We got this CD right. It’s on Low Impedance. It’s by .Pridon (note the prefixed dot!). And it’s called ‘Apnea Eina’. Dropping somewhere between earlier Autechre & prime BOC in parts, this sounds like nicely programmed & well layered electronic gear. Atmospheric is an over-used word in my oeuvre but I don’t give a jot. I’ll get my marker pen out right now & scrawl the darn word all over the office if anyone dares complain. Yeah, this above average machine music with some fresh touches. There’s downtempo moments for the headphones, funky minimal techno passages, woozy, fuzzy abstractions…all said, the beats are good, top programming & a host of nice sounds. This poops all over the latest promo from Ai we had the other day which was some gash minimal house that had wet it’s nappy. Hahaha. Give this a chance if you want a pre Quaristice fix of sparkling IDM.

.Pridon réussit des tours de forces : d’abord, grâce au “dot” juste avant son pseudo, on a pour la première fois commencé une phrase d’accroche par un point ; ensuite parce que sa pochette nous plonge en pleine science-fiction avec trois fois rien. Intrigué par ces formes grises et vertes, dont on se sait si elles sont organiques ou pas (est-ce un oeil mi clos ?), on tourne la pochette dans tous les sens et puis… bon sang mais c’est bien sûr comme dirait le commissaire… c’est un poing fermé qui laisse échapper juste un peu de lumière. La musique du producteur grec Petros Voudouris laisse elle aussi échapper peu de lumière, mais elle irradie comme le rayon vert, celui qui est censé se produire quand le soleil se couche sur la mer. Son electronica très influencée par Boards Of Canada joue également la sobriété, mêlant basses dub, esprit psychédélique et production ultra-futuriste. Seul hic de l’histoire : à notre connaissance, cette référence du label de Patras n’est pas distribuée en France.5/5*

It’s been a while since Petros Voudouris, also known as Pridon, released ‘New Steine’ on Low Impedance Recordings (see Vital Weekly 497), but it seems like nothing has changed since then. Back then I wrote about his love for things analogue, the retro futuro sound of synthesizers and drum machines, the cross between all things danceable, from techno to electro, IDM, a bit of ambience, a bit of psychedelics and the result is longer than the previous – eleven tracks instead of six – make up some pleasant listening session. Perfect sunday afternoon, post hangover music, while browsing the internet, reading yesterday’s paper or looking outside watching clouds pass by. Apparently Pridon uses a lot of improvisation to generate his music, but he’s capable of hiding that in tight pieces of music, and no self-indulgent overlong pieces. Still, nothing new under the dance sun, but as much as the previous done with true love of the genre.

11 tracks that bring in mind the big moments of Warp, something like “the best of” or like a showcase about the great times of electronica of the last few years. Despite the use of different styles and sounds that are mixed, from techno to electro to dub and ‘70s psychedelia, the homogeneity is outstanding and the variety makes it more approachable than anything the artist has done before.

I must admit that I never heard of the artist “Pridon” hailing from Athens before. But I must also admit that since that day I received his new album called “Apnea Eina” I missed something… I missed an album like this. Released on the innovative Low Impendance recordings label this album brings magically together what normally can’t fit together. IDM dub, Techno, 70’s Psychelic, Electronica and experimental sounds brought together in order to define a new sound. This is music made with genius and heart, electronic structures and sounds meet an ambience that can only be found in the classical hand made music. This album plays with its listener its very accessible for sure, but don’t walk in the trap, behind this façade you’ll find an universe of sounds. Hidden treasures, sounds fading in and out with echoes like a breeze on the sea. So you ask yourself wasn’t there something? Who touched my ears and brain? A wonderful album, with controversial layers who create unity and make sense. Tracks like “She Bit Me First” , “Who Are You” or “False Schematics” are my tips for you to dig a little deeper and get addicted.

A really wonderful and pathbreaking release! Rerfect10+ and beauty of February

Pridon, ein griechisches Soloprojekt von Petros Voudouris, ist im eigentlichen Sinne kein totaler Newcomer, da “Apnea Eina” nicht das erste Release ist – nach “Health Food Scroll” das zweite Full-Length-Album. Er selbst bezeichnet seine Musik als Freestyle Electronic Music, die von Detroit & Minimal Techno, IDM & Ambient inspiriert ist. Somit sind eigentlich alle grundlegenden Dinge genannt. I(ntelligent)D(ance)M(usic) ist an dieser Stelle vielleicht nochmals hervorzuheben und sollte beim Anhören im Hinterkopf umherschwirren, weil die CD einen gewissen Zugang verlangt, der sich sehr vermutlich nach einmaligem Durchlauf nicht finden lässt.

