31 f Drum ’n’ Crete
George Xylouris and Jim White are on a voyage of musical discovery. Jane Cornwell hears how avant rock met the word of Psarantonis.
L
auto player George Xylouris was raised in the mountain town of Anogia in Crete on a musical diet of traditional songs and the boundary-breaking sounds of
his father, the singer, lyra player and living legend Antonis Xylouris, aka Psarantonis.
Brooklyn-based drummer Jim White –
indie rock’s drummer of choice – grew up in inner-city Melbourne, Australia, playing in such avant-rock ensembles as Venom P- Stinger and The People With Chairs Up Their Noses and latterly with internationally renowned instrumental trio, Dirty Three.
But despite their wildly divergent back- grounds, the new musical pairing by the two longtime friends has been hailed as one of the most startling and exciting around. Their stirring debut album Goats (hear a track on fRoots 51) continues to send rock and world critics alike into paroxysms of delight, and little wonder: it’s a masterful, largely instrumental work that combines past and present with acoustic folk, free- jazz, post-punk and influences from every- where and nowhere.
Recorded in one room, without head- phones, by producer Guy Picciotto of Ameri- can post-hardcore band Fugazi, Goats com-
bines non-rock time signatures and sensitive but often ferocious drumming; its elemen- tal pull and free-flowing style stirs, mes- merises, uplifts. Traditional pieces such as Old School Sousta see lauto phrases – pro- duced with plectra including a vulture’s feather – put together like Lego bricks as rolling tom-tom thuds make way for a cli- max on a martial snare; suspense-filled tracks including The Bells / Wind are all more powerful for the way they rein in what always seems to be busting to let go [
youtu.be/Ky1t3xR-4Fs]. But where the duo really thrive is on stage.
“It’s hard to describe why we work so
well together,” says White, 52, as hairy and avuncular as, well, 49-year-old Xylouris, also happens to be. “On the one hand there’s this minimalist feel we have, and on the other hand there’s a trancey kind of circu- larity that feels super joyful.”
It’s late November; we’re sitting in a café in Shoreditch, a few hours before Xylouris White will play a blinding sold-out gig at Cargo – which follows on from a simi- larly spectacular show at Café Oto in Dalston and their rapturously received support slots for the UK tour by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, aka American singer / songwriter Will Oldham.
Goats has just premiered in the No 1 slot on Billboard’s World Music charts; live bookings are pouring in from major international fes- tivals and venues. The project that evolved naturally, unobtrusively, out of a friendship kickstarted by Xylouris’s Irish-Australian wife, musician Shelagh Hannan, in the early 1990s, has taken on a life of its own.
George Xylouris spent much of that decade living and working in Melbourne, home to a sizeable Greek-Australian popu- lation, and raising a Xylouris family ensem- ble: his three Greek-Australian kids continue to play alongside their father and grand - father at festivals including Womadelaide. One night in 1992, maybe three months after the Dirty Three (White, violinist War- ren Ellis and guitarist Mick Turner) were born in a bar in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, Xylouris spontaneously joined the trio onstage – a move so successful that he became their featured guest for years.
“I used to perform on a ten-minute-
long [Dirty Three] track called Indian Love Song,” remembers Xylouris, “and there would be a breakdown in the middle where Jim and I would be strumming and drum- ming, improvising rhythmical phrases and exploring dynamics.”
Photo: Manolis Mathioudakis
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