Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis - Calibrating Friction

Calibrating Friction

Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis

On September 15, 2023, The New York City-based, JUNO-nominated composer Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis will release his debut album, Calibrating Friction, via New Amsterdam Records. Stafylakis has been celebrated for his “ferociously expressive” (Times Colonist), and "dreamy yet rhythmic" (New York Times) “amalgamation of the classical music tradition [with] the soul and grime of heavy metal” (I Care If You Listen). Calibrating Friction serves as Stafylakis’s artistic mission statement and musical manifesto, showcasing a fusion of metal-influenced classical music and modern progressive metal.

On Calibrating Friction, Stafylakis, in collaboration with co-producer Adam Pietrykowski (Van Tilburg), re-imagines five of his most metal-influenced chamber compositions of the past decade from the perspective of bone-deep fusion. Stafylakis enhanced the inherent metal characteristics of his instrumental writing by injecting the arrangements with 8-string electric guitars, drums, and sundry aggressive timbres. The resulting sound world was then augmented with electronic elements, edited, and mixed by Pietrykowski, who treated it as a holistic sound object, transcending the individual pieces’ origins as live chamber music and re-casting Stafylakis’s masterful compositions through the lens of a modern progressive metal record.

Visceral, epic in scope, and grounded in a deep sense of rhythm and groove, the five pieces on Calibrating Friction invite the listener to undertake a journey through sprawling narrative soundscapes and interlocking musical structures. The record was brought to life by the virtuosic musicianship of the performers, a super-group of all-star players that includes members of Animals As Leaders, Leprous, Bang On A Can All-Stars, Sirius Quartet, seven)suns, American Brass Quintet, Contemporaneous, and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Calibrating Friction, Stafylakis’s debut portrait album — years in the making — represents the culmination of decades of artistic experimentation and music-making. It serves as his artistic mission statement and musical manifesto.
Conceived and created at all stages in collaboration with Adam Pietrykowski — also known as the prog-pop artist Van Tilburg — it is their response to the hypothesis: “what if we took metal-influenced classical music and produced it as we would a modern progressive metal record?”
Harry writes:
“From my childhood training as a classical pianist, to my teenage years pursuing metal music as a guitarist, songwriter, and producer, to my return to classical music in my twenties as a composer, my trajectory as an artist has intertwined — both by instinct and by design — the double helixes of classical and progressive metal. Over the years, these two stylistic and cultural forces have influenced each other in my work to varying degrees, in some ways supporting and in others violently conflicting with each other. In a very real way, my career to this point has been largely defined by my attempts to calibrate that friction.
While the music industry and mainstream culture alike position classical and metal as diametrically opposed genres – one characterized by elegance and erudition, the other by noise and aggression – I have always intuitively experienced them as two sides of the same artistic coin. If one forms a playlist that includes Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and Stravinsky, alongside Meshuggah, Opeth, Symphony X, and Animals As Leaders, one might find a prominent set of shared musical values: a fascination with powerful dramatic narratives, expansive soundscapes, complex formal structures, instrumental virtuosity, extreme precision in ensemble coordination, and a dominant sense of the epic.
I obsessively sought these values in my days as a composer/songwriter in the field of progressive metal – especially in my band Faces Of Horizon, which disbanded in 2005 – and I have continued to seek them throughout my career as a composer of classical concert music. With every new piece of chamber or orchestral music that I tackled, my deep roots in metal (especially prog, djent, thrash, death, black, and power) played a significant role in shaping the flow and drama of the music, injecting technical and conceptual elements that resulted in some kind of fusion between the genres. As the years went on and I explored ways of translating metal and guitaristic musical idioms into classical mediums, the stylistic fusion became increasingly organic, and to me at least, increasingly inspiring for the next piece.”
Calibrating Friction combines five of Stafylakis’s most metal-inspired compositions from the past decade and re-imagines them from a perspective of bone-deep fusion. Initially created as pieces of pure chamber music to be performed live, in concert, by classical ensembles, they contained the musical elements of progressive metal in their structures and instrumental writing but mostly used the sounds of (acoustic) classical instruments only. Stafylakis enhanced the inherent metal characteristics of his instrumental writing by injecting the arrangements with 8-string electric guitars, drums, and sundry aggressive timbres. The resulting sound world was then augmented with electronic elements, edited, and mixed by Pietrykowski, who treated it as a holistic sound object, transcending the individual pieces’ origins as live chamber music and re-casting Stafylakis’s masterful compositions through the lens of a modern progressive metal record.
This project features some of Stafylakis’s favorite musicians and collaborators in the world, including members of Animals As Leaders, Leprous, Bang On A Can All-Stars, Sirius Quartet, seven)suns, American Brass Quintet, Contemporaneous, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and so many more – and, fittingly, his first collaboration with Faces Of Horizon drummer Matt Grou since the band parted ways in 2005. “It has been a massive endeavor and I am deeply grateful to all these supremely talented artists for their individual contributions to the album.”

Tracklist
1. Calibrating Friction
2. Flows Obsidian (feat. Javier Reyes)
3. Never the Same River
4. Unrelent
5. Of Beauty / Of Brutality (feat. Van Tilburg)
Credits
All tracks composed by Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis, except “Of Beauty / Of Brutality” composed by Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis and Adam Pietrykowski
Arranged by Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis and Adam Pietrykowski
Additional drum arrangements by Matt Grou
Guitar solos on “Flows Obsidian” composed by Javier Reyes
Produced by Adam Pietrykowski and Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis
Mixed & edited by Adam Pietrykowski
Mastered by Silas Brown at Legacy Sound (New York, NY)
Musicians:
Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis – guitars and programming
Van Tilburg (Adam Pietrykowski) – guitars and electronics, guitar solos on “Of Beauty / Of Brutality”
Javier Reyes – guitar solos on “Flows Obsidian”
Matt Grou – drums and percussion
Vicky Chow – piano
Chern Hwei Fung – violin and viola
Raphael Weinroth-Browne – cello
Tristan Kasten-Krause – double bass on “Flows Obsidian”
Evan Runyon – double bass on “Of Beauty / Of Brutality”
Tara O’Connor – flute, alto flute, and piccolo
Ken Thomson – clarinet and bass clarinet
Kathryn Brooks – bassoon
Eric Reed – French horn
William Keats Lang – trombone
Toby Kuhn – additional percussion
Recording of all instruments (except drums, cello, bassoon, flute, and some guitars) by Adam Pietrykowski
Recorded primarily at Greenpoint Recording Collective (Brooklyn, NY), with assistance by Nate Jasensky; piano recorded at Lethe Lounge (Manhattan, NY), with assistance by Mark Ettinger, piano tuning by Kazuya Tsujio.
Drums recorded and edited by Matt Grou at Matt Grou Productions (Montréal, QC)
Cello recorded and edited by Raphael Weinroth-Browne (Ottawa, ON)
Flute recorded and edited by Tara O’Connor (New York, NY)
Bassoon recorded by Andrew Yankiwsky, Paul Blandford, and Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis at Precursor Productions (Winnipeg, MB)
Guitars recorded and edited by Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis (Manhattan, NY), Adam Pietrykowski (Greenwich, CT), and Javier Reyes (Los Angeles, CA).
All music published by Staves Obsidian Music (ASCAP), all rights reserved.
Sheet music is available at: www.hstafylakis.com
Artwork by Nataliya Hines, concept by Nataliya Hines and Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis
Graphic design & layout by Evan Nolan
Photography by Moo Jae (intothestory), Toby Kuhn, Nataliya Hines, Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis, and Adam Pietrykowski