Another update - surely the CD is ready by now?? Alas, yet another bit of delay! So here's our progress..

All the music is mixed, all the texts are translated and the artwork has been selected. We are waiting for the artwork final design (some time next week) and the mastering of the mixes. Everyone involved is very busy and needs to find time to fit our project in - but it will be done in the next one or two weeks, after which it is finally pressing time.

Something about the titletrack,
We found 'The Wolf' the most inspiring text to use as the project theme, but we have not told you much about it yet.
It is not a song, but a story, in a traditional poetic form. The piece is almost 10 minutes and mostly spoken word, with some singing here and there. It is about a man in the mounains of Epirus, who is referred to as 'the wolf, the ashen one', who gets madly in love with a red haired girl. She does not return his affections. In the story, the wolf grows lonely and bitter, and ends up taking the girls life so no one else can have her.
A simple storyline but with a great passion and drama in it, masterly told by Yiannis Kalpouzos in partly local dialect from Epirus. With the help of our friend Dan Tuffy we have managed to make a translation, which seems to get very close in spirit to the original Greek text.
On the recording you can hear a most excellent bit of storytelling from Marifenia, with musical sounds from Michiel's guitars and self-made instruments.
The piece is certainly not the most commercial, but to us, the highlight of the album. And so it has earned the right to be the titletrack!

So in the mean time, we went for a short tour in the Netherlands, where we met some of you. It was fantastic to meet those of you who were there, and play our songs live, in duo. It forced us to retink the arrangements a bit, compared to the CD recordings which have many guests playing along.
After that, we had a rehearsal with our friend Kostas Klagos in Athens, in order to prepare for some shows early december. Even better to play live with three musicians!

So, now that our part of the production is finished, we will focus on the rewards for you, which in part we have already prepared - but some of them need some work. The next update will be about the rewards, including the digital download of the album. So stay tuned!

Dear friends,

a short update because it has been a while. We are in the middle of the mixing process, which started later than expected due to a busy summer (with work in the fields, Marifenia playing live with the Lalitades, and some family visiting us)
It also goes a bit slower than hoped - but it is happening and we are thrilled with the results so far!

Because we have kept you waiting, and must do so a bit more since mixing is not finished yet, we will upload one of the finished songs for you in a couple of days. This will not be on youtube but via Wetransfer. We will send the donators (only!) a download link which will allow you to download the song. The link will expire after one week.

Once the CD is being pressed, we will contact each of you regarding your rewards.
A little more patience dear friends! It is coming!

Marifenia
Michiel

Dear friends,

it has been some weeks since you heard from us - after the campain finished, we took a little break on the PR front, but work on the album has continued. The latest news!

We find ourselves with one deadline off our backs, but the next looming at the horizon: getting the album mixed sometime this month. While the mixing itself is not the issue, getting every song ready for the mix,proves to be a challenge. We got the last overdubs sent over last week from Holland, recordings done by mr Tuffy with great performances of previously mentioned musicians Gerwil Kusters and Marc Constandse.

At the moment our citrus fields demand our attention early morning and afternoon until dark, this because of the heat: between that, there is limited time to work on the music. One song has still not been recorded as we have been postponing it due to more urgent matters, the others are 'mostly done'. But while recording the final vocals during the past weeks, we still found some loose ends in the arrangements, which become more noticeable now that we approach the final stage. This is, however, part of the process: when you start creating a piece of music, everything is open - you have an infinity of possibilities, and without an 'idea' that puts you in a certain direction, i.e. to start making choices and excluding options, you don't get anywhere. Along the way you walk some paths which may finally prove to be dead ends. But once you have progressed up until the end of the preproduction, matters become more clear: the song (or any piece of art) has gathered what you could call 'critical mass of identity'.

Choices become more limited and more obvious, especially regarding what does and what does not work. Which can still lead to some difficult decisions, as we have experienced again two weeks ago. One of the pieces was sounding very nice on its own, with a clear identity, but the vocals were not fitting it.
What we found out, was that the lyrics demand a certain delivery, which was not matching at all with the arrangement and musical feel we had been recording.
Instead of watering down the vocal performance to something more suitable to the existing recording, we finally put the song into the recycling bin, and made a new recording - which indeed became muchbetter.

