ARTIST...: ldgu
TITLE....: Religious Music For Non-Believers
YEAR.....: 2021
LABEL....: Sagome / Tresno Records
CAT.NO...: SGM003 / TRE007
GENRE....: Classical
TIME.....: 36:23
SIZE.....: 83.38 MB
QUALITY..: 320kbps/44.1kHz/Joint Stereo
ENCODER..: LAME
SOURCE...: WEB
RLS.DATE.: 2026/08/09
WEBSITE..: https://tidal.com/browse/album/204241451
TRACKLIST
01) (01:56) S
02) (07:01) U
03) (08:23) K
04) (02:12) S
05) (07:51) M
06) (09:00) A
Conceived between long periods spent abroad in Indonesia (2013-2015) and Morocco
(2018) for ethnomusicology purposes, Religious Music For Non-Believers is at the same
time a eulogy for Pauline Oliveros' demise, a homage to the music of Tim Hecker and
Earth, and finally a descent into timeless horizons, where Ldgu seeks epiphanies in
the realm of sound-related truths.
LdguÆs music was recorded live at Chiesa Santissima Annunziata, Porto SantÆElpidio
(Marche, Italy) over two very hot and humid summer evenings in August 2017. All the
tracks of the album are raw excerpts from Ldgu's extended improvisations on the
churchÆs massive pipe organ.
~
"When I got the scholarship that allowed me to move to Central Java, I was coming
from a period of my life in which I had tried to get rid of my ego in every possible
way. Through music, through drugs, through sex, through poetry. I was dismantling it,
atomizing it, to recollect the pieces over and over while looking at them through the
microscopic lenses of experience.
I was trying to find a deeper meaning in everyday life, and the further I was
sailing, the more I flaked off. My "self" was thus losing tiny particles, like cosmic
debris, along the journey. After almost three years spent in Indonesia, I got back to
Italy with a spiritual strength I was given by the teachings of the Javanese and of
the Dayak: my ego, which had been scattered because of the blows dealt by that
difficult challenge I imposed on myself, found both renewed strength and unity. These
came from infinite and disinterested love, symbols and rituals, nature, knowledge,
and music.
At this point, one thing was clear to me: if I had comprehended how and where such
learnings were rooted and if I finally felt like a tough oak instead of a weak shrub,
I had also understood the rootlessness of being a western young man in the 2000s. No
matter how much I had studied Greek, Latin, philosophy, the history of Italian art,
literature, and poetry: I was just a product of neoliberalism, an embodied ghost
constantly seeking stronger emotions and singularities, trapped in what was nothing
else but a deadly loop.
Thus, as soon as I got back, it felt natural to me to look for a sacred instrument,
like gamelan, for the Javanese and the Balinese. The choice fell on the pipe organ,
which saw its diffusion in Central Italy (Lazio, Toscana, Umbria, Romagna, Marche)
because of the Papal States. The first documents talking of pipe organs in Central
Italy go back to the IX century. The Papal States ceased to exist when Italy finally
got reunited for the first time in 1861, but this doesn't mean that those
instruments, mostly hosted in churches, disappeared." - Ldgu
Released December 10, 2021
Music, recording, mixing: Ldgu
Mastering: Amir Shoat
Art: Chalice of Saint John the Evangelist , by Hans Memling, c. 1470/1475
Tape design: Oli Scotton
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