By Carlos Alarcon
Read this interview in Spanish
-Which is the secret that you have discovered with this new record?
The songs that are included in the album “The Secrets of the Rocks” were written by Stathis Kalyviotis and me while living freely with just our sleeping bags on remote seashores of faraway, small Cycladic islands. There, every day and every night, the moving pebbles of the seashore, the engines of the passing boats, the waves and the wind, the sound of the djembes playing all night, the bells of the wild goats running around us, were all telling us their secrets. Through this album we wanted to reveal these secrets.
-When I hear your songs, it seems that you are calling to present times the echoes of mythological ages. Does your music reflect the millennial Greece?
The strong vibrations of old times, still exist especially in unexploited places with a long history. One can feel in the air the sorrows and joys, the thoughts and the images of people that have lived there through the centuries and the millenniums. Their vibrations are stuck in time. When I sing, I do feel connected with this thing and the lyrics I sing, my lyrics, talk about such matters.
-Is freedom, in every sense, the basic condition and the starting point to compose your music?
Of course it is. Because when you feel free and therefore relaxed you become a better recipient and a better transmitter.
-What are you trying to reflect in your songs? What are you trying to communicate?
Through my songs I like to reveal the magic, which is hidden behind our common everyday thoughts and interests. I like to make people pay attention to this hidden other reality. It makes us wiser.
-You’ve talked about the danger for the natural environment and that inspired “The Secret of the Rocks”. Do you have hopes of saving it? What we can do from music?
In this album we decided to include these specific songs, so as to make it a “concept album” describing the kind of natural, free life which a whole community of people from Greece and from all over Europe like to live for some days or months every once in a while. I agree 100% with the straggle of some ecological groups to preserve species of animals that are getting lost. But how about this “specie” of humans that get dehumanised by every day life in big cities and needs to get away from all that, not by visiting a tourist ghetto, but by living freely near nature among other persons that have similar ideas and tastes.
“The Secrets of the Rocks” is dedicated to these people who have lived like that in the caves of Matala in Crete, or in Milopotas beach in Ios back in the early 60ies and in numerous other less famous similar places nowadays. More and more natural unexploited beaches are being destroyed or just forbidden for free campers and nudists year by year. They become full of cement, electricity and showing off of expensive swimming suits.
I hope that our music can make it’s listeners become more cool and love and therefore respect nature. This is not just good for nature itself, which anyway doesn’t care, but it is good for the people themselves. Our mind is widening while we gaze at the line of the horizon, but it is narrowing when we are just watching tv all day. And only wide open minds can save this world…
-Traditional instruments and electronics. Do you believe that it’s the future of popular music?
Stathis and I like very much to mix them. And he plays both. He uses a groove sampler and a groove box, exchanging and twisting loops and sounds that he has invented himself and on top of that, he often plays various Greek traditional string instruments. Then we also have a lot of hand percussion, played in our live shows by a friend percussionist and we also use the Greek bagpipe and various traditional flutes. This sound, as it comes in my ears, sounds like folk of the 21st century.
-Do you think that it exists a “mediterranean musical essence”? If answer is yes, what does it consist of?
Back in the early 90ies, I was singing songs from the mediterenean sea arranged in our own way by the band we then had. We were playing songs from Spain, Italy, Tunisia, Israel, Turkey, Greece. They all had things in common.
I believe the temperature, the climate, the environment, the colours and scents around you, the rhythm of life of your country influence the way you sing and play music. And further more, the mediterenean sea was always being crossed by hundreds of boats on which merchants, musicians, and other professionals were travelling from one country to the other, exchanging ideas.
-What influences (not only in music, but in all of fields of life) you are picking up in your music? Where do you find inspiration?
The observance of nature, sounds and images around me, experiences from long travels, readings about ancient rituals and prehistoric religions, the wind through the bamboos, the sound of a folk fiesta from the nearby village, yoga, all these can suddenly become a source of inspiration.
-Some people compares you to Marta Sebestyen, Björk or Patti Smith. Do you believe you have things in common?
I like all three of them very much. I don’t know whether we have things in common. It’s just that sometimes it is easier for people to describe a person or an artist by comparing it with someone who is wellknown.
-You started working with Stathis Kaliviotis at Selena band. Was this work a labour of pionners? How do you see your evolution since then?
We had big fun with SELANA. We were just four people in the band: drums, electric guitar, Stathis was playing bass and I was singing. That was it, pure garage sound. But we were playing rythms and scales based on Greek and Balkan traditional music. Very few people in town understood what we were doing. But they were really fanatics!
Then, when SELANA collapsed, Stathis and I went on making our own music and arrangements. We made a new group with a kind of a folk rock, ethnopunk sound, in which we were mixing electric and acoustic folk instruments, with drums. It was then that we released “Ifantokosmos” our first common album. Inbetween Stathis had started using the grove boxes and samplers, which are now playing one of the most significant roles in our music. ”Echotropia”, our next album was more electronic. The sound in each of our albums, is somehow always different than the sound of the previous one. We don’t know now what sound our next album will have.
-How people understand your music in Greece? Could you talk about the actual musical scene?
There are still those few, very fanatic people who follow me wherever I play and buy all my records. Mainly through a “from mouth to mouth” promotion year by year these people have become more and more. The last two, three years there are also those who got to know me and paid attention to my music because of the success it had outside of Greece, in Europe and N. America. This made things practically easier for me and for my music.
Generally speaking the commercial, mainstream music scene of Greece, is like everywhere in the world: a big market of musical recipes that resemble to each other, being just the products of the meetings of some managers that have to bring money to their companies.
Unfortunately, on the other side, the so called “non commercial” part, you have a lot of pompous, boring and conservative things going on. I feel sad to say that the cultural situation of my country nowadays is in a bad condition.
But there are also some authentic musicians and groups that really care about music. Very few of them manage to survive and go on. Most of them are usually just starving, so they are doing other jobs to survive.
-Are your concerts very different from your records?
I think they are better. Often we like to improvise on our songs. And very often after a good show, Stathis and I say to each other: We should have recorded it the way we played it today!
-Which are your future projects?
I do not work in terms of “projects”. We just like to jam in our home studio, record music and songs, play live. But we also like to spend days and weeks under one tree by the sea, to travel to India, to walk on the top of a mountain in Epirus or in the streets of Amsterdam, to spend weekends in the homes of friends. When all these things become songs, then we sit down and make an album.
-Are you still exercising your facet as a novelist?
I always like writing. It rests my voice when it gets tired from singing.
