Caught in the Carousel

TROULEMAKERS: An Afternoon with Night On Earth

By David Porter

Night On Earth

I have twilight singers by my side while I'm wide awake and waiting tonight and the
mischievous night. she yells at me and shouts why are you so sad my dearest one?
Forgotten memories, shoes are worn out by my trudging On crimson roads I left behind
I didn't flee or withered but homegrown melodies pierce through me
There's a place in the sky in between forgotten stars
Where I shall go when I turn into dust
And right at that spot I'll be waiting for your lot

"nightshift"
Lyrics by Sophia Sarri

Athens, Greece musical juggernaut Night On Earth released its sophomore album, second hand, in October 2009 on Sony BMG. The band recorded and released its first album, an eponymous double CD, in 2006.

Night On Earth songs are sonic journeys that explore dynamics and textures with as much force and virtuosity as they do rhythm and melody. "Jazz Rock" or "Progressive", as labels, only tell part of the story, as the band counts Bjork, Billie Holiday, Kyuss, Mazzy Star, Portishead, Tom Waits, avant garde composers Jani Christou and Iannis Xenakis, and directors Jim Jarmusch and Wong Kar Wai as influences. Repeated plays of econd hand may evoke the work of artists such as Jeff Buckley, John Coltrane, Joe Henry, Hooverphonic, Rickie Lee Jones, Pink Floyd, Smashing Pumpkins and the Twilight Singers. Night On Earth describes its music, when pressed, as "Post Rock".

Second hand was produced by legendary Greek musician and songwriter Thanassis Papakonstantinou—all of the songs on the album are originals inspired by his work or reinterpretations thereof. It is intense, exuberantly performed and finely wrought.

In September, just prior to the release of second hand, Caught in the Carousel had the astonishing good fortune to sit down with piano and keyboard player Costinho and vocalist Sophia Sarri to talk music and politics over a leisurely coffee at a café beneath the Acropolis. Is Night On Earth the coolest band in the world? "We are trying to play music and evolve ourselves", Costinho says, "as this may be the only radical reaction to the hard times we have to suffer".

Night On Earth, photo by Christos Zouliatis

Caught in the Carousel: Tell me how the band came together, how everybody met.

Costinho: Some of us met at university studies, in Corfu (the Department of Music Studies at the Ionian University). I'm the only one of us from Corfu—we all live here in Athens. We played together in Corfu in a free improvisational ensemble.

Sophia Sarri: There is a jazz department, theory and practice, and general studies from classical music to folk music.

Costinho: Everything, a little bit of everything, and it works with ensembles, for improvising or jazz or traditional music, so we were more into free improvisation, and some of us were also studying jazz.

When school ended, we all came back to Athens and decided to continue this journey, through free improvising stuff, free jazz, experimental music… It was then, December of 2003, that we formed Paracroussis, a sound-terrorist collective devoted to post-music adventures. Later, this project gave birth to Night On Earth, through an improvisation within a gig.

Sophia: I am the youngest and I grew up in Hania, in Crete. I met the others when I moved to Athens.

CITC: Tell me about your experiences, and what you listened to, before Night On Earth.

Costinho: There are seven of us in the band, so we have seven completely diverse stories. Before university I listened mostly to jazz, rock and world music. At university I was introduced to many new bands, many new styles of music and different composers, avant-garde and electronic pioneers from throughout the 20th century. Sophia was listening to experimental noise. Our guitarist was into black metal and free jazz.

Sophia: Our violin player, Juanito, comes from the island of Naxos, and he is into traditional Greek music, especially because he comes from the islands. Our first drummer was in a rock band before and loves dub reggae and bossa, among other stuff. Our bassist plays properly.

CITC: What flipped the switch for you? What was it you heard that you decided, 'this is what I want to do'?

