THE SYLEKTIS STORY
Sylektis is a collaborative music project with a focus on new creative processes, drawing on intuitive responses to a wide range of influences, musical and non-musical. It is not a band or a solo artist per se: its vision was to draw upon the value of diverse collaborators, to collect together musicians seemingly scattered and separated. Its greater goal is to create beauty and move people through the art of a global artistic community.
Origins: Collection One
It began when composer/producer Basil Hogios found himself limited by the Covid lockdowns of 2020. This was a difficult time for an innumerable number of creators and musicians who were unable to perform or collaborate with others.
With Sylektis, Basil set out to achieve something seemingly impossible at the time of the project’s conception. He wanted to turn isolation into community, channelling the innate potential of musicians scattered across a world riddled with uncertainty, with artists who might feel as alienated and aimless as he did.
He saw the situation as a potential experiment: how could collaborative music be made in this new limited existence? With just a few musical ideas and a selection of fragments from visual arts, literature, poetry etc, he reached out to old friends and new artists scattered and isolated, hoping to create a community remotely through recorded music, inspired by what this process might sound like. The process was to follow where the musical piece would go, being completely open to the artists' responses, free from limiting ideas of style and genre set by the music industry. The results were always surprising and inspiring. Each song's creation became its own story.
The 5 song first EP 'Collection One' is the result of that experiment, a unique collection with each track representing each artist and reflecting the story behind the song; a product of the stories and emotions of those two strange years. The texture of the compositions is ethereal and melancholic, at times existential. The sombre, nocturnal mood of the cinematic sound textures offers a quirky and theatrical style.
In a brief moment of respite between lockdowns, he and his longtime partner and collaborator film-maker Maia Horniak arranged a photo/video shoot in Prague to visually bring the character to life, incorporating elements of mythology, mysticism and baroque vanitas..examining the role of the artist and all humans in today's complex and troubled world. Read more about the Sylektis concept and visual approach here.
Behind the name ‘Sylektis’
Basil was the producer of the project, and in a way acted as a kind of collector or curator, assembling the music of the collaborators, adding samples from old records and his own archived recording sessions. The name of the project 'Sylektis' means collector in Greek, and from there, a visual concept for the whole project was created: a lone figure in their isolated space, collecting dreams and human experiences, transforming and transfiguring them into new works of art.
Looking Ahead: Collection Two
The project expanded further and continued to exist even after the restrictions of the pandemic. The collective is working on “Collection Two,” a second volume of works. As well as featuring new compositions, it will also have instrumental and ambient reworks from “Collection One” (as the material was so rich and full of potential for new incarnations). If “Collection One” felt like a reaction to a dark time in our history, this follow-up represents a new page: “Collection Two” is the will to slowly and calmly find a way back and re-adjust, reflect, and re-discover the light and hope in the original work.
Now that it’s possible to see the potential of this kind of project, Sylektis is envisaged as an on-going process. More ambitious musical and visual works are already in the pipeline, and will expand into visual art, installation, performances and immersive experiences.