Back in the 80s, Thessaloniki, self-acclaimed co-capital of Greece, suffered an unprecedented illness. Baby boomers, born in the 50s and the 60s, were all around plaguing the humid air with new ideas that challenged the very essence of a stagnant, conservative, almost theocratic place. Gradually the city came into an intellectual turmoil where youth took over do-it-yourself radio stations, bars, clubs and venues, playing challenging modern music, dressing accordingly, speaking a new language. Musicians appeared from nowhere, making music in tune with the times -you could almost feel the city taken by storm. A former nest of entropy, Thessaloniki suddenly was beaming with extroversion. Its colours though were varied. Not one of this movement participants could be matched to any other. New pop, postpunk, experimental, neodada, garage or indie rock, new age, free jazz, all were the soundtrack of youthful hope in a stale environment. Already established institutions like the International Film Festival of Thessaloniki were suddenly flooded with young things absorbing art or movies of their times and reacting to them not as merely fans but as life conspirators. You winked to people over a novelty and they responded. Conversations started with let's dos rather than ending with how nices.
It is such a place and time that young Victoria, an already trained classical pianist who got in the storm by initially joining the pirate stations movement as a radio dj and then activating in the fanzine/band scene, surprised herself once she found out that she had been quietly accumulating small pieces of music that were, well, her own creations. Her contributions to this big Thessaloniki picture, I might add.
I was very lucky to be near by and very bold to do everything to get this music out. Armed with two cheap mics, two generic dj mixers and my cassette deck recorder, knowing nothing but having faith in guessing everything about how to record this properly to get the mood, I went to her home twice I think, sometime on December of ‘89 and on February of ‘90 and left with some tapes' worth of material. I homemade the master tape myself, she did the covers and it was out, a cassette of Victoria's music, named The She-Frogs.
Listening to it recently, the music feels as aloof and out-of-context as I remember it did back then. Maybe nowadays it has even gained the unmistakable wow factor that this was done 30 years ago by a 20 year old.
Music wise you have instantly all the past great classical pianist tradition molded into a sensual landscape of various gender benders in extreme ends, but it is the overall, particularly domineering, personal atmosphere that haunts you. One of a kind, peculiar, equivocal, grotesque and emotionally fathomless. When recording I could feel Victoria often choosing readiness over perfection, it was clear that she was letting me record an impromptu musician, not a showcasing pianist.
I even contributed to some extent, letting her do her take on one of my own compositions that otherwise would be at stake (‘Soundtrack I’), offering some help in prerecording toy metallophone parts and then mix them live on the fly or doing some noises with found electrical appliances ("Industrial Zone/Βιομηχανική Ζώνη") or using musical toys and making some abstract guitar sounds for the closing track ("Sweet Dreams/Όνειρα Γλυκά").
Victoria escaped the She-Frogs very quickly, almost instantly and, I reckon, with a deep relief. This is not a safety zone territory, it still feels rather like a plague. She seems perfectly fine these days and the last time we spoke over this re-release, she even stated that she actually feels she has nothing to do with it. That was that.
With her permission to oversee this re-release using a new mastering I attempted, one could argue that this may not have been that, but that might have been this.

Κύριος Ρύκιος (Kyrios Rykios)