Is intelligence a fundamental musician’s property? The way he transforms his ideas in notes, his obsessions… even his fears… The way he does it can be lousy, but it can also be the definition of applied perfection. The Larissean Phase have stopped impressing me by their music and their use of language… I was shocked by both the first time I listened to, and read them, but I am not surprised anymore… I am just jealous. It’s one of the cases that you are being jealous of ‘others’, saying things better than you, being more talented, fuller and more mature, of getting you ‘intimidated’… In Consequence was the album that put me into ‘the trick’ and it’s my guide for what’s following, and that’s no other than its successor, the Wait album. How can this Wait be interpreted? What made Phase come up with that story? Nick Kalogirou brought me in touch with the band for the second time and I warmly thank him for that. The rest of you and foremost the children of the valley will have the opportunity to see them on stage pretty soon.

Q:Two years have passed since ‘In Consequence’ was released. I’ve read in one of your interviews that the next album is going to be entitled ‘the Wait’ and it will be consisted of ten numbers. When should we be expecting it?

Hopefully, the Wait will break surface in the beginning of the new year, we are in the final phases of its development and we can safely claim that the material sounds really astounding… We are overly enthused even though it’s missing elementary processing. We are hoping that it will have the same impact on our audience and that they’ll have the will to let it grow inside them.

-I’ve also read that it’s going to be a concept album, but not in the strict sense of a story. What are your thoughts? What will be its central topic?

The core idea, like the title betrays, is the Wait, and I’ve inspired that two years ago within a friend’s obsession with it. The condition under which you’re always waiting for something. You are waiting to finish school, to get rid of your braces, to be a grown up, to finish uni, to have sex, to leave your parents’ house… And we’ve extended it to showcase that perverse impatient-escaping narcissistic pattern when you’re never where you are. You never live for the moment. Either you’re living in selected memories, sometimes supported by photographic reminders of ‘what a great time you had posing’ or in unstable fantasies of an impossible future… As the idea is progressing we are making a turn concluding that the wait is what makes you who you are… Or better say, it shows you what you are made of, and it’s everything you are… That’s a very general outline, you’ll have to sit back and let yourself dive in the entire work to communicate the idea better. Furthermore, a big part of it has a nostalgic character and it sharply sarcasms the paradoxical nostalgia people have not for the familiar (hence νόστος [=house]), but for the utopic, the idealised…

-Will darkness, irony and all the other elements we loved in the previous album be present in the next one? Have you added things or removed some others?

Yes, all these will be ‘dressing’ once more the biggest part of our songs… We haven’t still made a report about what has happened in there, but surely our spectre is transformed by a bit, or more accurately it is further cleansed, charged with the changes and maturation we’ve been subjected to during all that time… We could be recording an album per semester but it would be pointless if we hadn’t anything different to say, I think.

-Is there anything that has influenced your approach musically and artistically in general all this period that you have been working on ‘the Wait’

Undoubtedly, anything we’ve encountered throughout this time interval has influenced our aesthetics, and we are responsible for the conscious part of it, and how much and what way we let things influence us… NIN, Depeche Mode, David Bowie, U.N.K.L.E., Menelaos Lountemis, travels, friends, discussions…

-Are contacts with labels being made? Do you want to release the album under a label or on your own?

Something is happening and there’s plenty of interest for our material, but we are not going to proceed unless our cooperation is not by any means insulting us, as artists… We are not disposed in any way to pay the pressings just to get the gratification of hitting up on chicks telling saying we are with a major label, plus a few copies reading EMI in the back jacket… If we wanted to start a business we’d open a mini market. Our focal point is art and art only… Of course we’d love to make a living solely out of it but only under certain circumstances like I said. Now if someone tells us that he believes in our material that much and wants to invest on it while he hasn’t gained the money by killing pirates in Somalia or from child pornography then we don’t have any problem to cooperate and he’s more than welcome!

-Will you feature any special participation in your new album like that of Duncan Patterson on ‘In Consequence’? 

We don’t have anything planned. If it happens again in the terms of artistic cooperation and communication we’d surely do it… We clearly wouldn’t hire an eponymous professional just to peacock and brag about how networked we are…

-We haven’t seen you live in a while. Are you preparing anything?

The day after tomorrow, Friday, November 30th we have our next show opening for Sivert Høyem‘s concert in our hometown.

-You’ve already been a band for five years. What is what you’ve kept from what you’ve been through? What’s what you’d willingly forget from your way to here?

We are keeping everything without exception… This is our way, and the way we are facing anything that’s bringing on us, reveals our character… We wouldn’t like to forget anything, no matter how bad, because we’d risk having to experience its repetition…

-Do you think it would be better if you were born in a different country? Concerning your music and your musical career.  

I don’t have the slightest idea… We wouldn’t be us for sure… For a little African child who would live briefly before he’d die by AIDS or a child born in a warzone the answer to that hypothetical question would be more than obvious… But for someone that’s born in a relatively free country, with the potential of getting educated it’s a bit ungrateful not to assume the responsibility of himself and the struggle/mission from his own post. Coming to music there are places with more opportunities and reach to learning how to play an instrument for instance, but an ‘American Idol‘ type of musical career was never our case anyway. It was always about healthy expression, communication, socialisation and travelling…

Interviewer: Costas Coulis
Publication: Noizy.gr
Period: November 2012