BKXS

This is one of the more adventurous albums I’ve come across recently, and one which is based on arguably one of the most adventurous dramas to come out of Classical Greece, The Bacchae by Euripides. The play is literally Dionysian and the music has some of that wildness to its character. While Angelopoulos – on drums and electronics – and Siotas – on violin – claim that the tracks derive from Greek folk traditions, this is hard to hear (much of the influence seems to lie in the rhythms, try ‘Agavi’ or ‘Choro’). A lot of it is hard driven and the drums are very much to the fore. This is not an album you are going to be relaxing to; but then this is in line with the nature of the drama it describes. The match between the play/characters and the track titles (e.g. ‘Tiresias’) is not entirely clear and given the rather uniform nature of the tracks, the distinction between them is lost. Mention should, however, be made of the beautiful narration (in modern Greek) on some tracks by Achilleas Kyriakidis, Matina Pergioudaki and Ektoras Liatsos, I could listen to their voices all day.