Music from Greece

Anastassis Philippakopoulou - voiceAntoine Beuger - breath recorded at home in 2022 mastered by Taku Unamipainting by Maria Philippakopouloudesign by Yuko Zamaproduced by Jon Abbey

*100 copies limited edition* Eventless Plot joins forces with a duo of clarinets for the aptly titled Distance Between Us, an extended composition that gives sensual expression to the nature of distance and its implied correlate, closeness – reflecting and blurring the two across multiple levels both apparent on the music's surface and hidden beneath it. As with previous releases, the ensemble forgoes straightforward narrative forms in favor of a process they call 'semi-composition,' which invol…

*100 copies limited edition* Eventless Plot joins forces with a duo of clarinets for the aptly titled Distance Between Us, an extended composition that gives sensual expression to the nature of distance and its implied correlate, closeness – reflecting and blurring the two across multiple levels both apparent on the music's surface and hidden beneath it. As with previous releases, the ensemble forgoes straightforward narrative forms in favor of a process they call 'semi-composition,' which invol…

"In this 3-CD set each disc contains one duo session between the three musicians: trombone-bass, piano-bass and piano-trombone. Recorded over the course of Bishop's last year of residency in Boston and soon after Smith had moved to St. Louis, these recordings capture a glimpse of the city's creative music scene at a particularly active time between 2016-22, when, the three musicians interacted frequently in many settings in the Boston area. The Smith/Bishop disc consists of all improvised music,…

"While on the island of Syros in the Aegean Sea for a film festival performance, Christina Vantzou experienced what she characterized as 'a moment of focus' -- a specific vision for the sprawl of raw recordings she'd been amassing for her fifth album. Upon relocating to the Cycladic island of Ano Koufonisi, she situated herself outside at a patio table with a laptop and headphones, taking brief breaks to swim, and began the 'reductive process' of shaving and shaping the source material into unea…

Sixth release in the MFR Contemporary Series. Greek trio Eventless Plot (Liolios, Giatas, Tsirikoglou), joined by bass clarinetist Chris Cundy, take recent research on music and Alzheimer's disease as starting point: that music helps both retrieve old memories and lay down new ones. Two long compositions are built from repeated patterns creating familiarity, then gradually layered with shifting tone combinations. Instrumentarium includes psaltery, tape (Revox A-77), modular and bass clarinet.

*In process of stocking* Contrarily to the rest of Tasos Stamou’s experimental discography, the musician’s latest album “Balkan Express” has a more obscure electro-folk approach. It consists of seven pieces, all recorded with seven different vintage electric keyboards from Stamou’s own collection, blended with oriental acoustic solos. Since Stamou grew up in the Balkans in the ‘80s, he wanted to pay homage to the essence of the sound of the era that unintentionally shaped a whole culture. It was…

*60 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Granny Records presents New Space by Savvas Metaxas. Eight untitled short stories of modular synthesizers, field recordings and electronics, sitting well on the brinks of pop and abstract jazz aesthetics.

A suite of raga-inspired compositions and improvisations that grew from a fertile collaboration between Christina Vantzou, Michael Harrison and John Also Bennett centered around a devotion to just intonation tuning, deep listening, and resonant spaces. Michael Harrison is a composer and pianist who is a dedicated practitioner of just intonation and North Indian classical music. He was La Monte Young's protégé and piano tuner during The Well-Tuned Piano years and a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath, a…

**200 copies limited edition** "The occasion of this double album is to present the two different practices in my music, live performance and studio work. Although phenomenally coming from a different place, it is a result of years of experimentations to bring a simple yet complete electroacoustic set up both on stage and in studio. The original idea was to compose or perform with acoustic instruments generating sustained sounds in a way that, although electronically manipulated, would retain al…

**Second edition repress** Vasilis Liolios: percussion, tapes/revox A-77, objects, analog modular synth Aris Giatas: piano, prepared piano Yiannis Tsirikoglou: electronics Max/MSP 4 electroacoustic compositions for tapes, piano, percussion & electronics.Composed and recorded by Eventless Plot, May-August 2020. Mastered by Yiannis Tsirikoglou

