· UNIVERSAL HIPPIES - ASTRAL VISIONS (GYR182) ·

::T R A C K S::

01. ZENITH RISING
02. EMPIRE MIND
03. TRILOGY OF DREAMS
04. ETERNAL WISDOM
05. MONOLITHIC
06. BEYOND THE SKY
07. TEMPLE OF HUMANITY
08. LUNAR GODDESS
09. STARCHILD GALAXY
10. TRANSCENDING REALITY


FORMAT: Audio CD / 4 PANEL WALLET
GYR182 - $13.99

Mega-awesome third studio disc from this amazing instrumental heavy guitar rock power trio from Greece featuring 10 songs of outstanding, dynamic, blues-based, cosmic stoner guitar music that shines with endless depth, scope and creativity. Flowing through time & spectral space that glows with hypnotic ancient mystery, the Universal Hippies set the controls for the heart of the sun and have produced a stellar work of art. Prepare to fly high far beyond the sky with "Astral Visions".

Universal Hippies is the brainchild and musical vision of Stavros Papadopoulos, a talented, prolific guitarist/producer of world-class proportions who has created an awesome original style & vibe of impressive instrumental guitar music artistry. Welcome to the third chapter from the musical book of Universal Hippies called "Astral Visions." An incredible, deep, mind-altering, epic six string musical journey that transcends reality, defies linear gravity and defines true guitar rock excellence.


MP3 Sample Clips

01. ZENITH RISING
02. EMPIRE MIND
03. TRILOGY OF DREAMS
04. ETERNAL WISDOM
05. MONOLITHIC
06. BEYOND THE SKY
07. TEMPLE OF HUMANITY
08. LUNAR GODDESS
09. STARCHILD GALAXY
10. TRANSCENDING REALITY

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UNIVERSAL HIPPIES - BEYOND THE SKY

 

 

· reviews ·

The Universal Hippies are not the only project of the bustling Greek Stavros Papadopoulos. Super Vintage, Hard Driver and Freerock Saints are other bands in which the composer, singer and guitarist works. "Mother Nature Blues" and "Evolution Of Karma" were two previous albums. In autumn 2019 "Astral Visions" was launched. The Universal Hippies are a trio with Jim Petridis on bass and Chris Lagios (drums). The digipak shows that all guitar sounds were recorded in the Freerock Recording Studio. The rhythm section was recorded in the Stone Groove Recording Studio. Exactly, there is no singing on this record. You may be particularly curious about what the trio is doing instrumentally.

"Zenith Rising" starts nicely spherical. Then the blues rock gets really powerful in motion. You can't complain about that after the first impression. The trio has substance and it's kind of logical that Stavros Papadopoulos' electric guitar is in charge here. Various breaks and a string solo loosen up the atmosphere. Towards the end, the Universal Hippies rewind the song theme again. The opener has something that gives the listener a good rock mood.

After the album debut, one could assume that "Monolithic" is even heavier. Surprisingly, you first encounter the acoustic guitar with an imaginative song opening. The rock then becomes hard and again the trio lingers in differently designed quieter phases. The front man reconsiders the piece with an appealing solo. "Lunar Goddess" begins in a similarly relaxed manner, only the acoustic is exchanged for the electric guitar. Stavros Papadopoulos sometimes uses the wah wah pedal. A nice change. Quieter phases are woven in again and after three randomly chosen numbers you have to ask yourself what the Universal Hippies mean by variety.

Okay, maybe "Beyond The Sky" makes all the difference. One more time relaxes in a song. But then it gets violent. Break to the slower drive, build dynamics and off you go. The next station is reached very quickly. Another break. The guitarist is soloing, but somehow the listener cannot remember a crucial accent of the track. If you concentrate on bass and drums, Jim Petridis and Chris Lagios are of course always involved, but they cannot create any defining effects to fill the memory gaps of the previous songs.

So now we are dealing with "Starchild Galaxy". Stavros Papadopoulos plays the acoustic guitar for almost two minutes without his two partners and lo and behold, what a pleasure from skilled fingerpicking and melody. He did indulge himself in the studio luxury of playing two guitar tracks. Anyway, highlight!

In "Transcending Reality" the six-string sounds migrate from one channel to the other. A gimmick that won't tear you off your feet. Otherwise the Universal Hippies move in the dignified ballad area. Ah, after a bass bridge you pick up some speed again and the electric guitar riffs with a retro look. The sound wafts back and forth again. Oh, the trio has relaxed the tendon of the hard rock bow again. Without a doubt, Stavros Papadopoulos is a great guitarist.

