Ananke
Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre
Saturday 21 June


Ananke is Greek for 'necessity' and is the name adopted by the Melbourne-based multicultural trio - double bassist Nick Tsiavos, bouzouki player Achilles Yiangoulli, and piano accordionist Anthony Schulz. I haven't enough words to adequately describe the sounds conjured by these musicians, three of the finest soloists I've heard for a long time, who when coming together made for an awe-inspiring and unique group sound.

Low-volume Greek rembetika songs greeted us as we took our seats in the cosy Nexus Centre, in the City's West End. The crowd amassed and took seats while sharing Egyptian platters and drinks and before long Tsiavos announced that the group was going to play two sets of music.

Yiangoulli - bald-headed, short in stature and possessing an intensity and focus channelled through his golden-voiced instrument - began with some ragged runs on the bouzouki. His tone, while classically Greek-sounding, took runs at American Primitive and raga-infused stylings and hinted at Medieval madrigal sounds. When he got some steam up, while remaining disciplined to the point of hovering mid-flight, he was joined by Tsiavos on the upright bass. The Episcopal appearance of Tsiavos contrasted his counterpart but his playing immediately zoned in on Yiangoulli's lightning twang. The bassist played mostly with his bow, his aching, creaking tone building a constantly moving bed of sound on top of which accordionist Schulz began to fill the highest tonal register. When Tsiavos began to thwack his strings in a stoned processional manner, the group took flight. Schulz's instrument lingered on flinty single-notes before bending some eerie horror-infused tango lines amid the cascading strings.

The sound was complex, always metamorphosing, and challenging (not to mention absolutely gripping and panoramic), to the point where a few of the audience members began to lose concentration. Clearly this was something that a lot of the crowd had never experienced before and the group took a short break. When it returned Tsiavos took a long solo, echoing Coltrane's late-period sideman, the great Jimmy Garrison, and while that is not intended to suggest that Tsiavos was playing free jazz - he wasn't - the sound emanating from his instrument had a deep devotional feel that filled the space, calling out to Schulz on the other side of the stage. If the string players took more of the lead in the first set, it was Schulz who pushed things even further 'out' in the second set. He dragged ripples of hand-cranked tremolo while igniting some fast and ferocious polyphonies, sounding like an armwrestle between Astor Piazzolla and Sun Ra. Tsiavos resumed his percussive thumping and Yiangoulli emerged with some of the most zoned-out single-riff patterns this side of Sandy Bull. There were moments where I closed my eyes and imagined Popul Vuh and Third Ear Band scoring Herzog and Polanski, or Parson Sound lolloping in the meadows of Sweden. Moreover I heard Greek rembetika transported to South India, or the West Indies even. But there was something more contemporary and more striking to the playing that reassured me that I was very much in a small theatre in Adelaide listening to a bunch of Australians with very wide palettes and even wider sonic spectrums.

I could've listened to Ananke all night; this was one of the finest concerts of recent memory. Do yourself a favour and check them out and just hope that they'll be back some time soon.

Lenin Simos