Dishee by Hugo Race

Dishee… what the fuq is a dishee you might ask?
It’s a made-up word derived from ancient Sanskrit that can exorcise demons.

The Melbourne winter of 2020 was a reality shift and my reality unfortunately shifted with it. For decades my life had been a continuum of reckless roadtrips, missed trains, packed intercontinental 747’s, dispassionate, haunted hotel rooms and maverick promoters. For years, I never stayed anywhere for more than a few months. I was searching for something to distract myself.
And then I became truly distracted…

March 2020 challenged me to implode inwards instead of exploring outwards. I studied ancient spiritual techniques and locked myself away to brood, meditate and smoke – anything to ease the crushing ache of lockdown and the 20-cent coin I now danced upon. I missed my old life. Everybody did.

I was skeptical that meditation, chanting and searching within could produce a record. But then someone close to me went missing and my heart went missing with him. We’d been taken over by a demon. This record, Dishee, is the exorcism of that demon from both of us.

I recorded at night when quiet reigned and I was ready to channel meditational music that I knew had to be not only transcendent but slightly fuqed as well. I thought about what I was doing as a mushroom radar dish, it’s red fairytale cap pointing down at the earth, its inverted ribbed cup pointing up to receive messages from the wheeling stars and planets in space. But the signals were bleak.

I bought a new guitar from Demonic Dishee town. The guitar was made in Japan the same year I was born and like many haunted vintage guitars contained unheard-of music waiting for the right fingers to set it free. I practiced snap freezing and distorting guitar sounds then started using the same treatments on my voice, paralyzing words mid-sentence. I inserted swathes of liquid ink into every irreverent guitar slide and vocal harmony, searching for a new sound rich with sonic grit and wild unpredictability.

And then something incredible happened. During my nightly night terrors, my Dishee murdered that child-snatching demon at a distance of forty paces with a millennium-old mantra and the practice of detachment. This record is the soundtrack of an exorcism.

Hugo Race, international producer, composer, performer and author, delivers intense sonic soundscapes that merge folk, experimentalism, electronica and rock. In the arc of three decades Hugo has left a mercurial trail of musical works spanning his many own releases and multiple international collaborations across studio albums, film and theatre productions, touring and festivals. www.hugorace.com