chromatron

a short history of chromatron. chromatron was born in 2002. back then, lena schmidt and david npunkt had moved to cologne from bremen, leaving their free impro/psychedelic/krautrock/punk band "das modell" behind. because they couldn't find a good drummer, david bought a vintage roland cr-68 drummachine and they started making plans for a more electronic orientated band. they met sick, the third band member via the falafel store where him and lena used to work at the time. sick (aka the surreal funfair) had a rather big collection of vintage synthesizers and realizing that they had a shared musical interest (iaw: industrial, synthpop, new wave and general weirdness), they decided to form a band. they dubbed it "chromatron" (nobody used the word back then, it means the tube in a tv set, now there's some design companies of the same name and even a shitty computer game). they rehearsed, recorded and played shows in bars that normally wouldn't let bands play, but because they didn't have a drumkit, they could get gigs at places where no other self respecting band would go and ask for a show. they recorded a full length lp in sick's apartment on a shitty personal computer, it was entitled "auf dem stand der letzten dinge" (an untranslateable wordplay). the highlights of bands career were a show on an antifascist festival in bremen and a gig with the legendary pink dots in cologne. soon after, sick left the band (personal difficulties, you know). after sicks departure, lena and david kept on playing and found a bass player, elke unholzer (former member of klitpop and leatherette). she gave the band a different musical input and the concept shifted over to a less melodic, more aggressive sound. the new lineup played 3 shows in cologne and one in berlin and then finally broke up in 2004. sadly, there a absolutely no recordings and just one rather blurred photograph existing from this period. david npunkt is still in cologne, playing music in various projects. lena schmidt is now works as a visual artist in hamburg. sick moved to berlin and is working on his 'the Surreal Funfair' solo project. elke unholzer moved to berlin as well and we don't know what she's doing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .'Though the band is not existing anymore, there's a 7" EP in the pipeline. It will contain 4 tracks of the only longplayer we ever did and will be limited to 300. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .There's a track on the new 'the Surreal Funfair' - album that was intended to be a coverversion of K.Weill/B.Brechts's 'Seeräuber Jenny' for Chromatron. This version has new lyrics. Check 'final show' at http://www.myspace.com/thesurrealfunfair .