Costinho: Keith Jarrett. I play piano and that's the style and the vision I dig, that's what I want to do. For the band, I imagine playing like Portishead, as a guitar player, and a kind of Jarrett-into-punk for my piano playing, or other madly inspired pianists such as Brad Mehldau and Aziza Mustafa Zadeh. Talking about this band's music, on our first album the tracks are 15 minutes long, or more, so that was the idea… Like the progressive rock groups of the Seventies.

Night On Earth

CITC: You guys are kind of in a place between improvisational jazz and progressive rock, which for me means each song finishes in a different place than where it started. That said, on second hand, there are some repeated musical and lyrical phrases, on "Vesper" and—

Sophia: Maybe "Prisons"?

CITC: I think so, and I like that as an idea, thematically, because it makes the album feel like a suite of songs.

Sophia: This is the core of our music. We also like the idea of trance in music—in the literal meaning of the word, like a trip—

CITC: You experience a shift in your consciousness, you lose track—

Sophia: It comes through repetition but also through evolving the melody.

Costinho: We wanted to play with some parameters that maybe are forgotten or used in different eras, like dynamics. Not the fusion way, such as tempo changes, but trying to develop our music within time, not just with the repetition of our motifs. We try to develop it in many ways—

Sophia: For example, the volume. Or energy levels. Increase, decrease...

CITC: Yes, a lot of your songs seem to go back and forth between quiet and loud, from a quiet passage to a crescendo, which reminds me of Jane's Addiction or Smashing Pumpkins, or Led Zeppelin.

Costinho: On second hand, these changes are mostly sudden changes, silence to noise. "Crocus" begins with piano and Sophia's voice, almost silently, and within 30 seconds there are four distorted guitars, drums, everything. On the first album, our main idea was to work these changes and progress—that's the way we form the compositions. For me, the fundamental inspiration was a Greek avant-garde composer, Jani Christou. He died young, at the age of 44, in a car accident in 1970. You can say he was in the same generation as Iannis Xenakis, who was one of the most well-known avant-garde composers (see "Waveforms. The Singular Iannis Xenakis", by Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 1 March 2010).

CITC: He's like John Cage or John Zorn?

Costinho: He is contemporary of Cage, inspired by Cage and other pioneers, such as Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg, and he is far more significant than Zorn.

Sophia: Yes, you could say that. He composed for orchestra, choir, mixed media...

CITC: Modern classical?

Sophia: Yes, but it's far more interesting; he's got this really crazy way about dynamics.

Costinho: We borrow certain ideas from such composers—not from classical composers, but from composers of the twentieth century—like Cage, Christou, Xenakis—because they played with everything, with sounds, with dynamics, with the form of the composition, with everything that stands as an idea apart and away from the composition, and we take it and work with this within our compositions and ideas.

Night On Earth

CITC: Like modern or post modern classical music?

Costinho: But not like John Zorn does this, I mean not so obviously post-modernized. We may play fusion, and then right after free jazz, but it's not exactly like this. However, we may use or borrow some ideas elementally, for example, from Zorn. Do you know an American composer named George Crumb (b. 1929)? I find him very similar to Jani Christou. Kronos Quartet recorded an album of Crumb's music—you should listen to this, you'll get an idea. You can also find Christou's music on the Internet. It's the main influence for me, for the way we play, and I'm speaking on behalf of the other improvisers. We met listening to these composers. Before Mozart, we listened to Christou and Xenakis. We were academically forced to play this music... It seems to be our natural musical code. And almost nobody, apart from the university, studied his instrument properly. We quit the conservatory—at university we were the jazz guys, not the proper musicians. That's how it worked.

CITC: I think jazz music requires the same kind of virtuosity as classical music.

Costinho: Not only that, you have to be an interesting improviser, in addition to being a skilled performer. But if, for example, you are a jazz guitarist, you have to find two other guys to form a trio, and you have to share a similar playing style. We have a guitarist, but nobody plays jazz in his way, while nobody digs piano in the style I play. Everyone has his or her own style. I think in fusion jazz, players tend to be more concerned with the technique, not as much with the overall sound.

