Exposé Online banner

Exposé Online

Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Thanos Stavridis — Spicy Margarita
(Bandcamp 002, 2020, CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2021-04-10

Spicy Margarita Cover art

Having taken his first steps in learning accordion and music theory at the early age of six, Greek composer and multi-instrumentalist Thanos Stavridis graduated from the School of Music Studies of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with a degree in Ethnomusicology. The title of his first release from 2016 translates to A Suitcase Full of Dreams, he also plays in a group called dRom, a boundary-crossing band who draw from gypsy styles of the past and fuse them with the essence of the current sounds of the Balkans, tracing a route that starts from Epirus, crossing Thessaloniki, Skopje, Sofia, and Belgrade and reaches all the way to Bucharest, using clarinet, accordion, guitars, bass, percussion and more. He’s also collaborated with numerous other musicians both live and on recordings. With all that, Spicy Margarita is only Stavridis’ second album under his own name, a purely instrumental endeavor, five years after his first, a powerful blend of Mediterranean folk sounds and other ethnic music from around the globe (the track “Havana Nights” blends his Balkan roots with a strong Caribbean flavor, for example), some of which were developed over time with dRom, others coming to life over the course of the year of quarantine, which afforded an opportunity to create new material. Stavridis sticks mostly to accordion on the album’s thirteen tracks, but on some he doubles on Fender Rhodes. He is joined by a number of other players, bringing in double bass, electric bass, electric guitar, classical guitar, drums, percussion, saxes, various brass, a string ensemble and more, track depending, although no two tracks share the same instrumental formula, save his everpresent accordion. Many of the cuts fuse the folky sounds into a jazzy idiom, like the brilliant “Let’s Play” and “Alma Gitana,” while others like the title track and the opener “Wondering” are a bit more laid back and dreamy slabs of beautiful folk sounds. There’s a lot of wonderful magic spun throughout these thirteen cuts, certainly evidence that Stavridis as a composer and bandleader has an abundance of great ideas to share.

Filed under: New releases, 2020 releases

Related artist(s): Thanos Stavridis

More info
http://thanosstavridis.bandcamp.com/album/spicy-margarita

 

What's new

These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.