Nyfida

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2024-07-12

Label: Room40

nyfidasoundbox.com

There is a Greek island called Lesbos, the island of an archaic poet, Sappho.
In July 2021 Spyros Polychronopoulos and Jannis Anastasakis, moved most of their studio equipment and musical instruments to a small house next to the beach to record an album. The exact location the recordings took place was a house in an uninhabited village in the gulf of Kalloni called Nyfida.
This house was where Spyros’s grandparents use to live. All the walls were covered by old pictures and embroideries made by them. This house affected how this music was made in very direct ways, in fact some of the sounds were made by using the props found in the premises: old materials such as parts of a loom, old sewing machines and more modern ones including a blender and a fridgeall found their way into this recording.
After the 2021 summer Spyros worked on the recordings for several weeks shaping the multichannel recordings to form this album. During this process the sounds with the embedded memories were reshaped and reimagined.
This album is the product of the work in two contradictory environments a small beach village during summer and a sprawling city during winter.

credits
Order the Nyfida unit here
nyfidasoundbox.com

Manual notes:

Welcome to the Nyfida Sound Box, a versatile device inviting you, the listener, to challenge
the enclosed composed material’s form and intended use in perpetuity.

• Operating as an Audio Player
for the compositions by Spyros Polychronopoulos and Jannis Anastasakis.
• Algorithmic Variation
Employ an algorithm to simulate composer decisions and musician executions, resulting
in endless unique variations of the material.
• Soundscape Generation
Transform your surroundings into ever-changing auditory experiences, creating inherently distinctive soundscapes.
• Jamming Tool
Interact with the album or the algorithmic variation of it, altering its sound through various effects and loops.
• Synthesizer Functionality

Create distinctive sounds by morphing audio material according to your aesthetic preferences.

Position 0: The device is OFF
• Toggle switch off: Listen to the album as the composers intended.
• Toggle switch on: Customize playback using Pots 1-4 for effects like Pitch Tremolo, Chorus, Distortion, and Reverb. Transform Nyfida into a synthesizer and compositional tool.

Position 1: Album Mode
• Toggle switch off: Experience live playback with endless unique executions of the four tracks.
• Toggle switch on: Interact with live execution using Pots 1-4 for effects like Pitch Tremolo, Chorus, Distortion, and Reverb.

Position 2: Live Mode
• Toggle switch off: Immerse yourself in unique soundscapes using the endless variations of album tracks as a source. Perfect for background music, relaxation, sleep, or meditation.
• Toggle switch on: Interact with the soundscapes using Pots 1-4 for effects like Detune, Speed, Distortion, and Reverb.

Position 3: Deepen Mode Switch between tracks using the button (LED blinks once) and adjust volume with the dedicated Volume Pot.

Advance feature: Looper
• Engage the looper in Rotary positions 1-3 with Toggle on by holding down the button for a loop size of up to 10 minutes. The looper supports multiple overdubs (adding new loops over existing ones).
• Double-tap to clear the looper (LED blinks twice) when the Toggle switch is on in any Rotary position.
• Return to Rotary position 0 (with Toggle on) to listen the loop on its own and adjust its characteristics using Pots 1-4, featuring effects like Pitch Tremolo, Chorus, Distortion, and Reverb. In this mode press the button once to play the loop in reverse.

Switch Toggle off to silence Nyfida.

Spyros Polychronopoulos: composition, sound-box algorithm, electronics
Jannis Anastasakis: electronics
Orfeas Moraitis: sound-box chipset design
Natalia Manta: artwork
JAM pedals: assembly, manufacturing
Lawrence English: Mastering
Released by ROOM40 2024