So war dann auch ‘huiui…’ der erste Eindruck, den “Apnea Eina” nach besagtem Querhören hinterließ. Das Gehirn auf akustische Aufnahme geschaltet, stellten sich einige Titel arg quer und wollten sich partout nicht auf die Reise durchs Ohr in die Schaltzentrale zur weiteren Verarbeitung begeben. Stattdessen klapperten sie uneinnehmbar vertrackt, verfrickelt, analog und doch kalt und lieblos um den Kopf herum. Waren die zuvor gehörten Samples andere Teilstücke, die gar nicht zu der Musik auf dieser CD gehörten? Doch! Aber man muss sich Zeit nehmen sie im Ganzen einzuordnen. Und siehe da, der zweite Durchlauf mit voller Hingabe und der Hinzunahme von Kopfhörern ergab plötzlich ein ganz anderes Bild. Ein elektronischer Detailreichtum, der sich in drei Jahren Schaffenszeit angehäuft hat manifestierte sich ganz unverhofft zu einem Hörerlebnis, das sich über die gesamte CD hinzog.

“Apnea Eina” ist entspannter Hörgenuss mit lockeren Drum-Programmings, der jedoch keinerlei andere Beschäftigung neben sich duldet. Mit dem gezielten Willen einen 52-minütigen Elektronik-Experimental-Ambient-Mix durch sich strömen zu lassen, wird man immer wieder viele kleine Dinge, die links und rechts vorbeizischen entdecken. Stücke wie “Fumble” oder “Sunk” sind dabei kleine Perlen, weil sie zusätzlich auch noch Anflüge von Tanzbarkeit bzw. rhythmischen Pepp beisteuern und damit die Kurzweiligkeit erhöhen. Zwar finden sich hin und wieder auch einige Längen und vereinzelt leicht unnötige Passagen, die aber zu keiner Zeit die Oberhand gewinnen. Die drei Jahre Bearbeitungszeit klingen zwar viel, haben sich aber mit einer hörbaren Liebe zum Detail ausgezahlt. Unser ‘Allerweltsgenre’ Electronic trifft es bei diesem Album haargenau!

Three years in the making, Apnea Eina is Pridon’s (aka Petros Voudouris) accomplished follow-up to Health Food Scroll, his debut album on Fluxion’s Vibrant Music imprint, and his Low Impedance EP New Steine. The Greece-by-way-of-Brighton Voudouris proves himself to be a polished practitioner and a man of many stylistic colours on the new fifty-minute collection. On “She Bit Me First,” he offers slow-motion, faintly hip-hop-inflected grooves that wouldn’t sound out of place on Geogaddi, but his material extends beyond a single style. The synth asteroids that careen through “Flask Bordon” bring a spacey dimension to the album while the springy swing of “Sunk” offers an ear-catching blend of minimal techno and African high-life. In fact, most tracks are hybrid in nature in that each one fuses two or three styles into something unusual. “Here Be Dragons” presents a smoothly flowing mix of trip-hop, funk, and IDM, the Afro-house-IDM hybrid “False Schematics” is so feverish in its percussive intensity it could be labeled Dionysian, “Who Are You?” traffics in bass-heavy IDM-funk, and elsewhere elements of dancehall, ambient, dub, and Autechrean snarl surface too. If such diversity makes pinning Pridon down to a cohesive style a challenging proposition, at the very least Apnea Eina is never less than interesting in its scenic variety.

On his latest release, Pridon (a.k.a. Petros Voudouris) has managed to make an album that is both synthetic and soulful. The usual, electronic suspects of ambient music make appearances, but buzzes and clicks are kept in check by warm bass and smooth pseudo-strings. Drums are frequently a bit cockeyed and off-kilter, making them interesting and surprising in the same way that Timbaland can be on a good day. The result is an album that is mellow without being boring and ambient without eating a hole in one’s brain.

