**Nikos Veliotis plays the cello in Muhammad, and is also known for doing so solo and in improvisation with others. In May 2013 he recorded his 'Folklor Invalid' in Knot Gallery and Camp Gallery in Athens. As stated by Touching extremes "A solitary, ceaseless low cello note paints blackness over the surface of nothingness, but soon stops to contemplate that very silence. Seconds slip by, and the drone reaffirms its needs. This time its tactile properties are thicker and the throbbing sensed more dramatically, the whole setting the listener on a topographic point where the rational substance is dwindling away while nerve reaction begins to seriously count. As we’ve entered the zone and float across inside and outside consciousness, the forbidding moan grinds to a halt again. The next stage is a harsh alteration, a development if you prefer, of the initial trace: the sensation is that of standing unprotected in front of a thorough sandblasting of the cerebrum as the frequencies get stridently prominent, hints of mechanical reiterativeness materialize, the level of ominousness approaching red. When we accept that all of the above will just mean “physical violation by the essence of buzzing clangor”, the last ten minutes deliver the terminal surprise. The shrieking choir – finely merged within the instrumental layers – improve the music’s heaviness with an equally massive stock; hell is raised until the sudden death of all. The endmost extremity surpassed, ears are left ringing for several instants. Of rather simple constitution yet highly aggressive, this work by Veliotis seems to represent the inevitableness of human involution: a sheer line turns int disorderliness, soundless harmony increasingly desecrated, despair and excruciation replacing what at the beginning we already had to live equably: sounds, quietness. Then the big illusion of feeble-minded midgets presuming themselves to act at the core of universal power in the name of some kind of controlling “god” began, the consequences well visible on most everybody’s countenance. That misconception will probably be extinguished sooner than many people expect: no tears or screaming anger will be useful at that moment. The ultimate murmuration will prevail, the universe proceeding after having brushed that annoying anthropomorphic dandruff off its shoulders.** Recorded May 2013 in Knot Gallery & Camp Gallery, Athens - Greece Recording by Coti K. & G. Kotsonis Mixing : Coti K. Mastering : ILIOS Screamers: Bella Fuzz, Natasha Giannaraki, Nalyssa Green, Anastasis Grivas, Simos Kakalas,
Yorgia Karidi, Thanos Kois, Kouza Dimitra, Elena Mavridou, Danae Stefanou