* Edition of 300 *   Invited by the town of Hoeilaart and with the support of the Flemish Heritage Fund we create this special document: a CD and a 32 pages booklet. Through photography, text, music, and sound we log a unique and peculiar culture: the grape cultivation under glass in Hoeilaart, a small village just below Brussels. Step with us inside the greenhouse, inside the confined world of the greenhouse workers.  Serrism is: a musical illustration - by Christina Vantzou, sound registration…

This special bundle collects all chapters in the Tasos Stamou trilogy of LPs issued by Discrepant and Ikuisuus,  namely the following:- Antiqua Graecia (Ikuisuus, 2021)- D-A-D (Discrepant, 2019)- Musique Con Crete (Discrepant, 2018)Antiqua Graecia (2021) In addition to its deep investment in the notion of progress, experimental music is a territory of creative expression that searches for something fundamental through sound; a music that speaks to and seeks the root of who we are. Across his rec…

Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos has been a member of the Wandelweiser composers collective since 2003. He pursues his own compositional style to create a new kind of tonal music, deeply associated with his individuality and the surroundings of his life in Athens, a unique blend of stoic minimalism, the warm colors of modern romanticism, and the introspective depth of Zen. "For many years I have concentrated my attention on modal monophonic melodies. In my pieces I want to bring a bala…

** 2021 Stock ** Hōryū-ji or else Learning Temple of the Flourishing Law is one of the powerful Seven Great Buddhist Temples in Japan. Horyu-ji has entasis, in architecture, the application of a convex curve to a surface for aesthetic purposes. It also serves an engineering function regarding strength, the key word of this collaboration that brought together Sakata, Yermenoglou, Di Domenico and Damianidis in a two days live concert meeting in Duende jazz club at Thessaloniki in May 2018. The rec…

The final instalment of Tasos Stamou’s stunning trilogy of LPs exploring the deep history and culture of his home country, Greece - "Antiqua Graecia" - weaves a startling sense of imagism that intertwines multiple pathways of creativity, culture, and temporality, and presents electroacoustic practice as we’ve rarely heard it before. Issued by a Ikuisuus in a tiny edition of 300 copies, this one isn't to be missed.

***60 copies*** "No options" is a collaboration between electroacoustic trio Eventless Plot and bass clarinet player Chris Cundy. On the first part, field recordings are interrupted by unique harmony combinations produced by bass clarinet tones, electromagnetic mic and electronics. On the second part, noise and concrete sounds create the substrate for Chris’ bass clarinet sounds, emerging and highlighting extended techniques such as multi-phonics, circular breathing and micro tonality. In Ataxia…

***60 copies*** 84100 is the result of the collaboration between Savvas Metaxas and Renato Grieco. The two of them met on the island of Syros, during the 2018 Syros Sounding Paths Residency. During their stay there the artists had to pursuit and investigate one or more ideas. Metaxas’ focus was mainly around the story and the sounds of the industrial ghost-past of Ermoupolis, while Grieco’s interest was the in the tape, not just as a format but more as a material and dare to say as a somehow liv…

* Edition of 300 * Dark Ballads is the obvious title of this LP, as if this music pre-existed the duo that, without any other choice, was formed around it. Since then, Giotis Damianidis and Audrey Lauro have continued to advance along this straight line that runs through their inner landscapes. Their music creates a "stretched" emotional space, which evolves in slow motion and captures the fragility of the tone, the tension of the path. Each stage of the record is a mineral evocation of the inti…

The Harmless Dust is a unique release in the discographies of both David Grubbs and the Athens-based cellist Nikos Veliotis (Mohammad). In 2005 the duo were on tour in the U.S. in support of Grubbs’s album A Guess at the Riddle when they took a most productive break at John McEntire’s Soma Studios, over the course of a day laying down something utterly different from the song-based set they were playing most evenings. The Harmless Dust presents the same composition in two arrangements: one for p…

