Critics

GIALINA FTERA / Glass Wings

Wave Music Production 2002

In a shattered world, made up of fragments, which leaves almost no hope, the dream comes as a midnight whisper from heaven to give a new breath into life, so as to recreate beauty and magic through the lyricism of personal moments that become lasting.

Such a feeling accompanied the songwriter Giorgos Stavrakakis during the years and his recently released second album, entitled “Glass Wings”, sends that same message. Anchoring for years in the channel of the South Sea, he tells us myths influenced by its warm inspiration, contradicting the inherent poetry of human contact to the fragmentation of everyday life and time. “Burned age(s) / the voice of the wind / begging for songs and crying / and you, silent at its touch / mocking and laughing / wandering in the deserted streets”.

That rushing subsequence of events which promptly take hold of the human soul and suffocate it in a dusty, ravishing and unvarying ring, challenge Stavrakakis to attempt creating some cracks on it, in order to touch and feel the human perspective through time, since the sense of a lost sociocultural collectivism is lantent.

“Lights gone / slamming doors / breaths passing by / minor promises / dressed in words / roost in niches.

I remember the nights / words you never said / on your lips the wounds remain / I count the hours on the swings of my mind / and yesterday sinks”.

---

RESALTO

Minos EMI Prtoduction 1997

“Over the blocks of flats, otherworldly by the smoke of the city, an eye ‘of the sea’ writes down its own script on the concrete. Like an old postcard, hanging on the wall of a room, somewhere in Germany.

The first track of the album is the song “Summer” -- like a wish. Like a bus that follows its itinerary: on the whitecaps at the surface, then down to the bottom of the sea, to the west, to the east. And it lands with a rush ride at the next dangerous mission.”

“’Resalto’, one of the most interesting releases we came across recently, is the first album of a young songwriter from Heraklion, Giorgos Stavrakakis.

The tenderness of his music and lyrics and his warm interpretation, make the album “Resalto” a really good debute for the songwriter’s journey through music. We have distinguished certain songs such as: “Night itinerary”, “Lina”, “A day-off” and “Like the cigarettes”.

“G. Stavrakakis’ voice has got a peculiar sweetness. It reminds us of Savopoulos at his very internal moments, when he makes somebody feel that songwriting is, in the first place, a very private matter and that an artist should only venture to release an album only when very serious reasons are existent (present) – ‘by fear of God, love and faith’. Nevertheless, his voice has also got a roughness which reminds us of Gaifilias, and turns his way of singing even more peculiar but evocative, too. He is able to support this prompt with a feeling of sensitivity that, despite its tendency towards electric paths [accomplished, indeed, in a very discreet and well set-up way, and accompanied by excellent musicians as the guitarist Theologos Stratigos, the bassist (double-bass player) Giotis Kiourtsoglou, the saxophonist and clarinetist Thimios Papadopoulos, the keyboardist (keyboard player) Vassilis Moustos and the drummer Stefanos Dimitriou], remains focused on the ballad musicality (bel canto),  comparable to the firm method that was developed by Thanos Mikroutsikos in the album “Stavros tou Notou”, yet, trailing the soul giving style of Nikolas Asimos. A consistent attitude, in terms of expression, whose delicate “fruit” perfume should be accredited to Giorgos Stavrakakis alone, as the lyrics and the music of this entirely personal L.P. are his…”

“Beautiful music from a sensitive songwriter. Low tone melodies and mature lyrics, full of traveling and dreaming mood. It is a remarkable work for which Manos Xidous has full responsibility as an executive producer. Giorgos Stavrakakis belongs to that group of “quiet” artists who, however, are capable of drawing their auditors’ attention”.

"A warm, tender and sad autumn glance at a provincial landscape, where “the workers ‘injure’ the roads and the roads lead nowhere”. An interesting production, coming from a new songwriter from Heraklion, which transforms ten songs into night rush rides to areas in the ‘other’ Greece".