Of course it would be more efficient if such escapades could be avoided, and you would simply go straight for the end result. But to us, it is actually very rewarding if, instead of us making all the decisions,at some point the music itself grabs us by the collar and tells us in no uncertain terms what is supposed to happen. Then you know it came alive.
We have another musician to introduce to you: violinist Giorgos Kotsikas

Suave looking Kotsikas comes across as the ideal son in law, except for one thing: he is to be a full time professional musician. (Although..these days.. what profession guarantees you a job..?)
He grew up in a musical family where he played, like Marifenia, from an early age, traditional Greek music in the family band. As these bands would sometimes be a musician short, it is common practice to borrow each others violinists, klarino players etc - so Giorgos was no stranger. After many years of playing traditional music, he decided to take his chances and went to study the classical violin, from which he has recently graduated.
Giorgos is an excellent player with a broad musical taste, including mambo and other Latin styles - which we are looking forward to hear him play on his violin some time! He has a talent for studio recording, as he is open to new ideas and very flexible in his playing style. A session with Giorgos is guaranteed to be fun and productive.

You can hear his playing on Όσο πάει, όπου πάει (however it goes, wherever it goes) and on Οι Εντολές (the commandmends)

as of yet, we have no link to any of Giorgos music, we hope to add something to the booklet.

Hello everybody, we just saw that we passed the 80%during the last 24 hours of our campain, that is fantastic news! Thanks all for your support - we can't put in words how much it means to us! As a result the campain will run another 5 days, after which we hope no-one will have withdrawn their support, and we move on!

Creating an album is quite a task, with many details, to each of which you must pay a lot of attention. At the same time you must not get lost in the details, but keep an eye on the project as a whole. You are constantly zooming in and out, at one moment thinking about the phrasing of a specific melody in the instrumental interlude after the refrain of song nr 6 that doesn't quite sit well with a previously done countermelody of the violin, but that can't be changed anymore - or should you ask the violin player to comeover once more and redo it with some changes?? the next moment on the phone discussing prices and deadlines with a graphic designer who is very busy and overdue for a holiday but he might be able to squeeze you in, but only if you get the final texts ready before tomorrow night which means you must rewrite the introduction, check spelling on all the chapters of the musicians, etcc.. the next moment you are calling a musician to reschedule a recording because your dog escaped and had an unfriendly encounter with the neighbor who you now need to have a compensating encounter on a terrace with while treating him to a good deal of soothing smiles and local liquors, so - you can't make the trip at the intended day.

To get to the point, it is chaotic, exhausting, at times frustrating as heck, but also exciting, adventurous, liberating and redeeming. Your support has made it even more rewarding. Thanks again! We move on with the recordings!

Musician of the week: Marc Constandse

Marc is an artist of extremes. He performed music and theatre in various ways before getting into a fight with a bandoneon, from which initially the bandoneon emerged as the victor. But Marc instead of giving in, fought back for many years, the results and progress of which can be heard on numerous records.
The bandoneon as a musical instrument has several qualities which make it the ideal choice for Marc as an instrument. For one thing, when you touch a button, it immediately produces a sound as if you have cut it with a knife. The more advanced player will find that there is no instrument in the world that can express sorrow and pain better than the bandoneon. But at the same time, it is capable of producing warm loving sounds, catchy grooves, ripping riffs and disturbing dissonants.
It may seem to the reader who is unfamiliar with either bandoneon or Marc, that we are giving more praise here to the bandoneon itself than to Marc, but once you know a bit about the bandoneon and what a quirky bastard of an instrument it is, you start to understand the things we are implying about Marc's musicianship.

On stage, Marc is charismatic and inspiring, incorporating many styles into his own. Through the years he has worked with various projects ranging from Industrial Punk to the Holland Baroque Society to alternative singer-songwriter projects such as Big Low (where he also played some energetic and unusual percussion) to his own renowned Balkan-band Parne Gadje, which made 5 CD's and did shows throughout Europe. Marc is also known as a passionate singer with a deep vknowledge and understanding of lyrics in many languages (Serbo-Kroatian,Rromanes, Greek, Russian, to name a few).

In the case of Kranides it has to be said that Marc was the one who singlehandedly put Michiel on the trace of music from theBalkans and Greece. Marc and Michiel played for 12 years together in Parne Gadje, which, one can imagine, affected both musicians to some extent or another. As Kranides we are thrilled to have Marc contribute some of his magic bandoneonism on a few of our songs.

