About this item

Like Odysseus returning to Ithaca from the Trojan War, it took Ahetas and Dubulah ten years to record and complete this extraordinary album. 'Xaos' is post-Troika Hellenic Trance Music, a hybrid of Greek folk, post-traditional and classical music instruments, from the last 5,000 years, with modern computers and keyboards - using microtonal intervals within the octave in order to accurately re-construct ancient scales, which are utilized as both melody and tone clusters; to combine ancient and modern ideas via the sonic manipulation made possible by present day technology. Ahetas' and Dubulah's aim was to create a new and contemporary sounding work to challenge the musical cliches that many people associate with Greek popular culture, and to make more widely known the vast range of styles, sounds and sentiments to be found there. Greece, after all, is a part of Europe (the name Europe is even derived from a Greek word - ) , yet most Greek music outside a narrow and predictable commercial range is largely unknown to the European audiences, let alone music fans elsewhere in the world. This is an album that shows a very different side of Greece to that normally heard - a musical culture and history so often represented as bouzoukis, plate smashing and Benny Hill playing Nana Mouskouri under an orange tree. Or Laika, recycled Rembetiko and Greco-Techno. The album features microtonally tuned electronic keyboards and sounds from Ahetas and detuned bottleneck dobro, monochord guitars and programming from Dubulah - and the rest of the instrumental line-up is equally brave and ambitious, with some of the best new and established Greek musicians placing their unique talents in an unusual and modern sonic and musical context, both nodding to the future whilst acknowledging a rich and diverse musical past..