Apnea Eina offers some instances of pleasant surprise. At the 1:54 mark in “Here be Dragons,” listeners are blindsided by whimsical little bells that eventually morph into computer-like buzzes. The bit of disjointed piano on “Sunk” also undergoes a shift of shape, slowly becoming more and more disjointed. Coupled with the bass, “Sunk” comes off sounding like a soundtrack for a factory that makes tiny toy pianos.

The instances where Voudouris steps off-course are thankfully few. “False Schematics” relies a bit too heavily on drums and pseudo-strings that are too redundant to carry the weight of a five-minute song. “Who Are You?” seems promising, but eventually falls into the common rut of redundant, computerized vocals. Luckily, the stuttering, stilted drums of “Gin” are enough to pull the album out of the rut. Pridon has delivered a solid, if not always thoroughly stimulating, album.

Pridon a.k.a. Petros Voudouris structures a quiet and enjoyable electronica, influenced by many different styles including techno, electro, IDM, dub and even an ounce of seventies psychedelia. This tissues are then carefully reassembled mixing different “spices”, but nevertheless the accessible moments are not completely slipping to more experimental structures. The overall impression is of an ambience in a groove setting, part of it engaged with atonal bleep or melodious choir, and some secondary spacey progresses with many synths. It’s a truly versatile album, sounds for decompression funneled in fairly surround recordings, gentle and flexible, where a sort of intimacy is embraced, leaving the innovation apart, and an overall quality that produces a perfectly refined listening experience, perhaps even exceeding a little bit, but acting anyway to the prejudice of a strong adoption of the contemporaneity themes.

With Pridon I discovered a very talented Greek project. Having missed the debut-cd, “Apnea Eina” was my first meeting with the band. I noticed some real sexy rhythms recovered with astral electro arrangements. Pridon sounds like it is coming from another planet delivering amazing atmospheric electro structures. The songs have been meticulously worked out and written with certain maturity. A few spoken samplings are the only vocals on the album. We’re here definitely facing an intelligent and progressive electro project using a wide spectrum of influences. The album is fascinating from start till end. As most recommended tracks I’ll mention the outstanding “Who Are You?” containing a great bass sound and other irresistible sound sculptures. Other cool cuts are “False Schematics”, which is an extremely well-crafted piece, Flask Bordon, “Here Be Dragons”, “Gin” and “Lithos”. I already heard some real nice surprises from Greece, but this is for sure a band to hold on in mind! Absolutely groundbreaking in the avant-garde area of contemporary electronics!

This second album from Greek IDM / techno producer Petros Voudouris under his Pridon alias apparently emerges as the result of three years of beavering away in the studio, and indeed, it’s the first new material to surface from him since his 2005 debut album ‘Health Food Scroll’ on Vibrant and its swiftly accompanying ‘New Steine’ EP, his first release for the Athens-based Low Impedance label. Like its predecessor, ‘Apnea Eina’ sees Voudouris following a predominantly downbeat IDM path that’s distinctly tinged by both hiphop and dub, with nods towards his more techno-based roots also surfacing amongst the eleven tracks collected here. While many similar producers simply focus upon building pristine, digitally-finessed landscapes however, Voudouris adeptly injects a tangible sense of presence and mass into his tracks through the deft deployment of sampled and treated instrumental elements and textures.

Opening track ‘She Bit Me First’ is emblematic of this approach, using a battery of live drum and percussion elements to bring out a real sense of rhythmic lustre to the ebbing backdrop of beeping melodic tones and trailing synth pads; indeed, the weary-sounding drums near the end beautifully suit the sense of wounded melancholy generated. It’s a factor also apparent in the case of ‘Flask Borden’s striking collision of crackling Funkstorung-esque IDM-hop rhythms and vast, echoing horn calls as gorgeous sampled swirls of orchestration drag things off into a psychedelic haze, shortly before ‘Here Be Dragons’ locks down around a tight rhythmic pulse that’s part hypnotic motorik glide, part half-speed Detroit night drive. While the predominant mood here is a distinctly downbeat one, ‘Gin’ offers up a brief wander out into skittering IDM/electro junglist styles, before ‘Lithos’ sees the techno influences rearing back up in the mix as dark electro bass synths begin to trace a path beneath contorted DSP manipulation and flickering minimalist snare programming. An extremely impressive second album from Voudouris under his Pridon persona, ‘Apnea Eina’ is well worth investigating.

