Andy Moor & Yannis Kyriakides

Hailing from opposite ends of the experimental music spectrum Andy Moor and Yannis Kyriakides have been making music together for over 15 years now. Their musical connection began due to a mutual passion and enthusiasm for rebetika music, 1920s and 30s underground music from Greece that originated from Greek refugees who were forced to leave their home in Izmir,Turkey and return to their homeland in the part of the Athens-Piraeus. The working method for this project involves making a selection of the original rembetika songs and Yannis reworking them using a combination of sampling, synthesisers and creating a template or musical background for each piece that they then improvise over in real time with guitar, live sampling and more recently, analogue synthesiser and processing. There is no attempt to create an authentic rebetika sound but more to celebrate their love of this music by deconstructing the songs and rebuild in their own particular way. This is one of several projects Yannis and Andy are working on. They also perform a piece called Folia an epic reworking of the famous tune from the 16th and 17th centuries called "La Folia". Fusing influences from this and South American folk music, Folia is a more composed piece but also incorporates improvisation and has been used on several occasion to accompany a dance performance by Marcela Giesche and the soundtrack to films directed by both Bani Khoshnoudi and Antoine Boutet. The combination of Yannis' remarkable compositional skills and Andy's improvisational work with guitar, results in a loose but well structured musical landscape that constantly shifts and surprises the musicians playing as much as the audience. Label: http://unsounds.com Yannis Kyriakides: http://www.kyriakides.com The Ex (Andy Moor): http://www.theex.nl