4+1

The ensemble 4+1 was Created in 2007 from musicians who have coexisted in several bands in the past, through improvisation and various musical influences, The group tries a range of sound associations, using natural instrument sound or transformed electronic sound, playing with the alternation of melody, rhythmical motives and timbre, 4+1 'S effort Is making music that combines prepared stuff with improvisation

4+1 give often concerts in Athens, they have participated in ElectroMedia Works Festival '10 and in June 2010, four members of 4+1 (Tania Giannouli, Vasslis Tzavaras, Stamatis Dellaportas, and Giannis Notaras who then left the group) performed together with the electronica musician Spyweirdos at Synch Festival as Schema Ensemble.

The first 4+1 's cd is now out on Triple Bath


Tania Giannouli: piano
Vassilis Tzavaras: guitars
Stamatis Dellaportas: clarinet
Nikos Nikoloupoulos: flutes
Orestis Zafiropoulos; cello

www.4plus1.net

www.youtube.com/TesseraSynEna

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Dirty Granny Tales

Dirty Granny Tales is an acoustic/experimental group, combining puppet theatre acts with music.The compositions are dark, full of gothic lyrics and atmospheric melodies, reminding strongly The Tiger Lillies.

Dirty Granny Tales describe themselves as below:

“What happens when music brings puppets to life?
It’s when the Dirty Granny tells her stories…

This is not the sweet Grandma that will narrate a fairy tale for the children in front of the fireplace. She is not the one to knit a woollen scarf while the kitten cuddles on her feet.

This old woman is dirty, releasing a rotting smell. You can’t define the gaze on her face, because it’s absent, you can’t stand the timbre of her voice because it’s piercing your brain with the strength of a thousand needles. Her guise is freezing cold, makes you wonder if she belongs to your World. What kind of stories would such a creature chronicle? Not the kind that work as a lullaby…

The more repulsive her aura, the more you become bewitched. What is that she is knitting with her nails? Would you dare to try it on?”

 

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drog_A_tek

drog_A_tek is a flexible musical band re-inventing itself at each meeting. A mixed and eclectic set of improvisation disorder, formed in 2001 in Athens, they record moments in real-time and produce temporary audiovisual environments. They use objects, analogue and digital musical instruments, typewriters, frequencies, images, recording archives/waste and technology landscapes to which they manufacture small public fragmented narratives.
drog_A_tek develop their shows beyond any normal use of their materials. Emitting, and receiving known/unknown stories and ephemeral desires. They print music, posters, stickers, write on walls and on the internet. They have played at the Athens Festival, in various clubs in Athens and Thessaloniki and many other festivals.

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May Roosevelt

Thereminst May Roosevelt was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. Her first encounter with a musical instrument was at the age of twelve, when she took to violin lessons. Nine years later her violin was replaced by a theremin, one of the earliest electronic musical instrument invented in 1919, by Leon Theremin. Aside her personal projects, May Roosevelt has collaborateed with several musicians and bands in Greece including Xaxakes, Matisse, Mary & the Boy, 2L8 and the LBO. She is currently working as a graphic designer.

From artist’s official myspace page

Influenced by the very reverend trinity of Bach, Björk and Klaus Nomi, May Roosevelt is an extraordinary thereminist, composer and producer with a sense for good, old-fashioned drama. Her classical arrangements will give you the shivers (or, at the very least, remind you of movies that gave you the shivers), with nods to early industrial or electronic music and a passing resemblance to the god of thunder behind a theremin. Like many people, she got into music via her first Casio synth as a kid. If her knack for otherworldly sounds is anything to go by, that Casio must have been possessed by some very restless and musical ghosts.

Discography:

PANDA, A STORY ABOUT LOVE AND FEAR

CooRecords 2009
Embarking from the ethereal tradition of Clara Rockmore, the composer and performer May Roosevelt guides the listener through 8 songs dealing with the mysterium tremendum. "Panda, a story about love and fear" is a concept album that narrates a story of a girl that is afraid of almost everything. Will she be able to overcome her weaknesses and embrace the assuring love of a panda or will her fears rule out any chance of happiness? This modern fairytale unravels through a musical dialect comprising unique vocals, English lyrics and a complex of electronic soundscapes. The eight original compositions stem from the esoteric quest for a dreamworld and define its obscure innocence. The production infiltrates the contemporary r'n'b and pop esthetics with sonic nuances of industrial electronica, screamo while leaving enough aural space for the omnipresent and otherworldly cry of the Theremin. May Roosevelt delivers an album where she maps out a path for refining not only the genre of electronica, and the ethereal frequencies but also the possibilities offered by a home studio recording, in complete absence of physical instruments. "Panda" was recorded in total by May herself; a painstaking process where at times she had to cope with broken hard drives, loss of files and other unfortunate surprises. In parallel to her music career, May Roosevelt works as a graphic designer. The EP's artwork is designed by herself and is fully attuned to the music.

