Masha Qrella

With both my instrumental bands, Mina and Contriva, I started playing music in the late 90’s. Since that time Mina and Contriva recorded and released several eps and lps and toured a lot – alone and also supporting bands like Blumfeld, Stereolab, Salaryman and Stereo Total on their tours through Europe. My first solo-album („Luck“) came out in 2002. Calexico invited me to support their European tour so I took a CD player and a guitar and played my songs alone in front of a big audience. That was a very exciting experience. From that point I played many solo-concerts in 2002/2003 but I also went on working with Contriva, making music for a German movie (Kleinruppin Forever) and co-founding another band (NMFarner). In between I did some remixes and collaborations with Rechenzentrum, ISO 68, Henrik Johannson, Knarf Rellöm, Kolossale Jugend, Erobique, Kissogramm and others. Whenever I had the time and a new song I recorded it for my next solo album „unsolved remained“ which came out in 2005. I then invited other musicians to perform my songs with me live. I asked Rike Schuberty (a Contriva band mate) to join me playing the guitar and Michael Muehlhaus to help me out with some keyboards. We played some concerts all over Europe and finally managed to play the first short US-tour in December 2005, and then in 2006 the drummer Andi Haberl completed the band. We recorded 2 cover songs and released it as a 7” single. In autumn we played the “don’t stop the dance”- tour and 3 support shows for Yo La Tengo. The band and I went on working together. We were asked to do some cover versions of Broadway compositions by Kurt Weill and Frederick Loewe, which we performed in October 2007 at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and then we started the recordings for my new album. I couldn’t finish it, because I got pregnant. In March 2008 my little daughter was born. In august we recorded our Broadway- cover- versions at the cloudshill-studios in Hamburg (watch the fotos!) Now I'm back, completing those recordings and whenever I find the time I keep on working on my album...