When the Mediterranean is mentioned, what usually comes to mind is a universally accepted and simplified cliché: a laid-back philosophy, bright days all year round, and some acoustic guitar playing in the background. That’s just a tiny, tiny part of a bigger, more complex picture. Projects like VASSIŁINA’s prove that there’s also a lot of darkness, experimentation, intensity, and vanguard going on. The Greek artist is here to discuss entering your thirties and becoming a fully functional adult in her new album, i.par.ksia.ko, out today via Kiki Music.
The first and most notable statement of the LP is that it’s her first entirely Greek-language release. Moving between Athens and London, VASSIŁINA knows a thing or two about feeling out of place, confused, and lost. “Moving between countries, cities and homes constantly shifts who you are. You adapt your language, your habits, even the way you present yourself in order to belong,” she comments. “In a way, it can feel like separating those lives while living them, suppressing parts of yourself to fit each new environment. Over time you realise you’re carrying many lives at once.”
That duality is one of the main fuels behind i.par.ksia.ko, a word that means ‘existential’ in Greek. But there’s more: the complex, sometimes rocky relationship with her mother, the search for identity, or leaving behind the more ‘experimental’ twenties and growing into a ‘mature’ person in your thirties, and reflecting on all the things you’ve done and people you’ve been throughout the years. There’s a song that especially encapsulates that: Eho Toses Zoes/ I Have So Many Lives. “It came from the feeling that we don’t live just one life but many parallel ones within the same lifetime. The song became a reflection of all the identities I’ve created and carried — the small-town girl, the city girl, the Greek girl in London, the ex-Orthodox Christian girl, the daughter, the immigrant, the girl in therapy, the artist, the hypochondriac girl,” VASSIŁINA explains.
What began as an EP has become a full-length project where the artist shows her vulnerability to the audience. It’s heartfelt, beautiful, honest. And to anyone navigating the insecurities of adult life, a necessary work. Music transcends language barriers, so even non-Greek listeners will be able to relate to the ten songs that make up the LP. For the occasion, VASSIŁINA has collaborated with several, like-minded alt-pop artists, including Pan Pan, Tamta, Dolly Vara, and Tsolimon. Oh, and Nalyssa Green, a sort of alter ego, in Eho Toses Zoes. She’s “a voice from the many lives I imagined or projected for myself,” the singer concludes.