Joachim 'Joe' Brookes / RockTimes (November 2019)
 


Regular readers will know that I just can't get enough of what's coming out of Greece nowadays. Here's yet another impressive album, this time courtesy of a stoner rock band from, I believe, Kavala in the northeast. At least, that appears to be the home of Stavros Papadopoulos, the prolific guitarist who conjured up this band. I also see a local connection as, among a number of other bands (Super Vintage, Freerock Saints, Hard Driver, Hush n' Rush), he also handles guitar for Revolution Highway, whose vocalist David Fefolt appears to be right here in Phoenix.

I can't say that everything here is Papadopoulos, because he benefits from some able support from Jim Petridis on bass and Chris Lagios on drums, but this is a guitar album for guitar fans and Papadopoulos is front and centre on everything. It's entirely instrumental, but it's much more grounded than your usual instrumental guitar album, because he's not a shredder, even when he's soloing. He has a clear background in riff-based blues rock and I'm not surprised at all to find him behind the recent Shadowplay Project tribute to Rory Gallagher.

Zenith Rising, which opens up the album, sets the stage very well. After a little texture at the beginning, he finds a groove and follows it naturally, while Petridis and Lagios play their parts to help him. Empire Mind, Trilogy of Dreams and others carry on very much in the same vein, the riffs new and the solos new but the tone the same. These all carry an eastern flavour but not so overt as to seem middle eastern. These are eastern in the way some of Rainbow's songs were eastern, just a little heavier.

This walks that fine line between rock and metal. I'm seeing it labelled as stoner rock most often, sometimes psychedelic rock, and that's fair enough, but, mystical song titles aside, this is really just instrumental rock with roots in the blues and production that adds the heaviness of metal. There's some jazz thrown in for good measure; a little folk here and there, like the beginning of Monolithic; and even some flamenco too, on Starchild Galaxy.

The first signs of specific influences come in Eternal Wisdom, which could have been an Iron Maiden instrumental, especially once it gets going. Like plenty of Maiden songs, this is Wishbone Ash heavied up, but the midsection is built out of NWOBHM riffs. The most overt influence shows up on the last track, Transcending Reality, also the longest on the album. It kicks off so reminiscent of Led Zeppelin's No Quarter that I wondered for a moment if it was a cover, but it finds other ground to explore as the track runs on.

This is good stuff. It would benefit from more variety in tone, because the majority of these tracks tread very similar ground. I'm hard pressed to pick a favourite piece or call out highlight tracks, because they're all good but none are sufficiently different from the rest to warrant special mention. I can say that each of them is able to stand alone as a strong example of what Universal Hippies do.

Each song benefits from a reliable rhythm section which provides an solid backdrop for Papadoupolos's guitar, which finds no end of impressive grooves and can solo without ever seeming to show off. It has a lot of texture to it and some of what he does is very subtle. He's as impressive when he's not doing much at all as he is when he's doing everything. Each note counts.

I see that this is the band's third album together, preceded by Evolution of Karma last year and Mother Nature Blues the year before. However, I also see another one called Dead Hippie's Revolution, which appears to be a slightly different version of Mother Nature Blues. Maybe it's an alternative release. I'm interested in hearing where the Universal Hippies came from and I'm also intrigued about these other bands that Papadopolous seems to be collecting like trading cards. More to come, I'm sure!

Hal C. F. Astell / Apocalypse Later (September 2019)
 


Greek guitar god and musical chameleon Stavros Papadopoulos strikes once again with “Astral Visions”, part three of his ongoing instrumental exploration of the retrosounds of futurepast with Universal Hippies, which is just ONE of his many musical permutations. Stavros suffers from a very rare and most delightful disease which I’ll refer to as MMPD (Multiple Musical Personality Disorder). He possesses the unworldly ability to channel separate parts of his musical personality into the service of whatever stylistic permutation strikes his fancy (Revolution Highway, Super Vintage, Freerock Saints & Hard Driver). His output in any ONE of these bands is a full career for lesser mortals; collectively, the breadth and depth of his discography is encyclopedic, the work of a superhuman…and like ALL of his other releases, this one serves up a kaliedescopic collection of killer compositions.

