They came from all over the continent, they played the piano, the drums, the guitar, they sang, and they made the audience dream or dance… In Zagreb, for the two-day indoor Europavox Festival powered by INmusic (Croatia’s largest and longest running open air music festival) that took place at Club Močvara, the seven invited bands embodied the raison d’être of Europavox: enable musical discoveries from all over Europe. Whereas some just had to cross the street to come and play (the local indie-pop heroines Bad Daughter), some could reconnect with their roots (Slovenian-Croatian soul duo freekind.), while some had to travel a little bit more, such as Austrian born, London based Anna F., from the alt-rock band Friedberg, the last act of a first day packed with guitars and female leads. For Day 2 a/lpaca, Šajzerbiterlemon, Bandit Bandit and Theodore came from, respectively, Italy, Serbia, France and Greece, sporting post-punk, stoner rock or post-rock colors. Overall, the festival saw a kaleidoscope of European countries and aesthetics, diversity being one of the pillars of the Europavox project.
From karate tatamis to Europavox stages
Croatia/Slovenia born and Austria based neosoul duo freekind. know this ethos quite well. Zagreb was their second contribution to the project, after their gig in Clermont-Ferrand this summer : “That was huge for us. When our agent told us it could happen, I wrote on the wall of my room ‘Let’s go to France’. Every morning I was waking up with that message and it really happened!“ remembers Nina, the drummer. They were especially enthusiastic about this Zagreb show too, as they haven’t had much opportunity so far to play in singer Sara’s hometown.A nice way to end a very busy year, with “Non-stop touring and no time for holidays,” they explained. “Now we need to finish our first album, which will be released around spring 2023“.
It will be their debut album, but the two musicians in freekind. are by no means beginners. When they play live, their high level of virtuosity is obvious, even if it’s kind of new to Nina. “I’ve not been on the drums for that long. When I was young, everything was about sports,” She said. She was a football player and Slovenian karate champion – “I got a black belt and gold medals and dreamt about the Olympics“. But she felt she had to wait too long to participate in the first Olympics that included karate back in 2020, so she started to play the drums instead, and the rest is history.
Picture : Patrick Muennich
Greek multi-instrumentalist Theodore Polychronopoulos had a much more traditional musical upbringing: he was trained as a classical composer, then moved to contemporary genres after he finished at music academy. “I didn’t study to become a classical musician. I always wanted to do things my way, and play what I really liked. But classical music and film scoring really inspire a lot of the music that I’m playing right now“. In his last album ‘The Voyage’, Theodore composed a highly original fusion of post-simpho rock and synthwave, with lyrics inspired by ancient Greek philosophers.
What will be his next move? “The remix of ‘The Voyage’ made by UK electronic artist Max Cooper will be out very soon,” he says. “I also work on another solo album which will be full of synthesizers with more ambient stuff and no lyrics. In the meantime I have a lot of gigs to play“. Europavox events punctuated his year. “I played in Bologna and Clermont-Ferrand in the early summer, and now I’m back again for the festivals in Zagreb and Vienna. It’s great to play for different audiences, and meet artists with different backgrounds. Also Europavox has an excellent Greek representative, Maro Angelopoulou, that does an amazing job showing Greek music to the rest of Europe.“
French psych rockers Bandit Bandit came to Europavox Zagreb just a few weeks after a great show in Paris supporting Muse. Far away from home, their frontwoman Maëva Nicolas and frontman Hugo Herleman were curious about the Croatian audience’s response to their lyrics. Their last EP, ‘Tachycardie’, is mainly in French and the pair plan to use that language again for their debut album next year.“We really like poetry and that’s the reason why we write songs in French,” they say. “The lyrics can be as powerful as the music. In France, the older rock’n’roll bands always sing in English, so even at home people are quite surprised that we sing in French“. The trip to Zagreb was the warm-up for Bandit Bandit’s European tour which included several gigs in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands. But it was also their first appearance as part of the Europavox project. The beginning of a new adventure for those two psychedelic bandits, as freekind. and Theodore are already packing their guitars and synths to go to Vienna… And bring their passionate songs to yet another Europavox audience.
