AKIS BOYATZIS marked his musical presence in his native Greece for the first time in the early 80’s with local bands CAPTAIN NEFOS and LIBIDO BLUME. CAPTAIN NEFOS (a tongue in cheek moniker & loosely translated as “Captain Smog” as a tribute to the menacing & hovering Athens pollution cloud) were a clear cut and poppy New Wave outfit. Together with LIBIDO BLUME, AKIS BOYATZIS appeared on several singles and on a couple of albums, therefore making an early successful mark on the Greek music scene as an English-singing artist.
In the late Eighties Akis moved to the US Midwest & started a band called HUM along with three American musicians. Upon returning to Greece in 1990, after a short-lived reunion of Captain Nefos he founded the ephemeral DEKA METRA DENDRA (Ten Meter Trees) but with no official recording output.
After a period of playing as a session musician AKIS definitely abandoned the New Wave power punk persona and reemerged in 1997 as a new revolving outfit called SIGMATROPIC. Aptly named after a chemical reaction type, it soon blossomed from a single person home-studio project into an exciting full blown live band. Meshing breezy Mediterranean flavoured beats with ice-chilled Electronica SIGMATROPIC soon dished out some excellent material. Together with the wizardry of highly respected musician-producer Antonis Livieratos, SIGMATROPIC released a single “Air” & an album “Random Walk”, both on cool Greek indie label Hitch Hyke. In 1999 the EP “If You Were Me” helped to enhance their profile with a heavy airplay rotation.
The same year, Sigmatropic were invited to perform at the great Athens summer ROCKWAVE festival as a local band sharing the same stage with the likes of Blur, Prodigy, Patti Smith & Placebo. Despite a raised profile and critical success in Greece, AKIS BOYATZIS remains far removed from the overall music scene. As an elusive master technician he only emerges to occasional dazzle audiences with a live set.
In 2002 SIGMATROPIC released to an unsuspecting public the Greek original version of “Sixteen Haiku And Other Stories” which was based on the poetry of the late great Nobel laureate George Seferis. This album had the decisive production of Coti K and contained a sprawling musical & literary odyssey with outstanding results. The extensive praise underlined spellbinding soundtrack like music with the sophisticated vocalisation of the Haiku poetry.
The next instalment by SIGMATROPIC was the international version of “16 Haiku And Other Stories”, produced by Antonis Livieratos and Akis Boyatzis. This project was the English version of the previously mentioned Greek-sung album featuring 18 guest vocalists from both sides of the Atlantic. An astonishing list of cult musicians graces this enhanced version, delivering their own vocal interpretation to an English translated poetry over the same music.
A tour followed in a number of Greek cities with guests like Carla Torgerson, Pinkie Maclure and James Sclavunos.
The next major step for the band and Akis especially was its participation in the production and songwriting of Carla Torgerson's first album "Saint Stranger". Carla with lyricist Michael Willet stayed in Akis' home in Athens for 3 months in the Spring of 2004, were most of the album was recorded and produced. and finally released by Glitterhouse.
The same time the band was active performing live around Greece. Among others, they performed (second time in their career) in Rockwave festival (July 2005), in the International Day of Music (Athens, 2004 and 2006) and opened for Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds (Athens and Thessaloniki, December 2005).
The band has just finished working on their long anticipated new album "Dark Outside" to be released in September 2007 in Greece (Hitch Hyke) and the UK (Tonguemaster). A number of guests (Robert Fisher, Howe Gelb, James Sclavunos and Carla Torgerson) also contribute with their vocals in the album that was mixed by Ian Caple, the legendary engineer and producer of the Tindersticks, Tricky, Mansun, and Shriekback.
http://www.sigmatropic.gr
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