Vangelis Katsoulis – The Sleeping Beauties: A Collection Of Early And Unreleased Works
Last year’s Into The Light compilation, the first release on Ilias Pitsios and Tako Reyenga’s label of the same name, did a terrific job in highlighting the little-known world of early Greek electronic music. Featuring artists whose careers invariably stalled before they got started, or at least made little impact outside of Greece, the compilation featured all manner of oddball electronic treats, with prog rock, ambient, new age, disco and synth-pop being twisted into intriguing new shapes. One of the more notable artists to feature on that collection was Vangelis Katsoulis, a composer/producer whose 1980s work – a melodic blend of new age melodies and ambient soundscapes with distinct jazz and soundtrack influences – is held in high regard by crate-diggers.
Vangelis Katsoulis
The Sleeping Beauties: A Collection Of Early And Unreleased Works
Into The Light
LP
While Katsoulis still operates, releasing occasional bursts of electronic jazz on obscure Greek labels, it’s his early work, recorded between 1986 and 1990, that really gets pulses racing. In that period, he released a trio of decidedly cosmic, largely new age-focused albums, with Through The Door Into A Dream (1990), a 20-minute exploration of lucid synth-scapes, Reichian cycles and African rhythms, being something of a must-have rarity for synthesizer fetishists. Given the high regard in which he’s held, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Pistios and Reyenga have decided to make the second Into The Light release a long overdue tribute to a man described as the “king of Greek electronics”.
Fittingly, Sleeping Beauties features three tracks from Through The Door Into A Dream, alongside a further four from The Slipping Beauty (1988), a similarly rare and obscure exploration of the melodic and atmospheric potential of the synthesizer. A smattering of unreleased tracks – two of which were supposedly written specifically for this compilation – complete the package. In many ways, it’s surprising that Katsoulis’ music isn’t better known. There’s not a duff moment on Sleeping Beauties, and many of the tracks border on the sublime.
Interestingly, the Greek’s preferred method of composition, creating largely beatless mood pieces built around melodic cycles, seems similar to American minimalist classical composer Steve Reich. There are certainly echoes of Reich’s seminal Music For 18 Musicians in several of the tracks, most notably the shimmering bliss and dancing melodies of “The Slipping Beauty” and the 10-minute “The Eternal Return”. This latter track – all rising and falling electric piano motifs, darting synthesized marimba melodies and undulating jazz-funk attitude – is arguably the compilation’s standout moment.
It does, though, have serious competition on that score. There’s the startling “Earth Beat”, a decidedly humid exploration of delay-laden voodoo rhythms and feverish electric piano chords, and “Longing”, whose heart aching strings, clarinets (synthesized, of course) and acoustic guitars perfectly match the smooth wooziness of the track’s delicious fretless bass. The previously unreleased “Imago” and mesmerizing “Light As Air” – a kind of riff on Thomas Newman’s “Dead Already”, the theme from Oscar winning film American Beauty – are similarly impressive.
Evocative, emotive and musically rich, Katsoulis’ work is much more than mere new age lift music. It ripples with complex musicality, the kind which would be much more lauded had he been working with an orchestra rather than a bank of synthesizers. Perhaps Sleeping Beauties will finally earn Katsoulis the wider audience and acclaim his music so richly deserves.
Matt Anniss
Tracklisting:
1. The Slipping Beauty
2. Earth Beat
3. The Eternal Return
4. Enigma
5. Touch The Sun
6. Longing
7. Improvisation
8. Living Colors
9. Light As Air
10. Imago
11. Epilogue