The opener, “Zenith Rising”, sets the tone of this foray into the future-retro world of Stavros’s’ “Astral Visions”: an uptempo slash & burn progressive slice of heavy guitar alchemy that rises and falls like a cosmic tide. “Empire Mind” & “Trilogy Of Dreams” both boast a pulsing, middle eastern-twinged melodic foundation which is laced with with psychotronic mood shifts and loads of twisting heavy grooviness that are works of true compositional artistry. “Eternal Wisdom” starts with a smooth halftime feel that unexpectedly explodes into an incendiary classic epic retrojamfest of astral proportions, coming full circle to complete the journey in a smooth transition back to the beginning again. “Monolithic” begins with an oddly placed but nevertheless harmonically rich intro that serves as a delightful sonic apperitif to cleanse the aural pallette for the driving and precise heavy scalar workout that follows.

“Beyond The Sky” and “Temple Of Humanity” are straight ahead, blue note-accented synchopated amalgams of rhythmic joy, cohesively weaving inside, outside, sideways and down. “Lunar Goddess” is a real standout and my favorite track here…Stavros goes into a wide-ranging melodic arc, from wah-inflected rip to restrained beauty, drifting and driving through a muscular and masterfully constructed composition that shifts gears, moods and tempo changes with ease, punctuated with dramatic and powerful hits cascading all over the damn place. Classic. To wind the proceedings down, “Starchild Galaxy” lands as a wonderful and sensitive acoustic interlude, dripping with sophistication and depth that provides the perfectly-paced transition into the closer, “Transcending Reality”, a spacey, stoner/shoegazer groove that morphs into a smoothed-out crankedfest.

Throughout, Stavros bobs and weaves his magic through these tracks, creating tones the gods would envy and purveying dynamic bell curve shifts from understated elegance to bombastic shred…and doing it all without clashing his mental gears. This is something only someone with MMPD is capable of doing.

“Astral Visions” is a retro instrumental masterpiece, a worthy addition to the legacy of the “Universal Hippies” brand and yet another inspired collection of musical art by the great and powerful Stavros Papadopoulos.

Jimmy Ryan / Guitar Rock Appreciation Society (October 2018)
 


I’ll say it outright: I will listen to whatever STAVROS PAPADOPOULOS puts on disk. This man is a modern-day guitar genius who has to be heard to be believed. On his latest ‘Universal Hippies’ CD, which is part of a series, he goes off the charts once again, engaging ‘Astral Visions’ of another order altogether. For this one, his mind has obviously landed in another dimension, one that engenders a prior epoch of world history, when gods were gods and demons were demons. Papadopoulos conjures a little of both in this offering. Along these lines, his writing always has an element of the majestic, to the point of divinity, as well as the killer raunch of the demoniac, capable of making the devil blush. Well written and masterfully conceived, he gathers the cream of the crop in terms of his rhythm section, as always, to accommodate and to share his musical vision, and with them he takes listeners on a journey to both heaven and hell. When you emerge, you’ll be a diehard fan of driving guitar music — and of Papadopoulos himself, who is clearly to today’s guitar music what Satriani was several decades back. A must have for guitar enthusiasts.

Steven J. Rosen / Author + Journalist (September 2019)
 


Once again Universal Hippies has taken a step to perfection. This cd, like the other two take the listener on a great journey. Has no vocals which to me only adds to the enjoyment of this music. Stavros Papadopoulos Knows how to play a guitar and then some. You have a great player who knows how to write great music. This cd for me seems to flow so nicely. Also has a very solid production. In closing just let me say that if you like amazing guitar work that can take you to another place in time grab this cd quick. Get the first two while you’re at it.

Clyde Keyser / Good Musical Brother of The Grooveyard
 


Excellent third disc by this most excellent Greek band. The musicianship on this recording is top-notch all the way. It amazes me that theses guys haven't garnered the recognition they so deserve. Maybe it's the band name, I know that kinda threw me off at first. But the fact that they record on the Grooveyard label was all the excuse I needed to purchase the band's first two albums. Those first two CDs were so good I had no fear of ordering this their third disc. Stavros Papadopoulos can play guitar with anyone else out there. He is absolutely awesome! And Jim Petridis (bass) along with Chris Lagios (drums) are truly a great rhythm section. The fact that this is a band who do only instrumental albums scores high with me. I have really gotten into instrumental rock the past six or seven years, and these guys come in at the top of the heap. Add that to the fact of this being a trio just seals the deal. My love for rock trio's goes back to Cream. Picking a favorite song is a little problematic due to the overall strength of the disc but the opening cut, "Zenith Rising," really did speak to me from the get-go. There's even some beautiful acoustic guitar included here. If one loves great guitar oriented rock this disc is worth owning as is their other two albums. Super quality!

Dante / Amazon Review (January 2020)
 



 


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