We’re Loud Athens
format: HD 1080p 25fps
language: English
subs: English, Italian
duration 52”50′
Directed by Wasted Pido
Produced by Slovely recordings, Black Gladiator, Rotten Babuino Entertainment, Lib Lab srl
Camera & sound: Wasted Pido, Helena Ch
Written By Wasted Pido, Pete Slovenly
Edited by Wasted Pido
Translations by Elena Chiusso
A documentary on the contemporary underground rock’n'roll scene, filmed in the Greek capital during the We’re Loud Fest, organized by independent record label Slovenly Recordings and taking place in September 2015, on the same turbulent weekend as political elections which immediately followed a extremely tense summer, with the country on the brink of financial collapse.
Before digital equipment became accessible & affordable, cassette tapes were the cheapest medium for recording. Slovenly & Black Gladiator compiled the best tracks from a box of cassette demos collected by Jaime Paul Lamb (who had engineered most of the recordings, and played on half of them) into a double album called WE’RE LOUD: 90s Cassette Punk Unknowns. As the title suggests, all of the bands are from the 1990s, and almost all were completely unknown.
To celebrate its release in 2015, a four-day festival was organized in Athens, Greece, featuring more than 20 international bands and DJs. That the festival took place during a crucial moment in Greece’s history was entirely unintentional. When organization began in May, there was an air of optimism in Athens — the economy was showing signs of recovery and there were less cops in the streets.
But in June, after Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras surprised lenders in Brussels by rejecting the terms of gigantic bailout loans, a referendum was called to ask the Greek people whether to accept them. With a majority NO vote (“OXI!”), the possibility of a Greek exit from the European Union was looming. Many of the country’s annual summer musical festivals were forced to cancel as banks were closed and capital controls introduced.
The same weekend in Las Vegas, Jaime Paul Lamb played in a band he put together for a US release party, and Italian videomaker Wasted Pido has put all the footage together into WE’RE LOUD ATHENS, a full length documentary of situationist rock’n'roll reporting. “We’re Loud Athens” captures the energy of the festival, which brought a bunch of rock n roll weirdos from all around Europe and the USA together for four days of wild parties in a steaming Athens, and provides an interesting look at the contemporary international underground rock’n'roll scene.
Featuring interviews and live footage of: THE KIDS (be), NEW BOMB TURKS (usa), USELESS EATERS (usa), ACID BABY JESUS (gr), BAZOOKA (gr), WAU & LOS ARRRGHS!!! (es), AVENUE Z (fr), THE RIPPERS (it), LO-LITE (nl), THEE OOPS (it), SULTAN BATHERY (it), BIKES (de), MAGNETIX (fr), KOMODINA3 (gr), THE ANOMALYS (nl), GAY ANNIVERSARY (gr).