Pridon (Petros Voudouris) makes self-declared “freestyle” electronic music. It sounds more adventurous than it actually is, for in mediating between the term’s constituents, the ‘free’ is very much subject to the ‘style.’ Freedom here is confined to ranging between a set of genre templates, predominantly Detroit/minimal techno, ambient, electro, and hip hop. Now, there’s nothing wrong with stylism, in fact it might be said that an overview of popular electronic music from the ‘90s to the ‘00s would show it to have grown increasingly stylised – in the sense of elevating form over content, container over contained, gesture over action. Artists now find their music trailed only partly by programmatic statements and musicological descriptions, increasingly reliant on pre-packaged designators, like “techno” or “electro” or “ambient,” or more likely some buzzphrase-generated hybrid combining several sub-genre exponents. It’s not that there are no gains from the March of Stylism. When postmodernism’s freeplay of forms is given its head in any artistic mode (cf. film, literature, visual art), there is opportunity in the air for heady indulgence. The downside is that forms, in being thus privileged, get more self-conscious, turning in on themselves, becoming less vibrant. More liquid crystal display, less cathode ray, means arguably a better resolved but ultimately less engaging picture.

Which preamble is intended to provide a setting for critique of Pridon’s latest release, Apnea Eina. Following on debut full-length, Health Food Scroll, and recent EP, New Steine, Greece-Brighton shuttler Voudouris has developed into an accomplished remaker and remodeller in the paradigm of stylism outlined above. A now more than workmanlike shifter of sonic scenery with a certain brio, operating in zones somewhere between the electro-techno axis of Autechre Mk.I (see “Gin” and “Fumble”) and the ambient-hiphop ambit of ‘classic’ BoC (see “Flask Bordon” and “Keweed”), with ventures into Rephlex territory of d’n’b-cum-breakcore (“Gin” and “Lithos”). Apnea Eina in fact situates itself round about where labels like Toytronic, then Ai, initially seemed to be heading a few years back, shaping to carry forward the old Warp torch of electronic listening music and armchair techno, before tailing off (Toytronic) or re-routing (Ai). It emerges as above-par e©lectronica, machine funk, and blip hop with a few individual flourishes (like the Afro-highlife colourings on “Sunk”), oozing atmospheric ambiance in that by now over-familiar sci-fi wooze variety of atmo-ambi that will satisfy most IDM-pathizers.

But those looking below surface will be disappointed. Certainly, if you lament Autechre’s (Chiastic) slide into internality post-1996, then you’ll be better off with Apnea Eina than Quaristice for your ‘Ambient-techno’ update. But this association is misleading, for Pridon is no Autechre stalking horse. Instead, with his love for the retro-futurist sound of analogue synthesizers, bleeps and wibbles, washes and wooshes, and big drums and drum machines, it’s more the likes of EU (remember them?), Novel 23, and Ambidextrous who are in Voudouris’s sights. Yes, this is not so much all Greek to me as Russian, in that spirit of affectionate, but still craven, appropriation of UK-tooled styles. Ultimately, the ‘stylist’ can satisfy up to a point, but then the more exacting will be looking for something of the ‘restructuralist’ spirit; the spirit of a Bola, or a Pub, or even a Bitstream – to name but three UK producers who have departed from a tradition. In their case, departure doesn’t stop at the primary stage of taking from it, but crucially extends beyond to taking it on through their own particular endowment. And it is this failing that condemns Apnea Eina to the 2nd class status of a merely diverting pacifier.

I once read the interesting statement that techno was the perfect realisation of a single musical idea. With regards to that definition, you can now do two things: Either ponder it for some time, gauge its validity and apply its implications to what you know and appreciate about the genre. Or listen to “apne eina” and forget you ever heard it instead.

Effectively, Petros Voudouris presents a new form of freestyle on his second full-length album, an approach which is refined to the bone but flows in a progressive pulsation, never resting in one place for too long before swiftly moving somewhere else, infused by an obsessive desire to change, morph and transcend strict regulation. His tracks often seem to build from scratch like regular club tunes, but then a disruptive sound will explode from within its structures or a new pattern will establish itself out of nowhere, taking the piece to entirely new horizons.

