Biography
Born in Pireus, Greece, Iannis with his family migrated, at an early age, to the U.S.A. (Atlanta, Georgia), where he was exposed to southern fried funk (James Brown, Bobby Byrd, Ike & Tina Turner etc.) and the local Blues artists, both white and black, which today continue to inspire and influence him. He still considers himself lucky that, at the age of 14, he was given his first guitar lessons by his neighbor and family friend Isaac Jones, a "sweet elderly black man that could only play guitar with a medicine bottle on his finger," which is called slide guitar.
After moving back to Europe, he started playing guitar and singing in various Blues, Rock, Funk bands, but at the same time listening and studying other types of music (Greek, Balkan, jazz, reggae and dub). At the same time he started working as a DJ after many years of doing it for fun, spinning rare grooves from Rock, Funk, Dub & Reggae artists. By the late 80's he had already bought himself a sampler, synthesizer and sequencer in order to emulate the sounds that were coming out of New York, Chicago and Detroit, which were Electro HipHop, House and Techno respectively, and to marry that with what he already knew.
"Easier said than done!" as he himself says. "If it wasn't for me moving to Vienna, Austria because of a woman I fell in love with, and there hearing the sounds of Kruder & Dorfmeister, I might have never gotten it right."
At the moment, tired of the nightlife and everything that implies, he has moved back to Greece, living in a small village on the island of Evia, where he has built a small studio in his grandparents house overlooking the Aegian sea "still making music for me and my friends, or whoever likes to listen to it".
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