Coti

An ultra-rare exotica album originally released in 1963, Monte Moya & The Surfers' "Percussionata" is high on the list of many exotica collectors and commands high dollar on auction sites when an original LP copy becomes available. Sounding like a cross between the Latin fueled jazz of Cal Tjader and the mellow exotica of Arthur Lyman, "Percussionata" sounds as fresh today as it did when first released, largely thanks to the audiophile quality of the original recordings…

This anthology aspires to map the heterogenous landscape of Greek Experimental Electronic Music in all its contextual, sociopolitical, geographical and aesthetic disparity. With a single exception, it zeroes in on post-80s music. It comprises works of very different kinds by composers of all sorts of backgrounds that, still, can be thought of, as both "Greeks" and "Experimentalists". Experimental Electronic Music is generally expected to be highly variegated, especially when examined in a breadth of several decades, and with respect to all sorts of artistic, academic, subcultural and other influences. What is not so obvious, however, is that the very notion of Greekness, as well as its contextual and historical offshoots, are highly diversified, too. This anthology is an attempt to map the various kinds of Experimental musics that have been produced by Greeks over the last few decades. More, it is also an attempt to delineate different understandings of what "Greek" or "Experimental" may stand for, by means of zeroing in on the numerous, often overlapping, realities and micro-scenes that are associated with the former.

On 2016's Delirium, Italian goth metal outfit Lacuna Coil hit a peak in their catalog with that album's psych-ward sideshow flourish and some of the catchiest songwriting in their careers. With their follow-up, Black Anima, they shed the theatrics and face the sobering reality that plagues us on a deeper, human level, revealing a harder-edged but equally grand version of themselves that mines vulnerability for maximum effect. In Italian, "anima" means soul, and the band bare theirs fully by processing personal growth, coming to grips with hardened adult perspectives, and struggling with real-life problems like loss and self-doubt.