Hot gigs and new technologies at the highly popular annual Synch Festival of electronic music
The popular alternative Synch Festival of electronic music is set to kick off this Friday. Now in its fifth year, the event will be held for a second consecutive year as part of the Athens Festival. Bringing together music, art and technology, the Synch Festival (www.synch.gr) will run through Sunday and will be spread out between the Technopolis Arts Complex, the Benaki Museum Pireos Street Annex, K44, Bios, Motel and Yoga Bala. Highlights on the music front include the concert of legendary British pop act Happy Mondays, playing Greece for the first time, as well as Irish electro-pop diva Roisin Murphy and British band Stereolab. Yo La Tengo’s show should not be missed – the band strikes a balance between whispering ballads, garage explosions and jazz improvisations. One of the most notable bands to emerge in 2007, Holy Fuck combines noisy electronica and punk and comes highly recommended. One of the objectives of the Synch Festival is to explore the application of new technologies. In a European first, the sound software for the «one laptop per child» scheme, created at MIT Media Lab, will be presented. The first $100 laptop ever to be mass produced will bring the children of Africa in touch with technology, opening up new fields of communication.
