Paradise Metal

Paradise Metal is one of many reasons why we keep reiterating: Heat Crimes is one of the best labels out there right now. At more than one point did we have to pinch ourselves at the the holy father’s procession of epiphanies effortlessly bridging ancient, microtonal Byzantine modes with DIY electronic modernism, often in jaw-dropping juxtapositions; sublime new age ambient to shoe-gazy basslines and mountaintop guitar shreds to techno incantations. Honestly it’s floored us in so many ways and is bound to exert the same effect with any of you lot, especially if you’re on a mission to sniff out incredible music from unknown margins.

The dozen songs speak richly to Father Dionysios Tabakis’ life immersed in the Orthodox church, and namely the historic Church of Panagitsa in Nafplio (Nativity of the Theotokos), one of the oldest and most beautiful in a city renowned as a centre of Greek faith. There, he has devoted a life to studying music and writing books, applying Athonite monastic wisdom to contemporary concerns of alienation, depression, and isolation in his writings -  which also feed directly into his extraordinary music. 

On a dozen songs the Holy Father proves as fluidly adept at a range of traditional Byzantine instruments (qanun, oud, cümbüş, Politikon tanbur, yali tanbur, ney, zurna, clarinet, Politiki lyra, Pontic lyra, kabak kemane) as his signature fretless guitar, favoured for its ability to feel out microtones - semi or quarter-tone pitches - closest to the human voice. The result is a level of emotional expression and harmonic colour that often escapes western modes, transcending a range of Asia Minor and Mediterranean styles from maqam to Greek traditional and Byzantine music with a disciplined but rapturous sense of transcendence.

Suffice it to say it all adds up to one of the most singular recordings we’ve heard in recent memory, knocking our heads clean off with flashbacks to the likes of Sandy Bull’s modal psych-folk, or even Sunn O))) x Julian Cope and Sun City Girls/Sir Richard Bishop ritualism in the first half, and traversing in the 2nd to astonishing sorts of techno impressionism, as with the THX string shear and choral chant of ‘TECHNO σε ΜΟΝΑΣΤΗΡΙ’ and a whole new definition of trance-techno, thru to bits that sound like a Greek Enya. 

100% brilliant, out there music.