- Electroacoustic dub infused with original recordings of Indian classical music.
- Noodreem, AKA Darren Sangita, is the former manager of Dragonfly Records, arguably the world's first Goa trance label, launched by music producer Youth of Killing Joke fame in his South London Butterfly Studios in 1992. Butterfly became a place for Sangita to hone his own production skills, working with the likes of The Orb, System7 and Marshall Jefferson. Butterfly Studios is also where he met Greg Hunter, AKA Dubsahara, a sound engineer on The Orb's first two albums. Hunter mastered Temple Of Sonic Peace and co-wrote "Shantiman (Basoa Dub)," where his guitar and synth programming, coupled with Sangita's ambient dub, are placed beautifully and intricately alongside the vocals of Haradhan Das Baul (who belongs to West Bengal's Baul tradition of mystical Sufi-Vaishnav minstrels).
Watching the Goa trance movement take shape since its inception, Sangita has fostered an inextricable connection to India that led him on a decades-long journey of recording and working with some of country's finest classical and folk musicians (some of which feature on this LP). Temple Of Sonic Peace is a union of ambient dub and ancient musical traditions, with Sangita skillfully blending electronica with the acoustic sounds of musicians he recorded on voyages across India between 2004 and 2018. It's an anthropological journey through an art form that has been kept alive over centuries by generations of musicians.
Some of these recordings were made in the ghats of Varanasi, beside the River Ganges as well as in villages across West Bengal, where Sangita would set up his mobile studio with mics, headphones, a MacBook Pro and an audio interface. Other tracks, like the bass-heavy "Vrindavan Dub," were produced in the Krishna temple town of Vrindavan and feature musician Debasish Haldar on the sarangi, a bowed instrument with 21 strings. Sangita told me recently that "recording not only captures the audible sounds of music, but also the subtle vibrations contained within the spiritual atmosphere of the holy places I visit on musical pilgrimage."
"Divine Mysterious Transcendence," featuring Dr Pandit Ranajit Sengupta, is a wonderful piece of psychedelic electronics, lit up with dense percussive programming and the distinctive sound of the stringed sarod. Cross-pollinating these worlds without losing integrity or honesty is what Sangita does best. His approach is subtle and respectful, especially when he blends his dubby beats with traditional sounds of the Indian subcontinent. This kind of authenticity is rare in this kind of global fusion chill-out music, which can verge on cultural appropriation at best.
Sangita's music also has a clear, direct sense of emotion. "Heart Temple" is a major highlight, where groovy basslines meld seamlessly with the captivating voice of Vidushi Shirin Sengupta, Ranajit’s wife. Shirin is a traditional Indian khyal singer from Kolkata, and she sings the beautiful lyric, "ja ja re apne mandirwa ja" ("go to the temple in your heart"). "Sensimillan Dub" is a heartfelt ode to cannabis with heavily phased guitar from Sadhu Seva, recorded at a different kind of pilgrimage site: Glastonbury, UK.
Temple Of Sonic Peace feels particularly special because it's trippy in more ways than one. Listening to it is like time-traveling across centuries, and finding out that the chill-out revolution—or something like it, anyways—actually happened at least half an aeon ago. It's an ancient form of sonic bliss that continues to be refined and explored in the hands of producers like Noodreem.
Tracklist01. Crystal Holographix feat. Pandit Sukhdev Mishra
02. Arcing Avalon Kashi Dub feat. Pandit Sukhdev Mishra
03. Krsna Dub feat. Pandit Sukhdev Mishra
04. Shantiman Basoa Dub feat. Haradhan Das Baul
05. Vrindavan Dub feat. Debashish Haldar
06. Divine Mysterious Transcendence feat. Dr. Pandit Ranajit Sengupta
07. Heart Temple feat. Vidushi Shirin Sengupta Nath
08. Sensimillian Dub feat. Sadhu Seva
09. Ouroboros feat. Holosonos