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On January 6th, The Cyclothymics will perform in the great festival of “Diggin’ Out Fest Volume 2” in Athens (An Club), Greece. Enjoy this moment of great pleasure folks; because this band is not very often on stage (at least until today!), this is your chance!

How did you begin to make music as The Cyclothymics?

All of us are music lovers and the right timing brought us together. It was Peter and Alex that first met after lots of years they haven’t seen each other and since both were in bands before, agreed they ‘d like to try some sort of a jam/band. We asked Dimitris (our first guitarist) to join us for a few jams, then Iris followed and then Marios (our present guitarist).

Which are your main instruments you use for your creation? Which one is your favorite?

For the time being we use a Tiger Organ, a bass, guitar & drums of course. We are very open in the music and instruments we enjoy, from garage rock, to classical piano pieces, odd trippy oriental sounds and instruments, analog synthesizers and actually all sorts of instruments that sounds nice to us, yet we ‘ve only used so far those that we are more familiar for our band purposes as a r’n’r garage punk band.

We do love all the instruments we use and the way we perform with them as a team, each of the bandmates has a special touch using his own.

Which are your musical influences?

Each one has his own influences from the zone of hard rock, psychedelic, garage, new garage scene, post punk, punk etc.. We do share some quite common influences but all of us interfere with other

genres of music as well from classical piano (our keyboardist) to hip hop (our guitar player) post punk/experimental music (bass player) and our drummer used to be part of a garage surf band before.

So as you can imagine there are some influences/bands that we do all enjoy and meet common ground like: Black Sabbath, Wipers, The Sound,  The Fuzztones, Radio Birdman and the list goes on, all the rest vary and that’s the great part, we do learn from each other, discover things we like and find our common influences. The next great thing related to that fact is that it drives us to make some unique music that has no obvious influence yet has a feeling that is common and enjoyable to us all..

Who is responsible for the compositions? Do you work alone or with all members of the band?

So far most of the tracks are pure jam or maybe some piece of inspiration someone brought to studio and we start jamming with it till it gets a full shape.

Other than Bandcamp, is there any other link where we can listen to your music?

Not yet, we are in the process of making our first album since November and we only have few demos that we felt that it’s pointless to upload them, cause the tracks have changed a lot since the time we recorded the demos, anyone interested will have to wait for our album recordings as it seems.

When are your most creative moments, in the morning or in the evening or maybe the night?

Two of us are working night shifts and the other two of us work in the morning, so afternoon is the best creative moment to jam/rehearse and communicate in general. However, we’d say that our most creative moments are when we do feel enjoyable with what we do. That’s when our fun and joy is obvious and in full energy in the band and we get the best ideas, strangely enough our most creative moments are those of rehearsing since we always say so much nonsense & end up laughing our guts out, quite a group therapy (literally..).

Would you like to name 3 life-changing songs?

It is hard to answer that question as well, 3 are just so few and can’t speak for the whole band.

All the songs that reach for our emotion and motivate us are life changing to us, we live, think, feel and fall in love by music. If I’d have to name 1 or 2 that come in mind now I’d say ‘Heartland’ by The Sound,

and ‘Boys Are Having Babies’ from Bloodless Pharaohs (ex-Stray Cats members. the latest title is known to all of as ‘Storm The Embassy’).

Your thoughts about your participation in “Diggin’ Out Fest Volume 2” on January 6th at An Club? After this, your future plans?

We are all quite happy for being part of Diggin’ Out Fest. There is a fine line up with bands we do like their sound and respect them for their activity, music and attitude.. Some of them are friends and we’d be happy to meet them and perform with as a brotherly local scene thing. We’ve played before with The Dead Dranks in a Ramones Tribute Night few years ago and also tried to make a gig with Blue Night Trip last summer but it was canceled due to circumstances then, as for The Dark Rags I used to love their sound since they first came up and happens to know them by chance by a friendly circle, so it is quite a nice synchronic thing.

It is also great to be part of an underground festival of local bands out of the hype and with their own perspective and we do encourage and participate in such events, we support the local underground, so many interesting bands and people with their own unique opinion and sound everywhere around in the scene.

Speaking a bit more personal, it is also quite a beautiful thing to be part of this festival for me since I grew up reading independent fanzines that suggested nice music and aesthetics amongst others, and one of my favorite was Rumble Skunk.. I appreciate the fact this zine introduced me to a whole new world and some of the coolest bands I’ve heard so far from the international and local scene in a compilation 12 years ago, like The Meanie Genies, Yesterday’s Thoughts, Baby Woodrose, The Hydes and the shocking for me at that time psychedelic Mandra Gora Lightshow Society, I used to love 60s-70s psychedelic rock & garage sound but I wasn’t aware there wass such a scene and bands later on.

It did motivate me to keep looking deeper in music further to the psychedelic garage sound of the latest decades at the time that none really was related to that sound in Athens besides some fans of Dead Moon and The Fuzztones here and there.

Our future plans are quite obvious for now, we intend to finish the recordings of our first album, see how we can release that material and then catch up recording more material that we have (old and latest),including performing live of course with people, bands and events that make us happy.

Let’s see.. it’s not fun to spoil the mystery with assumptions further,  right? 😉

Julie Aras