“Electrozali” is the third opus from the Greek experimental Biomass project. The tracks move in between pure experimentalism and soundscape style. The global atmosphere is frozen, which might be contradictory when realizing that a lot of sounds have been sampled from the Cretan lyra. I personally had a warmer consonance from this instrument in mind, but we all know studio production is able to transform all kind of sounds into something new. Another characteristic from this opus is the rhythmic sections. It injects a kind of boost to the tracks although we’re not moving into danceable or other technoid fields. The title track is a little jewel in minimalism. The rhythmic reminds me of the speed of Suicide (but mixed in the background) while the Cretan lyra here creates a smoother feeling. Extremes are sometimes touching each other to create a piece of magic. Another rather similar track is “Near End”. It’s more repetitive, but the sequences are quite enjoyable. “Electrozali” is definitely an album that will please a very restricted number of music lovers, but I’m sure those experimental lovers will fully enjoy it!

On his third Biomass full-length, Athens-based Panos Kyveleas (in all likelihood the only electronic producer who can lay claim to being both a dystopian soundscapist and pharmacist) orients his sample-based material around the exotic scrape and saw of the Cretan Lyra, a three-stringed bowed instrument that’s central to the traditional music of Crete and other islands in Greece. In a clicks’n’cuts style that’s distinguished by a Middle Eastern and Arabian flavour (an approach that calls to mind Random Inc.’s Tales of the New Jerusalem), the forty-minute album features seven sub-bass-heavy tracks that fluctuate between beat-based workouts and heavily-textured moodscapes.

The opener “You Must Log In To Do That” begins as an exercise in electrical dronescaping before morphing into a bass-prodded exercise slathered in sheets of metallic digitalia. Coupling the multi-layered scrape of the Cretan Lyra and a tribal-funk beat pattern, “Altamura” exudes a heavily narcoticized vibe as it rolls stealthily towards the center of an Arabian marketplace. The heavily textured but overly repetitive moodscape “Esilio 99” is countered by the b rightly swinging title track whose dance rhythms lift its spirits to semi-feverish proportions without ever quite crossing over into Dionysian abandon. The slow-moving “Credit” anchors the string sawings with a throbbing tribal pulse, while fierce winds and hammer blows punctuate the churn of factory machinery in the gloomy outro “Overlution.”

Electrozali is, in its aromatic fashion, contagious and is bolstered by the exotic character of its sound sources (the track “Hantiperas,” as performed by the Greek composer and Cretan Lyra player Psarantonis, and The Gaza Strip, are among those listed), a little more dubstep in its dub would make its material feel more current and less retrograde in its focus on the clicks’n’cuts style associated with the three volumes Mille Plateaux issued between 2000 and 2002.

For his third album, which seems throughout a continuation of his click ‘n dub style, the method of operation changed a little bit. Here he seems to be working with samples of traditional instruments such as the Cretan lyra as well as music from the Middle East area. With those basic ingredients he crafts together seven pieces of music that are pretty nice. Nicely bouncing rhythms, which aren’t the exact 4/4 rhythm pieces people dance too, but in a somewhat slower, dub ‘n click style. The ethnic samples form a nice counterpart and may remind the listener at times of good ol’ Muslimgauze. Biomass plays some nice catchy music and keeps his pieces concise and to the point. The samples work in a great way and add a nice musical edge to the pieces, moving away from being strictly sterile dance music. Warm, glitch like and just very relaxing, pleasant music.

Biomass is the experimental music project of Italian artist Panos Kyveleas. Since 2007 he resides in Athens, Greece.

Electrozali is his third full-length release, this time on the experimental and avant-garde label Low Impedance Recordings. The album consists of sounds he’s known for, groovy tunes combined with jazzy elements, tribal percussion and soundscapes. The whole album also has a somewhat clicks ‘n cuts approach, and sometimes even has the feel of a Squaremeter album. The album isn’t that long, 7 tracks clocking at around 40 minutes of playtime, it is relatively diverse, changing from more rhythmic tracks to dark soundscapes. I very much like the last track, ‘Overlution’, which is a fine dark evolving soundscape with lots of deep drones.