CITC: I know there's a Greek hip hop scene and a little bit of Greek reggae...

Sophia: Actually there's a really good metal scene in Greece, maybe the most promising one.

CITC: So it's rock and metal?

Sophia: Yes, and some indie-alternative.

CITC: I can't imagine there's much else in Athens that's similar to you guys. Where do you play? What's the audience like? If it's a Saturday night in Athens and I want to see you play?

Sophia: We have a hard time finding our place in the scene. We are, in a way, with the alternative side.

Costinho: We are too rock for the jazz scene and too jazz for the rock scene. And that's always the complaint—we get this from the venues, too.

Sophia: Exactly, this is our curse. We prefer to play in more silent places where people can listen to bands, rather than drink or speak to each other. We also like theatrical venues. The rock club is not the best venue for us to play, but it's okay. We'd rather play in a rock club than not play. However, after playing several shows here in Athens for nearly five years, we now have a core of fans who like our music, who follow us wherever we perform.

Costinho: When we started the group we thought our friends would listen, meaning the people of our generation, but from the first shows up to now, we always see some forty- or fifty-something people, even grandmothers, who enjoy our music and are really enthusiastic.

Sophia: We get people of all ages and styles. We have now found a way to..."tame" the audience, is that a word? To make them react the way we would like them to react. It is really great, that we have achieved this, in the end.

Costinho: That's because we usually perform this way, "shut up and listen", because we have a noise part, then a sudden change to silence, so you don't know when you have to talk with your mates during the night, so everybody knows, "okay, I listen, because I don't know what's happening next".

Night On Earth, photo by Michalis Kouris

CITC: For this album, the lyrics were adapted from music by Thanassis Papakonstantinou (b. 1959). Who translated the lyrics into English?

Sophia: I did the translation. Thanassis is a really well-known songwriter here in Greece; we are big fans of his. And many young people who may not listen to Greek music listen to him. He has a really interesting sound and perspective; his arrangements also. His music is based on traditional music, so it has nothing to do with what you're listening to on second hand. We met him, he was interested in our music after listening to our first album, and since we really enjoy doing covers—not in the actual meaning of the word, but trying to take a song and make it our own—we decided to make an album based on his compositions, older ones, attempting to find a new sound and make something new out of it.

Costinho: Most listeners in Greece tend to compare the two versions, the original lyrics and the English ones.

CITC: So for a lot of people who know his music, the songs on second hand will be unrecognizable to them.

Sophia: Absolutely. It was actually like writing songs, listening to the original songs and after internalizing them and thinking about them we composed new songs, new forms—based on the original chords or progressions. Some of the lyrics are translated, some are new lyrics based on or inspired by the originals, because some verses could not be translated.

Costinho: His lyrics resemble traditional poetry, making it very hard to translate.

CITC: "Prisons" is a poem.

Costinho: That's the most exact translation.

CITC: The lyrics for "Gliding"—

Sophia: That's my lyrics.

CITC: It reminds me of E. E. Cummings.

Sophia: We tried to put together our world, foreign music, American music, European music, classical, with the likes of Greek folk music and songwriting. And we also tried to express that fusion in the lyrics.

CITC: You grew up in it, right?

Sophia: Not at all, but even though I don't listen to that music, I know most of the songs.

CITC: We don't have that in the States. We don't have a common folk music, not like Greece or Brazil. We don't have that same tradition.

Sophia: Okay, we're Greek, we cannot pretend to be American or English, you know? This is who we are, where we grew up. Our influences also come from folk music, so we wouldn't be true to ourselves just trying to imitate—I mean, we wouldn't do it better than the Americans. Concerning that, this record was a bit risky, but challenging and adventurous.

