Product Description
Styles: Electronic, ambient, relaxation
“I wish that with this humble work you find your inner temple,” invites Italy’s jarguna upon the release of My Temple 2, an hour-long reflection of meditative electronic ambience. “As the title suggests, these imaginary temples are the abode of thoughts, hidden desires, perhaps not even of this world, perhaps of a past life, of another time? It is certain that it is a place where I take refuge from this crazy world.”
jarguna is sonic-alchemist Marco Billi. He creates organic-ambient-electronic music in mandala-like hymns of richly enveloping ritual music. Since his first recordings in 1998, jarguna’s work has been an exploration of sounds, feelings, contrasts, passion, acoustics and electronics.
On his 44th album, jarguna continues a musical project dear to his heart, his My Temple series.
He explains in more detail:
This release was created in a period where I tried to let myself go towards a sound meditation. Rather than structuring songs I let go of all preconceptions and composed what came from within. There is a deep intimacy beyond the notes, beyond a musical phrase, that’s a place I seek.
I was researching sounds that hypnotize, that stimulate, that cause one to stop and think, in the hope of being able to produce as many endorphins as possible. Endorphins are a neurotransmitter hormone that, unlike adrenaline, helps the mind and body fall into a state of relaxation and consequently regenerate energies. Meditation, sex, good physical activity, even some foods and obviously music stimulate the production of this “drug” that the body naturally produces.
The depiction of a pilgrim on the cover conveys the idea of this journey, reaching a destination, even if along the way one finds numerous obstacles, pleasant encounters, discoveries and experiences; so much so that one forgets about the goal. Sometimes a pilgrim does not even realize the most important experience was made during the journey and not reached at the finish line.
A metaphor linked to life, the goal is inevitable, but it is the path that makes the difference, and the difference is knowing how to slow down and observe with attentive and sensitive eyes.
In this album there are more electronic textures, tapestries that color the path, dilating time. The loops of bells seem to want to stop or go back; the loops are a wonderful expression of time that seems to distort or change the course of some events.
In Mayan culture it is said that time does not exist but there is only space. From this heavy statement it can be rationalized that thinking it at all is nonsense; yet quantum mechanics is also re-evaluating some preconceptions that are perhaps too fossilized. Einstein himself (with the special theory of relativity) said that time and space are two sides of the same coin. We could name the string theory or precisely the loop theory of Rovelli and Smolin, but here they are to describe a musical album not to venture quantum theories. The fact is that time is linked to gravity, gravity and movement are linked to space.
As I said, the electronic plot this time is the host, which at times seems to have no escape route. It is a single track where slightly different landscapes follow one another, as if for the pilgrim to get to the temple, in the drawing a Ziggurat, one encounters different environments, which in reality are only thought forms perceived from the beginning when the sounds of nature are altered. The central part of the track is the heart of this album where everything has developed an almost deafening minimalism, for a few minutes practically made of a single sinusoidal frequency, like trying to remain in deep meditation inside an anechoic chamber, where every sound it is completely absorbed and destroyed by the particular walls and you only perceive the movement of your body.
An enigmatic album, an interior ambient, I venture to say that I could define it as a spiritual texture, or simply a soft drone. I wish that with this humble work you find your inner temple.
Cover illustration: Giuseppe Pucarelli
Coloration: Naomi Mallegni
Graphic effects: Marco Billi aka jarguna
Reviews Editor –
From Exposé
Joint review of My Temple 2 and Amongst Jungles
Any regular reader of Exposé over the last four-or-so years should be at least familiar with the name Jarguna, the working name of Italian sound sculptor Marco Billi, during which time we have reviewed a dozen of his releases, both solo and in collaboration with other like-minded travelers. This double review considers his most recent release, My Temple 2, a follow-on from his 2020 release My Temple, as well as the collaboration with Nicola Serena titled Amongst Jungles. Serena has been releasing music since the 80s, both as a member of the dance/techno groups R.E.M. (not to be confused with the well-known American band) and Out of Sync, and later as a composer and arranger of TV documentary soundtracks under the name Nick Straybizer Serena (with seven releases to date).
Much like the original My Temple from 2020, My Temple 2 is a single long form piece around an hour in length, a cascade of slow moving floating ambient chords occasionally mixed with mysterious field recordings and duly informed by metallic sounding textures that fold gently into the fabric of the piece. The evolution is slow to a point that the listener might not even recognize the changes as they occur, fading over one another and into the flow as the piece slowly proceeds down its path, a slow swirl that might well remind of Tibetan bells or glass bowls as they echo in the distance through a blanket of thick fog in extreme slow motion. There are few signposts to let the listener know where they are, only an endlessly stretching ribbon that seems to stretch out in all directions at once, folding back inward as we follow the continuum. If the dreaming starts before you get to sleep, worry not, that’s the expectation with ambient soundscapes like My Temple 2, imersive alteration of consciousness. A short four-and-a-half minute excerpt of the main piece is included as a bonus track, though don’t expect that to bring you the full effect that an hour in the cosmic spiral does, but at least you’ll get an idea.
Amongst Jungles is a completely different experience, even though it’s comprised of many of the same types of sounds — organic ever-expanding synth drones, found sounds (including voices), cosmic sounds of shimmering starlight, gentle mystical sequences, and more. If anything, it’s more of an electronic album in the classic sense of the word, with clusters of bold colors dancing across the listener’s field of vision and bristling arrangements of sequential evocations, swirling around inside the overall immersive experience. The album is comprised of eight pieces of varying length (from under six minutes to over eleven), and although the pieces tend to shift gears and alternate frequently, they could generally be described as a fifty-fifty mix of sequenced electronics and gentle floating ambient, with field recordings of water, wind, insects, and animals adding to both as required. With an appropriate title, “The Forest Does Not Sleep” seems to feature it all, cicadas, crickets, monkeys, some random hand drum percussives, gently bubbling synths amid pastel floating abstractions, creeking sounds of a walkway through the jungle, the cooing in the background, all mixed together with a blanket of beautiful electronics. True, as previously noted, this is a completely different experience from the mostly textural nature of My Temple 2, though both offer a powerful experience for deep listeners. -Peter Thelen