To hear some of Marc's music, you can type his name into youtube

Dear friends,
another week has passed and we have entered the last week of the crowdfunding campain! While we have managed with your help to gather over 1600 euro's so far, this last week will need to find us a considerable amount of extra donations, or it will be game over! If you had in mind to donate, but didn't get round to do it, now's the time more than ever!

Should you have any friends who might be interested in donating to our project, please show them what we do. We have compiled a short videoclip of us working, rehearsing, editing, etc.. have a look and share it!

Musician of the week: Kostas Klagos

The story of Kosta and Kranides is as follows. We had been thinking for some time to find either a contrabass player, or a percussion player, to play shows with us at least in Greece. Marifenia knew Kosta and his parents, and she was aware of Kosta playing the bass - but had not heard or seen him some years. We decided to visit him and see if he liked what we do, and 'if he could play well enough his bass' .... we were in for a surprise or two!
We came to his house in downtown Athens and played him a few songs live, and some early recordings from the computer. Kostas is not what you call a waterfall of words - he is more the thoughtful character, but once he starts talking, you know he is telling you the essence of his thoughts.
He liked very much our songs and musical skills. After a look in his agenda he told us he could come to record bass for a few songs two days later.

Two days later, Kostas showed up at the house of Marifenia's parents where we had set up some microphones, and he got straight into it!
He was extremely well prepared, had written scores for his parts which he had worked out on each song, played them without any mistake from the first take. We were impressed with his professional approach, and his playing was excellent! During the recordings, it became also clear that for each song, Kostas had been paying a lot of attention to the role of the bass, finding slightly different ways of performing his parts in order to make it work best.
After a couple of weeks, Kostas visited us in Arta where we did some more bass recordings on other songs. We all got more and more enthusiastic about working together.
You will hear Kostas playing the bass on most of the songs of the album, and if we will play live in Greece in any form other than duo, we will surely have Kosta with us!

During the past week, we got many warm reactions to the song that we put online. Thanks for that! It is always a bit .. exciting .. to show something new to a larger audience, and especially when you have been working on it for such a long time in your own little house.

Since the previous update, we have had two rehearsals, but most time went into clearing up the hard disk and getting clear what is what and what is not what. During rehearsals we refined some instrumental parts, and Marifenia dived deeper into the lyrics in order to get the most out of it. This week we plan to record some final vocals, and replace some other parts.

Giorgos Floudas came by for another song, for which he used a different style of playing, more inspired on the styles in east of Greece. His violin brought again a very special touch to the song 'Ta Matia sou, t'anisixa' (those restless eyes of yours)

Status Crowdfunding

As you can see, we have gone up to 57%! However - the clock is ticking, we have only 12 days left. So we start to get a bit nervous..
We are very grateful to those who have donated so far, but if we don't find the remaining percents (or at least up to 80%), your donations will be returned to you and we get none of it! So.. we'd like to ask, specially to those who donated already, if you can make an extra effort to spread the project to friends, talk to them about it, and encourage them to chip in. Every 10 euro's is very welcome, and will help to get to the target!

Musician of the week..

The next musician we'd like to introduce to you, is Dutch Ramblin Reedplayer Gerwil Kusters!Gerwil is one of the driving forces behind Balkan Bunch Extraordinaire Parne Gadje, which is often referred to as one of the most original and adventurous world-music bands in the Netherlands. Apart of being one of the main soloists (on various reed instruments) in the band, Gerwil takes care of bookings, management, and planning and development of future projects.
He is an excellent and much sought-after teacher, with his own teaching practice.
On his site you can reed (mwahaa..) about his other projects Yabani and Zor.

As a player, Gerwil stands out through his sensitive and supportive playing interchanged with energetic solo's, his thoughtful choice of instrument and color in each song, and his playful interaction on stage with both bandmembers and audience.
On 'The Wolf', Gerwil participates in 'Entoles', 'Oso paei', and a third song which is still in need of a good title. In these songs he plays two versions of the saxophone, the melodic alto, and the low and gritty bariton sax.
You won't miss him!
Recording of his parts has been done in Rhinetown Wageningen by none other than Parne Gadje member and Smoked Recordings CEO mr Dan Tuffy from Australia - for which we'd like to thank him once more!

