Rubycon

A 30 minute audial intergalactic short story

You’re on a one man space odyssey, a marooning expedition. Drifting through the inky incandescence of the black inertia, the ship’s fuel almost depletes into nothingness; over this last crestfallen decade, your gawk into the scintillating mass of stars ceases to wane. Like a siren, the secluding darkness beckons you, so much so you swear you can hear your name being uttered at the back of your mind, but is this the call to adventure, or a sign of your deteriorating mental state? You learn that unaccounted for time erodes perception of time itself, you feel every second pick at your flesh like the seagulls back home would pick at beach food, with the sensation of life absconding your body becoming ever more noticeable. You are hit with the epiphany that the deeper into the eternal gloam, the more your humanity dissolves in it’s dark stomach; Family and friends become an alien construct, sentiment evolves into indifference towards the transient infinity. The mind has slowly been terraformed under the isolation into a vessel that holds nothing but emptiness and sorrow…

That is until you encounter the glow of an alien sun, a lilac lustre lingering over your face. The subtle burn, the tendrils of light, it all nestles into that soul of yours, that hollow heart. And in the distance, a speck begins to form, magnifying in the days your ship hurtles towards it. Suddenly, the burden of decrepitude starts to fade, it’s misfortunes replaced by the embers of an intense hope. With this new found Ardor, you eagerly anticipate the discovery of this planet. As you sleep, you treasure the warmth of this lavender light. A rush of memories whisk you to your childhood, stirring porridge thoughts that serve to obscure the internal struggle within. A wistful feeling weeps through you, and with wonder you sink into the gorge of dreams more effortlessly than you’ve done in years.

After what feels like an eternity, you land on this enigmatic planet, and upon the opening of the ship’s doors, your ears are greeted with the Euphony of alien songbirds sprinkling down from the Cerulean skies. You rush out of the ship in your spacesuit, and your foot intimately caresses the periwinkle grass. Masses of Mushroom trees beguile you, seduce you. What looks like cardinal flowers back home make up flourishing fields in the purple distance, and what look like bunnies are bronzed under the roseate light. Your spellbound, awestruck. The sheer resplendence… it’s better than anything that your home planet had to offer. A brief air scan concludes that its contents include… oxygen?! And from this point, an exciting realisation hits like the alien sun above; there may be civilised life on this planet.

On a whim, you decided to live on this planet. With renewed determination, you remove your space helmet and fill your lungs with cold, foreign air. you begin to gather your resources as the violet rays begin to dissipate, and a familiar object starts to fill your vision; a blue moon. A turquoise twilight begins to drown your vision as you gather the resources required to build shelter, as panic begins to set in; are the planet’s nocturnal life forms beginning to emerge? The night drones on, and the singing birds seem to evolve into ominous screeches. As the gelid vespers of eventide envelop you, a disconsolate anxiety rises in the senses. You recall the sci fi movies you watched years ago, the canvas of space painted with frightening, chimerical creatures. Cruel lifeforms. Evil aliens. Your heart rate quickens, the stench of your own sweat invades the air. In your desperate search… you encounter an alien aircraft, only this aircraft looks like it’s built for war. You realise the screeches you heard earlier were the screeches of distant ships. Isles of green light shoot down from the ships, scouring the enigmatic landscape around you like tentacles. They glide around the mushroom trees, searing human eyes at a mere glance.

Suddenly, a heart wrenching thought rises from the darkest corners of your mind; these aliens are searching for *you*. The urge to run beckons you, and you sprint through the Baneberry bushes and what look like wisteria willows, skittering away from the mushroom biome you landed in. The act of running becomes meditative as you attempt to evade the myrtle lights. The further you abscond, the more apparent it becomes that you’re running through a Forest of bones. The skeletal structures of life forms hang from the trees, and the bloodstains on the grass become more and more apparent the deeper into the forest you get. As the search continues, the baneful growl of horns shred the last of your calm. Are the ships… communicating with each other? The lights become more and more difficult to avoid, until your running takes you to an alien beach of pink sands and dewdrop palm trees.

You listen to the sound of the crashing waves, a nostalgic sound that whisks you back into childhood reverie once again. And in this horrifying moment where you realise there is nowhere left to run, you realise what brought you here; a lack of appreciation for your own life. You travelled into space to run from the constraints of Earth, the mundane reality of human routine… and yet surrounding this reality were the sun kissed days, the days that were worthy of sentimental photographs that you could bury yourself in. You abandoned happiness to search for something grander, but in reality you left the grandness behind. But as you realise you’re about to die, you feel calm; standing on this beach, you are grateful for the life that was bestowed upon you…

I always found it difficult to conceptualise a review for an ambient record, especially something as grandiose as a Berlin School space ambient album. In fact, I’d been sitting on Rubycon for a while, after being perplex and equally enamoured by it after my first listen. This was Tangerine Dream, a group whose work I was woefully unfamiliar with, yet a group whose influence has echoed for years. Released in the 1970s, Rubycon stands as one of Tangerine Dream’s most influential works, going on to inspire artists like Brian Eno, as well as David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy which saw the inception of groundbreaking records such as Low and “Heroes”. In fact, Tangerine Dream seems to be an influence lurking behind many great works. Even more so, Tangerine Dream was a pioneer of the German electronic scene which was particularly popular in the UK, and would be defined by bands such as Kraftwerk in the seventies and early eighties, and then Enigma through the nineties and early 2000s. With such a gargantuan impact, I thought, “how am I suppose to write a review for this thing?”

But here’s the thing about ambience; it’s a form of musical storytelling. Generally speaking music tells a story, but the audial narrative is essential to an ambient record, as it’s a genre that lives and dies by the atmosphere it creates… and then it hit me. I’ll write a story pertaining to the feelings this record elicits. And so I did. Now, listening to ambient music is a beautiful rabbit hole, as the best pieces of ambient music plant seeds in your head, stirring a reverie that allows you to imagine the world the music takes place in. It’s like reading a book in a way - you are given a set of components which guide the imagination. The stronger and more vivid the image in your mind is, the better the book, and this same concept applies to ambience.

Simply put, the fact that this record planted such a descriptive narrative in my head speaks volume to Tangerine Dream’s immense talent. Rubycon is a beautifully evocative record, one that may be blighted with some bloated synth passages here and there, but one that is effortlessly timeless and never ceases to be engaging, even after subsequent listens. With every listen, a new piece of this fabricated narrative emerges, making each dive into this record a rewarding one. This is what ambient music should be.