Averkiou

"Word Around The Camp Fire: Averkiou's debut full-length Throwing Sparks has been one of the most hotly anticipated albums in Gainesville's local music scene for at least two years. Adding to the drama is the fact that in those two years, there have been multiple rumors floating around that the shoegazey band had broken up, or was definitely going to. So, to see them venturing out on an East coast tour, with a set at CMJ smack in the middle, it's hard not to be excited about the band's future.
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http://breakthruradio. wordpress. com/ - Breakthruradio.wordpress.com

My friend and your friend Seth sent me some music this week and he told me about a band that was from the South that sounded like JMC. A swamp band from Gainesville doesn't that doesn't sound like swamp rock. Hmmm.... Averkiou play a scuzzy brand of guitar and have drony vocals. I can already tell that my ears would be ringing at one of their shows, but in a good way.

http://julioenriquez.blogspot.com/2008/12/averkiou-my-friend-and-your-friend-seth.html - Cause=Time

Averkiou makes music that makes you want to play air guitar. Don’t get me wrong here – by that, I don’t mean the two-minute unnecessary, self-indulgent, guitar-shredder solo Slash takes after every chorus. In essence, lead singer Matt Brink and Co. want to satisfy the shoegazer in us all – the barrage of fuzzy guitar sound and hazy vocal woos and hoos from the backing vocalists undoubtedly bring to mind My Bloody Valentine. However, you soon come to realize that, more so than MBV, Averkiou is also well-versed in the three-minute pop song – instantly catchy guitar hooks come soaring out of the reverb, calling to mind The Stone Roses on serious steroids. A year and a half in the making, Throwing Sparks is one of the most spectacular debuts (and hell, one of the best albums, period) to come out of Gainesville in years. At 22 minutes, Throwing Sparks is the musical equivalent of speed – it’s quick, dirty, fun, and over before you know it, but God knows, you’ll be back for more again soon.

http://satellitemag.com/averkiou - Satellite Magazine

As far as I know, Florida's chief musical export is usually some kind scary goth metal (i.e. Marilyn Manson), which makes the existence of Averkiou—a band making perfectly blissed-out dream pop like it was 1991 all over again—more than a little surprising. In fact, when this record first passed across my desk a couple of weeks ago, I assumed that it must be the work of a U.K. band playing on the current nostalgia for old Ride and Pale Saints records. But no, these kids are from Gainesville and they are happily shoegazing away at their guitars as if the last decade of music never happened. And you know what? I’m just fine with that because this record sounds amazing. At just eight songs long, Throwing Sparks is the perfect length—a twenty-five minute blast of poppy guitar goodness that sounds best when played at maximum volume.

http://vmagazine.com/blog.php?n=12388 - V Magazine

Throwing Sparks is the debut release from Gainsville, Florida five-piece Averkiou, and the group certainly doesn't let moss gather. Clocking in at eight songs and just over twenty-two minutes, it's closer to the running length of an EP, but certainly tries to make up for lack of time in instrumental density. Recorded over two and a half years, the process of tracking the release apparently was the cause of many broken instruments and frayed nerves, but there's a raw promise here that's hard to deny.

http://www.almostcool.org/mr/2341/

Sounding inspired by a slew of early 90s groups that still send a shiver down my spine (like Teenage Fanclub, Ride, Jesus And Mary Chain and others), Averkiou utilizes a triple guitar attack with loads of feedback and driving rhythm sections with multi-tracked vocal harmonies. "I Don't Wanna Go Out" opens the release with just under three and a half minutes of fuzzed-out power guitar chords and a sturdy rhythm section as dreamy vocals sift high through the mix and eventually build into a gorgeous blowout of an ending. "Holland & Headaches" is even more hooky, with another hazy, Bandwagonesque guitar feel and warm vocal tracks.

For sheer overload, "The South Wall" probably can't be topped. Again coming in at roughly three and a half minutes, the wall-of-sound song sounds like it has approximately 20 layers of guitars that act as a tidal wave for the vocals to surf on and the drums and bass to get swirled under. Songs like "We'll Stand Erect" and "Girls Go Out" are power-pop filtered through a thick shoegaze lens, and both work quite well. Despite the long documented recording phase, Throwing Sparks amazingly doesn't sound incredibly fussed-with. It still manages to retain a rough charm, and while it does trudge a bit in places due to feeling a bit over-packed, it definitely manages to stand out a bit from other artists doing similar work.
- Almost Cool

Averkiou's (pronounced av-er-kyoo) Throwing Sparks is almost there. In terms of sound and melody its nice, but as a whole the recording process sounds like it's missing something...kind of muddy and flat where the guitars should really take off.

