WARAN - Reviving the Art Of Progressive Rock of the Seventies

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WARAN live 1978

Foundation

WARAN originally was founded in 1977 by Welisar Petrow in Krefeld, Germany.
They decided to take the challenge and produce music that came close to early Genesis and maybe some Yes influences.

In 1978 a live album was recorded with minimum effort but showing some remarkable musical abilities. The band became a local celebrity and toured over the Rhine Area in western Germany for some years.

Welisar Petrow live 1978

Unfortunately large portions of their equipment were stolen after a gig in Krefeld, which hit them hard due to a lack of insurance.

Also their members started their graduate studies and spread over the whole of Germany, thus making rehearsals almost impossible. The result was a split of the original band during the early 1980s.

One of many articles in the local press

Experimenting

In 1981 Welisar Petrow met Frank Altpeter, who had been playing in several projects since 1974. Both of them were prog-addicts and liked to experiment with early synthesizers. Initiated by keyboarders Michael Wieck and Kraft Schmidt they met for some sessions but never got together as a band.

Sessions with Michael Wieck in 1981

Second Foundation

In 1994 Welisar Petrov and Frank Altpeter eventually met again on a children’s playground in Bonn, Germany without knowing, that they had been living only some few hundred meters away from each others for years.

The decision to dive into the prog-universe once again was only a question of minutes - and immediately they started reviving the ghost of WARAN.
The result was their first CD “Wheel of Time”, released in 2003.

Third Life

In betweentimes Welisar Petrow had become a reknown dermatolgist at Bonn University, completely devoting himself to research and clinical work. So he finally left WARAN at the end of 2004, leaving a deep gap.

Fortunately Frank Altpeter carried on with his work and joined forces with American located Daniel J.S. Lewis, a superb guitarist from Buffalo, U.S.A.
Dan soon became WARAN's indespensable co-writer and together they are preparing the release of the second WARAN CD - a concept album named “Kings”.