CD – Mazagran
Empathizing with the suggestion that a bird’s eye image may be translated into sound, Yannis Kyriakides makes use of satellite images gathered from different sources. “I often think of my compositions as a musical setting where it is possible to wander in a lapse of relatively open time. Consequently the idea of using a map of a physical space as a direct analogy of a musical score has become the starting point for my work”. The idea generates a kind of movement with variable speeds, creating harmonies that seem to dissolve into each other as they move through elliptical, ethereal orbits. In “Airfields” the Greek composer skilfully spatializes the different contributions of both traditionally solo instruments (violin, bass clarinet, piano, cello, flute) and very calibrated electronic elements. Kyriakides, by the way, is not the first to join together diverse digital media and sound sources, exploring composite and hybrid narrative structures. In the continuum of the twelve brief compositions the electronic voices run together in a non-uniform manner, producing suspended views of hypothetical sidereal and imaginative snapshots. The delicate balance between acoustics and electronics seems somehow grounded by the use of piano, over which is layered very immaterial and ambient drones, scanty echoes and feedbacks, orchestral depths and rhythmical sounds. The whole effect is engaging and evocative of imaginary places picked up from the airspace.