Costinho: We began recording here with Thanassis as a producer, without having a contract or an agreement with a label. He had the idea to record an album of covers of his songs. It was strange because at the same time he was the producer and the original composer, and we had to work as musicians, not as fans—we had to forget we were his fans. If you achieve in finding a sound, distant from the original, you have to forget that he is the composer. During the time in the studio, he is just the producer, so it was a strange collaboration.

Night On Earth, photo by Yiannis Lianos

CITC: How was working with him day-to-day? Was it enjoyable?

Costinho: He is very open. He wanted to see not just covers of his songs, but something new.

Sophia: He wanted to create new music. Also, imagine that he doesn't speak English, so it was very new to him. I had to translate for me to sing and then re-translate in Greek to make him understand what I had done.

CITC: It sounds like it was a massive project.

Sophia: It was, parts of it, but I think every record requires a lot of work.

CITC: How did this compare to recording the first album?

Sophia: Our first album was a really homemade thing. We recorded it mostly live; two gigs set for this, and that was it. It was a very different process, not a proper recording in the studio. It began as a demo.

Costinho: On the other hand, the second hand recordings were kind of proper, you know, because we were recording in Papakonstantinou's home studio in the village where he lives.

Sophia: In the woods.

CITC: So it was like being rock stars.

Sophia: Yeah! Or shepherds!

Costinho: And without having 'studio time begins now and ends this time'. We would come up with an idea of making a track, so it was like 'come here, let's record'. This took a year.

Sophia: We were going to the village and coming back to Athens. It's Metaxohori, near Agia Larissa, northeast of Athens, near the coast, five hours from here. The name of the village is translated as 'silk village'. It almost burned to the ground three years ago.

Costinho: That was a completely different way of working, because we didn't have to do anything else. We were away from home, away from our jobs, we had only to think about arrangements and recording. That's why we also wrote most of the album in the studio—arrangements and ideas took shape while we were jamming during the recording sessions.

CITC: It was almost like a retreat, an escape.

Costinho: You can say so.

CITC: Now that you've played these songs live, how do you feel about them? Do they translate well to live performance?

Sophia: Most of them, not all. Some songs needed some changes, in order to be performed live. Since we really get bored with ourselves easily, we try to change them almost every time.

Costinho: Talking about improvisation, we are the kind of musicians who cannot play the same thing twice, so we have to play something new or different, or almost different, whenever we play. Note that second hand is a studio album—you hear many overdubs, and the band collaborated with fellow musicians. This is the studio sound, expressing what we could do with studio techniques.

Night On Earth, photo by Christos Zouliatis

CITC: In the liner notes for second hand, the mixing on "Atman" is credited to Digital Alkemist.

Costinho: He is an electronic music producer and DJ. He was our first drummer and now he is again a member of the band. He has released mostly electronic works under this name, some of them under a German label, Mole Listening Pearls, which specializes in lounge and new jazz. "Atman" was recorded live, with live drums (played by our drummer back then, Vangelis Kotzambasis) and Alkemist (aka Costas) did the remix. We filled everything with distortion—the drums, the synth lines, even the voice. We were searching for a Nine Inch Nails feeling, or something even more extreme, such as Atari Teenage Riot. Costas is one of our founding members, he knows our sound and the perspective, and he loves drum'n'bass. His stuff is ranges from drum'n'bass to electro-bossa.

CITC: Like Thievery Corporation, Kruder and Dorfmeister?

Costinho: Yes, that's what he does. As a drummer he plays in stoner rock bands or funk/reggae styled jams. That's his style. You see, we never thought about this, because we always wanted to have our friends who are musicians play for us. 'What do you play? Okay, come and play'. We wanted everybody to contribute in his way, and so there were ten musicians, apart from the band.

CITC: It seems like you started the band as a collective, not necessarily as a set band—people join, people leave...

