UK blowout psychscaper outfit The Oscillation will release the new album, Untold Futures, tomorrow, Oct. 29, through Forte Music Distribution. That makes it sound kind of mundane, admittedly, but when you get past the basic bookkeeping factoids — the numbers and names, places and all that — you open the door to the encompassing spaciousness of “The Inner Void,” a new video set to VR compatibility such that even if you don’t have fancy billionaire goggles you can wave your phone around and look at the transformed universe around you.

Such psychedelic futurism perfectly — I mean that: perfectly — suits the consciously-titled Untold Futures, which is Demian Castellanos‘ umpteenth release under the banner of The Oscillation. Joined by drummer Tim Weller and intermittent percussionist Jem Doulton, the self-recording Castellanos sets out a presence like a sure hand reaching into churning lava. My ears keep returning to a molten version of a ’90s British cool, flashes of lysergic electroniche moving in and out around the five-song/47-minute procession, guitar drones and effects farouttery swirling in an urbane cosmos.

And as the 12-minute “Heart of Nowhere” rises to its nigh-on-maddening crescendo, having progressed along a deceptively linear thought pattern to get there, Doulton‘s percussion and Weller‘s drums play a not-at-all secondary role to the liquid tones surrounding. Coming off of “Dilated Mind” and “Forever Knowing” at the outset — the first a scorch and wash psych-rock blaster, the second feeling its way around the hole in space-time that its predecessor just tore — “Heart of Nowhere” and the subsequent “Obscured” (12:30) feel no less purposefully paired as Untold Futures works its pieces shortest-to-longest until capping with the aforementioned “The Inner Void.”

More than the run of its songs, though, it’s the feeling of pushing deeper into the ether that most pervades — yeah, it’s all psychedelia and way trippy as one would hope, but the cavernous reaches of even the early minutes in “Obscured” add a sense of drift that the more manic stretches of “Dilated Mind” and “Forever Knowing” were too manic in their thrust to convey. Slowed down? Why yes, it is a bit, thank you for asking. But there’s also a hit like two and a half minutes into “Obscured” when a genuine verse starts, vocals and all, and you get smacked in the face with the realization of just how far you’ve come in the time since you last experienced human speech. Thusly contacted through isolation, the only thing to do is keep moving, kind of swaggering laissez-faire style through Hawkwind-via-The–Matrix, too weird to be chic, too weird not to be.

“Obscured” gives reality the outright swallowing-up it deserves in its ultra-noisy apex, a rightful heir from the midsection of “Heart of Nowhere” but more, more, more, with an electric guitar solo cutting through somehow like the last radio frequencies being pulled into a black hole, background-radiation drone leftover when all is said and done and the great nom-nom-nomming of all that was and will ever be has taken place. Does that make “The Inner Void” a post-script? Maybe. But isn’t it just as likely that by transferring ourselves into this yet-unlocked dimensional plane we’ve actually embarked on the next stage of a grand renewal cycle, such that the end is a new beginning? Or maybe I’ve got the songs in the wrong order so it just sounds that way? Whatever is left of our matter/energy continuum still holds infinite possibilities and outcomes and nothing is more likely than anything. What do we say when it’s all over and the long fuzz fades into echoes? I don’t know. Thanks, probably? For the ride?

The deeper you go, the deeper you go.

Watch for flashing lights, and enjoy:

The Oscillation, “The Inner Void” video premiere

The Oscillation’s continuing journey into the centre of the mind and beyond shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. New album Untold Futures is less a consolidation of all that we’ve come to love and expect from the cosmic explorers and is more of a leap forward into an upcoming reality.

Redefining the possibilities of altered states through audio stimulation, Untold Futures finds The Oscillation at their most daring and breathtaking. A multi-layered assault on the senses, this is an unexpurgated experience for the seasoned connoisseur and unspoiled novice alike. Its power is felt in the multi-layered dissonance and undying throb of Dilated Mind, the metaphysical possibilities that beat at the heart of metronomic pulses of Forever Knowing and the face-melting attack of The Inner Void. Heart Of Nowhere is a mantra for the profane, while the dissonant beauty of Obscured realises re-birth and resurrection.

Following recent releases Droneweapon and Wasted Space, Untold Futures is an album that’s wholly distinct from its acclaimed predecessors yet unmistakably the work of Demian Castellanos, the driving force behind The Oscillation.

Revelatory in its brilliance and an intersection between the individual self and the collective unconscious, this is music to fuel the inner technology of the mind. So load up to the brim and give yourself up to Untold Futures.

The CD and digital versions of Untold Futures are augmented by ambient versions of The Inner Void, Dilated Mind and Heart Of Nowhere.

Recorded and mixed by Demian Castellanos at Xibalba Studios, London 2019-2021
Demian Castellanos: Vox, Guitar, Keys, Synths, Percussion, FX
Tim Weller: Drums on all tracks
Jem Doulton: Percussion on My Inner Void, Forever Knowing, The Heart Of Nowhere
Mastered by Carim Classman at The Fishtank

The Oscillation, Untold Futures (2021)

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