HAUNTED

Self Release, 2011 "Haunted": The Strange Musical Case of May Roosevelt May Roosevelt's new album "Haunted" opens doors to phantoms of the past. The work's eight musical compositions are supernatural entities of modern technology that hover in the air, bursting open the chest of rustic tradition only to be transformed into rhythms of Greek dances. Following "Panda, a story about love and fear", composer and thereminist May Roosevelt uncovers a dark and reclusive universe defined by motion and dance. "Haunted" starts with the zeibekiko dance rhythm in 'The Unicorn Died', which was composed and presented for the first time in London at the Red Bull Music Academy in February 2010. The original idea evolved through an intense speculation about the place held by traditional Greek rhythms in the canon of Greek electronic music. This exploration subsequently led to the creative transformation of eight different Greek dances presented in "Haunted". The Theremin, a very complex instrument yet absolutely submissive to the hands of May Roosevelt, was used to create a plethora of curious sounds ranging from wind and stringed instruments to an imitation of human voice. The Theremin's unique sound also shifted from a bagpipe (in 'Oomph') to a Pontic Lyre (in 'Mass Extermination'), and from a clarinet (in 'Vow') into a violin (in 'Dark the Night'). Through the use of electronic beats to form each rhythm alongside synthesizers and vocals, May Roosevelt attempts to embed anew Greek musical idioms within contemporary music while retaining all their respectable characteristics. The title "Haunted" - inspired by the idea of hauntology, introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida - defines the concept and underscores the character of the compositions: The phantoms of the past and the spirit of future, mingled, haunt the music of May Roosevelt.

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Interstellar Overdrive

The core of what was to become interstellar overdrive was formed around 1998 in Athens, Greece; since then little or no resemblance exists. The genre changes dramatically with every new project.

In 1999’s ‘Battle of the Bands’ contest (held in Athens) the band was awarded with the first prize leading to the realisation of the debut album (Pegasus Records, 2000), which was recorded from May 1999 to June 2000 at various times.

From April 2002 to January 2003 the band, with a different line up this time, records a second album titled ‘Surface b’ again for Pegasus Records. The genre is a lot different than the debut with influences ranging from indie to post-rock. Yet, within this album there is evidence of a more experimental and less commercial approach to music.

From May 2003 the band stabilizes its line up (Catherine Papahristou, Pepy Kosma, Alex Sakellariou, Orestis Karamanlis) and records a series of pieces for different occasions. Within Spring 2003 “A short piece for the poison–man” is ‘exhibited’ along with the homonymous painting of Stefanos Rokos. In July, ‘Pop+Rock’ Magazine hosts the same song in a collection. In March 2005, ‘Pop+Rock’ Magazine hosts ‘Happy Hour’ in a collection for the Greek English-spoken scene.

In November 2005 the band records a series of pieces for the painting/engraving exhibition of Stefanos Rokos in Athens at “Agathi Hall of Art”. The music was intended to accompany the catalogue of the exhibition titled “Noise and Useful Objects” and was reproduced in 1500 copies. It consists of a mixture of electroacoustic sound and songs divided in 9 parts. The album was recorded in Cambridge and Athens and mixed by George Priniotakis at ArtRacks studio. It was disposed free at the opening day of the exhibition.

In January 2009 the band’s 3rd official album - titled “Hibernation” - was released by Studio2 Records. This is by far the most elaborate work to the present day. It was produced in 3 countries (Greece, England and Ireland) within the span of 5 years. It has been co-produced at SARC, a research center on sonic art, implementing also new methods for musical expression and human-machine interaction.

The music of interstellar overdrive has also been used in film and theatre.

At the moment the band continues to undertake an even more experimental approach investigating alternative ways to produce music using new media (even though its members are scattered).

http://www.interstellaroverdrive.gr/

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Absent without leave

Absent without leave is the solo project of George Mastrokostas, based in Athens, Greece.
Recording everything himself in his home-studio, he produces a sound that has at times been described as a mix of shoegaze, post-rock, ambient and electronica.
He has just released his third album, called faded photographs, featuring guest appearances from some really great artists, including port-royal, stafraenn hakon, epic45, millimetrik (below the sea, le chat blanc orchestra, glider, parallel lines) and members of hood, the declining winter, plumerai, eksi ekso, tupolev, slon and others too.
To date, he has released his music on labels such as distant noise records (uk), unlabel (uk), chat blanc records (canada), awkward silence recordings (uk), thisquietarmy records (canada), symbolic interaction (japan), october man recordings (uk), friend of mine records (japan), duotone records (japan), bsbta (denmark), fuzzy panda recording co. (usa) and also on his own label sound in silence (greece) and has collaborated for split releases and remixes with artists like port-royal, yellow6, televise (ex-slowdive), landshipping (ex-metrotone) featuring isan, millimetrik and kimonophonic amongst others.
He has played several gigs in Greece at various venues, including synch festival 2007 (alongside mum, !!!, front 242, fischerspooner and alexander hacke, amongst others) and has shared the stage, most of the times after being personally invited by the artists themselves, with god is an astronaut, 65daysofstatic, port-royal, piano magic, i like trains, jeniferever, manyfingers (ex-movietone, collaborator of matt elliott / third eye foundation and hood), millimetrik, section 25 (from legendary factory records), sigmatropic and many others.
He has composed the soundtrack of the short film the crossroads (directed by Petros Sofikitis) and his music has been played on some of the best radio stations worldwide like BBC 6 Music, Resonance FM and others too.