Exciting news: We have uploaded a rough mix of one of the songs, for which all basic recordings were done! Before you read on, here is the link:
https://youtu.be/yIXCllpLlC4
While there may be some small changes made to some parts, and the vocal parts will be redone, we thought it nice to let you hear some real example of what we are doing.
The song is not typically Greek in that it has a type of 5/8 rhythm which is one of our favourites, but completely different from the 5-based rhythms which are used in Greece. This one feels more like a waltz that skips the last bit of the 3rd beat (Imagine the chaos on the dancefloor.. )

After a lot of experimenting, we recorded this song 'O, ti vlepeis, o, ti aggizeis' in duo with two laouto's. After that, we sent the file to our friend Brice Soniano, who went to work on it. He put down a solid but lively bass, and added several bowed and percussive tracks to the song, all of which you might not immediately recognise as contrabass (like the soft flute-like sounds that accompany the voice in the first verse, or the bouncy percussive chords at the end), but they are un-altered sounds from Brice's bass.

Next we got a visit from our friend Giorgos Floudas, with his violin. He added some wonderfully subtle and soulful parts throughout the song, and put some real fireworks at the instrumental end.
The funny thing was, before recording it, he told us he didn't really know what to play at the end of the song. We looked at each other and said, .. well.. just do your thing.. which he did! as you can hear!

Giorgos Floudas played many instruments from a young age, and worked most of his life as a professional violinist, guitarist, teacher (he wrote a series of educational books for the violin which are highly appreciated)
Apart of Greek traditional styles, Giorgos studied also classical violin, which allowed him to perfect his technical skills and broaden his musical horizons. A sensitive soul and a life of hard work have made him a very special musician, known through all of Greece, who can impress both with virtuosity and with slow, soulful cries which he tears from his strings.

This link https://youtu.be/g09QjAO9a4I contains an older recording of Giorgos improvising over a slow groove which is laid down by laouto and percussion.
By now, he leads a more quiet life, but is still highly sought after for his unique touch at weddings and panigiria (festivals), where his haunting sounds dance around the equally mesmerising tones of the klarino, on the beat of the laouto's and drums

Yes mandarins! This may not have much to do with the contents of our project, but the past week we have spent for the most part in our mandarin fields, which, due to meteorological circumstances, had a lot of urgent work. So now when we close our eyes, we see mandarin trees, mandarin blossom, mandarin leaves, and weeds weeds weeds.
Anyway. We still managed to get somethings done on the music front!

We had been feeling unsure about the recording of one of the songs. It was lacking that certain 'something' that is very hard to describe, but that when it is there, it is obvious, and when it is missing, no matter what mixing tricks you try, it will not get better. Playing it together in duo felt better than what we heard on the recording. So we decided to redo it, and now that we have the new recording, it seems very obvious that the old one was 'not quite there'. Sometimes you need to give things some time before you can hear or see clearly what it needs.

This week, we are working on two of the remaining songs, getting ready to record, and editing some overdubs (getting rid of unwanted coughs, squeaking chairs, cursing musicians etc)

Guest

We would like to introduce to you the musicians who are participating in this project. We will do so in random order, one by one, and let's start with the first who surprised us with some enriching parts, French Bass-Wizard Brice Soniano

When considering re-incarnation as reality, one could imagine Brice to be the re-incarnation of someone like Yehudi Menuhin or Nicolo Paganini. Soon after being born as Brice, he grabbed the first instrument that looked like something familiar to him, and he almost got it right. In any case, he played it as if it was a violin, while ignoring completely the fact that the actual size of the instrument of his choice was many times that of a violin.
Meanwhile of course, Brice has realised he is not playing the violin in thislife, but the Contra Bass, but that doesn't bother him one bit.

Anyway, that is all speculation. The fact is, Brice has been working since an early age so passionately with his instrument, that it has become an extension of his personality. And his personality is a very lively and inspired one, always full of childlike joy and wonder.
This shines through in his playing, which is creative, refreshing, responsive and highly original!

Brice has studied both Jazz Bass and Classical Bass, and he is part of a group of highly talented improvisors who have organised themselves under the label ASTROPI
Their music is hard to put into words, but an essential theme is 'Being In the Moment'. Brice has a website here.

He plays on two songs of The Wolf, where he added not only a nice groovy bass part, but also some spacey bowed parts which give in each case quite a twist to the song.

Crowdfunding

As you can see, we have reached 48% in a very short time! With still most of a month to go, that is very encouraging! But we still need to find roughly 1400 euro's in order to get to our target.. so, also to all those who have donated, you can help us by interesting other people for what we do, show them our page. We hope to upload some more music by the end of this week. Until then - enjoy the good weather!