Sigmatropic returns with one more guest
Back for more shows in support of their recent album, «Sixteen Haiku and Other Stories,» local act Sigmatropic will give three performances in Greece this week – Fri. Thessaloniki, Mylos Club; Sat. Athens, Small Music Theater; Sun. Patras, Droseriko – with the New York-based fringe act James Sclavunos, one of many foreign guests on the aforementioned album. Since the release of «Sixteen Haiku and Other Stories» late last year, Sigmatropic, led by Akis Boyatzis as the band’s nucleus, have performed two rounds of shows in Greece, each with guests that had appeared on the album. Carla Torgerson, a frequent visitor here over the past decade, both as singer of Seattle band the Walkabouts and its splendid side-project Chris and Carla, launched the series. She was followed by the Scottish act Pinkie Maclure, also a guest on the album, and Lumen. «Sixteen Haiku and Other Stories,» a project based on poetry by the Greek Nobel Prize-winner George Seferis, was originally released in Greek and then reworked for an English-language rerelease, with vocal deliveries from numerous figures, including Robert Wyatt, Lee Ranaldo of the pioneering New York band Sonic Youth, Howe Gelb of the alternative country act Giant Sand, and Steve Wynn, formerly of the LA band Dream Syndicate, who, nowadays, is putting out one worthy solo album after another. Sclavunos, the latest visitor to join Sigmatropic on stage, has a worthy background of his own. Currently fronting his own band, The Vanity Set, the drummer and percussionist has been a member of Nick Cave’s backing band, the Bad Seeds, and prior to that, worked with the psychobilly band, the Cramps.
