Hydra Coil Bio

Hydra Coil is the name of the music team comprised of the musicians Marcus Aurelius Klonek and Aaron Marshall. Marcus Aurelius has been producing ambient electronic music since 1999 under the name Shojin. His sound varies from hard hitting industrial works, to otherworldly ambient soundscapes. Aaron is an ambient musician whose style gracefully combines modern classical compositional techniques with organic textures, and expertly synthesized sounds. Both musicians have many years ago realized their music styles and –tastes mesh and are very similar. A musical co-creation therefore seemed very fruitful and promising. Since then both have mastered the art of complementing each other’s efforts, with both alternating in bringing in the creative impulse and translating it into the final structure of the song. Their philosophical and professional visions, also, go in the same direction, as both not only create outstandingly beautiful music that invites the listener into a world of yearning dreams and otherworldly realities, but they also incorporate their creative potential into –so far – short film projects that catapult the watcher to the fringes of intellectual understanding, into the zones of quantum knowledge, cosmic interrelations, and intuitive knowing.

Their interest in revealing microscopic and macroscopic interrelations and connections through their music expresses itself in the name they have chosen for their team. Hydra can be identified as both, the about one inch tall Hydra polyp, a water bound cellular creature, as well as the largest of our modern star constellations, the Hydra constellation. On this macroscopic level, the only bright star of the Hydra constellation is the Alphard star (“the solitary one”), which actually is a double star, again indicative of the music team’s co-creative mindset and musical process. Because in order to create harmonious and uplifting music, the lower-self aspects of each musician have to take a back seat to the higher mind, which alone is able to create masterworks inspired from higher dimensions and realities.

On the microscopic level, the Hydra polyp is a rather indestructible creature; when cut into pieces, it reproduces itself into several new animals. This feature earned the Hydra polyp and the Hydra constellation a place in the old myth of the Lernaean Hydra, as defeated by Heracles for one of his Twelve Labours. The myth describes Heracles’ fight with the nine headed snake-like monster, which would grow back two heads for each head he cut off. Only its ninth head was immortal, which Heracles had to bury underneath the swamps the beast lived in, after he had vanquished it with fire. Heracles ended up using the snake’s poison for his arrows, and was eventually accidentally hit by one, causing him to suffer greatly until his immortal father God Zeus took him into heaven.

It is surmised that the snake-like monster was in fact a symbol for the stagnant and invasive waters of a swamp that on top of that boast a multitude of writhing snakes. Heracles was faced with an insurmountable appearing challenge, when asked by king Eurystheus to “vanquish the monster”, to dry up the life endangering, treacherous swamps. But being the half-immortal, with supernatural powers endowed son of Zeus, he succeeded in his task. However, for mortal woman/man, the word Hydra has come to stand for trouble so complex, pervasive, and persistent that it cannot be overcome by one single effort. In fact, this kind of trouble reminds of the sum of all karmic burdens a soul has accumulated over the course of all her/his lifetimes, a burden so vast, it can only be overcome over a long period of time, or through great spiritual discipline and mind transcending.

The symbol of the Hydra star constellation is a twisting snake, reminding of the wave-like energy flow of dualistic realities. Since antiquity, the snake has been a symbol for latent powers and dualistic movement, and is therefore in the Vedas associated with the kundalini energies coiled up at the base energy center of the human body. When awakened through spiritual discipline, the kundalini energy rises and enlightens the individual. However, if triggered prematurely, this life energy can overpower the individual to the point where he could actually be killed by what is inside him. The fact is that the individual kundalini energy is connected to an infinite reservoir of universal life energy that vibrates and flows continuously through all life forms, from the macroscopic to the microscopic level and vice versa; and before the individual takes all the protective energy blocks and barriers down, she/he better be purified and consciously aware enough to withstand and maintain a higher energetic balance within one’s mind and body, similar to the necessity of a wire to be non resistant and pure enough to withstand the high voltage of a great electrical power surge.

This challenge of triggering and overcoming the enormous, at times deadly seeming life energy at the bottom of our beingness, is what drives the musical momentum of “Hydra Coil”, the ongoing battle and mastery over one’s own slumbering snake monster that once awakened and mastered, becomes the greatest asset and blessing known to us: it crowns us with the glory of our Divinity, with the enlightened state of our immortal Self! We don’t need to be a Heracles in order to vanquish the beast and dwell in heaven forever, because in each and everyone of us lies the potential to immortality, and “Hydra Coil” shows us musically how to get there, with music that is breathtakingly on the edge, and yet dreamily relaxing.