The first two-days Festival of Cyberdelia Records: took place in the Club 8 Dytika in Kavalas Avenue at 12 and 13 of December. In this point I’d better tell you some thoughts of mine about these kinds of festivals. I wish that there were more labels like Cyberdelia, which would have the strength to organize something, really big like that festival that I’ll write about. There are some people that really love the Greek scene and are trying to do the best they can, but they really need the fans’ support to be succeed on that. It’s a shame for the Greek fans not to support festivals like the Playhouse Gotique, cause I do not see that they will have any other chances in the future to listen to those bands. The club should have been full of fans but instead of this, only a few seemed to have understood that if we do not support the scene they would be no other events like that in the future. Personally I must give congratulations to Mike Pougounas who had the guts to organise the festival and to all the people that came there at Friday and Saturday night.

The first day (Friday 12th) the bands that played were Nexus, Genetic Variation and Past Perfect. Due to a personal problem I wasn’t able attend to the first day’s festival but I was informed afterwards that the bands played really well, although the people weren’t as many as they must have been.

The second day (Saturday 13th) I went to the club along with George about at nine O’clock and after 20 minutes the doors opened. Once again the sub-standard number of the fans disappointed me… but I thought… Let’s see the live show and enjoy it…

After a small discussion that George and I have with Mike, the first band came out to play. The name of the band was Forkys and was formed in 2001 by the musician/engineering Wryl. The band had a good sound (although the sound on the firsts bands usually isn’t too good and clear) and the music of Forkys was a mix of psychedelic, gothic and industrial music along with some dark wave influences. The lighting was pretty “psycho” and it was perfect for that kind of music. Forkys have released a demo, which is titled “Lamentation”, and one song of them was in the compilation CD that a well-known magazine in Greece has released.

The second band was Tilbury On Cloves, which appeared instead of Adis cause the band couldn’t attend due to some problems that they had, as I heard afterwards. Tilbury On Cloves were formed in 1994 as a five-piece band but after a tragic event that happened in 2000, which cost the life of their bassist, only two members left in the band, the guitarist and the vocalist (now he plays also the bass). The band played with a lot of passion although the sound didn’t help them a lot and due to that they also didn’t manage to play one song of their play list. Also I liked their two last songs (actually the last one was dedicated to their bassist) and the voice of the singer brought in my mind a little bit of U2. In my opinion if they decide to make their sound base more rock (like U2) they could succeed better things in the future, cause the singer has a good voice and he knows how to sing with passion! They have released since now only a 7’ but they have already finished the recordings of their first full-length album, which it is going to be released from the Danish label BSBTA.

The third band that came on stage was Dark Runner. I didn’t know what kind of music this band plays but when I saw the two guitarists I betted that they would have at least some heavy riffs… and I wasn’t wrong at all! Dark Runner is the personal band of Glaufx Garland -who is also the owner of Capp Records- and they were formed in 1999. Their music style is a mix of industrial music along with heavy riffs and a dark wave feeling! Also the “nightmarish” vocals are fitting very well the whole music! They are not a common band that we listened to, every day but they worth to be listening by the fans of dark music. They have released two albums so far, “Unknown Master Save Us & Gently Sin” and this year they also released “Awaken All Myths” by Pandaimonium Records.

Finally the headliners were the well-known band Slow Motion that was formed in 1986! Their performance was very good and the sound was also clear and helped them to present us their “weird” music! Also I must mention that they have placed on stage a projector which was screened images like seas, castles etc. and was fitting pretty good with the whole music style and the atmosphere of the band. I described the music style of the band “weird”, cause their music although is synth based (they were the only ones that had a drummer upstage) I cannot tell exactly that what kind of music they are playing. Sometimes the reminded me of Klaus Nomi! The mainman and the singer/keyboardist of the band did his best to present us something really good along with the bassist and the drummer. I have to admit that the singer has an excellent voice and he could easily sing from German to English and his accent was also very good! The crowd showed that were really familiar with the music of Slow Motion, they were singing and some were dancing all the time that the band was playing. Personally, I liked very much the band and I’ll try to listen to some albums of the band for sure in the bear future. For the record Slow Motion have released to date three albums: “This”, “Viaticum” and “Blind Transmissions”.

After that, the festival was over and everyone seemed to be really happy. I stood on a corner wondering that those who didn’t come to the show they missed a great opportunity to listen to some really good bands that deserved not only our money but also our valuable time! Let’s hope that next time the club will be full of people who in general love music!

by Thanos Aggelakis

P.S.: A very special thx to Mike Pougounas who is a really cool person and helped me a lot. Man, you rule! Also a thx goes to George (my partner) for the fun that we had there!