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Jarguna — Hanami
(Projekt ARC307, 2024, DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2024-05-10

Hanami Cover art

Hanami is the Japanese traditional custom of viewing the transient beauty of flowers, and in particular flowering trees like cherry and plum. Throughout the month of April, as well as late March and early May, cherry trees bloom all over Japan, though the blossoms only last for a few weeks. Hanami, in modern Japan, typically refers to an outdoor viewing party during the day or even at night during those few weeks while the cherries are in bloom. It is from this that Jarguna takes the inspiration for his latest release, an album of four side-long tracks of captivating kaleidoscopic beauty, each shimmering with elegance in a general floating ambient style, unfolding slowly and gently much like the cherry blossoms, glistening with majesty in the morning light. As a sculpture of sounds it exists both as very precise shapes and colorations, as well as a muted and dreamy shades that follow the breezes and currents, much like viewing an outdoor scene through two lenses simultaneously, one eye through a crystal clear plate glass window, and the other eye projected through a wire mesh window screen, with your mind reassembling the two images after the fact. Some moments are clearer than others, some seem intentionally blurred and psychedelic, but they all work together seamlessly like a kaleidoscope, and the result is easy for a listener to appreciate. The track titles reveal another curiosity, for example the opener “Hanami (428Hz)” or other cuts such as “Icy Drops on Buds (436Hz)” or “Where the World Ends and Begins... (432Hz)” are each performed with a slightly different intonation, made possible by the modular synthesizers they were created with (and naturally any other instruments would need to be retuned accordingly), though in practice, as one listens to the four tracks, the difference is only noticeable as one piece ends and another begins, and that change is quickly forgotten as the next piece begins to develop. In fact one might have not even noticed had the change not been mentioned in the titles. All taken though, Hanami hosts a magical and mystical collection of glistening sound sculptures that certainly holds up over the long haul.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Jarguna (Marco Billi)

More info
http://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hanami

 

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