Manolis Aggelakis and Antonis Livieratos have been friends for twenty-five years, or, if you prefer, a quarter of a century. During this by no means insignificant period, they have collaborated many times on stage and in the studio. They both have, for example, participated in each other’s solo albums, and they were also founding members of Illegal Operation.

“Distance/No Distance” is the first album they co-sign as a duo. It consists of four long, approximately ten-minute tracks, in three of which the sole sound sources are an electric guitar (Aggelakis) and an organ (Livieratos). In the fourth, a second guitar has been added and the organ has been replaced by an electric piano and a synth. Since the overall result is too noisy to be classified as ambient and too “atmospheric” to be labeled as noise, the term ambient/noise has been chosen (whatever that may mean).

The artists themselves write:
“In the spring of 2020, during the first lockdown due to Covid-19, we found ourselves in an unprecedented situation. One of its main features was that while we could still communicate via a long video call with someone in another country (or even another continent), it was suddenly completely impossible to meet and hug our loved ones, even if they were just a few kilometers away. This forced us to accept that the word “distance” would henceforth have a different meaning from what it had in our lives up to that point. This album is, in a way, the soundtrack of our realization process of this enormous change.”

Distance/No Distance is out on LP and Digital Album via Same Difference Music, distributed from Inner Ear.