Quite a nice release from this artist I haven’t heard anything of before this album. Definitely interesting for people who like dark soundscapes combined with some tribal grooves.

Panos Kyveleas aurait pu devenir un DJ tout à fait honorable si, en 2003, il n’avait pas pris le parti de s’orienter vers des musiques plus minimalistes et expérimentales. Le Grec s’est tourné vers un public plus exigeant, peut-être moins ouvert aux escapades technoïdes mais plus alertes en ce qui concerne le côté plus cérébral de la musique électronique. Son idée principale a été de reconstruire les formes blues et jazz dans des ambiances que l’on pourrait qualifier de post-industrielles mais auxquelles on intègre une architecture sonore composée de basses lourdes, des nappes électroniques et des éléments tribaux et orientaux. Electrozali, qui est son troisième album, présente ainsi tous ces éléments de manière organisée, pensée jusqu’à la moindre note mais sans donner l’impression soit trop stéréotypé et prévisible. Avec des morceaux comme Altamura on pense avoir affaire avec un héritier de Muslimgauze mais le champ d’exploration de Kyveleas ne s’arrête pas aux marottes habituelles du britannique décédé. En effet, là où Muslimgauze répétait inlassablement les mêmes procédés, Biomass se veut plus varié et moins emprisonné dans des sphères musicales identiques. Tout en cherchant une certaine cohérence, notre homme élabore ses morceaux de manière à ne jamais lasser son auditeur et lui donner une impression de renouvellement. Electrozali remplit donc parfaitement son rôle et Kyveleas est parvenu à produire un album plein et entier qui ne déçoit à aucun moment. Disque d’une parfaite maitrise il se révèle être tout à fait passionnant et débarrassé de toutes les impuretés sonores que le style post-industriel peut habituellement véhiculer. Peut-être est-ce là sa formation de pharmacien qui ressort permettant, peut-être inconsciemment, une sélection drastique des sons et une organisation de sa musique qui a plus attrait à la posologie plutôt qu’à une totale anarchie. Même quand il tente d’approcher les profondeurs, comme sur Overlution, il prend bien soin de ne pas aller trop loin dans l’obscur et l’inconnu. Cependant ce disque fait largement son effet et il présente un Kyveleas inventif, surement plein de ressources et offrant des possibilités futures que l’on a hâte d’entendre. Clairement, Biomass se pose comme l’un des espoirs des années à venir. Electrozali en est la preuve vivante.

”Electrozali“ is the third album of the multitalented artist Biomass from Greece. This time his music will be released on the innovative Lowimpedance label based in Patras Greece – a label that is known for its groundbreaking releases in experimental electronica. On his third album Biomass changed his sound by sampling choirs and traditional instruments. By reediting these samples Biomass merges the warmth of these classic instruments together with his cool minimalistic click’n cut sounds. This mixture of obvious opposed musical characters creates a never heard before sound. You can call this sound experimental, but strangely this music disperses also a captivating nearly catchy feeling. And these tracks invite to dance to. Great! Tracks like the opener “You must log in to do that” or the wonderful “Esilio 99” are my favourite ones. The bridging between the cool minimalistic electronica and these absolute stunning samples is a high-wire act that function perfectly. These mesmerizing loops and this never heard before soundscapes join together to a kind of experimental Techno. So I can approve this wonderful exceptional album 100% to you!

This one has been laying around for a few months now, as it has been released in May actually, but the dark and brooding electronic soundscapes of Biomass didn’t fit the bright light of this summer anyway, so maybe the old saying is true: everything deserves its time when its time is right and now it es late September, the wetter becoming colder, the nights longer and the reasons to stay at home more convincing.