Within this 25-minute disc lies a scorcher titled "South Wall," the band's finest moment. It's got an immediacy to it that sounds grown-up, powerful and features a great chord progression. Think of a sonic milkshake featuring Teenage Fanclub, Ride and Guided by Voices.

The Gainesville, Florida quintet just released its debut album on Tonevendor, which in the past has offered great music from Paik, The Brother Kite, Astrobrite and much more. Buy it here, and sample "South Wall" below.

http://surfingonsteam.blogspot.com/2008/11/averkiou-south-wall-mp3.html
- Surfing On Steam

The problem with “shoegaze” as a descriptor for these guys—other than the fact that saying it out loud is basically waving a wiener flag—is that the arms-crossed apathy it implies is the opposite of how I feel when I listen to them. They’re like the atmospherics of Slowdive filtered through the enthusiasm of your younger cousin’s first pop-punk band, and as a result the whole thing has a happy smoothness that makes it perfect ecstasy accompaniment for people who like music instead of techno.

http://www.viceland.com/int/v15n11/htdocs/records-326.php?source=db - VICE Magazine

Averkiou—pronounced ave-er-queue—are five dudes from Gainesville, Florida, playing toe-tapping steamroller stoner jams who have just released one of the best albums of the year, Throwing Sparks.

http://vice.typepad.com/vice_magazine/2008/12/new-york---a-ch.html - VICE Magazine

People scrambled for party poppers and maracas as the band played one last time. With orange and green balloons flying toward the stage, Common Grounds looked like a big party minus a clown.
Shaggy hair laced with streamers, Matt Brink sang to the packed room looking out on the crowd through his black-rimmed glasses. Parachute men floated across the room, as Averkiou finished up the Pop Mayhem show and the last set they would ever play.
Or so they thought…
Six months later, Averkiou (Av-er-kyoo) is coming out with their first CD Throwing Sparks. In April, the indie rock band was on the brink of dissolving. Member Jay Shusterman, 26, had briefly left the band but came back to play guitar for Pop Mayhem.
“[Shusterman coming back] felt good,” said Brink the 31-year-old lead singer. “It felt like coming home.”
Playing for over two years at the time, Shusterman’s leaving, among other things, caused the band to consider breaking up. An hour after playing at Common Grounds, Dan and Heather Sostrom approached the band about a record deal with Clairecords they couldn’t refuse.
“It was great,” Brink said. “We really wanted [the record deal] to happen.”
Averkiou thought Pop Mayhem would be their last show, and they played their hearts out. Sweeping streamers from the stage, Brink felt on top of the world. Averkiou had a great show, and he was sky high. Leaving Common Grounds, he sent text messages to his other band mates about the record deal, unaware what the next six months held.
A few days later, Averkiou dismissed the idea of dissolving and started putting together their first record.
In January, the band will be together for three years. James Hernandez, 30, on drums, David Quarles, 26, on guitar and Chad Darby, 27, on bass make up the rest of Averkiou. With five members in the band there is bound to be some conflict. However, there is a plus side to so many “chefs in the kitchen.”
“Everyone’s really picky,” Darby said. “It’s five people that are filters to other people’s ideas.”
Although the band wrote about 80 to 100 songs since getting together, only about 20 are finished and only eight made it to the album. Throwing Sparks is set for release on Nov. 11 in local music stores in Gainesville, at shows the band will play, and online at sites like Rhapsody and iTunes. Along with CDs, Averkiou will release 500 vinyl records – 100 being seafoam green. Brink said it’s always ideal make some of the albums colored vinyl.
“It’s for the nerds,” he said in a nasal voice. “For guys like us.”
Averkiou recorded the album in multiple places over the past three years. Some of it was bedroom recording, getting together at Shusterman’s house with a case of beer and a computer, sitting in a room recording until the sun came up.
“It’s a really good feeling to stay up all night,” Brink said.
Brink, a devout smoker, sat rolling Natural American Spirit tobacco into cigarettes. When Averkiou first started playing, he remembers never wanting to go home. However, staying up until 5 a.m. with the guys isn’t so appealing now that he’s married.
Another session was at Earthsound Recording in Valdosta, Ga. Recording in different areas enabled them to cherry pick the songs they liked for the CD.
Some of the house recordings took place while one of the members was moving out. If listened to carefully, sounds of doors slamming and people falling down stairs can be heard in the background. Brink, locked in a room with a case of beer and headphones, sang over the muffled noises throughout the house.
While each member of the band contributes to the songs, Brink writes all of the lyrics. He pulls some inspiration from when he lived in Future House – a boarding house downtown. There was a lot of drinking and partying, and some of his lyrics are really about being tired of that lifestyle and wanting to take care of himself.
“Give’m What He Wants,” the shortest song on the album, is about being at a party that you don’t want to be at and finding a way to entertain yourself.
“It’s waiting to leave, wanting to go and not being able to do it,” Brink said.
Much of the lyrics he writes are “written off the cuff.” First comes the melody, and then he writes the lyrics. Brink unintentionally relates songs to his life, and many times “meaning” comes after the fact.
The band just got back from a mini tour to New York and Virginia. Darby said their shows were just as packed as they are in Gainesville. He said they have a lot of fans out of town because many of them moved from Gainesville.
“We didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “We weren’t expecting much, and there were a ton of people there. We were smiling our asses off.”
The band’s name came from a friend. While sitting around brainstorming one night, someone yelled “Averkiou” to get friend Nicole Averkiou’s attention, and it stuck. Within the next year or year and a half, Brink and Darby said they want the band to come out with its next CD. There are already some songs for a second album, and the members have learned a lot from recording the first album.
“We learned a lot of lessons of what we don’t want to do,” Brink said.
After playing the Fest 7, Averkiou’s next Florida show is at Crowbar in Ybor City on Nov. 13. For fans who feel like a road trip, there’s another show before that in Atlanta at East Atlanta Ice House on Nov. 7. For all other show listings or changes to show information, check Averkiou’s MySpace page, www.myspace.com/averkiou. - Satellite Magazine

