f32 I
t was through the Xylouris family that the members of the Dirty Three developed a fascination for Greek music, particu- larly the music of Psarantonis (fR 301) – a darkly eccentric man fRoots has described as “sometimes giving the impres- sion of having sold his soul to a goat at the crossroads.”
“Jim is always telling me he loves my father’s [1998] album
Nogw the most,” says Xylouris. “I think this is because it’s a mostly instrumental album where Psarantonis is expressing himself with dynamics and passion. There is so much freedom and a lot of impro- vising on the rhythm.”
White nods. “Whenever the Dirty Three were touring the world it became a thing that we’d always go into record shops looking for Psarantonis albums,” he says. “We’d be like, ‘Did you find one? Which one?’” He flashes a grin. “Plus I love the fact that Nogw actu- ally means ‘I reckon’ in English.”
But the real precursor to the founding of Xylouris White, he says, came after Nick Cave, a longtime friend and Ellis collaborator, curated the 2009 All Tomorrow’s Parties festival at Mount Buller in Victoria, Australia. He duly invited Psarantonis and George to play.
White was there at ATP with two bands: Dirty Three and Smog, the project by American singer-songwriter Bill Callahan. “I don’t know how it happened but George and Psarantonis asked me to come onstage with them,” White says. “I’d been listening to that music a long time but I’d never thought about playing it, but I could hardly tell them no. We had a rehearsal in the hotel room before we went on, and I was playing with my drumsticks on the side of a chair, just trying to keep the rhythm with George.”
Xylouris laughs at the memory. “I was moving my foot so he was following that, and I was whispering things to him as well. Then my father – who doesn’t speak English and Jim doesn’t speak Greek – told me to leave him alone and let him play. I admire the fact that he [Psarantonis] always likes to let other players find their own way.”
White’s subsequent cameo was so successful that he ended up joining the father and son on an Australian tour. Then in 2012, after years of false starts, White finally made it over to Crete, to the home that Xylouris and Hannan share in Heraklion. After lunching on goat, he and Xylouris immediately went into the studio, bent on developing their style of improvising on Cretan rhythms and melodies. White had even learned some Cretan folk dances so he could internalise their feel.
“I also love the rizitika, the root songs,” he says. “They’re kind of like slow-walking a cappellas that people such as shepherds or rebel soldiers sing when they’re going somewhere, in groups or on their own. They’re like mix and match songs: there are many differ- ent lyrics about love, loss and liberation that fit a certain melody.”
Xylouris jumps in. “There are different melodies for arriving and departing, for birth and death… They’re all monophonic, sung in unison. You sing one, another person repeats, I sing one, someone else sings one and so on. Rizitikas can go the whole night. So we carry these sort of traditions in the music,” he adds. “But the connec- tion between me and Jim is in the feeling for the music itself. Together, his sound and my sound make a new sound.”
Seeing them perform live, the connection is obvious. The way they give and take and push and pull is like choreography unfolding. Seated at either end of the stage, each man’s gaze locked on the other, their silent language of nods and more imperceptible exchanges erupts into arm-swinging, head-banging performances that make them riveting to watch: “The way they communicated endings to these improvised pieces blew my mind,” Picciotto has said. “They would be cranking away so hard and suddenly some code was exchanged and they would stick the ending like gymnasts. It was killer.”
There were recording sessions in Rethymnon in Crete, and then in Sydney and Melbourne before the album was recorded in Brook- lyn. There have since been rapturously-met gigs in Australia; this year they’ve toured Canada and North America opening for Ameri- can experimental rock band Swans. In April they’re back in the UK and Europe for a handful of gigs and as support for cult Canadian post-rockers Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
And wherever they play – there was a residency at Union Hall in Brooklyn – they usually tend to fall into a trance while doing so.
“I always think of the dance,” says Xylouris. “I think of the old pictures of dancers. Singing and dancing go together in Greek tradi-
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