Amsterdam-based Cyprorite composer and electronics player Yannis Kyriakides and British guitarist Andy Moor, known from The Ex band, have been collaborating for almost two decades now. In 2017 Kyriakides and Moor were invited to participate in French multimedia artist Xavier Veilhan’s ‘Studio Venezia’ at the French pavilion for the 57th Venice Art Biennale. The pavilion was a space where a series of musicians were in residence throughout the six-month duration of the Biennale, recording and performing there in an open environment.
Kyriakides and Moor had access to a variety of instruments and machines including vintage Moog, Buchla, and Vermona synthesizers which were used for some of the recordings. The unusual situation involved work in a studio, experimenting, trying out ideas while at the same time being a part of an ongoing art installation. Kyriakides and Moor did not know whether they should play for the crowds who were constantly passing through the pavilion or just ignore them, and this confusing yet intense situation brought out a different way of playing as if they were «stranded in the middle of a busy street playing to unremitting traffic of ghosts». They recorded nine hours of material, edited into the 45 minutes of «Pavilion», the fifth album of this duo.
The six distinct improvised pieces offer loose and evocative, cinematic textures, where many strange ghosts and even weirder creatures and entities move in and out. These pieces charge the fluid atmosphere of the pavilion and color it with the reserved yet thorny and very suggestive guitar work of Moor and the enigmatic palette of sounds of Kyriakides, best captured on the most engaging piece here, «Camera». The following pieces «Dedalo» and «Stropha» draw elements from the rich legacy of the Greek rebetika music, explored in previous albums of Kyriakides and Moor who search now for new tonalities and rhythmic patterns within this great, evolving tradition. The tense «Concha» sounds as corresponding with the geometrical shapes of the pavilion and the steady commotion within it. «Diluvio» and «Fossa» are more free-formed textures and their abstract, free-improvised spirit brings to mind Moor’s work with other sonic explores as sax player John Butcher or another synth wizard Thomas Lehn.
Inventive, mysterious, and provocative.
Eyal Hareuveni
Andy Moor (el.g), Yannis Kyriakides (comp, synth)
