The Orichalc Phase | en

The Orichalc Phase is Demian Castellanos, a musician and producer based in east London with a penchant for stargazing sonics and attention grabbing melodies. Drawing on a variety of influences and articultating ideas with an array of instruments, ranging from home made zithers to singing bowls and Moog synthesisers. Castellanos’s world was turned inside out by Loop’s incendiary cover of Can’s Mother Sky. Hearing this whilst twiddling out Hendrix riffs in a Cornish music store rewired his circuitry, shifting his focus from baroque licks to atonal drones and metronomic grooves, an epiphany that weaves its light through the fabric of The Orichalc Phase. Whilst the progressive sounds of 1970’s Europe set the controls for The Orichalc Phase, taut drum patterns and funked out bass lines add dimension to oscillating analogue keys and droning electronics, bringing new intonation to the cosmic voyages of pioneers such as Edgar Froese and Klaus Schulze. This is the kosmische musik of Neu! and Tangerine Dream interpreted with an eye on Pil’s dubbed out punk funk, Miles Davis’ experimentalism and Spacemen 3’s strung out songwriting, a dilated kaleidoscope vision of progressive music past, present and future. With releases as Mesma (Static Caravan) and The Oscillation (Bee & Smoke/ Slackyr Records), The Orichalc Phase gives Castellanos an opportunity to reconfigure his influences in yet another way, putting emphasise on analogue keys and dance floor friendly rhythms, but never losing sight of his project of exploration, guided as it is by themes of psychedelia and other worldly experience. .