Aquarius Bao

The region of Epirus is famous for it's landscape of mammoth mountains and holy rivers - and now experimental heavy rock. Villagers of Ioannina City are deeply influenced by Greek nature and cosmic phenomena and infuse their unique brand of heavy psychedelic rock with folk instruments such as bagpipes, flutes and didgeridoos. Their second album, Age of Aquarius - originally released in September 2019 - will now be reissued by Napalm Records. Epirus may become the unlikely epicentre of the heavy rock universe: A mantra for the new Age!

Amira Medunjanin - Damar (2016) {Aquarius CD 578-16}
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© 2016 Aquarius Records | CD 578-16
World / Folk / Sevdalinka / Traditional / Bosnia and Herzegovina

Amira Medunjanin is the finest exponent of sevdah, the melancholy and emotional folk music of Bosnia, and is remarkable not just for her clear, pained voice, but for the way she balances respect for ancient styles with experiment. She started out with a fine local band, the Mostar Sevdah Reunion, but then teamed up with jazz pianist and producer Bojan Z and began to expand her range. Their latest album together includes powerful and passionate traditional material, including an exquisite old song from Sarajevo and jaunty Serbian folk tunes. Elsewhere, her songs are transformed by Bojan’s sometimes furious and edgy piano flourishes, or the flamenco-influenced guitar of Boško Jović. And on the title track, a slow and theatrical piece written by Jović, she takes on a new musical personality, now singing in a deep, breathy style against edgy and jazzy piano chords.

Like fine wine, progressive rock bands normally require years of careful fermentation before maturing into a great vintage, so it's shocking, bordering on unbelievable, when a brand new group hits the scene so fully formed as did Britain's Haken. Indeed, Haken's 2010 debut, Aquarius, landed just two years after the sextet's initial creation, and yet the breathtaking scope of its ambitions, stylistic hybridization, and sheer instrumental skill suggest entire decades of accumulated experience between those involved. Just picture Dream Theater dabbling in harsher heavy metal ingredients (death metal vocals, mainly), as well as the fearless excess of poetic ‘70s prog rock originals Genesis and the classically inclined Kansas, and let the music flesh out the resulting mental canvas…