Neither married, nor from Berlin, the Berlin Brides honeymoon with receptive North American audiences

We introduce you to one of our Winter Sonicbids selections

By Roxanna Bennett
Published: November 3rd, 2010 | 7:30am

Although their luggage was lost in transit, their drummer misplaced his passport, and they’re about to play six gigs in a row, the Berlin Brides are remarkably cheerful and relaxed when we sit down to chat outside the Indie Week music fest in Toronto. “It’s because we’re from Greece,” singer Natasha Giannaraki says with a smile. “It’ll all be fine.”

Gracious despite jet lag, the electro-pop band is in town for the famed Indie Week experience whereby 150 bands play 15 venues in seven days. “We’re even doing the Irish show,” Giannaraki jokes. Keyboardist and classically trained composer Marilena Orfanou quotes the ad for the all-Irish showcase, which takes place at the end of the week: “We know they’re not from Ireland but they rock!”

Impressed Indie Week organizers found the Berlin Brides through the Sonicbids platform and invited them to perform at the festival. The programmer asked the band to play six shows at five different venues in three days. Giannaraki explains, “We had the option to say no, but we were grateful for the opportunity, so we said, yes, yes, yes, to all of them; hopefully we will be exposed to different audiences.”

For their live shows in Canada the duo has added a drummer, honorary Berlin ‘Groom,’ Manos Papadopoulos. “We like the mix of electronic and live drums,” Orfanou says. Papadopoulos was present for the original band formation but had to put music on hold to serve his mandatory stint in the Greek army. “Every man does nine months. I was not a drummer in the army,” he laughs. “I was a drummer before. We all met in a house by the sea in 2007.”

Giannaraki continues, “We were going to create music with a guitar player but it kept getting put off and put off. We were swimming in the sea; it was the first time Marilena and I met, and we discovered we had many things in common. We both wanted to create an electro-clash sound.” Forming a band with a guitarist never happened but the creative chemistry between Giannaraki and Orfanou was instantaneous. Orfanou quickly put Giannarakis’ lyrics to music on keyboard. “That was early September; by the end of October we had nine songs for a demo album. We work like that together, everything comes very quickly between us, very easy.”

Giannaraki says the band name came from an idea she had to “put all of our single friends on a plane and fly them to Berlin, then release all of those brides into the city to find husbands. It would make a good short film.”

Recently signed to Inner Ear Records, the Brides are happy to have help with promotion and distribution, plus other bonuses, according to Giannaraki. “They are a small label, they like vinyl, and they like the artists to have creative control.” Their first single, Rejection Junkie/Off The Rack was a limited run on 7" clear vinyl and are almost all sold out, but there are still a few for sale on the labels’ website. Having just released their debut album Modern Celibacy, Orfanou describes the production process. “We worked very closely with the producers, because they know better than us how to mix the sound—but we know what we want it to sound like, so we would tell them: more synth here, more bass here, and they would do that. It was very collaborative.”

Although they have a loyal audience in Greece and work with a close network of musicians in Athens, the Brides have found foreign audiences more receptive to their sound than folks at home. Giannaraki says that the Greek press has not been very favorable to the Brides. “One reviewer said our music would be relevant if it was the 1980s, and compared us to Sleater-Kinney. We are always compared to different riot grrl bands. We don’t sound anything like them, our music is very different. We play electronic music, not guitar. Our lyrics might have something in common, but not our music. I think it is because we are women that they say this. They think for their criticism to be valid it must be judgmental. Greece has a very macho culture. We are better received abroad; right now we are looking for a North American label to work with for licensing and distributing our music.”

Orfanou adds that in the Greek press every article written about the band has focused not on the music they play, but that there are two women onstage. “All girl, all girl. We are always called an all-girl band. What does that have to do with the music?”

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