* Aquamarine coloured vinyl * Beaubourg is an expressionistic work, consisting almost exclusively of strange, unearthly sounds. Ring modulators, noise, and weird effects are unleashed in wide stereo spaces. The album is often referred to as anti-commercial, because of its non-melodic - even consonant - nature. Vangelis however spoke with great affection about this piece in several interviews and his engineer says Vangelis took it very seriously while recording it. "Beaubourg" takes its title fro…

Eventless Plot is the collective name for three musicians from Thessaloniki, Greece, who compose together. Vasilis Liolios, Aris Giatis and Yiannis Tsirikoglou have been collaborating in this way since they met as students 20 years ago. They bring in other musicians from Greece and Holland (where Yiannis now lives) as their compositions develop. The CD presents three of their recent and most compelling chamber works. "The title reflects the basic idea of the composition. There is a contradiction…

Multi Natural is a new example of Christina’s organic chamber music. We enter nine composed chambers. Nine rooms to inhabit, constructed out of elements that are slowly fusing. The album is a string of semi constant metamorphosis. A gesture appears, is elaborated upon—or is halted and replaced by a new gesture. Multi Natural has multi focal points, quite dissimilar to Christina’s other works that tend to have a more linear path. Within this album lives a composer who is not afraid to let the con…

"In the mid '70s, Mariangela Celeste signed to a major label (Polygram) at the age of 13. She would then go on to record her self-titled album with rising European superstar Vangelis. Though tragically overlooked upon its release, Mariangela is a gem of early electronic pop with sparkling synths, drums machines, and lush arrangements, propelling the songs of an unapologetically strong-willed adolescent.By 1972, Vangelis’ band Aphrodite’s Child had earned widespread acclaim for their lavish psych…

**60 copies** "Despite working often alone, Savvas Metaxas is someone who rather thinks in terms of community and connectivity, who prefers alliances over ego, who is a sound artist as well as a musical activist. Coming from Thessaloniki, Greece, he co-founded Granny Records, puts up local shows, worked with the Goethe Institute, did site-specific sound installations in London, collaborates with other experimentalists like Spyros Emmanouilidis and released brilliant albums on fellow tape travell…

The French pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert possesses an exquisite touch and engagement with his repertoire. On this new album he tackles the stripped-down music of Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos, a key member of the post-Cagean Wandelweiser Collective, tracing out the delicate, sparsely mapped notes from a dozen contemplative, spacious miniatures.  The pieces are built around austere melodic fragments, all of which hang pregnant in the air, unfolding carefully before the next p…

Maybe it’s too much to ask for a moment of your attention. As we grow older and keep diving into this era of information, disinformation, fake news and all that, we also tend to take a step back and listen to the intents of those social media adverts that tell us to slow down, breathe in, breathe out, enjoy everything around you a little bit. So, if it’s not too much to ask, you can press play and start enjoying D-A-D. If you’re doing that, you can even stop reading this, because you don’t need …

**75 copies** A free improvised music duo recorded on February 28, 2018, at Flimflam night in Ryan’s Bar, London.  Alan Wilkinson: bass clarinet, tenor saxophone - Tasos Stamou: diy synths, Korg Volca FM, digital horn. 

**300 copies** Hōryū-ji, or else, the Learning Temple of the Flourishing Law is one of the powerful Seven Great Buddhist Temples in Japan. Hōryū-ji is built with entasis, which - in architecture - is the application of a convex curve to a surface for aesthetic purposes. It also serves an engineering function regarding strength, the key word of this collaboration that brought together Sakata, Yermenoglou, Di Domenico and Damianidis in a two-days live concert meeting in Duende jazz club at Thessal…

Caveman is a document of Stamou's live practice: two complete extracts of solo improvised performances using his 'portable electroacoustic studio'. The setup combines acoustic instruments (prepared zither, reeds, recorders, objects) with handmade electronics, modular synthesis and live-processed feedback loops, producing long continuous pieces built on sustained tonal textures and free improvised solos. What the artist calls ritual noise: a slow-burning, immersive electroacoustic atmosphere.