If so, the right time for “electrozali” is a dark and rainy night apt for pondering the ways our civilization has taken from its very first origins in ancient Greek and Syria to what it has become today. And this trail of thought is not only adhered to the sampled lyras and string sections, especially the one at the end of the title track, which give a certain historic feel to this postmodern electronica. But also because the brooding, bass loaded soundscapes of this album call up a movie that is more about the fall of civilizations than the heroic deeds needed to build them up or defend them.

Electronic soundscapes, if produced well, always have that contemplative air. Well, at least in my ears and mind I can differ the good ones from the bad ones by this effect, that the good ones seem to suck me into their world and then my mind starts to wander as if by itself. And it deserves a nice stroll from time to time, while the music sets the ambience. Carefull, though, Ambient is something very different. Biomass likes to add vocal samples that radiate a glow of imminent danger with their radio signal transfer aesthetic and he adds heavy, straight beats to the whirring and buzzing electronic layers. In some moments the intensity of the beats and the soundscapes becomes almost dub-like and a feeling of Jesu starts to fill up the room. Or the moments in which EndName lose all their metal beats and riffs and go for just the sounds.

I wonder whereas the name of the project, Biomass, is meant to hint at a big, massive chunk of biological organism, or if it is a liturgical ritual in favor of some kind of organic god. Both seem to go into the same direction, always along the lines of the connotations fuelled by the music, but the first interpretation seems more dangerous, more horror-/post-apocalypse movie whereas the second would focus stronger on the ritualistic aspects of people gathering for music shows to have their minds set straight (or twisted, whichever way you prefer). Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by the philosophical questions these two interpretations might open up if you take them too far. Better let yourself be overwhelmed by the awash of spectral droning sounds.

Definitely more experimental then electronic, Biomass plays its own movie and aside from overused adjectives and labels like “dark ambient” or “industrial electronic” it is hard to pin down. And never forget, in my book that is a sign of quality and not the other way around. Clad in its yellow-black cover the signal colours already give away the danger atmosphere on here.

A normal biomass is composed of plant and/or animal matter. This one restlessly searches for fresh, new biotopes to infest before moving on to devour the next. In his short career as a recording artist, Panos Kyveleas´ Biomass crept from the late night clubs of bebop hangouts and techno dance floors (“Miledrops”) to the mud of the Mississippi Delta (“Market”) and now returns home to Greece and the Near East.

Born in Naples and residing in Athens, the two towns in which he recorded Electrozali, Biomass has the ambition of embracing a broad world of sound without ever losing his tight focus, buttressed by deep bass and canopied by a twitching electrical storm of intermittent glitch. This framework marks him as auteur, even though in many ways, these three albums couldn´t be more different.

The rather foreboding opener leads us through a portal into an Oriental marketplace, where Arabic drumming and scents conveyed as sweetly mewing strings get clawed at by pesky small glitches before abandoning the scene. The percussion redoubles its efforts in ”Near End”, a fitting name for a slow-footed dance whose colourful skeins of string loops are utterly trance-inducing.

Perhaps ”Esilio 99” (a track created with colleague Lorenzo Schettini) portrays the ultimate achievement of that state, as a sense of bodily suspension is invoked while the brain is actively entertaining itself with drunken strings, electronic moans and misfiring synapses.

Snap out of it with the title track, as everybody awakes from their opium nap for a dervish-like twirl. ”Credit” is mental and physical exhaustion being dispelled with a demanding clacking beat and sprays of static electricity. The closing ”Overlution” just lets off a little steam, almost literally.

Another enjoyable album by a very nimble mind. I wonder where he´ll take us next?

