Интервю с Thanos Grigoriou (PHASE)

Hello, can you please introduce the group briefly for those who don’t know you.

Hello there and thank you so much for hosting us on Metal Hangar 18… It’s really an honor!! I’d say simply that we are a rock group that’s dedicated to making beautiful, sincere artistic statements and sharing openly what we have with everyone that’s interested to…

You mix rock, alternative, progressive, electronics… what is the genre that you would never include in your music?

I think we wouldn’t have a problem messing with anything as long as if feels right to us and unconstrained and not pretentious… At the moment I really can’t think of us ever incorporating techno musical elements…

A lot of groups from The Balkans often interpolate into their songs folk motives. What`s your attitude on that and have you ever listened to Bulgarian folk music?

Yes I’ve listened to some modes you people use there and I can say they are quite… progressive… hehe… We love folk elements and we use them ourselves… it’s a living link with our roots… Art is a culture’s mirror and how traditions  blend together shows how musicians were always open and communicating really effectively… I mean by common elements in music or similar instruments and their travel through the world and where they first appeared and how they were evolved… It’s amazing… back then there were no internet…  unlike now where Canadians can dig some middle eastern music without anybody traveling there with it inside him and in his hands… I can’t really transfer how I feel about it or effectively explain what’s on my mind right now… But I am really fascinated…

The idea for the excellent cover of your album is yours and it gives a background for lots of interpretations and meditation. Would you reveal your point of view?

I can try it but an image, a thousand words they say… And I can’t find the proper order to articulate everything that it encloses… It’s about loneliness and how everyone is living in their own distant desert planets… About desire… Emotional fall… Karma; which isn’t other from our own character and what we reflect and attract, and pays with a clockwork’s precision… The whole album is like a verismo to our social reality and it was written during a dark period firstly to demonstrate or reveal these really awful aspects of the modern man and then to exorcise it… I think lack of communication and empathy, emotional intelligence, truth, life, relationships, autism, narcissism are things my lyrics are so often dealing with… There are so many taboo truths in our society and we really feel the need to expose them… To go back to the cover’s features whenever I am attempting to make a similar “decoding” people go, yes we were amazed by the cover but we wouldn’t be able to tell all these things… and I go like that things are what amazes you apart from the perfect color Aris picked… Like we all have symbols stored in us that are acquired from the collective subconscious… Like the animal traits on aesop’s fables which are also the same in the Persian version of them… Like peacocks are symbols of showoffs or the fox is smart or sly… Serpents symbolize impulses and instincts and have a negative essence since we can’t emotionally identify with them… And we human beings are so sensitive to visual stimuli… especially men predominantly probably because of the hunting and mating… That’s why marketers are selling us ice creams using horny chicks in the ads with making also their eyes and cheeks seem like they are menstruating… The more uneducated we are the most arrogance rule us and we are easier manipulated… Yet it’s a powerful tool for art when you have something beautiful to propose… And make people see…

There are quite serious and popular extreme metal bands in Greece, including Rotting Christ, SepticFlesh, Suicidal Angels, etc. That means that there are also a lot of fans of that music. What is the situation with the progressive and the rock music – is it harder to make your way to the top?

Well we are not aiming at any top… But yes our road is craggy and wild compared to extreme metal bands’ because there is no underground scene for us… Not much of tape or concert trading, quite a few zines and rock people meet us as too heavy while metal ones find us too mellow… It’s a mess… so we are walking alone having some people willing to help us through the way… And some of the metal press is quite helpful like you are we are so thankful for that…

How did you start and why did you decide to make music? Tell us something interesting from your early years?

I guess I was a fucked up detached child and teen… Yet curious about the truth and how things are working… Back in junior high I guess I was daydreaming the success and acceptance the rock idols were standing with but through a long and crooked road I can claim I learned truths about my self and subsequently larger universal truths which I feel obliged to re-inspire to the society which tends to forget… I think interesting from back then could be that I always wanted to get a bass and become like Steve Harris who was like an idol to me back then and my first instrument was bought from my father when I was 15 after I gathered some of my pocket money and subscribed my self for a couple of lessons and it was a squire guitar which was rounding up dust under my bed for so long after a while…

In which phase is PHASE right now? Do you record new songs and are you planning a new album soon?

