YANNIS KYRIAKIDES - Resorts & Ruins

Composer Yannis Kyriakides has few but very clear memories of his native Cyprus: among them, those of the beach at Varosha, a suburb of Famagusta, are the sharpest. It's there that the Kyriakides family finds itself when, in the summer of 1974, Turkey invades the island (following the coup by the Cypriot army backed by the Greek colonels).

Since then Yannis has lived in Europe: first in London, then in York, and finally in Amsterdam, where he now teaches electronic music. In 2008 Yannis returned to Varosha, where he found a Ballardian scene: the very same buildings he had seen newly built in all their splendour were still there, left to age amid sand and nature, "it was like standing before the image of memory itself."

"Varosha (Disco Debris)" began life as an installation first staged in Amiens in early 2010: a dark room in which actual debris from different sources was played (speeches, Turkish pop songs from the '70s, birdsong, etc.), while a hidden camera recorded the reactions of those present. The version on "Resorts & Ruins" runs thirty minutes and features Ayelet Harpaz's austere voice underscoring the contradictions of wars that still violently mark life in the Mediterranean today.

Less evocative, but just as tied to Cypriot culture, "The One Hundered Words" is a piece inspired by an ancient song form from the island. Here too, elements of Cypriot folklore are treated by Kyriakides as fragments set against the gleaming electronic architectures of his manipulations. Rounding out the CD's tracklist is the three-part piece "Covertures", also originally conceived as an installation and first presented at the 2011 Biennale.

The CD includes a series of postcards created by Isabelle Vigier, gathered under the title "The Golden Seaside".

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27/06/2013