Product Description
2 Immanence is yellow
3 Permeability is green
4 Now refraction
5 Direction
6 Between two trees
7 The grass in the water
8 Among the tallest leaves
9 Poetically
10 The earth and the candelabra
11 Cloud in prayer
12 Green and yellow
13 The canal and the dust
14 Ornithology
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 sixth Projekt release (and 82nd album in all) reveals 93 minutes of peaceful and hypnotic deep ambient meditations. Mixing processed acoustic instruments like the harp and zither with subtle electronics, Aglaia investigates the imperfections of memory as he weaves musical fragments into a textural, mysterious mandala.
Immortality is divided into two parts. The first consists of three long tracks, and the second spans eleven shorter pieces. The first are immersions, or premonitions, that flow perceptibly. The others are fleeting impressions, intuitions, or traces of memories still unformed.
Gino explains:
Especially in the first three tracks, I continue to search for a sound without notes, increasingly made of rich vibrations. I try to construct pieces that contain lightness but have weight. I remain, feeling empty spaces, filled with dense emptiness.
I think of a flower made of a thousand petals or infinite nuances, and in playing I try to pursue the touch of sound, the overlapping of waves that form breathing patterns.
In this album, I tried to respect the search for “detail pursuing its own truth.” Technically, I managed to better expand the sound, making it more granular without, however, causing it to lose definition. The vibrations interact with backgrounds, which I have distanced, to bring greater depth.
When you play, or listen, you bring into play your ability to shape what you hear, your sensitive, imaginative, or regressive dimension. I read somewhere that “listening to music is an exercise in humanity.” I’d like to continue pursuing this wonderful definition.
The shorter pieces are more of a synthesis of my repertoire from past years. They are sounds that, though older, still contain premonitions. They can remain in the service of some horizon that perhaps has been lost in the folds of time. This idea is an attempt to reproduce the imperfection of the contents of memory. I would like to hear the existential self making its way through time, in the unfolding of reality, creating and destroying internal patterns.
A certain type of music manages to be heard without disturbing. It remains a foundation while remaining simple. A certain type of sound flows toward the future but remains decidedly primordial, a potential, a suggestion. A certain type of music flows without agitation, floating in a kind of immobility… of immortality. Sometimes a piece of music remains like a simple footprint, a witness to the passing of something or someone. There are blades of grass and great mountain ranges, there are oceans and puddles, together, in the uncreated constellation of our consciousness.
Reviews Editor –
From Exposé
[Combined review with 2026’s Altitudes]
Gino Fioravanti (Aglaia) has been busy the last five years or so releasing some of his finest efforts, though what one sees on the Projekt label only represents about one third of his output, the remainder coming out as private releases. The two releases at hand represent his final Projekt release of 2025, Immortality, and his first Projekt release of 2026, Altitudes, and as far as I can tell both releases are download-only, even though the tracks of Immortality are divided into disc one and disc two on the Bandcamp page — perhaps done so that listeners who burn their own CDRs can use it as a guide. Aglaia’s music is most definitely ambient, though not in the same way as synthesizer practitioners such as Steve Roach and Robert Rich present, instead opting for a rich carpet of acoustic instruments (bells, santoor, strings, zither, and more, plus electronics as well) while eschewing any sort of meter or cadence, the pieces just float freely and beautifully on the solar winds, never quite settling down.
Immortality begins with three very long pieces: “Transcendance Is Blue,” “Immanence Is Yellow,” and “Permeability Is Green,” each around twenty minutes in length, give or take a minute or two, subtle and powerful with gentle waves and sparkles echoing throughout the fabric of each piece, each a perfect dreamlike escape tailor made for meditation, wholly immersive. Perhaps Alio Die might be a good reference point for these works, they just float the listener along like a leaf on a river, sometimes smooth, sometimes restless, but always with a purpose, bristling with imagination, and imminently enjoyable. The second half, or disc two, as it’s labeled, is a collection of eleven shorter vignettes, the longest around four minutes and some quite a bit shorter, that are said to be a synthesis of his repertoire from earlier years, as he says in the notes: sounds that are older but still contain premonitions; fragments of memories perhaps, they tend to be to the point, still quite excellent but certainly not as immersive as the first set, perhaps fine-tuned for those with shorter concentration spans.
With Altitudes, six long tracks are presented, 85 minutes in total, each with enough playing time to be considered immersive. I would add powerful and gentle to that, sparkling bits of tonal color that exist within a strong synth undercurrent, again without any discernible cadence, drifting freely like a soft wind that carries the imagination to new horizons. The fourteen minute opener “Unicorn” exemplifies all of these qualities as well as setting the stage for the rest that follow. Some of the pieces utilize synthesizer to a higher degree, for example the 21-minute “Novilunio” drifts along gently, with occasional outbursts of rich, slow moving tonal beauty, amid a shimmering backdrop that defines immersive. “Anemoi” is a middle meeting, synth based and powerful, yet ornately touched with acoustic sounds, the extreme low end synth sounds demand headphones! Swirling out of the darkness, “Lines in the Sky” unleashes ribbons of scintillating color, bending and swerving with a magical beauty, full of lush radiant soundscapes that reach out in all directions. Set closer “Advent” reaches inward with a shimmering beauty, amorphous and mysterious, full of magical sounds, both acoustic, electronic and unknown. Both Immortality and Altitudes are as essential as they are different from one another. -Peter Thelen
Reviews Editor –
From Audion #86 February 2026
Presented as a 2-disc release, albeit download only, this turns out to be the most surprisingly different and engaging of Aglaia releases for some time. “Disc 1” comprises three lengthy tracks of somewhat dark and mysterious ambient music, largely based around melodic phrasing and what I tend to call fractal electronics – that is sounds that have been fragmented, layered and fuzzed/blurred over each other in diminishing patterns, blending the familiar and unfamiliar. There’s also quite a bit of looping involved, and a restraint that avoids melodies as much as it uses them. As such, it feels like film music underscores. “Disc 2” contrasts greatly, with its eleven tracks in under 33 minutes feeling like a series of ambient sketches that are often not so far from Brian Eno or Steve Roach moods. A yin and yang sort of release then, or – if you wish – play it at random for a mixture of moods! -Alan Freeman