WL//WH Review Πύργος Αθηνών / Tower Of Athens
TOWER OF ATHENS (ΠΥΡΓΟΣ ΑΘΗΝΩΝ)
On April 25, the Tower Of Athens (electronic duo from Athens – GR) released their brand new “37°59′05″N 23°45′39″E / 37.984587°N 23.760874°E” EP with 6 new tracks that are filled with urban poetry (or spoken word if you prefer). The album’s title refers to the exact location of the Athens Tower, a landmark building primarily for the Ampelokipoi neighbourhood, which it has dominated since 1968. The building of the Tower of Athens is less than 100 meters high without the antenna masts, has 28 floors, and the architecture of the tower is minimalistic and futuristic and is an imitation of other buildings in Europe and America.
I am copying here the words they sent us on WL//WH:
“Tower Of AThens (Πύργος Αθηνών) was born in the isolation of quarantine. An anonymous, impersonal electronic music project that unites digital and analog media with urban poetic discourse, transformed through raw vocoders and hardware processing. The human element is removed from the human voice, leaving room for emotion to function as architecture.
The first EP titled 210 included three tracks. Two years later, the LP 11527 was released by the Spanish Soil Records on cassette and in digital format. Their new release 3 7°59 ′ 05 ″ N 23°45 ′ 39 ″ E / 37.984587°N 23.760874°E is available on cassette, by them, as another step in capturing the city through audio media.
We express human feelings and experiences through the beings of the beautiful buildings of classical modernism in Athens. The people who loved people, the wet eyes, the shadows, the people who breathe out their remaining time between buildings, lights and small green squares. The Athens Tower is not a complex. It is not individuals. It has no face. There are no appearances, there is no social networking, profiles, likes, there is no image. Music and poetry are the only medium. Athens is the third member of the project. Its buildings, shadows, lights and statues are the narrators. Modernism, the loneliness of buses, the nighttime humidity on the walls, memories without presence — all this is the material of the Athens Tower.”
I am a native Athenian, and I realistically want the alternatives and “strange” aspects of my city’s arts to be visible. But I respect (I can’t do otherwise anyway) everyone’s desire to exist individually in the air and cement of the city, in the conversations of the tribes, and in the, ultimately, “epic” things of the city. The Tower Of Athens only exist on their albums, and nowhere else as an act.
Secrecy, loneliness, the challenge of invalid individualization, the decline of friendships in my city, and the overwhelming presence of concrete in our interpersonal relationships—all of these elements, along with the unique musical situations that arose during Covid, contribute to a deep sadness that pervades the city. These themes, and more, are encapsulated in the music of this remarkable album, along with its lyrics and manifesto. Electronic waves. Anthropomorphism. Urban poetry.
The titles of the album’s tracks are: “Leviathan”, “Foreign Skin”, “Pulses”, “Ippodameia’s Sorrow”, “Eros”, “Rewritable Disc”. The music is a blend of electro to techno music, the concrete sounds of the electronica, with short EBM flashes, some future-pop passages and harmonies, along with the convincing immediacy of the entire project. At some points, the music is intense, follows the words with ‘sarcastic’ sound episodes, becomes deep, becomes ‘hiking’, becomes a party, changes to a brief ‘comatose’ state, and finally, writes the soundtrack of my city. Such records are aimed at a dedicated audience that seeks out the rare and the strangeness in music.
The least you can do is listen to it, and why not give it a little love – the machine needs our affection.
Keep up with Πύργος Αθηνών / Tower Of Athens:
Written by Mike D.
