Nikos Veliotis/ Alex Zethson — CRYO

CRYO is a trip into gloomily bounding and ultimately very doom-laden modern composition for cello and piano. It’s a two-track album, with each track lasting around the twenty-minute mark, and each is as brooding & bleak as the last.

The CD comes presented in a monochrome mini gatefold, which features on its front and back covers a picture of a male and female skaters. They are on the ice, snow is falling, with undefined gloominess behind them. It looks like it’s from the 1950s

The album features Athens-born Nikos Veliotis on cello and Stockholm-based Alex Zethson. Both have been fairly active in the wilder experimental scenes for some time. Veliotis formed the pioneering electronic group In Trance 95 and is known for his collaborative work with Giannis Aggelakas (Tripes). Zethson is a member of projects such as Goran Kajfes’ Tropiques, Martin Küchen's Angles, Fire! Orchestra, Vathres .

The two-track album was mastered by  Mell Dettmer, who has collaborated with the likes Earth and Sunn O))). So this enhances the doomy, at points veering towards metallic quality of the tracks.

The tracks are simply titled  "CRYO I" and "CRYO 2"-  the first runs at just over eighteen and a half minutes, and the second at nearly twenty-two minutes. Both tracks use similar playing techniques- the piano shifts between continual gloomy bounding, clunking cascades, and bleak tollings. While the cello often has a simmer haze, to a grimly hovering quality.

Both tracks focus on a sense of constant rolling discord- the first track, maybe a little more active in its piano playing, while the second feels more oppressive & more towards the experimental doom metal side of things.

If you enjoy piano and cello set to their most doom-laden and bounding-yet-gloomy forms, then CRYO will appeal. Though I do think if the pair do another collaboration, there will need to be a tad more variation on offer. Drop by