Dharana Biography

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The electronic music formation DHARANA was founded in 1982 in German town Schweinfurt by the two schoolmates Klaus-Ulrich Merkle and Ulrich Wößner; both have learned playing piano in their youth. Due to their musical taste (classical EM from the Berlin school) they wanted to form their own band.
DHARANA took their name from an album by German band Between which had the title "Dharana". Inside the record on the inner sleeve there was also a definition of "Dharana" to be found! read it at the curiosity show.
K-U Merkle soon left the band and in 1984 Andreas Hedler joined. They recorded a first musicassette, Mirador, and sold it to the few interested friends.
1985 saw the recording of the second DHARANA-musicassette Synthetic Dreams which was a Ulrich Wößner solo recording. Soon after that Jürgen Geiger joined the band.
Now this classical threesome lineup played their first live concert on July 29th, 1985. Geiger & Wößner played keyboards while Hedler tried to play electronic drums and manage the light show simultaniously from the stage.
Due to his bad musical skill Andreas Hedler put down his musical ambitions to concentrate only on the stage effects for the next gig. Exactly 4 months later Geiger & Wößner played their second gig which became the third DHARANA-musicassette Life Tapes, the first release with an original painting from Jürgen Geiger for the sleeve design.
One of the viewers of that concert was Frank Kober. He joined the band and the final lineup was found!
In 1986 they played two gigs in that lineup (one supported by Jens Kirchner on electric guitar). Geiger, Kober & Wößner plus short time returned K-U Merkle and new musician Matthias Rücker went to the studio and recorded musicassette no. 4: Circles on which they used for the first time a little sampling keyboard. They also put together a kind-of "Best Of" musicassette called '84 - '86.
Through the years 1986/ 87 Geiger, Kober & Wößner recorded the next musicassette called Incuanoq, a title which shows their interests in the novels of American writer H.P. Lovecraft. On this release they were supported by guest musicians Jens Kirchner (e-guit), Markus Leitz (sax) and Victor Pfeuffer (sax).
The second release in 1987 - and the 7th musicassette in a row - was Chrome, on which DHARANA added the following guests: Thomas Limbach (e-guit), Victor Pfeuffer (sax), Roland Trautsch (trombone) and Rainer Engelbrecht (synth).
Then Geiger, Kober & Wößner went to Würzburg to study. Jürgen Geiger begann to study design and interior decoration, Frank Kober physics and Ulrich Wößner chemics. But nevertheless they continued to make music.
In 1989 the next musicassette saw the light of day: Metro-Pole on which the three were joined again by Roland Trautsch who played accoustic guitar on "Early In The Mornig".
During the following years DHARANA continued recording and also played some live gigs in Würzburg. They had two different new projects running: the first project was music around the novels of H.P. Lovecraft, the second was called "Modern Architecture".
In 1993 they led the Lovecraft-project to an end in releasing the musicassette Pnakotic Sounds and the book Pnakotische Manuskripte painted and designed by Jürgen Geiger simultaniously.
Also in 1993 they released the musicassette Inorganic Waves on which Claus-Dieter Bandorf took part.
The next three years became the years of most activity! From 1994 to 1996 DHARANA played 10 live concerts and in 1995 released their first CD Gallery Of Flavours recorded from May 1994 to May 1995. The "Gallery"-equipment includes:
Ensoniq ESQ1, EPS, Korg Wavestation, MS20, Poly 800, Roland MT32, D50, Yamaha REX50, ART Proverb.
1996 saw also the release of another CD including one DHARANA track: Syntonic Waves Vol. 6.
After finishing their studies DHARANA departed and went to normal work.
In 1999 Inorganic Waves was rereleased as a 2-CD-R with the help from Lothar Lubitz from syngate, the gate to synthesizer based music. In 2001 Metro-Pole and Pnakotic Sounds has been digitally remastered by Frank Kober to be rereleased on CD-R in 2002.
Today they live in Würzburg, Munich and Marseille (France).
Nevertheless there is still interest in DHARANA! Their CD is distributed in Germany, The Netherlands, the USA and soon in Italy!
And maybe there will be a rerelease of some of the musicassettes on regular CDs....