« Leaving The Ashram » is an instrumental mini-epic in four movements, respectively named, « Meditative Walk, » « Running The Last Stretch, » « The Tabla Master's Enigma, » and « The Ordinary. » The music begins with a slow moving sparse ambience featuring percussion and gradually growing instrumentation reminiscent of Indian music, and evolves into a restless and angular electronic groove that evokes contemporary life, omnipresent technology, busy schedules, and countless concerns.

The first movement came about around the end of November 1999, while I was exploring the percussion sounds of my synth module. Already then the music featured an abrupt shift in tempo, which, if my memory serves me correctly, was actually inspired by a scene in the movie « Little Buddha » that I had watched around that time, and wherein a group of kids playing percussive instruments sing a folk tune that includes a similar twist, to a quite powerful effect.

The whole suite really bloomed into shape when the idea of combining that movement with a hitherto totally unrelated sequence, written around the end of October 2000 for another multi-chapter work called « Juggernaut, » crossed my mind. Even though the two pieces of music stood worlds apart in terms of mood and instrumentation, I could hear how they would fit together to illustrate a passage from a period of retreat and introspection into the activity and stresses of everyday life. And thus, having that story to tell, writing the remainder of the music suddenly became very straightforward.

Eventually, the whole piece was included in a suite in three chapters named « Entering The Stream, » which is the conventional designation of a specific early stage in the Buddhist curriculum.

The original version of the track was first published around the beginning of May 2004, and if I'm not mistaken it was my first-ever official release via the Internet, which also brought in my first sales. As such it reminds me of the period, roughly from Summer 2003 to Spring 2007, during which I was running my own online music store, whose existence came to an unforeseen and unfortunate ending following a decision from Microsoft to terminate a mission-critical technology.

At the time the recording took place, since I didn't have access to most of the exotic instruments the piece required, I settled on using a sampler that had very decent flute and sitar sounds, which I ended up playing on keyboards. I also used some of the aforementioned percussion sounds from my sound module. I played some of the bass, but I decided to leave the synth bass part along with the electronic drums from the demo in the last movement, to accentuate its cold and mechanical feeling. I remember struggling to record the fast vibraphone break though, on a smaller scaled and not particularly sturdy instrument that I had bought used from two older ladies who had been playing it occasionally in their meditation classes.

Writing about that recording process calls forth memories of my first house, in which I had built a well furnished home studio in the basement, complete with mobile acoustic panels, and even a wood stove for the winter, where the members of Poligraf would meet to rehearse and write. And obviously, writing about that period, and about ashrams, reminds me of my early years as a Buddhist, discovering the culture, sitting daily in meditation, and going through the various stages of the inner work required to reach the aims. I didn't know where it would lead, but I'm so very grateful of having gone through all of that.

This particular recording is the actual original mix from May 2004, which I have revisited in December 2021 in the hopes of enhancing it somewhat before officially re-releasing it here.

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