Originally released as a cd only release, Homeland finally gets the vinyl treatment it deserves! Valia Calda’s sophomore Lp, will be available in a limited pressing through Fair Weather Friends.
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.
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.