Ross Daly - Echo of time (2 cd)

These recordings are the result of a 20 year collaboration with the Cretan lyricist Mitsos Stavrakakis which simultaneously reflect the early work of the ongoing musical project “Labyrinth”. The first recordings are from 1982 and concern themselves entirely with the idiom of Cretan music, although the influences of other related musical traditions are readily apparent. At that time I was living in Hania on the west end of Crete, and was entirely submersed in Cretan music. I was also still studying under my teacher, the late Kostas Mountakis, whose influence on my playing at the time is quite clearly noticeable. In those days Cretan music was very different from what it has come to be today. It was much simpler and clearer, and was a direct reflection of a much older aesthetic sense and order, which has today been either seriously distorted into folkloric mannerisms, or buried entirely under a façade of urban modernity. Nothing, however, remains the same forever and Cretan musicians, even at that time, seemed to be in search of new sounds and forms, whilst remaining equally insistent on maintaining a characteristic sound, which they felt to be very much theirs...

The lyrics of Mitsos Stavrakakis interested me particularly because they are, on the one hand, full of very vibrant and intense images, and on the other hand, because they make use of a traditional linguistic idiom in a very contemporary yet uncompromising way. The voices of Vassilis Stavrakakis and Spyridoula Toutoudaki are ideally suited to Mitsos’ lyrics and, for me, bring them to life in a very unique way.