Product Description
2 The nature of light
3 Evening meadows
4 The grace and the three essences
5 Hidden levels
Genres: Meditative, Sleep, Ambient, Electroacoustic Ambient
RIYL: Alio Die, Nobuhiro Okahashi, Tim Hecker
Aglaia is the musical project of Italian electro-acoustic sound sculptor Gino Fioravanti, begun around the turn of the century. His fifth Projekt release (and 79th album in all) reveals 90 minutes of peaceful and hypnotic deep ambient meditations. Mixing processed acoustic instruments like the harp and zither with subtle electronics, Aglaia utilizes the essence of Zen and Tantrism to weave musical fragments into a textural, mysterious mandala.
Exposé, writing about Aglaia’s previous album: “[this type of music] typically comes off as ‘space music,’ in this case it’s far closer to forward-reaching world music… the only space here is the inner space one finds in deep meditation as the mind relaxes and the spirit wanders free.”
Gino reflects:
The philosophical reference is to “emptiness,” the container of all reality. Zen proposes a simple, empty, sudden, sometimes delicate vision, always aware of the illusory nature of reality. In these pieces no sound remains too long. As if the musical events were all diluted in a substance, in a solvent.
The essences are the sensitive forces, the sounds and notes that flow from emptiness and return to emptiness. Everything, however, is also a praise to kundalini, the Tantric goddess who animates nature. Nature harks back to Pan and Siva, deities of forests and remote natural places. I sought inspiration from those woods and places animated by lights and short sound events.
In the first track, “Archaic echoes,” after a brief minimal and acoustic opening, I introduce classic electronic sounds, echoes and spatial reverbs. In this way acoustic and ambient music are placed side by side and alternate throughout the duration of the piece.
“The nature of light” brings to life the lights and shadows of the woods; it is a dialogue between the known forces and those present in the shadows. “Evening meadows” is made of harps and sounds that suspend time. “The grace of the three essences” is meditative but above all dreamy, evocative. “Hidden levels” is perhaps the most linear and descriptive track but also filled with dews and reflections.
Reviews Editor –
From Exposé
Gino Fioravanti, a.k.a. Aglaia, has been extremely busy creating powerful and immersive electroacoustic sound sculptures since his beginnings around 1998, some with his former creative partner Gianluigi Toso (before 2012) and many collaborations as well, with the likes of Alio Die, and over time has released around 75 full length releases, most on private labels like Hic Sunt Leones (Alio Die’s label), others on Bandcamp; but around 2022 he began to release some (but not all) of his material on Projekt Archive, and to date we have covered four of those releases, Essences Referable to Nothingness being the fifth. While his works here could be classified as meditative electroacoustic ambient informed by world music elements, those world music elements mostly come from his choices of acoustic instrumentation (harp, zither, strings etc.) that accompany the blanket of textural electronics and synthesizers, heavily effected electric guitars perhaps, and a gondola full of studio effects. Sounds seem to appear out of nowhere, and fade into oblivion just as quickly while others take their place, all in the service of the dreamy feeling and mysteriousness that permeates it all.
There are only five tracks herein, but each one is the length of an LP side, and together eclipse the capacity of a compact disc by about ten minutes, each a beautiful homage to a shimmering wonderland of the imagination. This is not the type of floating ambient music that slows down the mind in preparation for slumber, but instead a bed of beautiful textures and forms that call to the spirit in service of wandering deep meditation, a peaceful and tranquil world but a stimulating one as well, where the listener may not even recognize the passage of time — and dare I say psychedelic. A piece like “Evening Meadows” drifts freely through a number of portals for around twenty minutes without any cadence to anchor it down, just elements of a sonic tapestry that seemingly float in free space. The sixteen minute closer “Hidden Levels” is almost like the soundtrack to a dream, with powerful acoustic sounds and seemingly infinite electronics offering signposts through a misty cloud of wondrous effects. Essences is a stunning cornucopia of sound, a beautiful place you won’t ever want to leave. -Peter Thelen