Christina Vantzou
Padre, fammi partire! (a tribute to Franco Battiato)
“Padre, fammi partire!” (Father, make me leave!). Franco Battiato, orphan of a father, sings this verse in "Da Orienta a Occidente". He declaims it solemnly and decisively. More than a request for a blessing, it is a declaration of intent. The force with which this prayer is recited admits of no weakness, no compromise and no obstacle. To leave is necessary. The volcano is there, showing the way. The power of this phrase reflects the impatience of a hawk that, tied to the arm of its falconer, wa…
Κλίμα (Klima)
Christina Vantzou and John Also Bennett return with Κλίμα (Klima), their third album as CV & JAB. Using an extensive sound genealogy including piano, flute, voice, and field recordings, the duo dive deeper into their idiosyncratic collaborative language. A reflection on microclimates and their ecologies, Κλίμα (Klima) is an invitation to probe the implicit memories of animal, plant and place, and our connection to the environments we inhabit.
No. 5
LP version. "While on the island of Syros in the Aegean Sea for a film festival performance, Christina Vantzou experienced what she characterized as 'a moment of focus' -- a specific vision for the sprawl of raw recordings she'd been amassing for her fifth album. Upon relocating to the Cycladic island of Ano Koufonisi, she situated herself outside at a patio table with a laptop and headphones, taking brief breaks to swim, and began the 'reductive process' of shaving and shaping the source materi…
S/T
A suite of raga-inspired compositions and improvisations that grew from a fertile collaboration between Christina Vantzou, Michael Harrison and John Also Bennett centered around a devotion to just intonation tuning, deep listening, and resonant spaces. Michael Harrison is a composer and pianist who is a dedicated practitioner of just intonation and North Indian classical music. He was La Monte Young's protégé and piano tuner during The Well-Tuned Piano years and a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath, a…
Serrisme (Book + CD)
* Edition of 300 * Invited by the town of Hoeilaart and with the support of the Flemish Heritage Fund we create this special document: a CD and a 32 pages booklet. Through photography, text, music, and sound we log a unique and peculiar culture: the grape cultivation under glass in Hoeilaart, a small village just below Brussels. Step with us inside the greenhouse, inside the confined world of the greenhouse workers. Serrism is: a musical illustration - by Christina Vantzou, sound registration…
Landscape Architecture
* Edition of 375 on black vinyl. In process of stocking * Beautifully serene and contemplative, ‘Landscape Architecture’ sees classical minimalists Christina Vantzou & John Also Bennett describe quizzical scenes on their follow-up to a sterling 2018 debut for Shelter Press, all mixed and self-released on the duo’s Editions Basilic imprint and now available on vinyl for the first time. It’s a suite of blurry dreamscapes made with flutes, piano, hazy environmental recordings, subs and subtle fx, …
Colliding Wind
* Edition of 250 copies. 180g vinyl, includes insert * The ambient/cross-genres record label Concentric Records (Simone Merli / Soundwalk Collective & Luca Calo / Born In 1986) - launches Colliding Wind, the second compilation of its introductory release trilogy. Featuring music by Christina Vantzou, Echium, Etapp Kyle, Jana Winderen, Kareem Lotfy, Soundwalk Collective, Tragic Selector (Daisuke Tadokoro & Terre Thaemlitz), the album is composed of a wide spectrum of ambient, field recording-base…
Multi Natural
Multi Natural is a new example of Christina’s organic chamber music. We enter nine composed chambers. Nine rooms to inhabit, constructed out of elements that are slowly fusing. The album is a string of semi constant metamorphosis. A gesture appears, is elaborated upon—or is halted and replaced by a new gesture. Multi Natural has multi focal points, quite dissimilar to Christina’s other works that tend to have a more linear path.
Within this album lives a composer who is not afraid to let the con…
No. 4
Christina Vantzou follows her role in the superb CV & JAB album for Shelter Press with the starkly haunting No.4 in her chrono-numeric series of albums for Kranky. No. 4 took shape across roughly two years, incorporating a diverse array of musical and conceptual collaborators, including fellow Kranky artists Steve Hauschildt and John Also Bennett (of Forma) as well as Angel Deradoorian (ex-Dirty Projectors), Clarice Jensen, Beatrijs De Klerck and members of Belgium’s Echo Collective. During the …
No. 3
Gatefold double LP version. "Album No. 3 from Christina Vantzou is the result of a two-year process of composing, arranging, rearranging, experimenting, and melding classical instruments with synths and electronics. Recorded in Belgium with a 15-piece ensemble of strings, horns, woodwinds and micro-choir, the tracks vacillate between orchestral, ambient soundscapes and more structured works that the composer refers to as 'pillars.' The internal core of the record, however, is unwavering. A…
No. 2
Developed over a four year period, and entirely funded by a part time job working as a SAT university entrance exam mathematics tutor, Nº2 was composed using synthesizers and a variety of unidentiï¬ÂÂÂed samples that were manipulated beyond recognition. Christina Vantzou then collaborated with Minna Choi of the San Francisco based Magik Magik Orchestra. Vantzou and Choi worked on the notation and arrangements and recorded the compositions with a 15-piece ensemble at Tiny Telephone studios in S…