After recent appearances at the Tomorrow Festival in Shenzhen China and Big Ears in Knoxville USA, Melbourne-born duo Xylouris White tackle Australia next with a debut appearance at the Queenscliff Music Festival and a run of east coast dates. The dynamic duo; lute player George Xylouris and drummer Jim White, will also include Meeniyan, Hepburn Springs, Hobart, Wollongong and Canberra alongside big city plays in Sydney and Melbourne.
The tour comes off the back of 2023’s release The Forest in Me an instrumental album drawn from multiple sessions spawned across two continents; Jim in New York City and George in Crete and pulled together by non-performing band member Guy Picciotto. If previous albums drew critical appraise the response for this, their fifth album, has been exultant.
“I absolutely love The Forest in Me; it smacks of confidence and creativity and is happy to shift expectations and deliver a sound so different to previous albums while keeping its core structure of lute and drums present. Each song surprises and leaves you wanting more, and at thirty minutes long, it is just too tempting to spin the thing again. I’ve enjoyed this duo (trio?) since Goats came along in 2014, but this short, sharp and dynamic project is the one I’ve been waiting for.” – Folk Radio UK
“When locked in to Xylouris and White’s deeply connected sound, it can feel like great secrets are being offered up to the listener, but heard in passing it’s barely anything at all. What magic.” – The Wire
Live Xylouris White are an even more compelling entity. White; with a style that can sound like a full band one minute and something stark and beautiful the next and Xylouris; a self-taught master of the lute with a background in traditional Greek folk and weddings, parties, anything – master musicians both with a supernatural power to express themselves as one.
“Two seemingly unconnected musical traditions could appear, on paper at least, as somewhat contrived, but Xylouris and White’s never less than compelling chemistry was as symbiotic as calm and storm, and rang as true as the dawn chorus. As timeless too.” – The Thin Air
Don’t miss Xylouris White live this summer. Tickets for all shows on-sale now.