Costinho: We have a standard form of a rock band, four or five members. This is the main core. We have changed musicians, especially the rhythm section. But we play as a trio, sometimes—piano, violin, Sophia and a guest musician. We play with a rock version, with the rhythm section, but even then we have guest musicians, like a friend on saxophone, or a flute. We had a gig with Papakonstantinou as a guest, and we played the original versions of his songs, but in our way...that's the way to avoid playing the same thing, always.

Sophia: Last year we did a set of live performances, titled 'in a silent way', at a small club here in Athens. Each night we invited a different musician to play with us—he had to improvise or play our stuff. We try to keep Night On Earth as open as possible.

CITC: And you sing in an a cappella choir?

Sophia: That's another project in which I'm personally involved, Sanades, an a cappella women's choir. We cover a wide variety of music, from traditional Greek songs to gospel hymns. Sanades means "female goats" in the Cretan dialect.

Night On Earth

CITC: How did you write the songs for the first album?

Costinho: Each song is a different trip. A different experiment, a different story.

Sophia: For example, "Prisons", on second hand, it was just the two of us in the studio. I asked Costinho to play these first two chords many times, and in the repetition we found the idea. I wrote the melody using the first two chords of the original song. Costinho kept only these two chords to structure the progression, while the original song has ten or more different chords. "Vesper" was completely rewritten by Costinho.

Costinho: That was due to the string arrangement. This is a very familiar song to Papakonstantinou fans. He plays this song only with a lute and his voice—he recreates a traditional sound. There was no way to translate the lyrics of this song, so we decided to keep it as an instrumental. There's a story in every track. We decide which elements we have to keep or develop.

Night On Earth

CITC: Is Night On Earth a democracy?

Sophia: In a way, yes, but we do have a leader.

Costinho: And a diva! Sophia's the diva. We usually work with the idea. When the idea is strong, it shows the way for everybody how to play. When someone wants to contribute a solo or an idea, we practice and we see—that's how we worked with these covers. Let's say "Prisons", which we mentioned, was like an improvisation. I began with the first two bars; Sophia sang the melody, so... we didn't have to talk. We got into the studio the next day and we recorded the idea. And we had additional arrangement on this recording which follows that first idea.

CITC: No negotiation?

Costinho: Yeah, we don't spend time negotiating, just reworking the ideas. We also do this at the gigs.

CITC: Which is more satisfying, playing live—

Sophia: Playing live!

Costinho: Playing live.

Sophia: We are a live band.

Costinho: And we tend to record this way. While in the studio, we are all together. That's the only way we understand music. The way we work is more similar to jazz bands. We know how each other plays, how he or she may react musically, what we're thinking about… That's the way we collaborate.

Sophia: I think we built up our reputation in Greece mostly as a live band. It seems we can't record the instruments separately. We avoid it, we prefer not to.

CITC: Over the past few years, what's been the most exciting moment? Or the moment when you felt like everything came together? A particular show?

Sophia: I really enjoyed this mini-tour we did with Dayna Kurtz. She's an American songwriter and she's really good. We invited her to play here in Greece. I was listening to her very much. I'm a big fan of hers.

Costinho: She has a great voice and she's a great performer. You should check her out.

CITC: That was just in Greece?

Costinho: We had five shows together; like a double bill. We opened for her with our acoustic trio, piano, violin and Sophia. Dayna played totally acoustic, only with her guitar.

Sophia: Also, one of the great moments was when we played with Papakonstantinou at an open air show, in front of 6000 people.

CITC: It was after you finished the album?

Costinho: Yes, but some months before the release. It was like a dream for us. Two years before, as fans, we wanted to be backstage with this guy, we wanted to open for him someday.

Sophia: Yeah, and we ended up playing—

CITC: How does he feel about the album?

Sophia: He paid for it!

CITC: It sounds like he gave you the freedom to do what you wanted to do—

Sophia: Completely.

Night On Earth, photo by Pericles Vissiliou

CITC: And that he wasn't going to impinge or press or restrain you. But was the result a bit odd or surprising to him?

