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Tasos Stamou

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Tasos Stamou, “Monoliths” (Moving Furniture, 2021)

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Discovering this London-based composer’s adventurously psychedelic collages of traditional Greek music was one of 2021’s great musical pleasures for me, so I was very eager to hear this ambitious double album follow up to Antiqua Graecia. As expected, it is a characteristically wonderful and unusual release, but it is also marks a detour away from Stamou’s impressive run of Greek-themed albums. The theme of the aptly titled Monoliths is instead Stamou’s attempt to “collide” the two sides of his working methods: live performances and studio work. By my estimation, it was a very successful collision, but it was mostly a behind-the-scenes one, as I would be hard pressed to determine where one approach starts and another begins. 

As a result, the more immediate and striking theme of the album for me as a listener is that each piece feels like an extended experiment in crafting an immersive, complexly layered sound world from just a single recognizable instrument. At least, that is how Monoliths unfolds for its first half, as the bottom drops out of the album’s hallucinatory feast of bells, organs, and steel drums to reveal a considerably more processed, abstract, and psychotropic second hour of drone-damaged mindfuckery. That approach admittedly makes Monoliths a bit less accessible than some of Stamou’s more conventionally melodic work, but serious heads looking for a deep and sustained dive into otherworldly psych meditations will likely love this immersive tour de force.

The opening “Bells Drone” sounds deceptively like it could be layered field recordings of wind chimes at first, as bells of different sizes amiably jangle and clang for couple minutes before any real evidence of Stamou’s hand starts to emerge. Soon, however, some tones start to linger supernaturally and the mood darkens into uneasy shadows of dissonance. It is quite a wonderfully hallucinatory and entrancing piece, evoking an ancient ritual in a cavernous subterranean temple revealed behind a dissolving reality. 

While it is the shortest piece on the album at a mere 13 minutes, it is nevertheless a solid representation of the album’s first half: a simple and minimal theme gradually transforms into a vividly multi-dimensional dream world. On “Chord Organ #2,” for example, an organ drone slowly evolves into a Catherine Christer Hennix-esque nightmare of dark harmonies before unexpectedly resolving on a note of sun-dappled transcendence. “Steel Drum Drone,” on the other hand, steadily becomes something akin to a lovesick tropical Steve Reich. That one is another favorite, as I am quite impressed with how Tasos weaves together patterns of plinking and bleary steel drum melodies into a thing of woozy multi-layered beauty.

In fact, I love every single one of the opening three pieces, but they turn out to be a mere prelude to two pieces in which Tamou goes totally bananas. In the first, “Supernormal,” Stamou mingles a chirping electronic drone with squealing and sliding strings en route to an harrowing mindfuck that calls to mind a goddamn demon summoning (the final stretch of oscillating synth thrum is especially choice). The closing “Synapse” improbably features some even more gnarly sounds, passing though such colorful stages like “menacingly gelatinous bass throb,” “an undead gamelan ensemble wanders the deserted streets in search of their next victim,” and “a simmering and intense prepared piano performance over quasi-industrial rhythmic loops.” This is an absolute feast of an album: five great longform pieces in a row spanning nearly two hours. Most days, I admittedly prefer the more meditative/ritualistic first half to the more nightmarish second half, but Stamou was swinging for the fences with every single piece on this album and the result is a monolithically stellar release.

Samples can be found here.

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Tasos Stamou, “Antiqua Graecia” (Ikuisuus, 2021)

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This London-based electroacoustic composer/instrument builder/DIY electronics enthusiast has been engaged in projects and activities for more than a decade now, but this latest album is the first time his singular vision crossed my path. Antiqua Graecia is the final release of a Greek-themed trilogy that began with 2018’s Musique Con Crète, though there is also a fourth related work that surfaced on Chocolate Monk last year (Greek Drama). 

The series is the fruit of an extended creative research project that initially began with a residency, but blossomed into repeat summer visits to Crete to hunt for traditional music albums, perform with local musicians, and make field recordings. While I have not fully absorbed the entire series yet, Antique Graecia feels like a significant creative leap forward from previous installments, as Tamou’s earlier Greek forays resemble a Sublime Frequencies album dissolved into a fever dream: there was a clear reverence for the source material, yet Tamou’s sound collages imbued traditional music with a murky, spectral character. 

With Antiqua Graecia, Tamou decided to go for broke, gleefully chopping and layering folk songs in a wonderfully psychotropic fantasia. I find all of the strains of Tamou’s Greek series to be compelling, but this album is the one that most beautifully transcends tradition to feel like something wonderful and new.

This is an album of top-tier psychedelic mindfuckery from start to finish, which makes it very hard to describe with any concise generalizations, but a rough summary like “a supernatural fun house at the center of a Greek street fair” is probably a solid starting point. There is a distinct arc, however, as the first few drone-based pieces steadily deepen my immersion in Tamou’s otherworldly fantasia to prime me for the wilder plunges to come. 

For example, “Madoura” sounds like a nightmarishly insectoid cacophony of buzzing bagpipe-like drones, while the following “Poor Mum” sounds like mid-90s Dead Can Dance made a lysergic soundscape from Nonesuch Explorer classics. We then pass through something akin to a flickering and phantasmagoric Scottish parade in a haunted jungle (“Oil Wrestling”), a phantom rembetiko song with an electronic doppelganger (“Taki’s Sorrow”), and a Lisa Gerrard-sung DCD classic consumed by a sickly, dissonant delirium of smeared chimes (“A Woman’s Moan”). 

All are a delight, but the album fully catches fire with the sixth piece, “Just Pagan.” It begins as a psychotropic throb of heavy electronic drones and surreal, jumbled, and haunting layers of melody and field recordings, but gradually transforms into a heartsick folk dance. The following “Epitaph” is yet another highlight, as the gong of a church bell leaves a ringing, bleary haze of high frequencies that morphs into a squirming, menacing electronic buzz mingled with a chanting street procession. 

The final piece brings that trend of escalating otherworldliness to its curious crescendo, as it feels like a cathedral is invaded by a churning, honking, and squawking cacophony (and a cow) before everything dissolves into a disarmingly sweet and calm rustic oasis. Tamou truly outdid himself with this tour de force, as all of these eight songs seamlessly blur sacred and traditional sounds with vivid, multilayered psychedelia in impressively singular fashion.

Samples can be found here.