Convex Model
Convex Model (Thessaloniki, GR), recently released their new album “In Human Hives” (September 9) after a four-year absence. They have released, after their last “Quantity Of Motion” album (2020), only two German-language singles earlier this year and have also published a live studio demo (2022) as well. We are so glad to have received it in our mail, and the waiting justifies them, as this is a new endeavour with all their materials carefully placed in it, along with the stress of life in our deadly nation, and also considering all the developments with the pandemics and everything else happening in the world… managing a band with human members requires commitment from everyone, and ultimately, all of these factors worked together (and perhaps without them realizing it immediately) in their favor.
Convex Model is Eleni Tzouna on synths, guitar + flute, and sax, Giorgos Papadopoulos on the bass, Kyriakos Tsakalidis on drums, Stavi Tsiara on the lyrics (except *), and it is a team led by Nikos Kapantzakis on synths and vocals and who has also left his mark in other bands such as Human Puppets, Plexiglass, and Dislocation Genders.
Last spring when they announced the “In Human Hives” LP, they left a note …“All of our stories are fictional, any resemblance to reality is involuntary and intended”…and if you also look at the back sleeve of the record you will read “Like Lost Children We Live Our Unfinished Adventures – Guy Debord”, and the story begins…
…the lyrics of their songs are not abstract, nor do they describe any past, and they do not imagine any glorious or dystopian future. If you read a verse, and then another, and then another one too… they are like dialogues in the places they hang out… and of course, everything is written with the directness of the situationist dialectic. They won’t cry for the past and they won’t party for the future, but they live in life and judge everything around them… and their judgments are often uncomfortable for the mainstream.
All these are dressed with a blend of post-punk, synthwave, occasional synthpunk, and with a straight-punk feel all the time and all over in their music. The album is ultra danceable and groovy, and the music runs steadily in the old-school black-and-white new wave directions. There is no synth revival in their music; rather, the synths serve as their medium for self-expression and self-decompression. Something else that I appreciate about the Convex Model is that in every song, they sound like a cohesive authentic, solid, and real band with a deep understanding of the needs of music they create.
So, here is their brand new “In Human Hives LP, press play and listen loud…“Nothing is real It’s just the way that we feel.”
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Photo by S. Ratlos
Written By Loud Cities’ Mike
