SYNCH FESTIVAL, ATHENS 2008
Synch Festival has been the musical event of the year for Athens since 2004. Starting from an almost completely experimental point of reference as far as the line-up is concerned, it has reached the point of a respectable and comparable European festival able to include mammoth experimental acts as well as quality hipster acts of each epoch. I have been attending almost every year to see the attendance level rising, unfortunately not to the international level but still doing good and the organisational performance not being a complete disappointment. This year’s Synch festival had a astoundingly exciting line-up, again combining the experimental scene with the indie and hosting bands of great expectations as well as bands of long-term anticipation. Hazy in the festival mood as one can be, holding a 100-times – folded programme sheet, I can remember running from stage to stage only making sure that I won’t ever come down my buzz moving from one stage to another. So..
yolatengo©antonis katrakazisYO LA TENGO
A great way to start a festival and a three-day holiday. Everything was in place, me and my mates in the front row, the sun at the point of semi-annoying and semi-optimistic for a good night and the pints in hand. Yo la tengo on stage and the mixed audience made you realise how many years it’s been since the 90’s and how older you’ve grown. The people you knew in their mid 20’s when you where 17 are now 30 something and you are in your mid 20’s and yo la tengo are grown as well. Looking all serious and professional without failing any of your musical expectations though. It looked like you had to try to catch their grown-up drift in the beginning but that was only the first assumption. Quite effortlessly indeed, it happened.
LIARS
No matter the legend though, I admit I had to go and play with the other kids of my age and abandon the Yo la Tengo stage to run and see another never-disappointing Liars show. Probably the fifth in my life. I am not sure if this is just me being overwhelmed with this band or a real fact but this band gets more and more intense every time I see them and their audience more and more firm before the stage. I personally must have been ridiculous and surprisingly enough congratulated from the person next to me for that. How could anyone help that when being in the vicious cycle of Liars’ ability to drift between drone and rock n roll realities without ever allowing you to keep your feet motionless in the ground or “watch”.
holyfuck in athens © antonis katrakazisHOLY FUCK
And now let’s see what they’re all about on stage. After all, I did spend most winter listening to that album in the party hours. And a party it was. Holy Fuck, a bunch of kids knowing what they were doing with samplers, guitars and real drums without being anal about it but on the contrary enjoying it as fuck, genuinely connecting with their audience, the quality party people, not faking anchors sweating their heads off and actually directing what the term “dance music” should actually be nowadays.
KHAN OF FINLAND
I’ve been trying to see that guy live since last year’s Sonar that never happened, as I couldn’t afford a day ticket. Finally though, his name on this year’s Synch line-up was good news. His performance was good news as well. Theatrical, cabaretish, dirty and humorously sexy (don’t take me wrong, I don’t mean ridiculous by that), Khan of Finland and his stylish band were a great act that unfortunately a few people appreciated by attending. On the other hand, you know how some parties are massive and end up being boring and alienated and other small ones get to be the best ones - the ones with the incidents and the drugs and the sex in the rooms etc, that show was such a case. “Hold my (drum)stick for a second, baby” he told me after finishing singing “strip down, to your big toe”.
SOISONG
Enough partying for one day, time to get intellectual. Move to the auditorium to see COH and Pete Christopherson perform together. Both on laptop, Ivan Pavlov and Coil’s Pete Christopherson, executed a live piece together in which I would have expected much more of their personal musical backgrounds unleashed in one piece. Unfortunately, that was not the case. By no means was it a bad show but not a very convincing one either. I wouldn’t say that it was the tension of the previous acts that made me encounter this like that but maybe the huge expectations that me and everyone else in the room had. Soisong was a “don’t miss” for most of us considering the members it consists of but an alright performance that only towards the end managed to break the geeky noise music barrier by getting closer to a recognisable sound lapse of these two musicians when COH performed a bit more of his math noise beat expertise and Christopherson his dark funeral soundscapes and them two merging together into what the whole show should be sounding like from the very beginning.
