Phlogiston Spark, with Iacopo Castellani

In the USB stick version you can find incense, printed cover and various surprise gifts inside!

I am Iacopo Castellani, a holistic vibrational sound operator and creator of the Infinito Sonoro project.

Guitarist and sound experimenter, I decided to deepen my knowledge of sound as a fundamental part of being after starting to practice Kundalini yoga.

I perform vibrational sound treatments in groups and singles with gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, tuning forks, and other acoustic and electric instruments, alongside voice-based practices, mindful breathing, and guided visualizations.

I met Marco (Jarguna) during a sound bath of mine that he wanted to witness. Even then, I had been experimenting for about a year with the potential and uses of electric and electronic sounds combined with the sounds of traditional instruments such as gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, or tuning forks, which I use as a holistic operator.

Almost immediately the idea of a collaboration was born and although I don’t remember the exact date, I don’t think even two months passed for our first recording session in Marco’s (Jarguna) studio.

That space has something magical and without any problem we managed to enter a creative flow where the ideas we had slowly dissolved, making way for the simple and fundamental doing.

What came out of it was a combination of my gongs and all of Marco’s (Jarguna) electronic instruments (which I consider magical). I find there is a very great balance in which one of the two instruments never overwhelms the other or acts as a supporting act. They work together creating something unique.

I also believe that gong purists turn up their noses at this, but I firmly believe that energy moves and comes through every tool we learn to use, and that continuous exploration and research is essential.

I have long believed that the difficult thing in creative construction is not adding but removing and that is exactly what happened during all our recording sessions.

Personally, this is how we got to the final draft of Phlogiston spark.

And I think it’s a successful operation.

The title takes inspiration from the Phlogiston, a substance hypothesized around the 17th century, before the discovery of oxygen and believed to be in any combustible material, helping to fuel the flame.

A way of saying that even in soul-searching, mistakes can be made, sometimes hypothesizing what doesn’t exist. But it is always a continuous becoming, without ever stopping. Until you find light in the dark but also darkness in the light.

Iacopo Castellani (Infinito Sonoro)

One winter day in 2025, I decided to attend a sound bath held in my town (Sesto Fiorentino), especially attracted by wanting to know who organizes these events. Iacopo Castellani has become a good friend from the very beginning, we share many ideas, in addition to playing gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, tuning forks and various instruments including Koshi, Ocean-drum, I discover that one of his passions is the guitar and experimenting through instruments he builds. So attracted not to the usual holistic operator in the most “standard” form I decided to host him in my humble studio.

We begin recording with the desire to develop something that went beyond the simple sound of a sound bath. We have moved beyond any concept of musical therapy, session, meditation…. We have let ourselves go in a truly unexpected flow of sound.

We know well that the sound of a gong, especially played with flumes, silicone clappers, used by rubbing against metal, generates a rather fixed, grotesque, but extremely hypnotizing, profound sound. This drone was the muse to evoke a cathartic sense in me, deciding to follow the natural drone and not accompany it with melodies or choruses.

So this album is also not a “pimp” product, meaning it has no commercial pretensions of holistic sectors or wellness centers.

Gongs can’t generate notes beyond the basic one they have with them. You can create very particular, dissonant, or well-tuned harmonics, but they always have a single note. From here, we played on a flow of vibrations and moods.

After recording Iacopo’s part, I extrapolated some segments and reused them inside samplers, or rather, sample readers, changing octaves, intonations to create a sound mass like a thick fog inside a dense forest, up to moments where everything vanishes, including matter.

I’ve tried to use as few synthesizers as possible but enhance the sounds of metals with effects games like classic phasers, chorus, delay, but also new digital effects that work on modulating the sound spectrum, and of course a reverberation cascade.

The first track is a classic Puja opening but with low drones, already setting you up for a deep dive.

On track 2 (On the Treshold) I used simple test studio oscillators to enhance and emphasize the resonances of the recorded gong, transforming a laboratory instrument into a musical instrument. Although in this case I didn’t invent anything since laboratory equipment has been used since the 1950s to create the first electronic sounds, the classic UFO sound. You will notice that the Gong was played with a rubbing technique, therefore a constant sound and without percussion.

In Phogiston Spark, track 3, however, percussion is a constant of the track, like a marking of time, a non-metronometric “emotional” time.

The last two tracks are one speculation of the other, just look at the title, since in the tortuous path of the human being a state cannot be appreciated unless the opposite is known.

jarguna

In the selection purchase USB key:

In this Box I propose the union of my activities, music and aromatic materials, as well as my real work. This sensory immersion wants to open a world between sound and smell to enter a deep state thanks also to the beauty of nature that offers us.
In the box, in addition to the 4 GB USB stick and the printed cover, you can find a pack of incense sticks (15 pcs) made by me, a resin to burn on the charcoal, an aromatic plant sample (surprise) and a small vaporizer containing essences to spread into the environment.