Optical Musics

Optical Musics is a pioneering Greek avant-experimental project, founded by Costis Drygianakis and a group of people, formed in Volos. They were early experimenting with musical forms like free improvisation and electroacoustic experimentation etc, creating a highly personal musical idiom. From 1984 to mid-1987 the group started to make their most absurd home recording. The line-up of the group changed several times acted like an open collective, with the line-up of the group, focused more on experimentation with custom instruments, child instruments, synthesisers, bass etc. The most sophisticated recordings was used for the the disc “Optical Musics Volume 1” LP, released in 1987. Some other recordings of that period was used / recycled in personal works by Kostis Drygianaki like “Post-visual landscapes” (EDO, CD, 1999) and “Eantaisglossaistonanthroponlalokaitonangelon” (EDO, CD, 1999).

The “First Words: recordings 1984 – 1987”, that is presented here, is including 27 unpublished works of the group, maybe their more rough material, which were then a work-in-progress or “unfinished” tracks, covering a wide range of musical experimentation (free improvisation, minimalism, avant gard). With this publication, we are very happy to bring to light recordings of Optical Musics, a group that at that period did not get the publicity they deserved, but in the future their music influenced a younger generation of people in Greece that involved in the Greek experimental music scene.

Optical Musics’s “First Words: recordings 1984 – 1987” is out as a 2x CD with a book (Greek + English version) of 64 pages, full with information and images of that period. The recordings include alphabetically the musicians: Takis Agrigiannis, Kostas Anestis, Giannis Argyropoulos, Eleni Barouksi, Costis Drygianakis, Christos Kaltis, Aleksis Karavergos, Kostas Kostopoulos, Nikos Ksirakis, Kostas Pantopoulos, Thanasis Chondros, Aleksandra Katsiani. This release is a collaboration of the labels moremars, Hxoi Kato Apo To Spiti and Noise Below.