PINCH
Dupstep in Greece is a term for music like what the Caribbean is for summer holidays. No offence, but dupstep is almost strictly music from London for London. Taking that into account and the fact that I spent the previous three years of my life in London seeing dupstep taking over the underground, I was tremendously curious to see how the Greek audience (which by the way, is by far my favourite) would pick up on it. Miraculous! I had already missed a good dupstep party living in Berlin and having it in the day Synch on that Saturday was simply unbelievable.
stereolab/athens 2008 © antonis katrakazisSTEREOLAB
After long term anticipation for this band, first time seeing Stereolab with the question “how kraut can they possibly be?”, on top of my head I found myself in the same main stage front row, in the same horny temperature. Only fanfuckingfabulous I can say, and as if the live performance of a band of long history of quality music demonstration, a crazy crowd going knowingly along the tunes, subtle “tank you” and “you’re welcome” smiles that made the band-crowd chemistry solid were not enough, half an hour after the proper ending of the gig (including encores, sweatdrops and everything), the lucky ones to hang out at the same stage enjoying a pint, doing the whole “what the fuck was that?” conversation with their mates were to be stunned by Leticia’s reappearance on stage saying: “OK, this is a surprise encore, we’re gonna play some more if you don’t mind…”. And “Metronomic Underground” put you back in the previous planet in an even more recognisable way. What more could I ask? Oh, and Yes!, they can be very Kraut.
KIERAN HEBDEN & STEVE REID
I wouldn’t visit that stage if it weren’t for that guy I fancied and decided to look for while nothing exciting for my likes was on any of the stages and found him there. The reason for that is the fact that the last time I saw Hebden and Reid perform together was close to a disappointment that no way was I willing to go through again. On the contrary, unlike the other time, the well respected drummer and Four Tet seemed to have finally synched to a solid sound not for observation of “jazz and modern” or any crap sick combination of terms like that but real beat escalation of physical attraction.
mapstation/synch 2008 © antonis katrakazisMAPSTATION/KLANGWART
That separates experimental electronic lap top projects on Staubgold label/Berlin from the thousands of concurrent ones, is the sounds used that are simply recordings of no particular field but acoustically familiar elements and not necessarily only machinery that are not processed or produced in an interesting or super-professional way but positioned in compositions. The lecture-like show I witnessed was a good reminder of what I liked in contemporary experimental music at the first place.
CARTER/TUTTI
And here we go again, the closest I would get to Throbbing Gristle this summer (without the above statement undermining my appreciation, even adoration of Chris & Cosey). I shouldn’t get started with all the poetic long phraes I have already used several times to describe their album and live show to all the people I know but it is worth mentioning that this couple is definitely very aware of the amount of intimacy they would let out through their music avoiding self-centred persona parading but beautifully holding hands through an adventurous trip.
SANCHO
A Greek project it is. Consisting of two members, a violin and a guitar player, Sancho was a pleasant surprise in the experimental stage as I hadn’t have a clue of their existence before that and the fact that they belong to the Greek scene that with acts like that should climb it’s way higher to the European experimental noise world that is able to prove the accusation of the genre’s development as “the easy way out” false.
angel/synch 2008 © antonis katrakazisANGEL
Last but not least, a musically perverted combination in one project. Ilpo Vaisanen from Pan Sonic, Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM) and of course, the girl. Hildur Gudnadottir (Lost in Hildurness, Mum). Hildur placed in the middle claiming her kingdom behind the cello abd the other two siding her, creating the soundscape where we would all breathe and sway along. If I try to describe it I will spoil my memory of it as well so I’ll only point out the impressive thing about the collaboration performance. How amazingly each member managed to maintain their sound territory without intruding each other’s space and at the same time perfectly dictating their instruments and sound generators to something that looked like a philosophical conversation of three people that didn’t mumble bullshit fancy talk but intelligently developed a theatrical play. Silent sine waves, drone strings, occasional looking-through-a –trashcan- beats, distorted guitar attack, extreme noise flood and applause exhaustion. In line of appearance.
-- chrisaphenia danai papagrigoriou 2008
angel/synch 2008 © antonis katrakazis
