Today is the 20th anniversary of our first concert and I think it’s a good occasion to announce our next release. I count the birth of Cawatana from the first concert. Actually it was planned as a one time occasion. In 1999 we got an invitation to a local festival for our band that was our “main band” that time, but we didn’t want to play with this band on this festival, but we didn’t want to decline the invitation either, so we decided to create a new programme for this festival, under a new name (which is coming from the name of that band anyway). We put together the set in 3 weeks, we wrote our very first songs for this concert (most of those songs we play till today). We liked it, so we decided to continue it, and in a short time it became our main band for a long time.
And now, after 20 years Cawatana is still here, not as active as at the beginning, but it’s normal, we are 20 years older. Not because to celebrate this anniversary (but it can be combined with it nicely) we will release a split 7″ with Larrnakh (our “sister band”, so to say, led by the person with whom we started Cawatana together 20 years ago).

When the idea of this 7″ came (last time, because it was not the first time for this idea) I was thinking about which song from my drafts could I use for this record, as I have many half-made songs, many drafts that have not been finished for a long time (some of them are 10 or 15 years old). But at the end I’ve decided to write a brand new song, more or less to show the current state of Cawatana, where I am standing now. A few years ago I announced that there would be a new world in Cawatana, I would use analog synths, drum machines, sequencers only (besides acoustic instruments), no laptop, no softwares. This new song is a hybrid solution, a half way to this new state. It contains an analog synth (no software synths at all), but the drum machine is still a software (an emulation of an old drum machine), and the sequencing was still done in Cubase, I didn’t use my beloved Squarp Pyramid hardware sequencer for this song.

I’ve mentioned many times it’s a new state, but as a matter of fact we can say it’s returning to the very beginning more or less, as we used in the first years hardwares (synths and drum machines) only (not analog though), and the music was somewhere between neofolk and dark wave/new wave (as today again).

And a sudden decision today morning: maybe I will do one or two “remix” versions. Actually one of them is already available as a demo version, a very few people have already heard it (available for everyone though). They will be also hybrid versions, I will use my other analog synths in them, keeping some original parts as well. I don’t know yet, how I will publish them, perhaps an additional 7″.