ZOOLIXO LIGO

A fairly untypical band of the Greek music scene, Zoolixo Ligo released their self-titled album in 1998 and 15 years later, at the time of writing this review, keep performing in live shows. Their style is built around an uncompromising ironic approach towards modern world on the lyrical side and a jazz-strong avant progressive rock.

With a very animated vocal performance (reminiscent of avant-garde theatrical plays), Zoolixo use Greek lyrics to make a parody of "current" hot topics such as politics and money ('Hronos ke Hrima'), folk singers ('Laikos Tragoudistis'), and TV ('Pios '), with a very original and extremely funny approach. Unfortunately this also constitutes an obstacle in appreciating the total package by non-Greek speakers. Your musical package includes of course the respective abrupt changes from lively rock riffs to mellow jazzier passages, odd-time signatures, eclectic keyboard phrases, and plenty of exciting structures that remind us of father Zappa, whose influence is more than evident in Zoolixo's philosophy.

Despite the dominance of jazz-rock patterns, Zoolixo also employ blues rock ('Kamia Fora mou Symveni') and some more eclectic aspects such as operatic vocals ('Opos Oposdipote'), which remind the styles used in the 70's and ancient Greek theatre, but also incorporate hints of AOR (Toto, Journey) in some of the albums highlights. Special mention goes to Papagianni's use of saxophone and the colourful keyboards of Hatziioannou, which, combined, produce some of the best pure avant moments ('Deka Mikroi Elefantes').

Strangely, there has been no follow-up to this rather interesting debut, which may don't reach the heights of Zappa's experimentation but serves as a short (31min) and delightful musical proposal out of the norm. Check out their samples on the web and make up your mind.

Best moments: Ime san ke Sena, Opos Oposdipote, and the instrumental Deka Mikroi Elefantes