Thursday, September 22, 2011

Inner Ear Releases INN038 - INN040 - INN041


Evripidis And His Tragedies



01 Teeth
02 The Bluest Summer
03 Before it's Over
04 My Little Sister
05 I Always Cry At Weddings
06 Just A Kleenex
07 Waves To Ride
08 Lights Out
09 LS Make the World Go Round
10 A Healthy Dose Of Pain
11 You'll Have To Learn
12 Uncle Drives Again
13 Este Verano (CD Bonus Track)
€19
INN038L


Evripidis and his Tragedies’ second album is entitled “A Healthy Dose Of Pain” and one could say it’s a passionate kiss between bohemian Barcelona and classical Athens. The title lent from a Belle & Sebastian lyric is ideal for the 12 small autobiographical “tragedies”, composed and written by Evripidis Sabatis. Despite the generous doses of humor in his lyrics and the happy notes that reveal influences from the 60s pop, each of the tracks contains its own little drama. Along with Evripidis and the 7 Spaniards, already known as Evripidis and his Tragedies, this album features many more talented and interesting musicians from Spain (and other countries). Together they give a taste of polyphonic Barcelona, where the entire album was recorded.
As the needle gently touches the grooves of the first side … the changes brought from life look like teeth that fall out, sometimes to be replaced with new and sometimes to leave a gap between teeth. Summers are carefree and lazy, but with some underlying sadness. Little sisters are victims of torture and cause guilt. Childhood, a treasure lost as soon as hormones invade our lives. Heroes face marriage with sweet anticipation, as happiness seems possible even for a day, but also with skepticism, because deep down they know that nothing lasts forever and that monogamous relationships often fail and get on a ship to escape their old lives, without knowing if they will spend the whole journey drinking at the ship’s decadent disco, or they will descend to an exotic island where a new life is waiting for them. “Ideal” love is a silk handkerchief in the chest pocket, while a one night stand is just a crumpled tissue in the garbage. Passion, a tsunami born in the depths of the ocean, leaves debris but offers brief but memorable moments to those who dare to surf on it. Withering plants on the balcony serve as a substitute for a lost relationship, but also as symbols of the futility of love. Apartments sink in darkness and all sorts of risks lurk in the shadows. Small objects, old tapes, forgotten mobile text messages, even the parent’s hair that turn white…these are all small, healthy doses of pain and favorite dead people return, to get in the car with the living, to make one last ride and to assure that after the end, there is another world, full of celebrations and laughter.
The album “A Healthy Dose Of Pain” is available from Inner Ear, in limited edition vinyl including cd. The cd includes the bonus track “Este Verano (Pensé Que Te Había Perdido Para Siempre)” in Spanish.
Evripidis and his Tragedies are:
Evripidis: vocals, piano, hammond, melotron, melodica, glockenspiel
Abel Puyol: sax, backing vocals
Anie Arjona: backing vocals, percussion, glockenspiel
Cristina de Sola: violin
Jaume Ribell: drums, percussion
Marisol Simó: backing vocals
Marc Ribera: backing vocals, musical saw
Victor Antolin: bass, backing vocals

Your Hand In Mine


01 Foreword
02 Desert Flags
03 Nightly Drums
04 A Boy and the Birds
05 Morning Drums
06 Rest
07 The Tin Can Parade
08 Rosin
09 Afterword
€18
INN040 
€18
INN040L 





Too long this fence door had been shuttered, no voices in or out of it. The wood warped…they saw everything written there. The trees, the watering cans; abandonness, yet a joyful one. How simply, people can leave their stories in this garden, without a single footprint. Local editors had always been ignoring them and most of this material was never published. Ever since, they remained here, within the borders of the fence, and now became “The Garden Novels”.
Time has passed since their first album, “Every Night Dreams”, the original soundtrack for Mikio Naruse’s silent film, which they performed live for the first time on “Independence Days” of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Despite the in between live appearances in Thessaloniki, Athens and Patras, the absence of new recordings was remarkable and the anticipation for their new work more and more intense. Your Hand In Mine (Manos Milonakis, George Papadopoulos) return this autumn with their new album “The Garden Novels”, where through 9 tracks, they undertake a trip into the subconscious, they encounter fictional heroes and listen to their stories.
Once you have experienced the garden, it’s hard to forget. Resident, amateur gardener or just visitor, they all surely have heard at least one story through the silences and sounds of a garden. For the descendants of city blocks the wonders and secrets of the garden, especially when this is located in the heart of the countryside, are even more unusual and sublime, as they reveal a wondrous, unknown universe, while digging up childhood memories of family escapes in the countryside. Other times, this garden can be completely fictional, can change colours and forms in the mind of its creator and may serve as an escape exit, going far beyond the boundaries of the fence. “The Garden Novels” has scents and sounds brought by Your Hand In Mine from their travels in the English and French countryside (it includes several outdoor recordings of natural sounds in the woods and fields), but mostly contains large doses of the village Melissohori of Thessaloniki, where as regular visitors they spend countless hours and days recording and at the same time experiencing all the changes of the garden as the seasons change.
The album title is not metaphorical, the tracks of “The Garden Novels” are accompanied by an equal number of short stories (available in the cd booklet), written as well as the music by the band. Only this time the creative process is reverse from that of the previous album. Instead of a soundtrack “dressing” pre-existing images and words, the music here is the beginning and the words come later to decipher the melodies and sounds and to capture them in pictures. A stroh violin, a trumpet and an analog synth called Persephone have been added to their ever-growing collection of usual and unusual instruments. Also among the instrumental soundscapes, for the first time they produce a song with lyrics (“Nightly Drums”) performed by George Papadopoulos.
The luxurious cloth-bound, special edition cd oozes vintage romanticism, was designed by dB and is influenced by early English printing and old editions of British fairy tales. “The Garden Novels” is out on cd from Inner Ear, and limited edition vinyl (including code for free album download) will follow soon.

Kid Flicks


01 Anhkein
02 The Institute
03 A Pleasant Weekend
04 My Own Song
05 Next Boat
06 Sum Of Light
07 Mount Destro



We got to know him quite recently (through his gigs and the internet) under the name Flight36-Β. While shortly after boarding he abandoned this name and adopted Kid Flicks, which expresses him better, the flight of “Hearts Of Gold”, after a short delay, is ready to take off.
“Hearts Of Gold” was written between 2008-2010 through experimentation, rehearsals, testing, and changes and is entirely created by Kid Flicks: music, lyrics, musical instruments, singing, recording, mixing, artwork. But its audio and artwork are so colorful and so different from track to track that one would think that an entire team has been recruited for its production. There are several reasons for this… Kid Flicks recorded the album, using his MacBook, in the most unlikely places, e.g. in the car in a field outside Preveza, an evening on a beach, on a boat at sea, in a forest near his house in Lefkada. The mixes also: in friends’ houses, cafés, student dormitories in Munich. Kid Flicks’ stimuli and influences from travel, books, paintings, movies and music are endless. In parallel, his involvement with painting and Twombly’s influence in his notetaking have resulted in an original way of creative expression: the structures of his tracks and lyrics are usually found among notes, rough sketches and smudges, which in someone else’s eyes make no sense at all.
“Hearts Of Gold” is an album that definitely should be heard as loud as possible, ideally with headphones and maybe on an island. Available from Inner Ear in limited edition vinyl including cd.

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