Together with some of his college friends, at the beginning of ’90’s Mojmir Novaković started a band Legen (www.legen.org) and in 1995. he initiated Ethnoambient (www.ethnoambient.net) festival dedicated to tradition based music from Croatia and all around the World. This festival is still successfully introducing different cultures to each other celebrating beauty of cultural diversity.
In 2002 members of Legen, who toured for 10 years all around the World (Spain, Mexico, Columbia, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia…), decided to take a break from each other and Mojmir formed a new group of musicians which got a name Kries (Bonfire in archaic form of Croatian language).
In the first year of this band’s existence, they made music for Konjanik (Horseman), movie by well known Croatian director Branko Ivanda and soon followed their first album Ivo i Mara (Kopito 2004) which got very supportive reviews in international media. In 2005 they were awarded by Croatian Music Award Porin for Konjanik oms in the category The best original music for theatre, movie and TV.
Their second album Kocijani created with the cooperation of Martin Swan as a music producer was released in January 2008 (Kopito records) and already is receiving excellent reviews worldwide.
Since 2003, the band performed at solo concerts and festivals (United Islands, Colours of Ostrava, Balkan Fever, Druga Godba, Celtic Connections, Penang World Music Festival…) in Croatia, Germany, UK, Ireland, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Austria, Malaysia…
Mojmir Novaković and KRIES base their creation on traditional lyrics, Slavic mythology, and Mediterranean traditional instruments with electronics being integral part of it.
They believe that ancient scripts and traditional chants offer numerous keys for discovering good quality of life and that it is up to each of us to find them and learn to apply those valuable teachings into here and now.
“Journalists love to use the “X meets Y” or “A’s answer to B” formula to describe bands, but …, this is a band who really don’t sound like any other.” Ian Anderson, fRoots, UK
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