Back in June we previewed Ston Elaióna (or Στον Ελαιώνα), the new full-length from US-born, Greece-based flautist, synthesist and composer John Also Bennett, coming later this July on Shelter Press. Composed and recorded live in Bennett’s Athens studio with the Parthenon in view from the window, the album was born of attentiveness to surroundings and executed with a minimalist’s attention to detail. As we wrote in our preview, “the record—titled ‘in the olive grove’ in Greek—[blurs] the lines between the ancient and the contemporary, the physical and metaphysical, with electroacoustic compositions every bit as precise and spacious as fans of JAB will have come to expect.” First single ‘Easter Daydream’ introduced the style, “building with subtle bass flute and synth which allows the real world to bleed in,” as we continued. “Namely the bells from a procession captured during Orthodox Holy Week down the road from Bennett’s apartment in Athens, sounds which have a strangely dualistic effect on the mood, both haunting the track and charging it with immediacy.”
Ahead of the the album’s released in less than a month’s time, Bennett has returned with a brand new single. Described as “but one key to opening the album’s multilayered worlds,” title track and opener ‘Ston Elaióna’ again intertwines bass flute, oscillators and DX7ii to recreate the sensation of quiet periods spent “in the olive grove,” or else at some other moment of peace within an otherwise bustling city. But just as the track serves as the door into the landscape and headspace of the album, it represents a door between worlds too. A porous, characteristically Greek threshold between the old and the new which allows the accumulated layers of time to be considered simultaneously.
Photo by Christophe Piette, artwork by Zin Taylor with design by Bartolomé Sanson