Upon becoming familiar with Averkiou's densely layered, harmonic take on indie rock, one might be led to wonder exactly what the hell the band's name means, as well as exactly what it has to do with the band's sound or philosophy.

And after examining the options proffered by a Google search, one might come to the conclusion that the group must be named after a certain Michalakis A. Averkiou, a researcher and inventor specializing in, among other things, the potential applications of ultrasonics to imaging technologies.

One would be, uh, wrong.

"Are you kidding me?" responds Matt Brink, the band's singer/guitarist. "I had no idea. That would be pretty cool, if that was the case. It's news to me."

The band is actually named after a brother and sister who are local Gainesville chefs; Brink, a sous chef, and Averkiou drummer-turned-guitarist Jay Shusterman once heard a co-worker hollering the name in the kitchen, and when their noisy, two-man outfit had practiced enough times to deserve a moniker, it stuck.

"It was just kind of a fluke," Brink says.

In the two-and-a-half years since being christened, Averkiou has evolved into a five-man, three-guitar juggernaut specializing in a visceral yet melodic blend of classic shoegaze-scene textures and more catchy, uptempo rock elements. Where some groups go the three-guitar route to stand out (or to give their singer something to hold on to besides a mic stand), one listen to wonderful forthcoming CD Throwing Stars proves that Averkiou is using the format to its fullest extent. There's no doubling up on simple barre-chord passages here; each guitarist provides separate yet essential melodies, countermelodies and aural foundations.

"It's very important, at this point," agrees Brink. "Jay actually left the band for about six months to work on something else. He wasn't ever terribly happy playing drums - he's crazy talented, he can pick up any instrument, and I think he was bored. At first, we had to figure out where to put the extra guitar. But since then, we've been re-writing the songs with these parts that are indispensable."

Many new fans might first assume that Averkiou is the latest in a long line of bands to obsess over progenitors like The Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, and Ride. But the die-hard shoegaze scene is a fairly insular one; Brink says the group is more influenced by the wider spectrum of alternative and college rock at large, and hints of adventurous predecessors like Husker Du and Guided by Voices crop up often enough in Averkiou's thick, ambitious and expressive material.

"We're all really into tricked-out, noisy pop," says the frontman. "That's what I grew up on - nerdy indie-rock."

Averkiou opens for Parts & Labor at Ybor City's Crowbar on November 13. The CD release party for their Clairecords debut Throwing Sparks is at Miami's POPLIFE on November 15. - REAX Magazine