Athos: Echoes from the Holy Mountain

FLEE Project are known for their work in presenting traditional musics raw, and then calling on contemporary musicians to recontextualise and reset them. Here they turn their attention to Mount Athos, a central part of the Orthodox imagination and home to a hive of monks from many Orthodox traditions. While the first disc of this double LP release features contemporary musicians’ interpretations, the second contains performances of various unembellished chants by a chorus or individual above a drone; the centuries have honed these melodies, like the fervent ‘Doxologia Chourmouzioy, Mode Varys’, into perfect balance. They are works of mysticism, a conscious effort to leave the world and thus save it by prayer. The other half of Athos: Echoes from the Holy Mountain draws on a clutch of different ensembles to provide takes inspired by and often using the archive recordings, mostly of an ambient electronica persuasion, with varying success, but mostly of interest. A splendidly detailed and opinionated book on the historical and aesthetic meanings of the Holy Mountain and its inhabitants accompanies the sounds.