http://www.myspace.com/geezertek

 

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Parallel Worlds

Parallel Worlds' music is a combination of dreamy/atmospheric textures with pure analogue electronic rhythms and sequences, combining the feel of modern electronica and ambient with 70's electronic music. For Parallel Worlds, melody is essential, but most important is emotional context. Parallel Worlds' tracks try to reach to the listener's heart and mind.
Parallel Worlds use mostly Hardware machines. Mainly huge Analogue Modular systems and Analogue Step Sequencers of the past and present combined with digital FM and virtual analogue synths and sampling.
Parallel Worlds are the main project of Bakis Sirros with John Sirros. They were originally born in 1994, but only after 1998 they started to be a part of the active Greek electronic music scene.
In parallel, Bakis Sirros is the moderator of the Doepfer A100 modular users group helping, in an important way, the progress of the tools for experimental electronic music in the 21st century. He has also done some extensive sound design work, as well as a Sample CD, for the well-known UK analogue modular synthesizer company Analogue Systems.
During these last 7 years, Parallel Worlds have played live also, participating in the E-PHOS electronic music festival in summer of 2001, Mad club, Club22, Music day festival 2006, Small Music Theatre, Synch Festival 2008, Reworks 2009 and some other Greek venues.

http://www.myspace.com/parallelworldsmusic

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Palov & Mishkin

Palov & Mishkin, grew up together as best buddies during an era of break-dance frenzy, cable wrestling fights and boom box anthems. Both of them cut their teeth on parks around home and school always searching for the next perfect move. Together they also formed their first band, a quartet which went very successful on various school nights. Around 1987 the duo had to split because of Mishkin’s sudden move to a different school in a faraway town.

They went separate ways and no one ever heard news from the other for almost 20 years. Some contacts had been made in several occasions but none was that strong to make them realize they should work together again. On March 2006 luck brought them together inside the same taxi….
And so they met again.

http://www.myspace.com/palovandmishkin

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Mary and The Boy

Mary and The Boy are a journey through time. A time machine. Through their piano punk performances they express their feelings about the crucial social movements of the past centuries.
They are interested in Berlin’s middle war cabaret music, 50s Hollywood musicals, artists that expresses the working class like Ken Loach and Sex Pistols, Andy Warhol’s and David Lynch’s pop art, the US comedy movement that shine through the ashes of Saturday Night Live, artists that have a main interest for the Word of Jesus like Robert Duvall and Fiodor Dostoyefski etc.

They have opened concerts for Holly Golightly, Four Tet and Marc Almond and write music for theatre productions.

http://www.last.fm/music/Mary+and+The+Boy

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Larry Gus

Panagiotis Melidis (born and grew up in Veria, Greece) started to write music as Larry Gus (larigas: greek for throat, larynx) in 2006, inspired by the rural enviroment of his hometown. His early influences have been Creedence Clearwater Revival and Minor Threat. He had been member of the seminal bass and drums duo Ginger, fusing hardcore punk aesthetics and hip hop beats. When Ginger broke up, he started composing music for TV commercials, which were in fact his first works as Larry Gus. Later on, he got his name due to some chaotic live perfomances, incorporating live looping techniques in an improvised pop manner.

He has played alongside Caribou, Ariel Pink, !!!, Deadbeat, John Maus, Mike Slott and has also participated at the 2nd Athens Biennial and 2nd Nuit Blanche à Metz. Recently, he has resided at the Music Technology Group of Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona (Reactable,Freesound) as a postgraduate student.

http://www.last.fm/music/Larry+Gus
www.myspace.com/larrygus

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Sigmatropic

Sigmatropic is one of the most influential and successful bands that came out of Greece in the last ten years. The band is the musical vehicle of founding member and main nucleus of the band, Akis Boyatzis.

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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Bokomolech

Bokomolech is a band from Athens, Greece.

The members met sometime in 1991 in the National Technical University of Athens. They started making an impression on Indie audiences in 1993, after having played at the Indie Free Festival.

Their name comes from a Ukrainian physician, Alexander Alexandrovic Bogomoletz, who came up with a drug of the same name sometime in the 1950’s, supposedly postponing the aging of cells in the human body.


Their debut LP was “Xero” (1995 - Lazy Dog Records, an indie label from Salonica).
They later signed with Hitch-Hyke and released the E.P. “Insect (songs)”. Steve Albini was impressed by their music and invited them to Chicago to work on a record together at his own well-known studios “Electrical Audio”. The product of this collaboration was a double L.P., “Jet Lag”. Steve and Shellac fitted an extra day in their European tour that autumn, so that they could play in Athens with Bokomolech.
Their next release was another E.P., entitled “Slowburner” and produced by Greek musician/producer, Coti.K.
“Exit: Trance” is their latest record. It was recorded during the summer of 2003, once again with Steve Albini, but this time in Iain Burgess’ Black Box Studio in rural France. It was their first record that got properly distributed abroad, in Portugal and Germany.

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