"Taxidoscopio" - Kristi Stassinopoulou & Stathis Kalyviotis

• artist:
  Kristi Stassinopoulou & Stathis Kalyviotis
• featured artist:
  Stathis Kalyviotis
• country:
  Greece
• release year:
  2007
• style(s): Electronic Greek
• formats:
  • CD (Compact Disc)
• record submitted by:
  alba Kultur
• label:
  Heaven and Earth
• publisher:
  Heaven & Earth

The songs of this album are diaries from journeys Kristi Stassinopoulou & Stathis Kalyviotis made together with their band these last years, invited by music festivals and clubs in various random places in the world. They were written in vans and airplanes, in airport lounges, in dressing rooms, hotel rooms and bamboo huts. They were recorded in Athens, from October 2005 to May 2006.

The last three songs are written for Thaleia Iakovidou; Kristi Stassinopoulou & Stathis Kalyviotis traveled together to most of the places. The whole album is dedicated to her memory.

Kristi Stassinopoulou was born in Athens into a traditional Greek orthodoxe family. She spent the most time of her holidays and weekends of her childhood in the dozy town of Kalamata on the Pelepones in the south of Greece, where church music and byzantine chorale was still predominantly cultivated. Her brother opened her ears for music from all over the world with his self-made short wave radios: Oum Kalthoum from Egypt, Turkish arabesque music from the Bosphorus and Balkans sounds, Patti Smith, classical music and Velvet Underground - nothing she didn't listen to ! In the late 60's Hippies from all over Europe drove in to Greece. Their music, the multicolored cothes and their long hair impressed Kristi. This athmosphere inpired her for the first experiences in amateur student bands and finally to study music. She discovered and became enthusiastic for the traditional Greek music. But those had been abused by the military junta to propaganda purposes and had a strong nationalistic image, similar to the German folk music after War II and abuse by the Nazis. So she earned her first Drachmens and merits in the musical >Jesus Christ Superstar< while singing the role of Maria Magdalena. In 1983 she represented Greece in the Eurovision Song Contest in Munich.
Then, in the beginning of the 90's she toured with Greek traditional songs through the clubs in Athen and met with Stathis Kalyviotis, one of the admitted Punk Rockers of the scene. With Stathis she formed the independent band Selana - with an ethnopunk sound, which became quickly an important name in Greece.
But both wanted to go further and recorded in 1997 their first common album Ifantokosmos, followed 1999 by the first international release Echotropia: futuristic electronic sounds, Ambient, energetic Rock, some Rembetiko roots, composed and arranged by Stathis, performed with traditional Greek instruments such as baglama and buzuki, gaita and accordion and Kristis clear and powerfull voice as well as with her poetic and pagan lyrics: psychedelic Greek Techno Folk Rock !

With this fourth album, Kristi Stassinopoulou & Stathis Kalyviotis continue their musical research, experimenting on environmental sounds they meet in various landscapes during their travels. On Taxidoscopio there are songs and sounds inspired from Germany, Spain, India, Brasil, Armenia, Israel, Canada, the US and Greece.

Links

• homepage Kristi Stassinopoulou
• label Kristi Stassinopoulou