 
Daemonia Nymphe
2002
CD
Prikosnovénie
Rik
18 December 2002 neofolk world music | This eponymous album from Daemonia Nymphe follows their their LP "The Bacchic Dance Of The Nymphs" and their MCD "Tyrvasia". Devoted to the recreation of the sounds of Greek antiquity, this project should appeal to those interested in early - or in this case ancient - music as well as to neofolk and neopagan audiences.
We know little, unfortunately, about ancient music, but fragments have survived along with actual instruments and their pictorial representation. An earlier attempt to recreate the sounds of Ancient Greece was made by the Atrium Musicae de Madrid in their well-known recording "Musique de la Grèce Antique" but it was only a matter of time before the Greeks started doing it for themselves.
Daemonia Nymphe means ‘goddess nymph’ and this album is an invocation to beauty, past times and mythology, celebrated in nine balanced and entrancing tracks of male and female vocals, chants, spoken word and recreated ancient instrumentation.
‘Message Horn's Enchanting Echo’ - the beautifully reedy, almost Oriental, opening track - is the perfect accompaniment to the view of a lake which I was enjoying when I first heard it a couple of months ago. ‘Ida's Dactyls’, with prominent male vocals, is more obviously Greek, at least to me. ‘Summoning Divine Selene’ features female vocals while 'Hades' is an instrumental. 'Dance Of The Satyrs' is certainly the most ecstatic and exciting track, and my favourite on the album. 'Karai Rejoicing In Antron' has male spoken word over an instrumental. 'Nymphs Of The Seagod Nereus' has ethereal female vocals. In 'Hymn To Bacchus' male and female vocals and female spoken word pay homage to the god of intoxication, while 'Invoking Pan' expresses the intoxication itself.
Daemonia Nymphe have a warm sound with a tinge of something darker, but this is always confidently resolved into a balanced, complete and natural sound as if the old religion had never died, and presumably that's exactly what core members Evi Stergiou and Spyros Giasafakis set out to achieve. The CD booklet features the lyrics as performed in the original Greek, and in English translation.
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