Costinho: It surely was. There's a song that even now he doesn't like.

CITC: Which one?

Sophia: "Atman". It was too noisy for him.

Costinho: He claimed that we 'destroyed it', that we 'castrated it'. But he was like 'you like it? It's okay'. He was very open as a producer because he is a musician and composer.

Sophia: I think there's a really big gap in the Greek music industry, as far as the future... There are no producers. Here, the producer is the one who pays all costs, not the one who guides the band or the musicianship or shares the vision for a special project or sound...

So in Greece it's not like it is in the States where you have Butch Vig, Brendan O'Brien...

Costinho: If you say any of these names, you know his sound or the way he works. No, you rarely meet this here.

CITC: Someone like Rick Rubin.

Sophia: This is vision.

CITC: But you don't really see that in Greece?

Sophia: Not at all. There aren't producers like this. We tried to do this with Papakonstantinou—he also wanted to work this way.

CITC: Had he produced anyone else before you guys?

Costinho: No, this was his first production. And he's not a proper producer.

CITC: So you guys jumped to one of the biggest labels in Europe, you find a guy who's not so well-known outside of Greece, you want to do reinterpretations of his songs, and he wanted to produce it and he's never produced an album—

Sophia: And he doesn't speak English! And his devoted fans are very hard! Some of them really hate us.

CITC: Because you castrated his song.

Costinho: Not for this. It's not only us. Two years before, Papakonstantinou made an album, kind of experimental—not too experimental, generally speaking, but far too experimental for his hardcore audience. Samples, loops, electro-acoustic aesthetics, not too many songs, compositions that weren't exactly songs...that was the most experimental element for him. His hardcore fans were disappointed—for us, it's probably the best album he ever made.

CITC: What bands in Greece do you guys like right now?

Sophia: There's a band called Modrec.

CITC:Two people from that band played with guys you on second hand, right?

Costinho: Yeah, the two guitarists (Lambis Kountouroyiannis and Dimitris Aronis). Modrec play something between Tool and Fugazi, just to give a brief reference point.

Sophia: They're really good. Their first album was mixed by Alex Newport, an 'almost famous' producer and mixer in the USA. He has mixed for Sepultura, The Mars Volta, System Of A Down...diverse styles.

Costinho: There's also a band named Old House Playground, they moved to Manchester to seek some luck. Imagine Tom Waits's darkest moments in a desert-rock soundscape, resembling White Stripes and passionate Flamenco moments. Their singer, Tryfon, sometimes sounds like James Hetfield and sometimes like Jeff Buckley.

Night On Earth, photo by Christos Zouliatis

CITC: You love Jeff Buckley.

Sophia: Yeah. He is one of my favorite singers of all times.

Costinho: Another band is Sancho 003. They found out there are two bands in the world with the name Sancho, so they became Sancho number three Their violin player, Fotis Siotas, also plays on second hand. He's a great musician and a very inspired composer and arranger.

CITC: Overall, do you feel like there's a good scene for new music here in Athens?

Sophia: I'd rather live in Greece, I like the way I live here, but I think if you want to be a musician or an artist, it's not a very constructive place.

CITC: How come?

Sophia: Because it's very hard to live by doing this. There are not so many venues, not that many opportunities, and if you don't play Greek music, the chances are way too few...

Costinho: There are certain limits for what we are doing. There's a glass ceiling. We almost know the audience.

Sophia: Since you don't play pop music, it seems there's nothing else.

CITC: So what's next?

Sophia: We love to play anywhere!

Costinho: We are heading to Europe. We went to Berlin and played two gigs. We have also contacted some venues and we're trying to set some gigs without managers. But meanwhile we have to look for a manager. It seems managers are necessary for doing the dirty jobs.

CITC: What about festivals? There are so many in the UK and Europe.

