SIDE A

SIDE B

"Through The Night" is a paean to darkness, not to be understood as the absence of light, but as the thick, rich soil out of which all of life pours forth and disappears into — a loving darkness, the frame around everything that we cherish and hold dear. It's a hymn to a love crowned by loss and a connection to life fortified by the need to inhale the world. A hunger that can only be satisfied by living a life of nomadic wonder. It's a record about the million and one ravishing moments Maxim Vaga got to feast on, the people who crossed his path, and the different parts of the world that have beckoned him.

'You have to go through the night to get through to the day.' – Maxim Vaga

The Polaroid of daylight spilling over into a pitch-black room through a thick cotton curtain, which is now the cover of Maxim Vaga's debut album 'Through The Night,' was a gift from Patti Smith.

‘Finding home in places where I thought I was a stranger is one of the reasons for making this record. That, as well as a number of unforgettable encounters with people, spirits, and dreams.’ – Maxim Vaga

Some of the earliest songs that made it onto ‘Through The Night’ were penned years ago while roaming the Greek islands. Others took shape in South East Asia. The rest were written in Paris, Lisbon and Berlin. Maxim Vaga’s love for music as a universal language, albeit refracted through different cultures, along with his hunger for the variety this blue rock has to offer, were his sole compass. Along the way, guns were drawn, ships were dragged across the ocean floor, sessions with rembetiko players cracked the night open... Life happened. A life full of contrasts that is now reflected in the man's music.

‘I need songs to ask questions. In dreams we don’t ask the same questions as we do in waking life. We are not puzzled when places change or a character becomes someone else. Instead we're onto a different kind of truth.’ – Maxim Vaga

"In the beginning, I thought this was going to become three records because of the different ways these songs came into existence and how they were recorded," the artist recalls. It was only when the two-time Grammy-nominated producer, Dan Cox (Lianne La Havas, Peter Doherty, Florence & the Machine), put his hands on the recordings, that the record, as we know it, started to take shape. Suddenly, what appeared to be a loose collection of songs started to feel like a mazy epic poem or the tangled meanderings of an Antonioni movie.

'A lot of these tracks came out of improvisations. I was just there to make sure the paint hit the canvas.’ – Maxim Vaga

Maxim Vaga produced 'Through The Night' in close collaboration with acclaimed Greek composer and bass player Petros Klampanis, also responsible for the string arrangements and long-term band member, guitarist Neta Shimoni. In addition to Maxim Vaga’s band, the album features an international myriad of top-tier musicians: trumpeter Milad Khawam, Paris-based vocalist Anaïs Rosso, percussionists Evi Kanellou, and Christoph Matenaers aka Ma:ttic, to name just a few.

"I don’t think I know much more about who I am now that I've got these twelve tracks. If I were a tree, you could say that I grew 12 more branches," – Maxim Vaga

‘Through The Night’ is a rich mosaic of stark contrasts. It's poetry, but the type with fresh blood on its sleeve. The sound is dirty and gritty in the most beautiful way possible — earthy, full-bodied, warm, bleeding into a saturated analog red. The arrangements are alive; the band is swinging in subjective time. Hand claps, stomping feet, a slurring Hammond organ, a piano, thick bass, drums, biting guitars, lush strings, a baritone like gravel and at the heart of it all, Maxim Vaga's voice, that balances a wild palette of contradictions.

'I hope that someone, who listens to this, will feel less alone.' – Maxim Vaga

— Lukasz Polowczyk