Corima was formed in 2005 in El Paso, Texas by high school friends Erik Martinez, Jaime Silva, Juan Tarin, and Sergio Sanchez. Highly inspired by the energetic and challenging music of The Mars Volta, they endeavored to create a project that would incorporate and fuse each of the musicians’ varied musical styles which were deeply rooted in punk-rock and metal. In its early stages Corima was composed as a quartet of two guitars, bass, and drums and went through a constant transformation, combining the energy of punk rock and metal while delving into new unexplored musical territories that encompassed the complexity of progressive rock, the pulsating rhythms of African and Latin music, the poignancy of 60’s and 70’s classical rock, and taking as a concept the philosophy of Mayan and Aztec spirituality, especially with the mysteries of the feathered-serpent illumined seer Quetzalcoatl. Their interest in unconventional progressive rock bands grew considerably and became very influenced in a wide variety of them such as Gong, King Crimson, ELP, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Soft Machine, to name a few. By this time Corima was already playing shows in local venues around town but the direction in which they wanted to take their music found them with an urgent need of a keyboard player. Juan Tarin invited his long-time high school friend Francisco Casanova, a keyboard player with whom Juan had already collaborated in other projects, to join Corima. In the beginning Francisco would rehearse with them only every once in a while but as time passed his musical inclinations started to develop in conjunction with the band’s influences and finally decided to become a permanent member of the band. Finding themselves with full force as a quintet with Francisco, they started to perform throughout local venues with the intent to create a mystical atmosphere that would envelop the band and audience into higher states of spiritual consciousness. Although by this time they had managed to consolidate a solid foundation in which all of the musicians could freely express their musical styles, they were still exploring new ways in which they could develop an original sound that would be able to blend and integrate the many influences that they envisioned. They felt a strong intuition that there were still more bands to discover that would help to shape a definite organic sound that would shape the direction of their music in a more refined way. It was during this process of endless exploration that they discovered the legendary French Zeuhl band Magma. When they listened to them they intuitively knew that they had finally found a band that would change the course of their music forever and that would serve as the primary basis for their inspiration. They then discovered a new realm of musical territories that consequently influenced them greatly. Along with the discovery of Magma they also discovered many bands that would influence them immensely such as Koenjihyakkei, Bondage Fruit, Ruins, Eskaton, Weidorje, Eider Stellaire, Dun, Zao, Univers Zero, Present, Art Zoyd, among others. With the peak of these musical discoveries, however, guitarists Erik Martinez and Jaime Silva left the band and Corima found themselves with only three members and with the lack of what had been until then the driving force of their music. Despite this, the remaining members did not lose hope and decided to carry on with the project by reassembling and re-shaping the old compositions into new ones that fitted more the style that they had recently discovered. With unexplored musical territories increasingly opening up for them they developed a strong inclination towards jazz, thereby becoming greatly influenced by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, etc, and also started to develop a strong affinity towards funk, soul, an afro-beat music. Digging deeper into the music that influenced Magma, they also discovered a whole new musical world that they had always been interested in but that had not become an influence for them yet which was that of 20th century classical music. They discovered the music of Stravinsky, Bartok, Penderecki, Schoenberg, and other important classical music composers that indubitably became a marking influence in Corima’s music. The band, now as a trio, was able to reconfigure the old compositions that they had with the guitarists and transformed them into the type of sound that they were striving for and were able to have the complete material that would later materialize into their first full-length album. With the compositions ready they went into the studio with a good friend of theirs from El Paso and recorded their first self-titled album. All of this was done completely on their own and they managed to draw an international attention in the progressive rock community worldwide and were able to sell their album to different parts of the world such as Germany, England, France, Canada, etc. In 2008 they decided to embark on an east coast tour that would find them playing in major cities of the United States such as New York, Philadelphia, Washington, North Carolina, and sharing the stage with major bands of the underground scene such as Child Abuse, Ahleuchatistas, The Red Masque, ZS, Mothguts, etc. When they returned home from a quite successful tour they decided to relocate to a bigger city that would allow a greater exposure of their music and after a couple of months they decided to move to Los Angeles. However, things became increasingly difficult for them since only Francisco and Sergio were able to make the move which left them without a bassist who had been such an integral part of their music. After a long hiatus but unwilling to give up, Francisco and Sergio decided to start performing in Los Angeles as a duo of drums and keyboard. After a couple of shows in Los Angeles their current bassist Ryan Kamiyamazaki contacted them to see if he could join the band as a bassist. They had a couple of rehearsals together and Ryan became Corima’s new bass player. After a short while Andrea Calderon, a virtuoso violinist from El Paso who had been a temporal member of Corima when she was only 15 years old back in El Paso moved to Los Angeles at about the same time that Ryan had just joined them and contacted them to rehearse with them. Everything worked out great with her and Corima saw itself expanding even more. After a couple of more rehearsals together as a quartet Ryan’s long-time friend and collaborator Patrick Shiroishi, who had been with Ryan in other projects, asked him if Corima was interested in having a sax player. Ryan inquired about this to the rest of the band and Patrick started to rehearse with them. The first rehearsal with Patrick joining in with sax was truly a magical moment for the band because they found the perfect sound that they had always envisioned with the inclusion of violin and saxophone. With this new line-up Corima started to perform in various venues around town and started to make a name for themselves in Los Angeles. They also started working on the new compositions that would be integrated into their second album. With the new compositions ready to be recorded they teamed up with Los Angeles musician and recording artist Christopher Votek and in late 2011 recorded their second album entitled “Quetzalcóatl”. When the album was almost finished, however, Corima had no means of a proper distribution of their album but it was exactly at this moment that Alain Lebon, the owner of the legendary French label Soleil Zeuhl, contacted them and asked them if they were interested in having their album distributed by his label. Corima felt extremely privileged about this and agreed to have their second album distributed by them. “Quetzalcóatl” was finally released via Soleil Zeuhl in late 2012 and has gained international acclaim in the progressive rock community. With this second release Corima have firmly established themselves as one of the most important contemporary zeuhl bands currently active. They will be touring the west coast this summer of 2013, promoting their new album “Quetzalcóatl”. http://corima.bandcamp.com