Costinho: We tried it, but in most cases you have to be introduced by a manager or a company and that's the gap here in Greece: we have no international strategy for our bands, and we don't have the commercial vision necessary for introducing the local scene to audiences worldwide. The music industry here is mainly about pop artists, and its perspective doesn't exceed the borders of the country. The whole industry here is based on Greek music, which means lyrics sang in Greek. As you may understand, this is music that cannot be exported.

Sophia: So we have to look for someone outside of Greece. So if you know someone...

CITC: What about if you took all the bands you like and put together your own festival in Athens?

Sophia: There are some festivals. There's a big festival named Rockwave, but local bands play there only as opening acts—one year they had a special stage for Greek bands, but that was it.

Costinho: We have done this. We usually collaborate with the bands we like—we all share the same feeling and agony. But it's hard to afford a huge production such as a big festival, it's almost impossible. It seems that here everything works against us! But there has been interest in us from Sony US, particularly Sony Independent Network. Sony Greece hadn't done this before. It was their first time, because their roster is mostly Greek acts—they weren't accustomed to exporting and promoting something outside Greece, or to collaborating with agents and labels abroad to introduce a Greek band. And it's not like Spanish music, which everyone listens to, because it's exotic and they can follow the language.

Night On Earth, photo by Michalis Kouris

CITC: Like the Gypsy Kings, or how everyone loves Indian music now because of Slumdog Millionaire.

Costinho: Exactly. The Greek language is not like this. This is also the same for Greek movies.

Sophia: There is new blood of artists now here who have gathered and are trying to export their sound outside Greece. I think now is a really good time for Greek musicians. There is a scene, and it's building gradually, so maybe we will be heard!

CITC: You need a festival like SXSW in Austin, or a chance to play somewhere like New York or San Francisco or London. We saw the Tiger Lilies in London.

Costinho: We had a slot reserved for SXSW, but it didn't work out financially—the travel costs were too high for what we earn as an underground band, and every sponsorship possibility fell through. Now that we are informed about the circumstances, though, we'll try next year.

Sophia: We know the Tiger Lilies, they're really big here. I've seen them twice.

CITC: Do you know the Real Tuesday Weld? I think they played on his first album, I, Lucifer.

Sophia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CITC: I wanted to ask you about some of your lyrics, particularly the first verse of "Crocus": "Wake up to see the wealthy ones torn into pieces and everyone we thought that won to finally give in". This was you coming from Papakonstantinou?

Sophia: Yes.

CITC: So what are his politics? Do they fold into yours?

Sophia: Let's say that in a general way we are left.

CITC: Here "left" means communist?

Sophia: Not exactly. We don't vote—we are anarchists. I don't feel like being classified under a certain political belief.

Costinho: Being a communist means you believe in a certain government model. That's not exactly the way we think, but mostly the way we react. Wherever is the other side, that's the left side here. We're on the other side.

CITC: What about Papakonstantinou?

Costinho: He's from this side.

Sophia: He's a loner.

Costinho: I'm not sure that he expresses exact political views in his lyrics, like this one, but there are such elements that make you think that he's—

CITC: Championing your cause.

Costinho: Yes, but he's not too direct when he writes. It's complicated, because you have to know about the Greek reality.

Sophia: We were in the demonstrations in December 2008 (there were demonstrations and riots after police in Athens shot and killed a 16 year-old boy).

CITC: So you were on the streets when everyone lined up against the police?

Sophia: It was not only against the cops. Too much anger and disappointment had been gathering.

CITC: And when that kid got shot—

Costinho: It was an explosion.

Sophia: And I remember, you know, all my friends and people who don't usually go out demonstrating. Everybody was in the streets, old women, children, teenagers, lots of teenagers. There were some issues with the government, finances and scandals.

CITC: With Karamanlis (Prime Minister of Greece, 2004 to 2009), right?

Costinho: Yes, but this was the top. I mean, killing a 16 year-old kid was too brutal to stay silent...

