XYLOURIS WHITE
Announce New Album
+ Share First Single
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Xylouris White, the ruggedly visionary duo formed of Cretan lute player George Xylouris and Australian drummer Jim White, have today released a new single, “Only Love”. “Only Love” is the first single from their new album Mother, to be released January 19 on ABC Music, with limited vinyl release through Kasumuen Records”; pre-orders HERE.
A passion for exploration comes naturally to Xylouris White. For their debut album, 2014’s Goats, Xylouris White compared themselves to the titular animals, wandering fearlessly through rough-hewn terrain. Two years later, they showed how far their horizons could reach on 2016’s majestically expansive Black Peak, named after a mountain top in Crete.
Just 15 well-toured months later, the duo’s exploratory instincts drive them further onwards still on their third album, Mother, and named to denote “new life”. As Xylouris puts it, “Mother is the extension of Goats and Black Peak. Three things, all part of a whole. Goats are mothers, Zeus was raised on Amaltheia’s milk, Black Peak is Mother Earth… Mother Earth is the mother of everything.”
Across Mother‘s nine tracks, Xylouris White nurture fecund growths from the spaces between their instruments. Sometimes the songs drive with an invigorating urgency; sometimes they brood, plead, yearn and lull. The duo seem to discover each other anew at every turn, teasing the songs out from their fluid chemistry with the kind of virtuosity that knows when to listen, accommodate and learn afresh. “A theme of the album is the significance of simplicity and a child-like approach”, Xylouris explains. “So, we connect mother and child and play instruments as toys. Xylouris White is still gestating.”
That ongoing gestation is a remarkable extension of already remarkable back-stories. Xylouris is a scion of one of Greece’s most revered musical families. His father is legendary singer and lyra player Psarantonis. Jim White, meanwhile, has commanded international attention for more than two decades as part of Australia’s Dirty Three. Now New York-based, White has often been called on to collaborate with numerous alt-A-listers (including: Bonnie “Prince” Billy, PJ Harvey, Cat Power and Smog), where he redeploys the rolling momentum of free-jazz to variously supple, sensitive and seismic ends. Most recently he performed with Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett on their acclaimed album Lotta Sea Lice.
Proving that Xylouris White can be thrillingly direct when the mood takes them, “Only Love” displays a brilliantly barrelling sense of momentum, White’s powerhouse percussion urging Xylouris‘ liquid-fingered lute-playing and impassioned baritone on to increasing heights of urgency. It’s the first glimpse at an album of extraordinary accomplishment from two supremely seasoned players who’ve kept a close kinship with the richly, rewardingly inquisitive instincts of their youth. In Xylouris‘ words, “It’s the natural maturity of fruits as they ripen. As fruit matures by the rhythm of nature, so the music grows at its own pace. So, here are two maturing fruits giving the taste of their present maturity – and they͛re still children.”
Mother by Xylouris White will be released 19th January on ABC Music.
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