever felt “this is it” for very long but as always I have to push things as much as possible so that I am confident I’ve done all I can and taken it as far as I can. For sure I did get to a point where it felt the purpose and sound of the tracks had revealed themselves which took a lot of work, but it needed it! I can’t bear the thought of looking back and knowing that I didn’t give the tracks all that was necessary for them to have their own true identities.“
That was the end of my chat with Demian, as always a pleasure to talk with such a humble and human artist. If you enjoyed his single and this review, please do check his whole album, I promise you won’t regret it. MadZen out.
Don’t forget to support The Oscillation on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, YouTube, and Spotify. You can also check out their official website. If you enjoy their music and are able to provide monetary support, you might consider downloading it on Bandcamp; for virtual concerts you can go to songkick “Live from their sofa to yours”.
Be sure to stream and share The Oscillation’s music; you can obviously find it in the following Playlists: Fresh Singles, Alterindie State Of Mind, Long, Long, Long Songs, and Sickest & Dopest.
Remember that you can always find me here Linktree MadZen for all my social media and music.
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This coverage was created via Musosoup #Sustainablecurator