Thanasis Papakonstantinou
I Vrochi apo Kato (Rain from Below)
Lyra CD1086

Thanasis Papakonstantinou Diaphanous
Lyra CD1103 (www.lyra.gr)

Metaxohori Agias, world headquarters for Ahos Recording Studio and Music Production, is located about 20 miles from Larissa, right in the middle of Greece. According to the city's website, "its 559 inhabitants mostly cultivate apple and cherry trees."

Among those 559 people living in this agricultural backbone of the country (and a place that is the the butt of a significant number of jokes), lives and prospers Thanasis Papakonstantinou; listening to everything, reading everything, eavesdropping into the 21st century, his feet firmly planted in the ancient, fertile ground of the heartland.

Somewhere between Rain... and Diaphanous, Papakonstantinou set up Ahos and decided to turn his booklets from Greek-only to at least modestly bilingual. Rejoice! Papakonstantinou has decided to conquer the rest of the world.

Papakonstantinou creates postmodern rock global laika that is selling his fair share of records, sells out each one of the limited number of concerts he gives each year and has all of the critics in the country waxing lyrically. How can music so weird be so commercial? How can music so weird be so beautiful? How can someone living in a small remote village be so aware of the rest of the world, so cool, yet so unhip?

Those two recordings are strongly related and draw at least part of their material from the music he composed for some theatrical plays and a recent Greek film, "O Vasilias" (The King), by Nikos Grammatikos. What is different, especially in I Vrochi apo Kato, is the use of samples and a bit of strong language. My personal feeling is that the latter was a way for him to sabotage all the preciousness that was beginning to descend upon him and his music; precious Papakonstantinou surely is not.

There are a couple of key tracks and first and foremost, "Sara." Passion fruit leaves produce a compound of cyanide which is deeply toxic - except to the sara, which uses that poison as a nitrogen source to turn its larvae into butterflies. The introductory track, "o,ti den borese" ("whatever couldn't") is recited by his 20-year old sons and offers this lyric: "Like a thunderbolt from afar/whatever couldn't be/crosses the night in a rush/without sound, and then it disappears./And neither a kiss to memory/nor charity/nor an attempted escape/from the fisherman's nets." "Aypni poli" ("Sleepless city") is his unique perpective on a Federico Garcia Lorca poem, which is also used as the reprise of the record, delivered in the original Spanish.

Musically, this is a continuation of his previous two studio records, "Vrachnos Profitis" and "Agrypnia." You still find the acoustic instruments in counterpoint to the electric ones, while most of the female singing is done by Martha Fritzila, who was responsible for some of the best things about his previous live double CD, Ta zontana.

In Diaphanous the male vocals are performed by Sokratis Malamas, a favorite singer of Papakonstantinou and a really talented singer and songwriter in his own right. Malamas is the singer Papakonstantinou wishes he was, a kind of alter ego for the composer. Nikos Veliotis, responsible for some very interesting work recently and cello player par excellence was also a big part of this production, along with some of the musicians he used in his previous records.

If I Vrochi apo Kato was his purgative revolutionary work, Diaphanous is his return to laiko primacy. Diaphanous is his most mature and complete record so far and is also the record where his whole discography is expressed, not only his late period (from "Vrachnos Profitis" henceforth) but even his previous records, when he wrote more straightforward songs for more straightforward performances. Lyrically speaking, it's a record full of lust, sex and death.

"Diaphanous," the opening track based on César Vallejo poems is pure beauty with a trumpet solo that will haunt. "(…) At the sunset's edge you don't see any dreams, you just see what has happened and the things to come. You see the human belittled, being trampled upon by his very own feet."

"In America," a song about Greek immigration with a sample from Elia Kazan's "America, America," is a first. I've heard many attempts to create songs that merge Greek music with American music and lately there have been certain successful attempts. Yet, never before has it been done with the panache and easiness of this song. And lyrically, it's top notch: "The place where I grew up, has the grievance that the sea didn't condescend to soak this soil. Despite all this, I know that the ocean's black waves can take you to China or deep down to the sea bed."

This is followed by "Pes mou kati" (Tell me something) where his whole family (from 9 to 99 year olds) sings over an incredibly funky musical background ("Something true, like the hanging man's loneliness, something insufferable like the unease in an elevator, something strong like flowers and something fake like the winter sun").

"Flies" uses members of the Tsiouxani choir, a remnant of the Venetian bel canto tradition from a few hundred years ago, transcribed to the heartland - from bel canto to bel campo as they put it ("campo" being the lowlands) who were paid in flowers.

"The Acheron Boatman" pokes fun at death and the sorry state of his boat. It has an almost reggae bass rhythm, lovely tzoura and guitar solos and it's danceable and sexy.

"360 km," is a kind of a road trip song. It is folowed by my personal favorite, "You, the_universe." Dedicated to bloggers, it starts with the now almost forgotten sound of a modem connecting, recites nicknames alphabetically: "aeraki (wind), alafroiskiotos (ghost), Aggelina Tzoli (Angelina Jolie), afrikanos74 (African), arahtos (laid back), vatrahokoritso (toadgirl), vrohopoios (rainmaker), giorgos_chirourgos (Yiorgos the Surgeon), elenitsa63, zen, I mikri ollandeza (The Little Dutch Girl), leviathan, litsaki (LizZzie), Lolita, loukoumaki (little turkish delight), metanastis (immigrant), mikros_pringipas_tis_skotinias (Little Dark Prince), omiros (Homer)…" on one channel and on the other he recycles parts of an old song of his. It's profound, funny, musically strong and simple. It's what Papakonstantinou does best.

I Vrohi apo kati is a record for those who already know and love his music and is an integral part of his work. Diaphanous, however, is his most accessible record lately and possibly his best to date - a record not to be missed. - Nondas Kitsos

CDs available from cdRoots:
The Rain From Below
Diaphonous

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