MangoSpecial: Polyscope

- November 23, 2020

Picture Credit: Polyscope

It is time for the first MangoSpecial! Some weeks ago I had an amazing chat with Pantelis and Giorgos, founders of Polyscope. Without further ado, let's jump right into it. I am thus presenting the work of this great community to you.

Polyscope is a music community initiated by Giorgos and Pantelis with base in Greek capital Athens in the year 2018. They started collaborating with artists from Athens and other parts of Greece. Since then the community has expanded to plenty of other places, such as The Hague and Groningen in the Netherlands, or London and Leeds in the UK.
Polyscope has connected to the people via making music with them or by co-releasing their records. The way the community is working and growing can thus be regarded as a process-oriented and social way.

Polyscope is a community and they explicitly do not consider themselves as a label. One basic reason is the fact that there are tons of independent records labels around. Like those labels Polyscope also helps artists with promotion, production and distribution of their music.

A major difference is that they do not declare themselves as a company which is trying to make profit, unlike most record labels. Apart from the financial point the decision to not become a label for Polyscope is an ethical one since there are plenty of independent labels who do an amazing job in what they do.
Thus, Polyscope is not interfering with the labels' work and supports music in their communal way instead. Therefore, they support artists they like without charging them for it. By working this way, Polyscope has created a great space for imagination and creativity.

The artists and releases that are featured on Polyscope are defined by a huge variety in styles and genres. The lowest common denominator of the music is an experimental or extravagant nature to it. That might apply for the way of recording, the way of playing it, the instruments, the way of mixing or many other forms that make the music special.
Since Pantelis and Giorgos like a lot of different music across genres, there is plenty of room for versatility on Polyscope. So, once the chemistry between the artist, their music, and Polyscope is right, a collaboration is possible.

Amongst the sheer amount of releases there is one that raised my attention especcially. In 2019 a charity compilation collecting donations for the NAACP was published. Like for every Polyscope release the distribution was paid by Giorgos and Pantelis. Normally, the profit completely goes to the artists. For this very case they contacted artists about whether they were interested in contributing their music for this cause.
And, Polyscope will definitely feature more charitable releases. The causes are omnipresent. Whether if it is financial aid for environmental projects, for regions who were struck by catastrophies of any kind of cause that helps making this world a better place. And actually another compilation is already being worked on.

Before the virus affected our planet there were several showcases organized by Polyscope. Those are one-night events for which the community put together a line-up. By the time this text is published we will have to wait a little bit until that happens again, but it most certainly will.
The idea was to invite artists to play and to grant them a stage. Thus, the artists do not have to be affiliated with each other or even with Polyscope. On these shows bands were given a playtime of around 45 minutes so that bands and fans had plenty of time to discover the music of up to four artists per night. This helped everyone to get a broader view of what is happening in their city music-wise.

No YouTube here, check them out on Bandcamp.
Picture Credit: Church / Artwork: Matthew Stedman, Joel Stedman, Ozzy Moysey

The next release Polyscope is working on is by Leeds' Ancient Infinity Orchestra. The album will feature more than a dozen musicians and include a huge mix of Jazz and various music styles from around the globe.
Band mastermind Ozzy Moysey has written several suites that are then arranged with big ensembles. The outcome will be a timeline of planet earth's history presented in music. This is a release you should not miss! Also, a compilation of improvised music is about to be out, soon.