ambiance magazine

The dreamtime can be a dangerous place. Witness the mungoon–gali, 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 mungoon–gali once terrorised humans and animals alike—ambushing and sometimes killing two or three people at once, eating only certain parts of the bodies—until its poison sac was stolen by Jumma, the black snake.

A skeletal reconstruction of mungoon–gali stands poised for display in the Queensland Museum. In contrast—or perhaps, as a complement to this fleshless, bloodless, lifeless exhibit—there 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 self–made 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 co–written by Hudson's longtime collaborator Steve Roach; with the result, for the listener, of a richly rewarding, deeply sonorous, lucid dreamtime experience.

• Christopher Coughran