Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
£10GBP or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
CD digisleeve in matt finish with original artwork by Raimund Wong.
Includes digital pre-order of Homeland.
You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
Includes unlimited streaming of Homeland
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
“My homeland is where hate, I have given
And hate, deeper than any place else, I have received”
— Yannis Aggelakas
The words of poet-songwriter Yiannis Aggelakas, lead singer of the iconic Greek post-punk band Trypes, are the inspiration behind Valia Calda’s second album, to be released in May 2023 by independent label Deep Mountain Records.
For Greek brothers Nikos and Thodoris Ziarkas, who founded Valia Calda in London in 2013, composing the eight tracks that make up the new album was a personal journey that demanded an interrogation of their own experiences of homeland and migration.
Like countless other Greeks of generations past and present, Thodoris and Nikos travelled abroad searching for their own path. Their yearning for the people and places left behind, drawing on a theme of nostalgia which has left such a deep imprint on the folk songs of the Greek diaspora, makes itself felt in tracks Koutselio, Crossing the Warm Valley.
The ideas of homeland and migration also herald an exploration of Valia Calda’s musical roots, which lie in the folk music of Epirus and psychedelic jazz, and tangle here with punk inspired guitar riffs and meditative improvisations in the tracks The Stalker, Homeland and Deep Cave in the Mountains.
While tracks Nostalgia and Isolation, But in The End We’ll Be Together, and To be with You, convey the bitter sense of feeling let down and rejected by one’s homeland—remembering ancestors being persecuted by fascist regimes of the past and thinking of brothers and sisters fighting on the streets of Athens today—Homeland also shares the joyful moments of dreaming that accompany departure, offering glimpses of hope that a new land can become a home.
credits
released May 26, 2023
Sam Warner - trumpet and flugelhorn
James Allsopp - tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet
Nikos Ziarkas - guitar and electronics
Gaspar Sena - drums and percussion (3)
Thodoris Ziarkas - double bass, electric bass (5), karpathian Lyra (3)
Tracks 1, 4, 5, 6, 8 composed by Nikos Ziarkas
Tracks 2, 3, 7 composed by Thodoris Ziarkas
Recorded by George Botis on 6th & 7th of November 2021 at Fish Factory Studios, London.
Mixed & mastered by George Botis at Dada Studios, Athens.
Produced by Valia Calda and George Botis.
Released by Deep Cave Mountains Records
Front cover design by Raimund Wong.
The original photo is a family portrait of Yannoula Papakosta and Thodoros Ziarkas with their children Nikos, Vicky, Tasia.
Photo was taken c.1964 in Koutselio, Ioannina.
CD design by Thodoris Ziarkas
Band photo by Deniz Kavalali
Reflecting on the contemporary yet timeless struggles of physical and ideological displacement, Valia Calda’s music draws
inspiration from the themes of migration and exile.
Their music is rooted in the folk music of Epirus (Greece) and psychedelic jazz, which also tangles with punk inspired guitar riffs and modal
improvisations....more