Putting this album on to dream away in your armchair is therefore not the best way to get most out of “apnea eina” – on the other hand, you will be hard pressed to find a DJ willing to give these tracks a spin. Despite the various styles of dance-oriented music which have made an impact on the Pridon-sound, the entire production, which stresses texture and timbre more than drums and linear development, defies their laws. Even a massively beat-oriented track like “Who are you?” with its theme-like, one-sentence vocal sample and pounding bass-punches, is more occupied with shifting and rearranging the synthesizer pads lusciously wrapped around its percussive propulsion than building a trance.

Voudouris also doesn’t mind going soft on many occasions, displaying a marked preference for warm bell- and chime-sounds, integrating them into the friendly alien-blubbertronica of “One of the last Doctors” or using them as a means to attain a cosmic groove on “Here be Dragons”. The atmospheric side to his personality also comes to the fore on two conscious or unconscious tributes to the Berlin-school of Electronics, when he delves into spacey Latin sounds, counterpoints pronounced metronomic hihats with an ominous choir or digs out analog sequencer patterns Klaus Schulze would have been proud of in the late 70s.

In the final third of the album, Voudouris puts his teeth in more, creating starker contrasts, darker moods and more aggressive settings, but he never deviates from his uncompromising scheme of following his gut feeling. On the other hand, he quietly sings the record to sleep with the otherwordly lullabye of “Keweed”, sounding out “apnea eina” in the softest possible way. A perfectly realised vision this album is, but there are more ideas here than on some techno labels’ entire backcatalogue.

The Greek project Pridon (Petros Voudouris) has taken his time to deliver us a follow-up to his debut album ‘Health Food Scroll’, He has of course released an EP in the meantime but this is finally a full album. It took the greek 3 years to record his second album which now finally has been released by Low Impedance Recordings which is also from Greece.

The new album, ‘Apnea Eina’, is again a more atmospheric IDM album, reminding of the older but also newer Autechre recordings.

The album has some well written tracks on it, most of which are atmospheric with some up tempo minimalistic beats, clicks and cuts and terrific synthi-layers. A lot af nice reverb effects create a relaxed atmosphere that makes it a nice quiet summer album. Think about sitting in your garden in the sun with a good book and Pridon’s music in the background, great.

Some of the best tracks on the album is ‘Sunk’, a mix of minimal techno and African percussion with a sauce of effects. Also the more glitch like ‘Gin’ is very nice to check. The opening track ‘She bit me first’ is more of slow hip-hop like beat with some funky leads. ‘Here be dragons’ offers a more of Trip-hop and IDM approach. All 51 minutes offers you something new.

This is a very promising album, maybe he now gets more attention I would recommend WARP to check it…amazing.

Pridon hails from Athens, Greece (Petros Voudouris is the man behind the name) and is not what you’d expect at all from Greece. “apnea eina” is a mix of techno/IDM/dub/glitch elements, and often an eclectic one at that. Supposedly 3 years in the making, there’s a lot more going on in this album than a first listening reveals. Light melodies play against dark atmospheres while seemingly simple rhythms are augmented by complex sub-elements. Alternately spacey and psychedelic, there is a flow from track to track that unifies the work as a whole, and prevents it from becoming just a collection of disparate sound sculptures.

Some of the rhythmic work, like on “Sunk” is blatantly familiar in a Tipsy-ish sort of way. This has an anchoring effect for .Pridon’s more adventurous elements, which if you listen closely, are fascinating bits of sonic effluvia. Some tracks like “False Schematics” are pretty far out there venturing well into the experimental zone, but if you always play it safe you’re not going to come up with anything new.

Excepting some sampled dialogue, this is a completely instrumental and mostly electronic programmed album. You can tell .Pridon put a lot of time and effort into it, maybe almost as much as Autechre puts into their work. Although there are a lot of retro synth and D&B elements in “apnea eina,” not much sounds clichéd or overdone. Even the repetitive sections are constantly morphing and changing which is a really big plus in my book for .Pridon.

I’m not wild about everything Pridon does on “apnea eina” though. Some of the tinkling fractured toy piano melodies just didn’t grab me. Still, there is plenty here for the IDM/techno enthusiast to revel in. The complexity alone is enough to thrill those who’ve been looking for something a little bit different than everything that’s been done before. If it’s minimalism you want, you won’t find it here. But if you enjoy a programmer that likes to tread off the well-beaten path, you have to check this out.