Napoli born and now based in Athens, Panos Kyveleas somehow manages to balance his sound design and production with visual scuplture work and a day job as a pharmacist. Three years on from his preceding ‘Market’ CD/DVD collection on Quetempo, this third album from Kyveleas as Biomass ‘Electrozali’ sees him increasingly working with sampled traditional instrumentation as source material, in this case the Cretan lyra, a bowed stringed instrument. For the most part, the nine tracks gathered here see Kyveleas working in predominantly downbeat / ambient territory, with distant traces of dark cinematic atmosphere surfacing amidst a glitchy dub / downtempo aesthetic. Opening track ‘You Must Log In To Do That’ provides an apt encapsulation of this approach, with moody processed string drones building an engrossing sense of rich atmosphere, shortly before dark, electro-dub beats and bass pulses rise up gradually in the mix to drive things towards their conclusion.

By contrast, ‘Altamura’ sees Kyveleas working with treated vocals and looped hand percussion, creating a dizying backdrop of echoing tribal polyrhythms over which skewed Cretan lyra strings dart and swirl amidst sudden scratchy burst of white noise and digital detritus, before ‘Near End’ scatters tight hiphop rhythms and swirling looped lyra strings across a backdrop of sampled astronaut chatter, in what’s easily one of this album’s most impressively ‘widescreen’-sounding moments (keep an ear out for the chaotic whistling as well). Elsewhere, the title track sees Kyveleas reaching for the sort of motorik journey fashioned by the likes of Neu! As streamlined, repetitive rhythms flit away towards the horizon amidst flickering traces of guitar and whispery hi-hat traces, the whole track curiously calling to mind ultra-stripped back blues at points. While at just 39 minutes in running length ‘Electrozali’ comes across as teasingly short, it’s impressive to see just how much ground Kyveleas manages to cover across the seven tracks here.

Die Informationen zu Panos Kyveleas alias Biomass enthalten zwar keine spektakulären Geheimnisse, sind aber trotzdem sehr ungewöhnlich. Der gebürtige Napolitaner mit griechischem Namen begann seine musikalische Karriere als DJ während seines Pharmazie-Studiums. Den Apotheker zog es 2007 nach Griechenland, genauer nach Athen, wo er bereits erste Veröffentlichungen beim ortsansässigen Label Quetempo herausbrachte.

Für sein drittes Album “Electrozali” arbeitete Biomass mit Tönen eines traditionellen Instruments, der kretischen Lyra. Dieses aus der Antike stammende, drei- bis viersaitige Instrument und ist eine Art Kniegeige. Zu diesen Lyra-Klängen kommt dann die Percussion einer gediegen getrommelten Darabukka und es entsteht ein folkloristischer, leicht orientalischer Sound. Biomass ist ein Tüftler elektronischer Sounds, der eigentlich eine Vorliebe für Blues und Jazz hat, zwei Musikrichtungen, die zwar auf “Electrozali” nicht vorkommen, aber verdeutlichen, wie weit gefächert seine Interessen sind. Einen Eindruck vermitteln, was einen auf dem Album erwartet, tun sie hingegen nicht, denn “Electrozali” ist eine Mischung aus bereits erwähnten, traditionellen Instrumentierung und düsteren elektronischen Sounds mit stellenweise massivem Bass.

“Altamura” beispielsweise besteht fast nur aus handgetrommelten Rhythmen und Lyra-Tönen, während das folgende “Near End” schon elektronischer klingt und synthetische Beats enthält. Die Lyra ergeht sich hier in hypnotischen Loops. Anders und trotzdem ähnlich ist der Song “Credit”. Er enthält zwar ebenfalls Lyra-Loops, lässt diese aber mit schleppendem Rhythmus langsam ihre Kreise ziehen und reichert das Ganze noch mit elektronischen, stromartigen Klängen an. Den Abschluss bildet “Overlution”, ein Dark Ambient Stück, das sich mit Drones und hallenden Geräuschen in der Finsternis ergeht. Obwohl Biomass eher experimentell veranlagt ist, merkt man dies dem Album kaum an. Gerade die Verbindung folkloristischer Musik mit modernen Klängen übt hier den starken Reiz aus.