Following last year's appearance at Rockwave, the Australian Expatriate come back to our country this Friday 24/09 in "Oxygen". Don't forget that Chris Kollias is on drums in Expatriate.
We talked with the band and voila everything they said:
1. First of all tell me some details about your new album.
Are you talking about 'In the Midst of This' or Album 2? Well if you mean 'In the Midst' then it's amazing to be playing this material at our first ever headline show in Greece! A dream come true you could say particularly for home boy Cristo! We traveled back in time to record it in Seattle at the famous 'Robert Lang Studios', (soundgarden, foo fighters etc..) We can't wait to slam out these songs and perhaps a couple of new ones too ; )... oh and also celebrate Cristo's Birthday which fatefully falls on the night of our Athens show!
2. And a really good Rock & Roll story (as a band) so far?
Stealing Damian's underwear whilst on the road, we're super close. Eating Deep Purples pizza whilst they were performing as a replacement for the recently disbanded Oasis : ) Supporting Placebo in Istanbul followed by cruising the bosphorus and then docking at a mega club has to be up there.. it was all organised by our Berlin Souvlatzithiko friend Kadir!
3. What about your influences?
We grew up loving bands like The Cure, Nirvana and Depeche Mode. That has progressed now to anything and everything, bands like LCD soundsystem, The Presets, Dead can Dance and QOTSA, anything pushing the sonic boundaries of music production as well.
4. How do you really feel about Athens? What can we expect from Expatriate?
An amazing gig i guess!?
Many feelings really, such an amazing historical city which has seen and experienced so many major events, if only she could speak to us. Right now we feel for the people of the city as they are enduring a crisis of which they themselves for the most part have not been implicit to. Endemic corruption at the very top tied in with the greedy endeavours of external forces including a few on wall street have conspired to create a loss in standard of living for the every man of Athens and indeed all of Greece.
As for Expatriate's show, you can expect an honest and highly energetic performance fueled with the passion for life's emotional roller coaster but centred on the one phenomenon most styles of greek music all share, the universal expression of love and how it pushes and pulls on the human body.
5. Christo, have you've ever been in Greece really?
I've lost count now actually. I've travelled extensively through Greece, from Ouranoupolis of Chalkidiki to Crete. Every time I visit I leave with strong and mixed feelings, I have family there so the connection is strong but at the same time I haven't grown up in Greece day in day out so there's also a somewhat melancholy acceptance that I'm somewhat of an outsider... It's one of the core reasons why I was drawn to explore the concept of being an Expatriate in this band. I always come away from Greece filled with such wonder and yet mysteriously in the same breath, spent, as if I was travelling through some heavy crosscurrent.
6. A gig to remember? So far?
It's all a bit of a blur really... I remember last weeks gig in Vienna, that was pretty good.
EXPATRIATE @ Oxygono, Friday 24 September
TICKETS
15 Euro the first 200 & 20 Euro the other 300.
Presales at Ticket House (Panepistimiou 42) and online from www.ticketpro.gr
ΟΞΥΓΟΝΟ LIVE:
www.expatriateband.com
www.myspace.com/expatriateband
We talked with the band and voila everything they said:
1. First of all tell me some details about your new album.
Are you talking about 'In the Midst of This' or Album 2? Well if you mean 'In the Midst' then it's amazing to be playing this material at our first ever headline show in Greece! A dream come true you could say particularly for home boy Cristo! We traveled back in time to record it in Seattle at the famous 'Robert Lang Studios', (soundgarden, foo fighters etc..) We can't wait to slam out these songs and perhaps a couple of new ones too ; )... oh and also celebrate Cristo's Birthday which fatefully falls on the night of our Athens show!
2. And a really good Rock & Roll story (as a band) so far?Stealing Damian's underwear whilst on the road, we're super close. Eating Deep Purples pizza whilst they were performing as a replacement for the recently disbanded Oasis : ) Supporting Placebo in Istanbul followed by cruising the bosphorus and then docking at a mega club has to be up there.. it was all organised by our Berlin Souvlatzithiko friend Kadir!
3. What about your influences?
We grew up loving bands like The Cure, Nirvana and Depeche Mode. That has progressed now to anything and everything, bands like LCD soundsystem, The Presets, Dead can Dance and QOTSA, anything pushing the sonic boundaries of music production as well.
4. How do you really feel about Athens? What can we expect from Expatriate?
An amazing gig i guess!?
Many feelings really, such an amazing historical city which has seen and experienced so many major events, if only she could speak to us. Right now we feel for the people of the city as they are enduring a crisis of which they themselves for the most part have not been implicit to. Endemic corruption at the very top tied in with the greedy endeavours of external forces including a few on wall street have conspired to create a loss in standard of living for the every man of Athens and indeed all of Greece. As for Expatriate's show, you can expect an honest and highly energetic performance fueled with the passion for life's emotional roller coaster but centred on the one phenomenon most styles of greek music all share, the universal expression of love and how it pushes and pulls on the human body.
5. Christo, have you've ever been in Greece really?
I've lost count now actually. I've travelled extensively through Greece, from Ouranoupolis of Chalkidiki to Crete. Every time I visit I leave with strong and mixed feelings, I have family there so the connection is strong but at the same time I haven't grown up in Greece day in day out so there's also a somewhat melancholy acceptance that I'm somewhat of an outsider... It's one of the core reasons why I was drawn to explore the concept of being an Expatriate in this band. I always come away from Greece filled with such wonder and yet mysteriously in the same breath, spent, as if I was travelling through some heavy crosscurrent.
6. A gig to remember? So far?
It's all a bit of a blur really... I remember last weeks gig in Vienna, that was pretty good.
EXPATRIATE @ Oxygono, Friday 24 September
TICKETS
15 Euro the first 200 & 20 Euro the other 300.
Presales at Ticket House (Panepistimiou 42) and online from www.ticketpro.gr
ΟΞΥΓΟΝΟ LIVE:
www.expatriateband.com
www.myspace.com/expatriateband