World music

Live crossover session between Katerina Fotinaki and Gaspar Claus

Audio 48:30

Katerina Fotinaki, Gaspar Claus and Basile3 at RFI.

© RFI/Laurence Aloir

By: Laurence Aloir

9 mins

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Katerina Fotinaki

presents her new album

Mixology 

(Label: Klarthe Records)

After her long collaboration with

 who died in 2021

after her personal album

Katerina Fotinaki now reveals a new facet of her musical and poetic universe. 

 : as if she were preparing a cocktail, whose flavor derives from the mixture of its components, Katerina Fotinaki goes beyond the perimeter of Greek poetic song, to bring together with great freedom, with power and elegance, unusual ingredients through languages, styles and eras.

Whether original compositions or unexpected revivals and metamorphoses, the common thread remains the force of the poetic verb, whether French, English or Greek.

To guarantee the unity of her compositions, in addition to the voices, she also performs all (or almost all) of the instruments.

Katerina Fotinaki.

© Klarthe Rd

Mixology,

why

“

'what is the genre of your music?'

'yes, but'.

However, I understand this question well, and the need from which it arises.

For that, I decided to invite the listeners of my music to consider it in the same way that they and they approach a cocktail: a margarita is a margarita, we do not need to know if it is composed of tequila or brandy, lemon or lime.

A mojito is a mojito, no one orders a rum with crushed ice, cane sugar, lime, peppermint and soda water.

So for parts of this disc.

Some come from a mixture of different ingredients that come from a deep need for expression: an expression that only these ingredients could serve.

Other pieces are one piece, like a dry whisky.

Others are a whole story with a beginning, a middle and an end, with many distinct ingredients and stylistic breaks, such as a B52 in three clearly visible layers, in a true taste narrative.

The entire disc, with its many faces, aims to convey a few sensations, regardless of language, style, instrumentation, the era from which certain ingredients date: to awaken memories and mobilize the 'imagination.

Like a new cocktail that we are made to taste without revealing to us in advance what is inside.

In order to preserve the unity of the record, I took up the challenge of recording it alone, notably playing all the instruments, with the exception of a few pieces, enriched by the participation of

and

. 

»

See the video of Katerina Fotinaki

Gaspar Claus.

© Sylvain Gripoix

Then, we receive Gaspar Claus

 for the release of

Tancade

 (at Infiné)

The cello, an instrument from another age just good for squealing under the old-fashioned chandeliers of a bourgeois music room?

This kind of (sad) cliché does not resist a second face to Gaspar Claus.

Carrying his favorite instrument, so often intertwined, in very different universes – contemporary jazz, electro, film soundtrack, postclassical, neo-flamenco, pop, ambient, song from here or music from elsewhere – this resolutely adventurous musician gives it a dazzling modernity and reveals its incredible expressive richness.

Since he gravitated through the planet of sounds, with total availability of ear and mind, he has already distinguished himself alongside

or even

.

No border stops it, no convention slows it down.

Recently, he founded with violinists

and

, the ultra-sensitive string trio VACΛRME, as well as

a live piece for an ensemble of six cellists playing in a circle on the stage.

Inspired

a very promising creation is also being developed with Matthieu Prual and Denis Lavant.

Still finding time and energy to manage

 his label with an unlimited horizon, Gaspar Claus is now taking an important symbolic step by releasing his first real solo album – excluding the soundtrack of a film.

Entitled

the album appears on InFiné, a label whose catalog already includes two superb albums –

 (2011) and

 (2016) – recorded by the young man with his father, the great flamenco guitarist Pedro Soler.

It succeeds the EP

released at the beginning of June (also by InFiné), which offers four tracks not appearing on the album.

Begun in 2017, in a small village in the Luberon, the long-term creative process ended in February 2021 in the studio of David Chalmin, an excellent sound engineer/producer and long-time musical partner.

The sound maestro

(Thom Yorke, Johan Johansson), won over by the album, did the mastering in his Berlin studio.

Throughout, Gaspar Claus found in

, boss of InFiné, “ 

 ”.

Entirely (or almost) instrumental,

 contains a total of eleven tracks.

Most come from sessions carried out between 2017 and 2021. Resulting from a slow and meticulous, sometimes painful elaboration, the whole – of high intensity – nevertheless flows with remarkable fluidity.

Rubbed with a bow, pinched, grazed, bumped, caressed, jostled, transfigured with the help, sometimes, of effects pedals, the cello is the only musical instrument used in the album, but it is used so inventive and suggestive way that one rather has the impression of hearing a myriad of string instruments surge, each one endowed with rich harmonic, rhythmic or melodic potentialities.

" 

 " says Gaspar Claus.

Gaspar Claus, Tancade.

© InFiné

From the inaugural track

enveloped in a powerful auroral radiance, we are carried – very far – out of everyday life by music that is both majestic and adventurous, stormy and radiant, dreamy and rigorous.

Destroying any attempt at categorization, it evokes chamber music suspended in the fourth dimension, the soundtrack of an inner adventure film or even the strange folk of an unknown people.

Fiery and eventful, irrigated by an unfathomable melancholy, the crossing ends with

All in subtle tremors and slips, this piece takes off little by little and brings the light of a new dawn.

Also stand out are

ample melody whose stunning waves flood the heart with deep emotion,

a jumping and scintillating composition which floats irresistibly in the lead, or again

a sinuous twilight ballad with such light gravity.

Offering an enchanted escape from the ordinary harshness of reality,

 sports a superb photo of the beach on its sleeve which gives it its title – a difficult to access, almost wild beach to which Gaspar Claus is extremely attached.

In a (very beautiful) text accompanying the album and echoing the cover, he evokes an island inhabited by a small hedonistic community.

Of the beings who form this community, he writes in particular: 

 ”.

Let's follow their example and let's not try to give too much meaning to the music springing from 

Let's rather immerse ourselves in it, let us simply go through it: the delight will only be greater.

Tires Interpreted at the big studio

–

 Live RFI Katerina Fotinaki

–

A Live

–

(Punk Meeting Rebetiko), from the album Mixology by Katerina Fotinaki, from a title by Violent Femmes

–

Live RFI Gaspar Claus

–

Live RFI Katerina Fotinaki

–

 Live RFI where Gaspar Claus and Katerina Fotinaki pay tribute to Angélique Ionatos, Greek artist who died on July 7, 2021, with this title composed by Katerina for Angélique, with her (spoken) voiceover in the intro.

Gaspar and Katerina come out of the big RFI studio.

© RFI/Laurence Aloir

Musicians

Katerina Fotinaki

, vocal guitar

Gaspar Claus

, cello

Basil3

, machines

Sound

Angelique Ionatos and Katerina Fotinaki.

© Michel Cavalca / Julie Carretier

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