Early life

Ysatis was born in Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

, Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

, and developed an interest in the synthesizer through exposure to electronic music by artists such as Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...

 and Jean Michel Jarre

Jean Michel Jarre

Jean Michel André Jarre is a French composer, performer and music producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and New Age genres, and known as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, laser displays, and fireworks.Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and...

 in the late 1970s. At age 15, he left Greece to move to New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, where he acquired some musical equipment and began experimenting.

His early ambient solo work was produced under the moniker Omicron. He met and started working with Taylor Deupree

Taylor Deupree

Taylor Deupree , is an American electronic musician, photographer and graphic designer. He is most known for the founding of the 12k record label, along with his work as a member of Prototype 909, and his collaborations with Savvas Ysatis and Christopher Willits...

 in 1993 and released a number of albums and tracks, with a variety of styles and under a few different names. Ysatis and Deupree released their ambient work as Seti, their jazzy trip-hop as Futique, and their more dance-oriented work as Arc. Most of Ysatis' work while in New York was released on the Instinct label.

Recent activity

In 1997, Ysatis returned to Athens to help the growing Greek electronic music scene. He founded the Sonar label with radio DJ

Disc jockey

A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

 Giannis Papaioannou

Giannis Papaioannou

Giannis Papaioannou was a famous Greek musician and composer born in Kios, Turkey . In English his name is sometimes romanized as Yannis, Ioannis or Yiannis. Most active in the 1940s, he wrote many songs, some of which are today considered classics of the rebetiko folk music style...

. He also started the Allou project with vocalist Elias Aslanoglou, which has signed with the V2

V2 Records

V2 Records is a record label that is owned by Universal Music Group as of October 2007. The label was founded in 1996 by Richard Branson, five years after he sold Virgin Records to EMI....

 label.

Musical style

Ysatis' early work, as characterized by his Omicron releases, and his work with Deupree for SETI, focused mainly on ambient music

Ambient music

Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...

. The Futique project was a completely different combination of trip-hop and jazz. The Arc project fit somewhere between the two other projects, with a stripped-down Detroit techno

Detroit techno

Detroit techno is an early style of electronic music beginning in the 1980s. Detroit, Michigan has been cited as the birthplace of techno music. Prominent Detroit Techno artists include Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson...

 style, with a little experimental edge. His latest solo work on the Tresor

Tresor

Tresor is an underground techno nightclub and record label. The club was founded in March 1991 in the vaults of the former old Wertheim department store in Mitte, the central part of the former East Berlin, next to the famous Potsdamer Platz, however the history of the club goes back to 1988 when...

 label moves to a classic techno

Techno

Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...

 feel.

Bands

• Omicron
• Sound Track

• Seti
  SETI (band)
  Seti is an ambient electronic band, which is a collaboration of Savvas Ysatis and Taylor Deupree . The duo formed in 1993 in New York.The term S.E.T.I. stands for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence...
  
   (with Deupree)
• Futique (with Deupree)
• Arc (with Deupree)
• Skai (with Deupree)
• Allou (with Aslanoglou)

Discography

• Symbolis EP (as Omicron) (1993, Instinct)
• Acrocosm (as Omicron) (1994, Instinct)
• SETI (as SETI) (1994, Instinct)
• The Generation and Motion of a Pulse (as Omicron) (1995, Instinct)
• Pharos
  Pharos (album)
  Pharos is an album by the experimental ambient group Seti, which was released in 1995.-Disc 1: "Arecibo":# ".beacon01" – 18:53# ".beacon02" – 6:17# ".beacon03" – 6:20# ".beacon04" – 4:34# ".beacon05" – 6:07# ".beacon06" – 6:54...
  
  (as SETI) (1995, Instinct)
• Globetrotter (as Omicron) (1996, Radical Ambient)
• Ciphers
  Ciphers (album)
  Ciphers is an ambient music album by SETI which was released in 1996. It is Ysatis and Deupree's last release under the SETI moniker. This album also features trip-hop and jazz influences, as found in their contemporary Futique releases.-Track listing:...
  
  (as SETI) (1996, Instinct)
• 12K (as Arc) (1996, Instinct)
• Luv Luv (as Futique) (1996, Instinct)
• Electronic Dance Music (as Omicron) (1997, Radical Ambient)
• Paging Mr. So-and-So (as Futique) (1997, Shadow)
• Arc vs. Tiny Objects in Space (as Arc) (1998, Instinct)
• Tower of Winds (as Savvas Ysatis & Taylor Deupree) (1998, Caipirinha)
• Go Low (1999, Shadow)
• Alright EP (1999, Tresor)
• Highrise (1999, Tresor)
• The Cooler (as Sound Track) (2000, Caipirinha)
• Select (2001, Tresor)

Compilations

Ysatis' work appeared on the following compilation releases:

• Chill Out! (1994, Instinct)
• Chillout: Phase 2 (1994, Instinct)
• Plug In + Turn On (1994, Instinct)
• Plug In + Turn On X 2 (1994, Instinct)
• Trancefusion, Volume 2 (1994, Instinct)
• Instinct Ambient Collection (1995, Instinct)
• Ambient Systems, Volume 2 (1996, Instinct)
• Exit to New York (1996, Radical Ambient)
• Ambient Systems, Volume 3 (1997, Instinct)
• Earthrise Shadow, Volume 3 (1997, Shadow)
• Trip Hop & Jazz, Volume 3 (1997, Instinct)
• Caipirinha Music Sampler: Re-Inventing Culture (1998, Caipirinha)
• Digital Reflex (1998, Instinct)
• Pure Abstrakt: Adventures in Dub (1998, Shadow)
• Ambient Systems, Volume 4 (1999, Instinct)
• Microscopic Sound (1999, Caipirinha)
• Annex 2 (1999, Tresor)
• Tresor, Volume 7 (1999, Tresor)
• Orbit Lounge (2000, Shadow)
• Tresor, Volume 8 (2000, Tresor)
• Ambient Boxed: A Guide by Instinct (2001, Instinct)
• State of E:Motion, Vol. 9 (2001, E:Motion)
• Blunted, Volume 3 (2003, Shadow)
• Tresor, Volume 12 (2004, Tresor)

External links

• Savvas Ysatis discography @ Discogs
  Discogs
  Discogs, short for discographies, is a website and database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc., and are...
  
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