Eventless Plot – Anisixia (Edition Wandelweiser, 2021) ****

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Greece is a small country with those who make music out of the norm (on a more bitter comment: those who don’t make hip-hop, punk or some other hip music styles) scattered mainly around the two big cities of Athens and Thessaloniki. Some very brave musicians leave even outside those two cities. The absolute lack of any kind of a scene (with its helpful connections and engagements) for experimental music, makes it even more difficult for anyone to continue. The absence of spaces (there are but few in numbers with the pandemic minimizing their number) makes these musics almost invisible to anyone but the cognoscenti.

The trio of Eventless Plot hails from Thessaloniki and has covered a lot of distance until today, where they’ve become part of the sophisticated catalogue of Edition Wandelweiser. Back in the late 00’s they were one of the few avant rock/electronic Greek acts. Slowly, at least in my eyes, they abandoned the comforts that labels like rock or electronica provide. On anisixia (restlessness in Greek) they are the trio of Vasilis Liolios on psaltery e-bow, Aris Giatas on analog synth, Yiannis Tsirikoglou on electronics with the addition of Nefeli Sani on the piano, Eva Matsigou on flute and Chris Cundy on bass clarinet.

This CD, clocking just over thirty six minutes, is a composition (a score if you prefer) that was recorded before the pandemic started. It is one long track that gradually builds up, but never climaxes. There’s a hidden, cinematic feeling willing to unveil itself after repeated listening. Thankfully the group doesn’t resort to the well traveled path of a climax in the end of the recording. On the contrary their collective playing stays within inaudible limits. At the same time they manage to produce a music that incorporates an internal contradiction (in comparison with my aforementioned remark) that the music will at some point explode, will make you, the listener, feel that something totally out of the blue might happen.

I consider this probably the biggest quality of anisixia. From the first second up until the last they build a cohesive atmosphere between likeminded artists. Even though as a listener I would prefer that the instruments would be clearer in the final mix, it is exactly this unity of the different sounds and timbres of the instruments that produces a final satisfying mix. The title itself (I’m always stuck with the why’s of track titles) is revealing for the music. It is as if this cd is one of the available versions of anisixia, producing an expectation of listening to some other version live or on a future date on cd. Restlessness (like Beckettian failure) makes the music world go round. Hopefully.

@koultouranafigo