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Kristi Stassinopoulou
Echotropia is daring, contemporary yet traditionally inspired music from Greece. The production is relentlessly driven, even on quiet tracks, by high-energy bass and percussion, and so many processing and multi-tracking tricks are played with Kristi Stassinopoulou's vocal that one might not fully appreciate its beauty without repeated listenings.
Echotropia is reminiscent of Márta Sebestyén's 1992 Apocrypha project, and never more so than at the beginning of the lead-off track, "We Are Flying," which begins with a deep-reverb fluty figure. It continues into slow, heavy drums leavened by plinking tabla, Stassinopoulou's vocal emerging in a multi-layered chorus, dreamily swimming in musical aether with an electric guitar so twangy it sounds not picked but breathed. A surprising hand-drum break is capped by an eruption of bagpipes. On "Aeolos," driving percussion and bass emerge from an introductory melange of exotic sounds, Stassinopoulou's multi-tracked vocal delivering a processed fanfare with the bass end truncated, a telephone call from the past. She intones a simple, insistent melody rendered more compelling by a presence so intimate that it relays every tone, breath, and click, mysterious and haunting when joined on chorus by the telephoned voices, choppy percussion ending the number peremptorily.
A swarm of whisperings on "Into the Fire" ushers in a calm space within which Stassinopoulou's vocal shines clearly, muscular yet seductive and precise with shooshing Greek fricatives. "Sol Invictus" is a dramatic triumph, thundering drums and thumping bass joined by electronic glitter filling the musical niche of a jaw harp, Stassinopoulou's vocal alternately gliding on this substrate and egging it into greater fury, a scat break leading to a ragged and crazed bagpipe solo. Staccato synth on "Only Love Remains" awakens a dense percussive and instrumental thicket through which Stassinopoulou's vocal leads us, half singing, half chanting, whispers igniting a dramatic firestorm of twangy guitar chords. On "Trigona," chimes seem to herald a message from space, but instead accompany a sad but spirited song of loss, Stassinopoulou's bereft vocal trading lines with a scratchy fiddle.
Echotropia is an exciting and encouraging example of the potential of the imaginative and intelligent collaboration of traditional sensibility, great talent, and modern recording technology. - Jim Foley
Recordings by Kristi Stassinopoulou and other Greek artists are available from cdRoots
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