I’ve got no idea how Second Circle found this track, but I’m so glad they did. Gus Till’s “Rainsong” was originally released in 2006, on a CD only compilation, titled “Tribal Matrix”, on the tiny Tokyo-based independent imprint Dakini Records. A label run by Giovanni Fazio, whose reggae and dub work, as Mayko, Ban Ban Ton Ton briefly covered recently.

Till is an Australian musician, who’s been making music since punk first hit Melbourne. Amongst many, many other things, Till worked on the score for the film “Dogs In Space”, which documented the city’s post-punk scene, and, moving into dance in the late `80s, collaborated with Ollie Olsen and Michael Hutchence on the chart-topping Max Q project. Assuming the alias Third Eye, he and Olsen then experimented with psychedelic electronica, and were around for the start of Goa Trance. Relocating to London, Till became the in-house engineer for Ian St Paul and Youth’s Dragonfly Records and Butterfly Studios. He still, prolifically, produces trance and techno today. 

“Rainsong” is a journey that opens with a thunderstorm and runs for an epic, near 13-minutes, before fading back into stormy weather. It could, I guess, be pigeonholed “ambient house”. However, it’s less KLF’s rave as revolution and more spiritual, more Jo Claussell. Building from ethereal vocals and pretty, spinning sequences, bass begins rumbling and a saxophone drones. Voices rising to joyful aboriginal chants over a muted, but forceful 4 /4 pulse. Till twisting tons of traditional sounding percussion into the tribal dance. Acoustic strumming attempting to temper, tame the wild shouts and yelps and the track settles into a groove. 

Kuniyuki Takahashi’s remix leans into the ambient. Leading the proceedings somewhere a little more Orb-like. Somewhere with a more mediative, monastic vibe. Removing the beats, bar the odd handclap, yet retaining a sense of momentum and drama. Distant echoes of the sequences, sax and vocals subjected to showers of delay and sonic shimmer. The guitar isolated to produce glimpses of Manuel Gottsching-esque picking within the bucolic bubbling and blinking. Cicadas and circuitry, all the while, twittering, singing, chirruping. 

Till’s bonus “451” mix is a brilliant, more straight forward dance floor rework. Tighter, harder, house-ier. Smooth and slick, dropping some acid and what could be wah-wah licks. Hitting deep, dark and hypnotic.

Gus Till’s “Rainsong” can be ordered directly from Second Circle.