New ways of an ex-rocker
Yiannis Aggelakas spent years leading one of the country’s most liked rock bands, Trypes from Thessaloniki, whose humble beginnings in the early 1980s gradually gained dimension that elevated the post-punk act to the forefront of the domestic indie rock circuit. By the late 90s, or several albums on, the highly charged Greek-language rock band’s run appeared to have completed its cycle. At their peak – in terms of appeal – several years earlier, Trypes would unfailingly pack sizable Greek venues. Several years later, at their twilight-era shows, Aggelakas and his musicians, most in their early 40s, were drawing a diminishing number of older fans. Having outgrown the band’s fiery and hot-headed work, these fans were mostly replaced by younger rebel-minded youths looking to vent some of their teenage unrest. Following several albums that were rich in conviction, it now seemed clear that if the music was going to be kept real, the band’s members knew that change would certainly be needed. It came in its most absolute form. Trypes broke up and the outfit’s personnel began pursuing solo interests. Aggelakas, the act’s poetic frontman, has made the biggest impact of them all. Now in his late 40s, Aggelakas has managed to reinvent himself by injecting zest and further musical diversity for a newfound sense of intrigue in his material. The singer and lyricist is nowadays backed by a multi-member collective, dubbed the Episkeptes, or visitors, on a wide range of instruments, including cello and brass. Inevitably – considering the number of musicians and range of instruments involved – Yiannis Aggelakas and his Episkeptes, as the seasoned musician’s latest project is called, have so far produced music of heightened adventure and diversity compared to the frontman’s days with Trypes’s guitar-bass-drums lineup. Following a series of extremely well-received shows over the past year or so, including a headline appearance at last summer’s Gagarin Open-Air Festival in Athens, Aggelakas and his Episkeptes gather again for a performance in Athens this Saturday at the open-air Vrachon Theater in the capital’s Vyronas district. Long before he eventually went solo, Aggelakas had hinted that the option of a solo career possibly stood ahead with the release of a debut personal effort, 1993’s «Yperocho tipota,» which emerged midway into his former band’s seven-album course. Slower, more atmospheric and almost eerie, Aggelakas’s debut solo album differed distinctively from the band’s preceding efforts. It took a further three studio albums with Trypes, as well as the publication of a book of poetry, his second, before Aggelakas opted to restart his solo endeavors. His expanding musical interest was strongly suggested by lead vocal contributions to several songs on «Vrachnos profytis,» an exceptional album by Larissa songwriter Thanassis Papaconstantinou that fused rock sounds with more traditional Greek styles to captivating effect. Trypes guitarist Babis Papadopoulos played a key part in the instrumentation of this album, a landmark project released in 2000 that helped introduce Papaconstantinou, until then a marginalized act, to bigger and younger audiences, while also highlighting Aggelakas’s interest in a new musical direction. Radical change in Aggelakas’s career, which has included a couple of Greek film roles, came with 2005’s «Anasses ton lykon,» a combined effort with Nikos Veliotis, a gifted Greek cellist who has figured on the international experimental music circuit in recent years. For the album, Aggelakas provided his trademark heavy-hearted lyrics and low-toned vocals to Veliotis’s multilayered cello compositions for an overall dark effect. Next, also in 2005, Aggelakas – with Veliotis still on board – went way beyond the two-man format to form Episkeptes, his backing collective, for the album «Apo’do ke pano» and numerous alluring shows around the country that have re-established the frontman as one of the country’s most prominent contemporary artists, while also shedding deserved light on his cast of offbeat but creative musicians. Saturday, 9 p.m., Vrachon Theater, tickets: 20 euros.
