In the Greek musical cosmos, composer, poet and performer Lena Platonos holds a place of the first rank, radically exceptional. On the occasion of our special report on the Athenian music scene and the previously unreleased release of Balancers by Dark Entries Records last October, Tristan Bera for Hemisphère son looks back at the career of a unique artist. 

Born in Heraklion, Crete, in 1951, a child prodigy trained on the piano by her father, Lena Platonos followed classical studies at the Odeion Athinon before pursuing academic studies in Vienna and Berlin, where she rubbed shoulders with the punk, rock and jazz scenes and discovered oriental music. On her return to Athens in the 1970s, she collaborated with the "progressive folk" group DNA and composer Dimitris Marangopoulos, her husband, before taking part in the Third Program of Hellenic Radio and Television (ERT) by Oscar-winning composer Manos Hadzidakis, which brought her national popularity. Edo Lilipopouli(Here Lilipopouli) is a children's program which, at the time, was heard in every home in the country. His own compositions, such as Roza Rozalia and The Dance of the Peasare among the show's most famous, and the poetic absurdity of the lyrics has become part of the Greek collective imagination. For its 2021 edition, the Athens Festival is programming, for the first time, a selection of songs from this work composed by Lena Platonos in collaboration with Nikos Christodoulou, Nikos Kypourgos and Dimitris Maragopoulos, performed by the Rosarte Children's Choir and the Ventus Ensemble. 

From his solo debut with the album Sabotage (1981), written in collaboration with lyricist Marianina Kriezi, singer Giannis Palamidas and Savina Yannatou, Lena Platonos' career took an experimental-electronic turn, with glimmers of post-punk and dark wave. Thanks to its impeccable orchestration and meticulous, infinitely poignant melodies, and above all its use of the synthesizer, the work is considered a pioneer of the electro genre. This release was followed by the setting to music of twelve melodic poems by Kostas Karyotakis, then by minimalist electronic covers of compositions by his mentor Manos Hadjidakis in the album To'62 (1983). Artist and curator Anastasia Diavasti, founder of the space and platform Ntizeza [pronounced Dizeza from the French term diseuse] dedicated to the support, education and celebration of femininity and feminist artists in Athens, who participated in the tribute to Lena Platonos at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNFCC ) in 2018, advises, even more than the documentary Lambda Pi (2018), the video excerpt Nouveaux Visages (1982) to dive into the infinite grace of the artist's melancholic universe. 

In 2008, after a long period of silence caused by deep depression and repeated stays in psychiatric hospitals, Lena Platonos reappeared on stage at the Athens Festival, more alive than ever. In an article in LibérationLena Platonos is the impossible missing link between the dramatism of Gréco and Barbara, the deranged pop of Laurie Anderson and Scott Walker, Nico and Björk, dance, techno and Massive Attack.

Since his return, Platonos has not stopped publishing and composing, in an ever more intimate way, unveiling his autobiography as on Diaries in 2008, and sometimes collaboratively, in the company of Tatiana Zographou, Sissi Rada or Athina Routsi, as his active Soundcloud account attests. 

In 2010, Platonos set texts by Constantin Cavafis to music for the poet's commemoration, organized by Dimitris Papaioannou, director and choreographer of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2004 Summer Olympics. The consecration is national. But according to Thodoris Dimitropoulos, who with Spiros Pliatsikas forms the dj duo Amateurboyz, emblematic of the 2010s electro scene, it is the Californian label Dark Entries Records, whose stated mission is to "resurrect theunderground ", that is truly responsible for propelling Lena Platonos to international icon status, by re-releasing her second LP Gallop (1985) in 2015.
Entirely composed, performed and produced by Lena Platonos, Gallop is a seminal opus both musically and conceptually, "a mythological study of the urban population of the contemporary metropolis and a look into its future existence", underpinned by lyrics that deal with grief, dreams, desires and the infiltration of technology into future societies. Josh Cheon, the founder of the American label, then became fascinated by this minimalist, hypnotic and haunting music, reissuing Sun Masks Remixes and Lepidoptera (1986), and, after frequent research trips to Athens, ended up releasing a set of twelve previously unreleased tracks, written between 1982 and 1985, under the name of Balancers. The album was released on October 21, 2021, Lena Platonos' birthday.

So that the re-discovery of pure emotion never stops.