Yes, we are finishing the recording sessions of our “the Wait” album while we already have set up the EP to follow it… We are having numerous of ideas we just need to find the right time arrange them and put them on a record… We are also having with us a beautiful small workshop of friends of ours and we become their vehicle to communicate their art through us and propose all these beautiful things along with us… It’s a bless… and Phase’s universe is gradually expanding so we are just enjoying the ride…

You’ve worked together with Duncan Patterson (Anathema, Antimatter) on your song “Ibidem”. How did you got in contact with him and is he easy to work with?

He is a really great guy, sincere and modest so I think that can answer the whole question at once… We hope we’ll meet on stage pretty much soon too… We wish him all the success with his current musical enterprise “Alternative 4” and he has all of our support on it!! He always is cooking up really interesting stuff you know!!

With who (musician or band) would you like to work with in the future?

Maybe Tony Iommi because he seems to be so down to earth and all this beautiful music passed through him… The remaining Zeppelin, Martin Gore… I think the list can go on for a long…

Let’s imagine that there are concerts of Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode and Anathema in the very same day. Which one would you choose?

I know people would stone me for that (Even Marios for not picking Pink Floyd) but I’d say Depeche Mode and I hope I will make it to one of their current tour’s show… I really admire their work and respect them… The way they are arranging their beautiful songs is mindblowing for me… Don’t take me wrong I like a lot of stuff the Pink Floyd did, but to me they are a bit overrated and at moments I meet them as quite a bit pretentious… Plus everybody can go on artificially indulged trips and discover the same truths autistic-ally… But to me who the artist is and what is also doing in his life matters… else it’s like parents… Not having words-actions consistency… Any way DM lyrics are simply amazing too… I know they are in Sofia in March so don’t miss them people…

Do you like to go to concerts as a fan and which one is best you’ve attended so far?

I have been in concerts a lot… We all have… I think I was really impressed being to a DIO concert as a teen… As an adult I think I found Loreena McKennitt’s concert really breathtaking… I have bitterly regretted for missing a few shows I was really interested in like Nick Cave’s or Diamanda Gallas’, Dead Can Dance’s and some more…

We will ask you to make a confession – did you overdose with Alice In Chains?

Everybody is telling us this one… Like really, everybody… I guess we just share the same influences and the other thing is that we’ve all listened a lot to Psychotic Waltz in the past who were really influenced by Alice in Chains… We dig them a bit lately and we really respect them as a musical collective!!!

And now follows the logical question – who or what you get your inspiration from?

Since you are asking about music inspiration it’s not something particular… Everything we’ve listened to compulsively as teens and is carved into our brains fused with anything our ears have crossed since… But I think it happens really efficiently and beautifully… We don’t have any blue prints but we always can tell to each other “oh look how David Bowie did this” or “Did you listen to that production Trent Reznor achieved? We should approach it for that song of ours” or so… But inspiration comes out from everything… We are that oversensitive entity that imprints everything and throws out the truth about it… Just like little children…

You will have your second concert in Bulgaria (at 26.01 in Rock club Adams), what are you expectations, comparing it to the first one?

Well we don’t have any expectations from our selves or the audience… We are definitely going to have a great time and we have to offer a really great experience to everybody that is going to attend as well as to our own selves… I think more people are going to show up but anyway are also always interested in the quality more than the quantity of the listeners and I can foretell with certainty we are going to touch people with our set….

I guess you’ve tried Bulgarian beer during your visit. So which one is better – greek or bulgarian? (I won’t ask you for women, because it’s not correctly ;-P)

Yes I think we tried a lot of stuff there… hehe… I guess this time I’ll change the order I will consume things to have an accurate opinion about them…

I can guess which is the most frequent question in your interviews. But which is that question that you’ve always wanted to answer, but nobody ever asked you?

Actually your very question now is the greatest question I’ve been asked…

We are very glad that we had the opportunity to take this interview, now you have the chance to say something to the Bulgarian audience and get their attention to your concert.

Thank you for this beautiful interview first of all, up for the rest of you guys I thing you should really pass by Adams Bar on the 26th we have really interesting and intense thinks to share with you… Just that I won’t incorporate my persuasion skills like a disgusting salesman… We will be really glad to see you there!

Phase

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