Monika Christodoulou began playing in local indie bands and writing and performing her original songs on the Athens, Greece music scene when she was barely a teenager. After early breakout success posting her darkly emotional tracks online, Monika’s 2008 debut LP, sung in English, became a platinum seller in her homeland. Soon she was headlining all the major Greek festivals and gracing the covers of music and fashion magazines. Her second LP, another set of beautiful and deeply emotional ballads released in 2010, continued Monika’s broad success at home, but she was already becoming restless, for a different sound and a new direction.
 
Monika took on projects outside of her pop career, writing scores for two acclaimed theater productions, and began to spend more and more time abroad. On a trip to New York in 2012, she made a pilgrimage to Dunham Sounds Studios Brooklyn headquarters, to see where some of her favorite artists from the Daptone soul scene had recorded; almost on a whim, Monika knocked on the door, and Homer Steinweiss (founding member of the Dap-Kings & Menahan Street Band) answered. Soon she was playing demos she had on her phone for Homer and Thomas Brenneck (MSB, Budos Band, etc). The connection was immediate, and the next stage of Monika’s career began. The whole of 2014, Homer and Monika worked together on her songs and her sound, and together they shaped what was to become Secret in the Dark.
 
Speaking about her relationship with Steinweiss, Monika says, “I always believed that the greatest songs are born through a friendship. When Homer and I started talking about this project, we would go to the movies, or for long drives listening to our favorite old records. It was like we taught each other to love music from scratch. Musically, Homer came from the ‘60s, I came from the ‘90s… we met somewhere in between. Homer and the guys brought me into their world, and I’ve never had so much fun working on an album.”
 
The album was recorded by Steinweiss and Brenneck at Dunham, with Homer producing, and a band featuring Steinweiss, Brenneck, Nick Movshon, Victor Axelrod, Leon Michels, and others from the Brooklyn scene. In various combinations this group has worked on classic albums from artists including Sharon Jones, Amy Winehouse, Mick Ronson, Adele, Charles Bradley, Dan Auerbach, and many more, and the record puts Monika’s incredible voice and talents as a songwriter and performer into a completely new context, and also pushes Homer and the band in directions they have rarely explored before. For the final step, Monika and Homer mixed Secret In The Dark with John Congleton at Elmwood Recordings. A blend of organic ‘70s-styled left field disco, ‘80s art-pop, and much more, Secret in the Dark is a distinctly New York album with a breezy Mediterranean heart. It’s soulful, arty, and a ton of fun, and will serve as the introduction to the world of the amazing artist and personality that is Monika.
 
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