Sophia: And then there was a really big thing going on with the media, trying to cover it, claiming that the policeman was shooting at the wall, that the bullet...

CITC: Ricocheted.

Sophia: Yeah, it was sad. It was a really interesting place to be, Athens.

Costinho: There's a lot of police violence here without any explanation and no reason. You see cops beating a guy...There's no way to discuss this with them, to defend your legal rights.

CITC: They'll beat the shit out of you.

Costinho: That's the way, the everyday reality. There's a lot of violence, so the anger gathers on the other side. It's not too far from what we could call a dictatorship.

CITC: I assume you're working other jobs while you're doing Night on Earth and other projects. Is Athens a hard city to survive in economically?

Sophia: It's quite an expensive city and the wages are not sufficient. Most people our age, 25 to 30, after they finish university, they can hardly find relevant jobs, or a job at all, and they have to stay with their parents.

Costinho: You may find a job, but it's not a proper job. You work eight or ten hours per day and you get 600 or 700 Euros. The average rent for an apartment here, it's near 300.

CITC: You can't live. Which makes it hard for anyone who wants to do anything in the arts. Whatever it is, you can't support your household and your work.

Costinho: Also our parents. My parents are teachers and sometimes they have to work a second job—even teachers.

Sophia: You get people who have PhDs and blah-blah-blah and they can't find a job here. Athens is a patchwork. There are ghettos here, too. In other cities in Europe the immigrants blend in—here we force them to be ghettoed.

CITC: In the States, people come from other countries to do our shit work.

Sophia: Same thing here. And if anything happens, they go out and say, 'the immigrants'! Greeks complain that immigrants came and took our jobs, but nobody works in the fields...

Costinho: The immigrants seem to be responsible for everything. This guy here (an Athens policeman), is looking for immigrants right now—he's a vampire seeking fresh blood.

CITC: That's why he has a stick—it's a stick for beating immigrants.

Costinho: If he meets an immigrant, he will ask for his papers and if he finds the immigrant hasn't the legal papers, he will use the stick and his power to do whatever he wants.

Sophia: Athens is the place where immigrants come and then they are thrown away in other parts of Europe—we're like a welcoming place.
Costinho: But not too welcoming.

CITC: Greeks were immigrants, so they should know, they should respect—

Costinho: They should. They don't. It's a way of living.

CITC: What if Karamanlis gets voted out, they're just going to vote back in Papandreou?

Sophia: It doesn't matter, same shit. Police will be the same.
Costinho: Maybe we'll have elections in a month, again, because no one seems to get the majority. Nobody is trustworthy (approximately one month after this interview, Papandreou was elected Prime Minister).

Sophia: Because the liberals failed!

CITC: They had to.

Costinho: Nobody wants to admit that these guys are getting richer through this so-called crisis.

CITC: In the States, too.

Costinho: It's like a joke.

CITC: Are you going to tour outside Europe? Are they going to bring you to the States?

Sophia: We don't know yet. We'd love to, of course, but we're still waiting for the response to the album... This step should be careful and measured. Until then, we hope!

NIGHT ON EARTH
Costinho - Piano + Rhodes
Juanito - Violin
Kleitos - Saxophone, Flute + Visuals
Lagos - (infected) Guitar
Sophia - Vocals
Petros Lamprides - Bass
Digital Alkemist - Drums
Dimitris Miyakis - Sound

DISCOGRAPHY
Night On Earth (2006)
second hand (2009)

LIVE Look for Night on Earth to tour Europe toward the end of 2010. The band is also looking to play at some European (and perhaps American) festivals in the spring and summer of 2011.

INTERNET
Official Website
http://www.nightonearth.gr/
http://www.noeband.gr
YouTube Channel
Night on Earth blog:
Sophia Sarri - MySpace Page
Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis (Spectral View)
Nikos Doulos - second hand artwork + web design: www.nikosdoulos.com

SPECIAL THANKS
Antigone Michaelides