Songlines Top Of The World title - September 2022.

Following his critically acclaimed debut solo album Kkismettin, Antonis Antoniou, the driving force behind award winning bands Monsieur Doumani and Trio Tekke, has returned with another unconventional and skilfully produced solo album, expanding his musical language even further towards exhilarating and unmapped territories.

With one foot in the East and the other in the West, with one ear in the past and the other in the future, Antonis Antoniou boldly dives deeper into his experimental and often eccentric practice, inventing new methodologies and developing new contexts, wherein various seemingly incompatible ingredients find fertile ground to intertwine. Carrying in his creative luggage his remarkable musical experience, knowledge and craftsmanship, he approaches music composition, arranging and production in a totally idiosyncratic way. Throisma is exactly the intoxicating outcome of this course.

Throisma comprises nine pieces, which exist in a psychedelic/dubby sonic world with a strong Eastern Mediterranean aroma, and enriched with heavily-filtered tzouras (small bouzouki) lines, fuzzy bass riffs, dirty analogue synth tones and hypnotic floor tom grooves. A finely crafted rich and colourful soundscape, bearing the trademark identity of a high-spirited artist and sonic explorer, attempting to marry diverse musical worlds: Eastern qualities with Velvet Underground-ish moods, Anatolian melodic vibes with rocky-psychedelic textures, organic folky flavours with sharp contemporary electronics and musique concr?te techniques. All this is delivered with an unparalleled flow, edge and elegance, clean of stereotypes and clich?s. Throisma translates as "rustling". The lyrics sung in Antoniou's native Cypriot Greek are characterised by a poetic reflection on existentialism, calling for a spiritual awakening, and a neglect towards the "Sk?rta d?ra" (useless gifts) imposed by capitalist structures and evil bodies that aim to keep our souls in custody. He asks: "What arethe things that keep our souls from rustling? Why do we continuously fall into the trap of shutting ourselves, depriving the breeze of love from reaching the depths of our psyche and vibrating its leaves? How deep have we buried our childhood joy, and what's the price we need to pay in order to unbury it?" An existential quest, fuelled through Antoniou's artistic medium, has managed to encode his thoughts and communicate these nuances through these nine songs.

1. Throisma
2. Syntagi
3. Skarta Dora
4. Ksorkisma
5. Engata
6. Yiorti (Feat. Efthymia Alphas)
7. Potte
8. Zeybek Anark
9. Achtina 2 (Fotis Siotas)