Katerina Fotinaki presents their new album Mixology (Label: Klarthe Records)
After his long collaboration with Angelique Ionatos, disappeared in 2021, after his personal album Tzitzikia, Katerina Fotinaki now reveals a new facet of her musical and poetic universe. Mixology : as if she were preparing a cocktail, whose flavor derives from the mixture of its components, Katerina Fotinaki goes beyond the perimeter of Greek poetic song, to bring together with great freedom, with power and elegance, unusual ingredients through languages, styles and eras. Whether original compositions or unexpected revivals and metamorphoses, the common thread remains the force of the poetic verb, whether French, English or Greek. To guarantee the unity of her compositions, in addition to the voices, she also performs all (or almost all) of the instruments.
mixology, why ? By Katerina Fotinaki
“ Since I started making music, I have had difficulty answering this recurring question: ‘what is the genre of your music?’ If I then had to answer it absolutely something, I did it in periphrases, with a lot of asterisks and ‘Yes, but’. As a Greek in France, I was classified in the category of World Music; it could even have caused amusing misunderstandings, since the public at festivals where I was invited often expected to hear bouzouki and sirtaki, while I offered them settings of poems by Odysseus Elytis or of Dionyssios Solomos. When I started to work on poems in other languages, on English poets such as William Blake, American poets like Edna St. Vincent Millay or French poets like Louise Labé, and to be inspired by the music of other periods or styles – medieval, contemporary, blues, jazz, punk – I then understood that it was definitely futile to try to answer the question.
However, I understand this question well, and the need from which it arises. For that, I decided to invite the listeners of my music to consider it in the same way that they and they approach a cocktail: a margarita is a margarita, we do not need to know if it is composed of tequila or brandy, lemon or lime. A mojito is a mojito, no one orders a rum with crushed ice, cane sugar, lime, peppermint and soda water.
So for parts of this disc. Some come from a mixture of different ingredients that come from a deep need for expression: an expression that only these ingredients could serve. Other pieces are one piece, like a dry whisky. Others are a whole story with a beginning, a middle and an end, with many distinct ingredients and stylistic breaks, such as a B52 in three clearly visible layers, in a true taste narrative. The entire disc, with its many faces, aims to convey a few sensations, regardless of language, style, instrumentation, the era from which certain ingredients date: to awaken memories and mobilize the ‘imagination.
Like a new cocktail that we are made to taste without revealing to us in advance what is inside. In order to preserve the unity of the disc, I took up the challenge of recording it alone, notably playing all the instruments, with the exception of a few pieces, enriched by the participation of Evi Filippou and of Gaspar Claus. »
See the video of Katerina Fotinaki Hiding in this asylum
Then we receive Gaspar Claus for the release of Tancade (at Infiné)
The cello, an instrument from another age just good for squealing under the old-fashioned chandeliers of a bourgeois music room? This kind of (sad) cliché does not resist a second face to Gaspar Claus. Carrying his favorite instrument, so often intertwined, in very different universes – contemporary jazz, electro, film soundtrack, postclassical, neo-flamenco, pop, ambient, song from here or music from elsewhere – this resolutely adventurous musician gives it a dazzling modernity and reveals its incredible expressive richness. Since he gravitated through the planet of sounds, with a total availability of ear and mind, he has already distinguished himself alongside Rone, Jim O’Rourke, Barbara Carlotti, Bryce Dessner, Arandel, Matt Elliott, Keiji Haino, Peter von Poehl or Serge Teyssot-Gay. No border stops it, no convention slows it down. Recently, he founded with the violinists Carla Pallone and Christine Lassortthe trio of ultra-sensitive VACΛRME strings, as well as Cellos, live piece for an ensemble of six cellists playing in a circle on the stage. Inspired by Nijinsky’s Diary, a very promising creation is also under development with Matthieu Prual and Denis Lavant.
Still finding time and energy to manage Records of the permanent festival, his label with an unlimited horizon, Gaspar Claus is now taking an important symbolic step by releasing his first real solo album – excluding the soundtrack of a film. Entitled Tancade, the album appears on InFiné, a label in whose catalog there are already two superb albums – Barland (2011) and Al Viento (2016) – recorded by the young man with his father, the great flamenco guitarist Pedro Soler. It succeeds the EP Adrienne, released at the beginning of June (also by InFiné), which offers four tracks not appearing on the album. Begun in 2017, in a small village in the Luberon, the long-term creative process ended in February 2021 in the studio of David Chalmin, an excellent sound engineer/producer and long-time musical partner. The Sound Master Francesco Donadello (Thom Yorke, Johan Johansson), won over by the album, did the mastering in his Berlin studio.
Throughout, Gaspar Claus found in Alexandre Cazacboss of InFiné, “ an essential ally, in terms of artistic direction as well as moral support “. Entirely (or almost) instrumental, Tancade contains a total of eleven tracks. Most come from sessions carried out between 2017 and 2021. Resulting from a slow and meticulous, sometimes painful elaboration, the whole – of high intensity – nevertheless flows with remarkable fluidity. Rubbed with a bow, pinched, grazed, bumped, caressed, jostled, transfigured with the help, sometimes, of effects pedals, the cello is the only musical instrument used in the album, but it is used so inventive and suggestive way that one rather has the impression of hearing a myriad of string instruments surge, each one endowed with rich harmonic, rhythmic or melodic potentialities. ” I like the idea that an album brings a moment of pause inside a rather oppressive present at the moment says Gaspar Claus.
From the opening track An island, enveloped in a powerful auroral radiance, we are taken – very far – out of everyday life by music that is both majestic and adventurous, stormy and radiant, dreamy and rigorous. Destroying any attempt at categorization, it evokes chamber music suspended in the fourth dimension, the soundtrack of an inner adventure film or even the strange folk of an unknown people. Burning and eventful, irrigated by an unfathomable melancholy, the crossing ends with Sea of love mysteries. All in subtle tremors and slips, this piece takes off little by little and brings the light of a new dawn.
also stand out A crowd, ample melody whose stunning waves flood the heart with deep emotion, 2359, jumpy and sparkling composition that floats irresistibly in the lead, or even At the borders, sinuous twilight ballad with such light gravity. Offering an enchanted escape from the ordinary harshness of reality, Tancade features a superb photo of the beach on its sleeve, which gives it its title – a beach that is difficult to access, almost wild, to which Gaspar Claus is extremely attached. In a (very beautiful) text accompanying the album and echoing the cover, he evokes an island inhabited by a small hedonistic community. Of the beings who form this community, he writes in particular: They didn’t make sense of anything. They bathe in their world, they are crossed by their world “. Let’s follow their example and let’s not try to give too much meaning to the music emanating from Tancade. Let us rather immerse ourselves in it, simply let ourselves be crossed by it: the delight will only be greater.
Tires Interpreted at the big studio
– Death by water / Children in the fields Live RFI Katerina Fotinaki
– A crowd Live RFI Gaspar Claus see the video
– Kiss Off (Punk Meeting Rebetiko), from the album Mixology by Katerina Fotinaki, from a title by Violent Femmes see the video
– MDMA Sea of amorous Mysteries, Live RFI Gaspar Claus
– Europe Live RFI Katerina Fotinaki
– Where are you going little ship with this weather Live RFI where Gaspar Claus and Katerina Fotinaki pay tribute to Angélique Ionatos, Greek artist who died on July 7, 2021, with this title composed by Katerina for Angélique, with her (spoken) voiceover in the intro.
Musicians
Katerina Fotinakiguitar voice
Gaspar Clauscello
Basil3machinery
His : Benoit Letirant, Mathias Taylor