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Can you tell us a little about your very
first impressions of George Xylouris?
Was it a warm opening or did you not
yet have mutual friends?
We met through mutual friends in
Melbourne in the late ‘80s or early
‘90s. George couldn’t speak a word
of English, nor me Greek, but the
thing I remember is it was very warm
nonetheless. I still can’t speak Greek
but George is super articulate in English
now. Soon after I met him I went to see
him play in Lonsdale Street, and then
with his band Xylouris Ensemble. I think
I remember him coming to see Venom P.
Stinger at The Tote.
When Dirty Three started we invited
him to play with us, at first at Vergonas
on Brunswick Street – the first of a
number of performances with Dirty
Three over the years.
The album has a distinctive Greek feel
to it but it doesn’t sound like you’ve
amended your kit set-up in any way,
hardware-wise. Did you deliberately
learn anything about the way
traditional Greek music uses accents
or song structure, or were you playing
by feel?
I haven’t amended the classic drum kit
in any way. When I played with George,
accompanying his father Psarandonis
at the Mount Buller ATP, I amended the
kit a lot to make the sound drier, and I
think it worked well for that situation but
I made a conscious decision to keep the
kit as I know it for Xylouris White.
I listened to Cretan music for 20
years before Xylouris White started,
without analysing it, but that put a lot
of the structures, accents and melodies
in me. I do deliberately, and no doubt
unconsciously, learn about the accents
and structures of traditional Crete music.
I am playing by feel, yes.
In
Hey, Musicians
you could be
playing a snare with the rattle off
or maybe it is a different drum
altogether... did you play the standard
kit items in uncommon ways, or am I
just hearing them differently?
Yeah, I use the snare off a lot in
Xylouris White.
Hey, Musicians
has a
lot of snare with the rattles (AKA snare)
off. This recording is of the first time we
played this song in a studio in Iceland.
There’s a lot you can do within the
structure of the regular drum kit. I enjoy
the formal boundaries of the kit. Snare
off fits more in the traditional palette of
sound, but snare on is powerful; it’s a
good choice to have.
Have you played
Hey, Musicians
live
yet? I’d imagine it is very demanding!
We have been playing it since the
album came out. The first few times felt
great, and then it lost its shape and we
dropped it for a few shows. Recently
we found a way to do it again. On the
record is an overdub that George plays
on the lyra that adds a lot to it at a
particular moment; we found an exciting
way to do something there that serves a
similar purpose.
Is George reciting the actual
Erotokritos
in the track of the same
name? Can you tell us its story?
Erotokritos
is an epic poem form the
14th century written in Crete. It has
10,000 rhyming couplets. On
Black
Peak
we cover 10 couplets – we do the
beginning scene. It says (to paraphrase):
The circle of the times, they are going
up and down and as they change and
never be stable and they always go to
the bad and the good, and the weapons
fire and the love and the friendship, all
this puts me in the situation today to
remember and say all this, what they
brought, listen to me then, and keep
this words to tell to the others. I’m
going to tell you a story that happened
in Athens, there where was the river of
knowledge, there a love happened, and
that love wrote it in the heart and never
diminished.
“I listened to Cretan music
for 20 years before Xylouris
White started... that put a lot
of the structures, accents
and melodies in me”
(
Black Peak
is out now via Caroline)