Sex Power was Vangelis' first solo album. It is the soundtrack for the same titled Henry Chapier movie. It was originally released by Philips in 1970 in Greece and France, and sold just a few copies. Nowadays however it is the holy grail for Vangelis collectors worldwide, with prices of mint copies reaching 1000+ euro. This frst ever reissue is an audiophile edition with sound taken from the original vinyl masters.

Active since the early 90’s in sound art and image, Iios has been exploring the extremes of sound and image derived phenomena. Through constant change in his sound palee touching and surpassing the limits of the sound spectrum ILIOS advocates for an anti-career. Some of Ilios recorded output has been regarded by the media as: “The sound of death” or “The most enervating record imaginable”.  More than 300 live shows, lectures and workshops in 30 countries in: Asia, South + North America, Europe, …

Christina Vantzou follows her role in the superb CV & JAB album for Shelter Press with the starkly haunting No.4 in her chrono-numeric series of albums for Kranky. No. 4 took shape across roughly two years, incorporating a diverse array of musical and conceptual collaborators, including fellow Kranky artists Steve Hauschildt and John Also Bennett (of Forma) as well as Angel Deradoorian (ex-Dirty Projectors), Clarice Jensen, Beatrijs De Klerck and members of Belgium’s Echo Collective. During the …

Starting with an artist residency Tasos Stamou visited the Greek island over the course of three summers, collecting field recordings, performing with local musicians, producing electronic compositions and gathering old records and tapes of traditional music of the region. The project resulted in the assembling of a unique sound collage which reflects his personal experience as a music visitor to this part of the Mediterranean. Tasos Stamou is an electroacoustic music composer, performer, altern…

Limited edition of 100 hand-numbered copies. Killing Realism is an electroacoustic composition created from improvised material that was recorded in Thessaloniki and The Hague in 2015. Various percussion sounds, generated from crotales, sound plates, singing bowls, contact mics and bows, are combined with analog synths, electronics and Max/MSP patches.

Taximi is the improvisation during the performance of traditional musical pieces, using soloistic folk instruments. It has roots in the eastern Mediterranean and Arabic culture and can be commonly found in Greek music and specifically in rebetiko. Taximi is a free rhythm melody, an author's imagination, alternating between various emotional paths with a passion respective to each one who carries it. The main prerequisite in order to play a taximi is not to have excellent technical knowledge, but…

2015 release **  "The pieces by Anastassis Philippakopoulos that guitarist Chaz Underriner "reinterprets" here were written for instruments other than his own: flute (Song 6, which Wandelweiser Editions published earlier under the composer's name on Songs And Piano Pieces), string section (Song 8, which Underriner performs with three other guitarists: Armin Abdihodzic, Greg Dixon, and Robert Trusko), and bass clarinet (Song 9). Three songs that follow one another discreetly, moving slightly unde…

Just when I thought I had collected all the recordings I could of Mark Wastell playing cello he unearths another gem from his vault, himself and Nikos Veliotis playing acoustic cellos. I started following Mark and the London/Berlin scene only about 6 years ago. I would be hard pressed to pick any other improvising cellists if had to choose a duet to hear. Lachenmann, Xenakis and Scelsi are my favorite cello composers and I imagine these two fellows are avid fans too. I missed out on the lowercas…

Two pieces of multitrack composition built from sustained tones on solo acoustic instruments - a 'Jubel Töne' zither in the first, a 'Hohner Organetta' chord organ in the second - each extended through real-time electronic processing (feedback looping, downsampling, pitch-shifting, reverberation, oscillator interaction) and extended playing techniques. Part of an ongoing series on layered acoustic-tone composition. The title refers to a sheep-shearing ceremony still observed in rural Crete.

2014 release ** "Beethoven’s fifth symphony begins with that now-iconic but aphoristic “short-short-short-long” musical motive about which so much has beenwritten and said, a radical statement for string melody without harmonic accompaniment.  On his 2008 composition “Song 2,” for bass flute, Wandelweiser composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos essentializes the very concept of a similarly constructed four-note phrase, presenting each gesture in isolation, long silences allowing for listener recont…