“Through the silence of space, a figure was coming from afar, at first it looked like a dot, a marble, with the unreal era. I wouldn’t be able to discern it amongst the other hanging, transparent objects which were distorting and were envious of it, it possessed motion. Silence and a light, far enough, blinds us so that we cannot see its truth. From the core of chaos a noise of keyboard keys was heard almost muffled, like a ritual, a guitar spitting sounds, a rhythmic bass so that the keys won’t be lost in the quietness of the universe. A voice, a hand coming forth from the figure, no it doesn’t sing, the voice originates from somewhere close by. The light, cruel and complete stops us from seeing what’s coming, but its energy can be heard, it has the sound of a flute, a trumpet or even of a few notes of a santoor.
I feel as if we’re being engulfed by this safety and we’re just the onlookers. We try to lift our hands, we don’t have hands, we try to kick the blackness of the universe, we don’t have legs. Maybe if I shout, I could invoke God, does he exist? I don’t think we have a voice. What are we? The only sure thing is that we were very far away from the realization. Surely, we are starting to feel something, what is it? What I feel, the aspiration of heat and at the same time I puke the notes of a song, the psychedelia goes on, so many sounds blend together, it makes our motion much faster as if it thrusts us from one planet, if there are still these words in the world as we saw it, to the other. The guitar plays its solo, it creates bridges like a rainbow trying to connect the worldly with the bizarre and the fairytale. I don’t hear the voice telling me to calm down anymore, I hear the Gravitysays_i. We keep seeing this figure, it’s chasing roses in statuesque gardens, it leaves itself in the haze of the desert, it converses with unknown reptiles, it wonders what love is. The electric sounds of the album in a larger percentage and with a mood of plenty of experimentation, like writing, like the pencil that turns to a knife. In the end I felt the vague breath left behind by the birds’ wings.
The closer I saw this figure, the later it was and our anxiety grew. We were certain that its course was heading this way. Sluggish rhythms, almost harrowing and trembling voices make me anxious whether we could meet somewhere. This trumpet gives me the chills, it’s the sound that drags roads along with it. Compasses and sextants are thrown in the battle between the everlasting darkness and the irrational suspension. I’m almost certain the trumpet will go on, maybe with a little help from the keyboard keys, all of them muffled from somewhere distant, I can’t call to the voice that sings so that it will release me from my sinful anxiety.
If there was a ground I would dig to hide myself but I’m scared of finding an ivory heart.
Suddenly I remember that the lovers are the ones that can remain truthfully alive in the end of time or are they the ones staying alive in our mortal poems? Memories of sensual pain are being awakened in my head, maybe some difficult words, every man for himself. What I describe is not a battle, it’s not a song, if it was a simple thing it would have a theme, no it doesn’t have a theme, it can take you from distant Spain, to post rock Icelandic sceneries with volcanoes puking the hot semen. What a word the last one? We pay a visit to a bourgeois composer, we get into his head, we listen to his compositions. Father and mother music, here we come. We are the parents of an almost erotic music, how many times did our energies get caught and stuck in a stance peculiarly ideal. The santoor along with the violin enchants us. Even this figure, we begin to feel it, it has consciousness, its eyes are open. It doesn’t faint, it feels no fear, no second thoughts.
I feel its kiss hugging me, almost battering. In the end we realize we are the womb of reproduction, we follow the circle of realization and simply enough we get lost before we become aware of death and change. It asks us if we’re ready for the hatching. We reach the end. Guitars and rhythmic keyboard keys constitute the most beautiful drowning in my opinion. We are ready to open the cellar door. There is no fear, the santoor may encourage me to accept you, speaking telepathic with the figure. Its hands fold around my neck. I’m smiling. Welcome, strange troubadours in our mind.”
The writing of the above passage took place accompanied by the sounds of Gravitysays_i’s new album called ‘Quantum Unknown’. A band, that firstly collects the sounds it wants, is experimenting and has the guts to provide us with a music really taken out of our dreams. I could say that it is an acoustically complex album with determined influences from space movies, psychedelic electric visions that reaches even the blatant truth of quantum. The new album lacks the choral parts of the second one and the coherence – the blending of one track into another. Of course, the traditional elements that have defined the band’s sound like the santoor are present and operate clearly as psychedelic pillars. But here we also have the introduction of another traditional instrument: the flute. Generally, we observe an intense use of brass instruments and electric sounds. It takes guts to stray from the standards that characterize and describe you. In every album the band has released, we can notice huge changes, something that I think we’ll be able to see/ feel at their concert. The impression this album gave me was of a chart with the intensely loose moments being traversed by bursts, either noisy or emotional, from the first track of the take off until the last track of the landing. A generally brief album that cannot tire the listener due to its diversity.
I can’t wait to see them live in Larisa.
Makis Gevros