9+1 Q&A with Boxes Of Blow

What inspired you to first start making music? And how did you come to be in your current incarnation? Or if you prefer, a brief bio about you.

We are all three people who were involved in music from an early age, as listeners or later as musicians.
Boxes of blow are :

Alexios Othon Theodoridis : guitars, synths and orchestration
Thodoris Koutsogiannis : Lead vocals, lyrics, synths
Kostas Mavrommatis : Bass

The first meeting took place in the summer of 2016 when Thodoris and Alexios met on a festival playing with different projects each other. They decided to form a band with post punk, darkwave and noise sounds. After a lot of experimentation and changes of members in April 2022 Kostas Mavrommatis joined us on bass.

Provide us with some info about your latest release…

“Dystopia” is the first LP of Boxes of Blow. It contains all the work we did from 2016 to 2021. Finally, it was decided to include all the tracks on this release mainly because it shows our first personal stamp from the first to the last track. There are many themes in it, the anxiety to find a solution to human problematic situations. Sometimes this anguish becomes a huge inaccessible “wall”, a boundary that we cannot cross, nor see beyond.
Many metaphorical meanings, such as “black rain” that can symbolize any catastrophe internal to our existence or external to nature and the environment in which we live. All this is expressed through the dreamy, atmospheric and electric sounds of the album. The LP will be released on 4th July by Wave records and pre-orders have already started.

Which ones would you consider your main influences both music-wise & non-music-wise?

There are so many classical bands from 80s such us Bauhaus, Joy Division, The Cure and others that have obviously influenced us. But we also admire new bands such as Blind Delon, Actors, Soft moon, Drab Majesty, Second still etc.

In what way does your sound differ from the rest genre-related artists/bands and why should we listen to your music? In other words, how would you describe your sound?

We would say that in most of our songs there is an atmospheric beginning usually with a combination of clean guitar and bass with a pad synthesizer. Then the sound gets wilder on the three instruments that we usually use as a climax. We prefer instead of having a second guitar to use synths. Their sound ranges in the guitar frequencies or in more mid frequencies. This way there is a larger “palette” of sounds. Also in the noisy endings of the songs, the synths with the mid frequencies give a feeling that we haven’t heard before in other bands.

Please name your 3 desert islands albums, movies & books…

Music albums : Joy division – Unknown pleasures, This Mortal Coil – Blood, Τhe Cure – Seventeen Seconds.

Movies : Stalker – Andrei Tarkofsky, Wings of desire – Wim Wenders, Dekalog – Krzyszstof Kieslowski ( We cheated a “little” on this last…)

Books : Liquid love – Zygmount Bauman, Philip K. Dick – Electric sheep, L’ empire des signes – Roland Barthes

Do you prefer studio or performing live and why?

Both have advantages. For us, they are completely different. So, we have a different attitude toward each one. Performing live is the main contact of the musician with the crowd. It is the outro of the musician. But without the one, you can’t have the other. All our life we wanted to create music for the first reason. Creation for a musician is the most essential. It is of course more convenient for us to compose music and lyrics in a quiet place away from rest of the world. Though sometimes the presence and colaboration of other musicians can bring great ideas.

Is there any funny-unique story you would like to share with us, always in relation to your music ‘career’?

At a concert, after we finished our last song, we started to leave the stage but Thοdoris kept playing his bass and singing. At some point the rest of us realized we had to go back on stage, improvise and create a new song to convince him that the show was over.

Which track of your own would you point out as the most unique and why?

We think our favorite track so far is “Out of control”. We wrote it during the quarantine, expressing, if we can put it that way, the feelings of most people at that time. We felt a little luckier with it than others. At least we have the outlet of music.

Would you like to share with our readers your future plans?

After our concert at Six dogs on June 4th we plan to start recording new songs that already exist. In addition we have planned the shooting of our new video during the summer.

Free question!!! (Ask yourself a question) you wish to answer and haven’t been given the opportunity…

We would like to write about the event that will take place at Six dogs on June 4. The Future Sonic Showcase in the years it has been around has been involved with post punk, darkwave and synhtwave bands. This year’s lineup will include Dagon, Man over heart, Boxes of Blow and Meat Injection. It will be a great night with dark melodies that will fill the venue for several hours.

Curated by: Christos Doukakis

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