Dimitris Korontzis is a guitar player from Athens in Greece. He has released his first Jazz-Fusion LP Empathy in September 2017 and here we have his second one by the name 5 Elements. It is described as an ambient guitar album related to the Chinese tradition of Wu Xing. There’s more: according to this philosophy everything in the universe is made of this 5 elements Earth- Metal- Water- Wood- Fire
The basic music scale of the Chinese is the major pentatonic C-D-E-G-A and every note is related to each element, C is Earth, D is Metal, E is Wood, G is Fire and A is Water. The order of the notes he used is called the Productive Circle in the Wu Xing philosophy. All songs are built using only these 5 notes with that specific order and a drone with the basic note of each element.
And for a guitarist it is a remarkably restraint effort. In Earth the guitar is hardly recognisable, while you can hear it play its gentle parts in tracks like Metal and especially Wood and Fire. The guitar is heavily processed with use of effects like reverb and delay and such. This makes it an album aiming for atmosphere rather than technique.
Something to chill to!
