Genre: Post Rock, Experimental, Instrumental
Country: Greece
Label:Ikaros Records
Year: 2018
Music as a medium of internal expression, from unquiet senders to unquiet receivers. I could close the case completely when it comes to the debut of Athenians Message in a Cloud, with the expression above. Since, there as on behind this specific musical project is exactly this. Nothing less, nothing more. Yet, I think a few more words are appropriate for a debut that finally brings to the spotlight the special –and at the same time, peculiar- aural sign of a band that starts an exploring journey. A starting point. And you know what they say? The beginning is half of everything.
The waves, the influences and the musical references coexisting in the album create a big musical structure. Every new listen of the album gives more insight to the listener – receiver. I have written again how important this is, right?
In the case of Message, the needle goes to the start again almost on its own. It is like talking to the songs and the conversation hasn’t finished after a single listen, or two, or three…
You pay attention and you swear they have grown up with music from the 90s. They transfer that by creating a music allayer that is a bund ant in the whole of the album and waits to be discovered. So you will also find the metal introvert style of these times, hand in hand with a coldness that haunts a pile of black metal albums of the 90s, until the mid 00’s. All of that goes on in the background though….
At the main part of it, diversity reigns and it’s given with adventurous forms, agile and interesting themes, flirting with prog as an approach and not as a label and of that under a melancholic soundscape. The melancholy with some romantic attitude will be found in moments where the piano, the acoustic guitar or the cello are the main protagonists, but also at the naivety of the cleansing parts -during the late 80’s we would call that shoegaze-, or even at the psychedelic atmospheres that spray the tracks quite much… All of this sounds so natural though, that you have the impression -not to say, certainty- that probably they came up independently during the composition of the material and they weren’t used as targeted artistic interventions at the birth of the tracks. I don’t know, my radar at the beginning points at one guitar and four walls. Claustrophobia and away out. Regardless of how every track turns into an independent message in the meantime.
Post rock references are not missing from the puzzle. Many times, the band gives the idea that they set a destination at a post rock universe, but their musical pluralism opens new paths for them, goes on differently, without the band itself being able to control it. Music is a living organism. Sometimes it masters its creator.
I consider this debut and important -of course- step to the journey of this band from Athens and im convinced they are for much bigger things -musically speaking- that will come in the future. I’m certain that the more mature handling of their music, which is a reference point of the band, will leave us speechless in the future. We’ll be here.
I have nothing more to add about “Anassa” that was released in June, 200 limited LP copies from Ikaros Records, and in digital format. In the positives of the band also goes the correct and clean production but the artwork of the Romanian Costin Chioreanu as well, that fits perfectly with the aesthetics of the album.
Look for the message in the cloud, sometimes it is worth it.
