Stargaze Inferno - Hayman Island Sessions

Are You Before and Total Stasis join forces for a first time vinyl pressing of a set of pastoral improvisations and twilit laments originally released to tape by the legendary Breakdance the Dawn people back in 2016. And thankful we should be, too, for these recordings are hugely deserving of an audience beyond the limited distribution of its initial release. The appropriately named Stargaze Inferno are the Australian duo of Ryko Kalinko (guitar & sampler) and Aemon Webb (vocals, guzheng & percussion) with just this single recording to their name, made (and you could have worked this out yourself) while stationed on Hayman Island, one of the Whitsunday archipelago just off the coast of Queensland. A cursory Google search tells me the official population of the island apparently stands at just 50, but that it's also home to a luxury holiday resort accessible by private yachts, an unusual but probably all too common tension that likely speaks most to the problematic colonial history of Australia - who and what had to give way for that rich person's playground to appear? How Kalinko and Webb ended up making music there is somewhat mysterious, and the sounds they made seemingly at odds with its modern day usage, but dig a little deeper and the duality becomes more apparent. The 22 minute long-form piece that comprises the entirety of the first side is serene and hypnotic in ways you'd imagine reflective of an area of such natural beauty, the cascading intersection of guitar and zither a transportative, near-spiritual experience. On the flip, the tone becomes a little darker with the introduction of percussion and, on closer 'These Waves All Look The Same (Gun Street Girl Revisited)', moves towards a darkening drone, punctuated by the dolorous, foreboding vocal of Webb, reciting lines of things going a little wrong. In those moments, I'm reminded of Suzanne Langille's work with both San Agustin and, with her husband Loren Connors, in Haunted House, that poetic kind of evocative post-rock that seeks to capture the dark night of the soul. How this connects directly to the uneasy history of Hayman Island remains out of reach, but all likely isn't as it seems. When is it ever? If Stargaze Inferno are charged with unresolved secrets, then they're at least very beautiful ones.