Vantzou, Christina

Vantzou, Christina

No5

Kranky

While on the island of Syros in the Aegean Sea for a film festival performance, Christina Vantzou experienced what she characterized as “a moment of focus”—a specific vision for the sprawl of raw recordings she’d been amassing for her fifth album. Upon relocating to the Cycladic island of Ano Koufonisi, she situated herself outside at a patio table with a laptop and headphones, taking brief breaks to swim, and began the “reductive process” of shaving and shaping the source material into uneasy but lyrical movements, alternately austere and adorned with strange inflections: glottal groaning, cavernous water, glittering eddies of modular synth, languorous silences. Mixing the pieces herself without outsourcing to an engineer compounded the intimacy and autobiographical dimension of the music; she refers to Nº5 as “almost like a first album.” Drawing on sessions staged in February 2020, Vantzou’s editing instincts emphasize process and isolation, spotlighting resonance and restraint, liquidity and long tails. Fleeting configurations of piano, wind, strings, synthetics, and field recordings, these are spaces as much as compositions, surreal grottos of shifting light, suffused with a sense of invisible divinity. Although seventeen musicians appear on the record, the proceedings feel minimalist and malleable, sculpted from interstitial moments and oblique synchronicities. The definition of a composer as “one who joins things” is here both plumbed and proven; Vantzou describes Nº5 as “a letting go,” a place of “soft borders,” unfixed and undefinable.

Vantzou, Christina

No4

Kranky

Belgium-based composer Christina Vantzou’s fourth full-length for Kranky ventures further into the uniquely elusive and evocative mode of ambient classical minimalism which has become her signature: a fragile synthesis of contemplative drift, heady silences, and muted dissonance. In regards to the new album she speaks of focusing particular attention on the effects of the recordings on the body, and of “directing sound perception into an inner space.” No. 4 took shape across roughly two years, incorporating a diverse array of musical and conceptual collaborators, including fellow Kranky artists Steve Hauschildt and John Also Bennett (of Forma) as well as Angel Deradoorian (ex-Dirty Projectors), Clarice Jensen, Beatrijs De Klerck, and members of Belgium’s Echo Collective. During the creation process Vantzou wanted to “blur lines of hierarchy,” and thus allowed all ensemble members and technical assistants to add or delete elements. Despite such a spectrum of input the eleven tracks feel distinctly cohesive, weaving elegant textures and resonant open spaces within a twilit landscape of eclectic instrumentation: piano, harp, vibraphone, voice, strings, marimba, synthesizers, gong, and bells. A mindset of premeditated exploration informs the album’s emotive textural intuition, with hushed drones and delicate gestures eliding in the periphery of the mix. Vantzou cites sleep and “the loosening of time” as two formative practices in her private and professional life, which manifests in the quietly hallucinatory properties of her music. No. 4 feels both endless and ephemeral, immersive and immaterial. It’s a music of horizon lines and half-light, mapped with feeling and foresight.

Vantzou, Christina

No3

Kranky

***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! Album Nº3 from CHRISTINA VANTZOU is the result of a two-year process of composing, arranging, rearranging, experimenting, and melding classical instruments with synths and electronics. Recorded in Belgium with a 15-piece ensemble of strings, horns, woodwinds and micro-choir, the tracks vacillate between orchestral, ambient soundscapes and more structured works that the composer refers to as "pillars." The internal core of the record, however, is unwavering. All tracks head in the direction of otherworldly drones surrounded by soft, subtle and sometimes intense veils or points. The structured tracks mark a new direction for Vantzou. Whereas 100% of the music on Nº1 and Nº2 was composed without time structure or steady click, the pillars on Nº3 adhere to a solid mathematical scheme. Perhaps Vantzou's day job as a math teacher is starting to have an influence. Nº3's virtual instruments and voice samples hearken back to Vantzou's time with The Dead Texan, specifically tracks like "Aegina AIrlines" and "When I see scissors I cannot help but think of you". The synths on Nº3 were given special attention and were recorded over a 2 week period using a DX7, Yamaha CS20, Roland Juno-6, and a selection of eurorack modular synths, making Nº3 very much a hybrid record, both symphonic and synth-based. To complete the album, Vantzou made 2 slow motion videos using a phantom high-speed camera and a 16mm short film.

Vantzou, Christina

No2

Kranky

***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! Developed over a four year period, and entirely funded by a part time job working as a SAT university entrance exam mathematics tutor, Nº2 was composed using synthesizers and a variety of unidentified samples that were manipulated beyond recognition. CHRISTINA VANTZOU then collaborated with MINNA CHOI of the San Francisco based MAGIK*MAGIK ORCHESTRA. Vantzou and Choi worked on the notation and arrangements and recorded the compositions with a 15-piece ensemble at Tiny Telephone studios in San Francisco. The chamber layer on Nº2 follows a similar pattern as her first record with the addition of bassoon, oboe, and an enhanced string section. Vantzou spent four months premixing the album before ADAM BRYANBAUM WILTZIE (Stars of the Lid / A Winged Victory for the Sullen) engineered the final mixes, as well as added some of his signature sound texture, at his studio in Brussels, Belgium. Perhaps a better title for the album would be “Symphony Nº2” as it was composed as a cohesive whole, much like her first album “Nº1”. Dense layers of strings are augmented by angelic voices, piano, woodwinds, & various synthesizers. Instrumental music, especially that which is scored with strings & horns, is invariably described as “filmic”. This is even more likely when the composer is a filmmaker such as Christina Vantzou. Welcome to the future, which luckily for us is filled by a womanʼs voice with a beautiful narrative. A recording that is a meeting of personalities is like the contact of chemical substances:...

Vantzou, Christina

No. 1

Kranky

*** CHRISTINA VANTZOU is an artist, musician, and composer. She was born in Kansas City, studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (1997-2001) and moved to Brussels in 2003 where she currently resides. Christina is known for her work with THE DEAD TEXAN (kranky) as well as in a variety of creative mediums including video, drawing, and animation. After various collaborations and a short tenure as a touring member of SPARKLEHORSE in the summer of 2007, Christina began composing the music for this album. She worked in isolation over a three year period using synthesizers, samples, and her voice. Then, a long distance collaboration with MINNA CHOI, director of MAGIK*MAGIK ORCHESTRA transformed the sprawling 45 minute single track into a score for a 7-piece orchestra, resulting in a two day recording session with Magik*Magik at TIny Telephone studios in San Francisco. The album was finally mixed in Brussels with production assistance from ADAM BRYANBAUM WILTZIE (STARS OF THE LID). While these works certainly orbit in the same musical galaxy as those of Stars of the Lid and The Dead Texan, Vantzouʼs compositions are more grounded and concerned with the terrestrial as opposed to the extra-terrestrial symphonies of the former, and are full symphonic movements as opposed to the shorter pop structures of the latter. These works also draw parallels to a number of late 20th century composers who concentrated on layering the string sections of orchestras while steering clear of bombastic brass and percussion elements. What becomes...