ambiance magazineJuly 1998The dreamtime can be a dangerous place. Witness the mungoongali, or giant goanna, a reptile of up to seven metres in length and, quite possibly at one time or another, deadly poisonous. Aboriginal legend tells how mungoongali once terrorised humans and animals alikeambushing and sometimes killing two or three people at once, eating only certain parts of the bodiesuntil its poison sac was stolen by Jumma, the black snake. A skeletal reconstruction of mungoongali stands poised for display in the Queensland Museum. In contrastor perhaps, as a complement to this fleshless, bloodless, lifeless exhibitthere is David Hudson's latest CD release, Gunyal, comprising seven didjeridu compositions, each of which centres around the tale of the giant goanna. Gunyal is a living, breathing, "dreamtime soundworld", richly evocative of the ancient spaces through which the ancestors of both Hudson and goanna roamed. Deep ambient, subterranean pools of sound underlie Hudson's rhythmic intonations of Australian nature, performed on a variety of selfmade didjeridus, click sticks, boomerang clapsticks and voice. A member of the Tjapukai tribe in Kuranda, northern Queensland, Hudson possesses a profound understanding of the didjeridu, and frank international recognition as a contemporary master of this ancient wind instrument. Gunyal was recorded, produced and cowritten by Hudson's longtime collaborator Steve Roach; with the result, for the listener, of a richly rewarding, deeply sonorous, lucid dreamtime experience.
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