lolek

Lolek’s highly anticipated new album is coming out early May from Exostis and is entirely Greek-speaking. Two years after his debut album “Alone”, Lolek continues on is lonely path, but it seems a lot has changed since then…

When the waltzes were locked as shelters of romanticism and the introduction entitled «Alone» was over, one was sure: whatever would follow would be neither romantic nor innocent. And if for some reason we are inured to stories supported by a myth and acompanied by words soaked in poetic formalin to keep… And if this is the only defence of art against its humiliating equation with the real and the immaterial… Then it is defeated by fighting stance.

No myth is following «Ahinos» (Sea-urchin). And no strange story has coincided with its creation. No political act is expressed through bouncing in the refrain and no love is satisfied by a cinematic finale. The words are simple and the music just disobedient.

“Ahinos” (Sea-urchin) comes to ally with reality, to collide with the roles we have undertaken and with everything we have created to be protagonists in, whether it is called hope and future, or grief and peculiarity, or loves and flowers.

A 10 track album with leading elements the guitar and the accordion is the introduction to Lolek’s microcosmos. Confessional lyrics with themes such as love, religion, isolation, death and beauty, give the listener the chance to identify with them and are harmoniously tied up with his deep and powerful voice. His performance is simple, direct and subterraneanly ironic. Pure music without forms, expressed unambiguously as a sincere evaluation of its creator. “Alone” imprints a romantic, past world, but also contemporary at the same time, as it goes round everything we miss. There is an intense feel of farewell aiming however to a powerful return and this is expressed through folk rhythms (“I Went To The Beach Alone”), romantic valses (“A Valse Of True Romance), lo-fi aesthetics (“River Of Diseases”), power ballads (“Now Cry!”) and electrified songs (“These Guns”). Lolek handles adequately the power of guitar and his voice and in combination with a simple arrangement he emerges as a song writer who surprises with his influential ability. The minimal approach, the stripped performance and the unsophisticated lyricism are the elements that compose the character of a neo-romantic debut.

The album was produced by Lolek himself and it was mastered by Greg Calbi, who is known for his collaborations with Bob Dylan, John Lennon, David Bowie, Paul Simon, Interpol, MGMT and others. There is a guest appearance of The Boy on piano (“Since I Am A Soldier”, “Oh Mama”) and backing vocals (“I Went To The Beach Alone”).

Lolek’s debut in its simplicity creates a personal and transfixed atmosphere that has nothing to defend except from the sincerity of an idiosyncratic musician, raising thus the standards from the very beginning.