Can a story thousands of years old really reach us today? This is instrumental music that I find inspiring and clearly suitable to accompany listening with our mind’s ear, discovering millions of such unspecified stories.
A deeper, richer investigation of progressive electro-acoustic music
According to the legend at hand, the moniker AeTopus suggests time (Ae), while “Topus” loosely means place. This makes for the perfect aural experience, creating legends and contemporary spiritual moments centered on imagined ancient sacred sites. Music suggests opportunities, choices, wishful thinking, and best of all, creative illusion. Bryan Tewell Hughes, aka AeTopus, is a Bellingham, Washington based multi-media artist whose music is influenced as much by the arts and nature, as by the human experience. Music for the imagination and soul, a deeper, richer investigation of progressive electro-acoustic music.
Wandering through nature inspires AeTopus. My strolls happen at night, and this soundscape triggers my imagination. There are strange lights in the sky; suddenly, the music tells us we are traveling light, spanning the realms. The tones are cycling, signaling into infinity, into an increasingly complex beautifully cold expanse. I am captured by the sputtering percussion and melodic motion flowing in a dynamic, mixed density, mini-epic soundworld, bouncy and complex, clear and dynamic, “Pure” (4:45). Next, the beat romps a bit, changing tempo with the melody. I feel a steady pulse at a pace like footsteps, with a forward motion and a “Clean Break” (3:40). The mix includes what sounds to me like tuned wooden drums, a sweet marimba sound, something like a Rosewood xylophone. There is a long delicious silence as this next track slowly fades in, things start to happen. Mostly the atmosphere glows just floating there, midway through it seems to end and quiet down. Then comes the beat, and the “Beam” (6:34) turns on and kicks in. The action takes off, nervous and fast with an engaging tempo. The melody is very simple and I feel it, I am dancing or just somehow strangely moving about to the beat. The atmosphere becomes something like a sunrise, gradually getting warmer and brighter, bouncing along.
A relic is oft described as an object or article of religious significance from the past. When the “Relic” (5:45) object is revealed, there is a steady, sacred tempo before a marimba-like wooden tone bone drum begins summoning us. I imagine benign percussive creatures that dance about slowly, signaling one another with clicks while floating over the abyss. “Sygna” (5:10) gives me a nifty little dance step, with abundant odd noises, perhaps made with found objects, adding intrigue to the ambiance. Now there opens a mysterious entrance leading into some engaging trance stuff, dark and quiet. I hear easy beats and monster feet, enduring intricacies.
Something like a sunrise, gradually getting warmer and brighter ::
I feel like I have been welcomed into the inner circle by a valiant warrior. “Drue” (4:25), with dark rainbows, guitars and brass, maybe in these atmospheric ear theater soundscapes contain human choirs, who intone and echo, or is that something else? I also hear metallic tings and electronic tones, slowly shimmering as if heard in a dark hall under water. From behind the dark, tunnel noises start with slow layers of melodic interplay, and I have a realization that a dreaded secret is exposed in “They Know” (4:57). Spiraling lights and continuous fragments, surprise and calculation, mystical chaos lurking. With “Glance” (2:06) there is a very different sound palette, maybe some more samples, some more rapid little motions. A melody takes form with interesting complex tempos, percussive assemblages.
Change comes again, starting with no beat and then the organ glows with bowed drones, perhaps a hidden purring engine, “Access” (4:48), soon joined by a foot stomp beat and odd veils of sound, fluttering at times. The percussive tempo fades. “Sundial” (5:24) gathers its fragments and the pieces line up; soon we are marching at a good clip and the light changes as we go. The pace is powerful. The shadows move, I hear slow and mystical deep echoes return from the dark expanse. We are investigating a gigantic cavern, somehow sensing motion in the darkness until the melodic pulse joins in, revealing geometric constructions, “Advent” (4:14). We have arrived and there is more to come, from the void comes a new form, something clicks and strange lights dance in the dark. Now I am seeing a UFO sky-dance, maybe you know about these curious events, those strange distant fast moving colored lights in the sky, and the sounds, a swinging motion as new fragments pulse through. Sometimes the lights seem to disappear and reappear, then vanish again. Or they flicker, and just quickly scoot along.
The final track begins, “Soft Green” (7:02). In a curious forest the night is long. Now the rippling form is stronger, knitting the strands, I hear what I fear are ominous dark sleeping snakes, the tension is slowly building and then relaxing, becoming sparse and then continuing to build again. The forest has distant hills, darkness is always in the picture. Soon there is a complex melodic beat, weaving and layering, never too dense, eventually the pace fairly flies.
A cup is used to hold liquids close, for pouring or drinking. I hear music for exploration and acceptance, symbolic of fluidity, feelings and emotions, intuition, relationships, healing, and cleansing. The cup story has come around in different versions, the empty cup, the chalice, the prized cup, the sang réal, an ancient calix, a goblet, smashed into thousands of tiny pieces. Can a story thousands of years old really reach us today? This is instrumental music that I find inspiring and clearly suitable to accompany listening with our mind’s ear, discovering millions of such unspecified stories.
Cup is available on Spotted Peccary Music. [Bandcamp | Site]
