Amongst Jungles by jarguna and Nicola Serena

The union of two sometimes very contrasting minds made it possible to carry out this work.
One, a botanical researcher, or rather ethnobotanist, always traveling in search of plants and all the culture that revolves around him. The other, an urban explorer, while living in the countryside, rests his gaze on corners where "distracted" people do not stop and are unable to observe fascinating details, stories permeated in the structures.
Photographer, musician for over 30 years, Nicola Serena is a shy but great artist who knows how to create compositions of great suggestions, exploring over the years countless genres, from the new age of the 90s, to techno, chillout.
He plays bass and synths, in the early 2000s I was a student of him in a course of sound engineer and DAW (digital audio workstation).
With this album I launched a new challenge on myself, that part perhaps less rarefied Ambient but more structured by rhythms and refrains, a sound that is partly retro, partly avant-garde, yes, avant-garde ambient, progressive, since it never ends how it starts. Two worlds that try to coexist, sometimes one dominates the other, I am referring to the two jungles, Nature and civilization with its cities made of iron and concrete.
The man who constantly tries to control both one and the other, mere illusion, the synthetic sounds blend with some forest landscapes, which I myself have recorded, imagine seeing a skyscraper totally surrounded by vegetation, a few years would be enough because the earth carried by the wind enters and with it a seed, a little water and the Earth takes back its space, even the world of plants is a great competition, as I say during my courses in ethnobotany and preparation of incense "Birds don't sing," but I will have other opportunities to talk about this.
The search for sound and rhythm was complex and articulated, the expressions of the timbres of some sounds led us into dense and twisted jungles, lights, shadows build mechanical, artificial dimensions, sometimes simple and spontaneous.
The first track has the opening of my first album Introspective Course (Hysterical Life), dated 2006 only a few years ago but many albums have passed since then and I hope a more mature experience in many points of view.

Good exploration.

jarguna

You can also request the album through my website:
https://www.jarguna.com/product/amongst-jungles/



Nicola Serena


He begins with the study of the piano and then moves on to electronic music, thus exploring new sounds. He dedicates himself to the composition of soundtracks for television documentaries (Overland, Rai TV), audiobooks “Thin men” Cesare Monti Montalbetti, “They called her two hearts”, “God on Harley”, “The Way of Wirld” -ed. Sonzogno and commercials (AEM Milano). As an arranger and composer, Nicola also designs multimedia installations where sound and image coexist in a single project. He is also known under the pseudonym of Nick Straybizer. Other projects: Native Americans Dreams, African Lightness, Spirit of the Highlands, Native Americans Dreams 2, 17 Red Stones, In The Network.

I met Marco many years ago and, thanks to the passion for electronic music and synthesizers, we decided to create a project that would combine our musical and cultural experiences. An album was born with multiple fragments of sound, a synthesis of sharing of small experimental studies on images and virtual scripts. A combination that has allowed the creation of excellent work that encompasses our experiences in electronic and ambient music.


A journey into a not too distant dystopian future, through an uncontaminated nature that slowly envelops archaeological fragments of disappeared civilizations, recovering its fundamental primary role as a living laboratory. The sounds and rhythmic interweaving of sequences created by the synthesizers accompany us throughout the journey, often letting real forest sounds emerge like rays of sunshine, through the mists of an undergrowth in a humid dawn. A work composed by Jarguna and Nicola Serena through a close collaboration since we live in the same valley or better to say jungle.

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