VOUKOLIKA TRAGOUDIA

VOUKOLIKA TRAGOUDIA (The Shepherd's Songs) is a collection of tracks that tries to imitate in fragments of extreme sound the wild and often primitive life on the mountains and plains of Creta. Growing up on this kind of environment it can surely be a catalyst for experimentation.

The main characters of these sound ''postcards'' are firstly the animals (goats or sheep usually) while they carry on their necks pieces of iron in the form of bells, ungulae, bones & skin, when climbing on the hard rocks or descending a steep mountaintop in the storm & secondly the shepherd himself - a father and religious figure that screams and signals in a nonsensical, primitive language - who is trying to gather them in safety and protect them from the arbitrary and the hostility of nature. The shepherd is at the same time tender and harsh on their skin and bones.

The sound fragments here are contradicting and monotonous, as a shepherd's life can be: the shepherd must protect and care for the animals, but the animals will be slaughtered eventually to become his nourishment & survival.

The intention here is translationary, using aspects of sound expressionism: each track (or sound postcard) wants to highlight a certain ''episode'' of a shepherd's life beside his herd, and this is happening always in a bold or emotional way through the synths, irrational vocals, Cretan traditional instruments, found objects & horns that are used here.

ANARMEGO is the animal that it had not been milked yet, LAGIA is a very rare female sheep with grey skin, KOURA is the festive act of cutting the animal's hair for summer period, STERFA is the sterile female animal, SKARISMA is when the herd is going out at night, KROUTA is a term for animals with short horns.

The instruments used here have a wide palette: Modular synths, Tunisian horn Mizuad, Cretan lyra played unorthodoxly, vocoders, snare drums, distorted lutes, mandolins, mallets and even iron bells from sheep and other shepherd's objects gathered through the years, amplified & mixed on tape.

The result is at the same time mystagogic & ritualistic but also harsh, unforgiving & guttural as life on these ancient island mountains can be