JAGATH 'Devalaya'



CSR290CD (4 December 2020)
CD in 6-panel glossy digipak
Barcode: 0641871745630




  Jagath is a ritual/industrial ambient act from Perm, Russia.

We create our music at abandoned industrial locations - the bottom of a moist underground sewer shaft and inside huge hollow oil tanks - without using digital synthesis. We use simple, mostly hand-crafted instruments, found objects and our voices. We do this to share our vision of decaying post-industrial age, to unleash the spirit of deep beyond-world and unveil life in the abyss.

It is cold out here, in Russia, everything stays frozen for decades. Life is almost stopped, and this cannot be changed. So we have to do something so as not to freeze to death.

"A firefly may inspire a man. Man takes a flint, flint carves sparks, sparks set fire to wood, a flame lights up. Flaring up more and more, a fire turns into a firestorm. Firestorm lives its own life".

"Devalaya" ("Temple") was recorded in vast oil tanks from 2015 to 2018.

6-panel glossy digipak with photography by Gregory Skvortsov and Dmitriy Frolov.

For fans of: Shibalba, Phurpa, Arktau Eos.

Track listing:

1. Agadha (Abyss) (11:30)
2. Utthana (Rise) (7:39)
3. Catu (Conversation) (10:55)
4. Devalaya (Temple) (14:28)
5. Nila (Darkness) (9:39)



Reviews:

"The ritualistic chants that permeate the ambient drones and metal clanks remind me somewhat of tantric throat singing legends Phurpa, whilst one can’t help but feel that as well as the obvious musical influences of drone, industrial and found sound they are drawing heavy influence from the post-industrial landscape of their homeland as well as the films and literature of what many are calling the urban wyrd. However you look at it, it’s an excellent, creepy, sinister slab of ambient, industrial drone that will live in my CD player for many weeks to come." (5/5, Musique Machine)

"Everything is laced in doom and despondency... When you find out that these five songs were recorded in disused industrial structures in the middle of a bitterly cold Russia, using only hand-crafted instruments and the group’s voices, it all starts to make sense. The music moves from being something abstract and negative to almost religious. These are songs of ritual and celebration... ‘Devalaya’ is an album that is all about tone... Swells of decaying sound echoes around us... ‘Devalaya’ is a remarkable piece of music that is filled with haunting sounds and guttural tones. It’s an album that reminds us that even in the bleakest environment’s music can, and should, be created" (Vital Weekly)

"A key aspect to Devalaya’s prevalent atmosphere is the slow and controlled pacing, where the five meditative tracks unfold over an extended length... Passages of ritual throat chanting are seamlessly blended with reverb-derived drones and further interspersed with slow percussive segments, distant wind instruments, sporadic use of ritual chimes & mouth harp, and the ever-present interjecting shards of metallic textures... Also of note, a number of repeated sonic elements across the album strongly remind of Alan Lamb’s classic ‘wire music’ experimentation... an extremely engaging album of emotive atmospherics which blends archaic pre-modern ritual sounds with a current aesthetic of post-industrial decay." (Noise Receptor)

"At times the music also captures the atmosphere of a horror movie soundtrack.. Jagath plays a musical style that takes ambient, industrial and ritual and mixes them together to create a sound of his own as well as keeping most of the music instrumental while the production sounds very dark. In my opinion Jagath is a very great sounding mixture of dark ambient, ritual and industrial and if you are a fan of those musical genres, you should check out this project." (8/10, Dark Underground Music Zine)

"Die Vision des zerfallenden postindustriellen Zeitalters... Die Klangwelten sind in ihrer Beschaffenheit mit einem gewissen Grad an mystischen und rituellen Eingebungen behaftet, dessen Kulisse jedoch erstaunlich gute Einspeisung findet... Man lauscht gespannt auf das, was da am Ende des dunklen Ganges lockt. Fackeln beleuchten die Umgebung mit einem fahlen Licht, ein modriger Luftzug kommt zwischenzeitlich auf und lässt Hoffnung auf ein Entkommen... "Devalaya" nimmt von Anfang bis Ende gefangen und birgt zudem eine völlig eigene Aura. Jagath zelebrieren eine wirklich starke Angelegenheit, die für Freunde des rituellen Ambient fraglos eine Pflichtveranstaltung beinhaltet. Wer mit dem Label Aural Hypnox vertraut ist und dessen Ausrichtung für essenziell befindet, der muss in diesem Fall zuschlagen. Meine Empfehlung!" (9/10, Raben Report)

"Jagath, sigla di Perm che debutta con il pregevole "Devalaya". Registrano in siti abbandonati che restano testimonianza della decadenza dell'era postindustriale, in questo caso in enormi serbatoi petroliferi in disuso, e si presentano con l'ingenuità dei puri affermando che "fa freddo in Russia"... La glacialità è sicuramente una delle componenti più eclatanti del lavoro, allinsegna di una rigorosa dark ambient dalle eventi connotazioni rituali e costituito da lunghi brani che, pur non congiunti, si compattano in un unico flusso... con rumori di oggetti di cui non si dubita mossi da spiriti, in una sorta di 'concreta' casualità" (7/8, Blow Up"

"Performance como laboratorio sonoro y visual de gran complejidad simbólica. La experimentación musical que desarrolla el grupo ruso Jagath como fundamento de su álbum “Devalaya” es una de las muestras artísticas más impactantes y multidisciplinarias que haya disfrutado en los últimos años. La luz en movimiento, los sonidos metálicos propios del estilo industrial, la tenebrosa esencia musical del dark-ambient, el ocultismo sagrado velado por lo ritual, todo se entrecruza artísticamente en los cinco temas que vertebran el álbum “Devalaya”." (Lux Atenea)

"clangori che si fanno spazio nel buio più completo, colpi metallici minacciosi, oscuri vortici ambientali e sporadiche incursioni vocali atte a rinforzare quella sensazione d'inquietudine che emerge da trame adeguatamente efficaci, decisamente più inclini all'industrial ambient, piuttosto che alla ritualità propriamente detta. Oltre all'efficacia didascalica, l'album si fa apprezzare per una resa audio di alto livello, essenziale per cogliere ogni sfumatura delle sessioni che, tra il 2015 ed il 2018, hanno dato vita ai brani in esame... un lavoro che di certo incontrerà il gradimento degli estimatori delle ambientazioni oscure a carattere industriale." (Darkroom)