Komeda

Honoring the late jazz musician and film composer Krzysztof Komeda, celebrated for his scores in Roman Polanski and Ingmar Bergman productions, the Swedish kitsch-pop outfit Komeda formed in 1991 to serve as pit band during a Buster Keaton festival. Additional festival engagements soon followed, featuring the quartet of vocalist Lena Karlsson, guitarist Mattias Nordlander, bassist Marcus Holmberg, and Jonas Holmberg on drums, who frequently performed cinema-related sets under the name Projektor 7. Their debut album Pop På Svenska surfaced in 1993, succeeded two years afterward by the Plan 714 Till Komeda EP. The full-length The Genius of Komeda reached listeners in 1996, while What Makes It Go? followed in 1998. Further recognition arrived via the band’s contribution to Heroes and Villains, the 2000 soundtrack for Cartoon Network’s popular Powerpuff Girls series, and 2001 brought heightened activity that included Minty Fresh reissues of both Pop På Svenska and Plan 714 Till Komeda. Nordlander left prior to the fourth album Kokomemedada, issued across Europe in 2003 and released in the U.S. the next year.