Kromata

Kromata was my first serious band. It was also the place in which I started to experiment with the idea of world-fusion. It has been inactive for a while now, we have all moved on to different projects and stages of our lives, but I think we all loved the experience. In my case, this band was my kickstart into composition and music in general.

The members were*:

Alex Daniels - Accordion
Polen Iñaki Pérez - Flute
Charly Daniels - Darbuka, Congas and Bodhrán
Axel Tamayo - Bass Guitar and Double Bass

We recorded two demos, one in 2005 which was sort of home made, and one in 2006, in a studio. I really like the 2006 demo, we recorded it after a two month season of weekly playing in a nice bar called Zaza, so we had the momentum in our favour. These two demos had been gathering dust in my hard drive for some time, I thought they'd do better out in the open.

I was thinking of uploading each demo in a separate post, but while doing some research on the copyright status of the songs, the list sadly became thinner and thinner :( As I want to remain out of any copyright trouble I'll only upload original pieces and pieces in the public domain. So a single post will be enough.
I particularly regret leaving out our rendering of Autumn Leaves. It had beautiful solos by Axel and Polen. I might have time later to edit the theme out and publish only the solos.

From Demo 2005:

· Basasón.
Basasón is a composition of mine which mimics cuban son. Polen's solo was amazing!

· Rights of Man.
A beautiful irish Hornpipe.

From Demo 2006:

· El Tigre (The Tiger).
We got this from an Ibro Lolov record called Gypsy Music from Bulgaria. The tune is marvelous. I'll post in the future about ARC, which is my favorite world-music label.

· A Camello.
This is another of my compositions. It's the sort of calculated fusion I try not to do anymore, basically a strange mixture of Balkan and Cuban music. My solo was nice (I think), but Cha's incredible conga solo takes the spotlight :)

· Happy Zenkov.
I consider this song one of my best things I've done. It was the first fusion I made not thinking of mixing this with that, it was a natural and intuitive invention that certainly has some Balkan and Irish things but not in an artificial way.
When we were rehearsing this, I remember the moment we overcame the technichal dificulties and could focus for the first time on the music and the feeling, as one of the happiest moments of my life. :'-)

Listen to and download the demo at Archive.org

* The Attribution in any of these works should contain this list.