Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis - Calibrating Friction (2023)

Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis’s debut album Calibrating Friction unveils a muscular, pyrotechnic blend of progressive metal and symphonic classical music.

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, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.