Meshing electronica with soulful lyrics and sultry performances, band members Heather Pierce (vocals, music), Brett (B.) Crockett (vocals, music, producer, mixer, and engineer), Rafael Acevedo (DJ/Turntablist) and Brian Templeton (bass) deliver amazing, unique music. Their sound — an amalgamation of trip-hop and downtempo electronica — has earned them a large following throughout the world.

Karmacoda began as a studio project of Brett's. Brett had been active in the diverse San Francisco music scene for five years after moving to California from Chicago. As part of an artist endorsement, Intel provided him with computer equipment to put together a fully functional recording studio. Brett's initial goal was to create new, interesting music that fused strong beats with unusual electronic, organic and heavily processed sounds.

Brett played early instrumental versions of songs to Heather Pierce, a fellow San Francisco vocalist with whom he shared a vocal coach and an interest in electronic downtempo and trip-hop music. Brett met Heather in the studio to check out their mutual chemistry and see if Heather's vocal ideas fit the music being written. Heather's amazing recorded "audition" is actually the song "Frail" on the groups first CD "Reco mended". Heather quickly joined the new project.

After several months of writing and recording, Brett and Heather decided to make the project official and put out a CD on the Sola Musa Music label. After debating names for the band, Brett suggested Karmacoda — partly as an homage to the Massive Attack song "karmacoma," as well as a play on the words "karma" (in reference to the incredible luck they had meeting and the fun they had writing and recording the disc) and "coda" (referring to the bands strong use of loops in creating their music).

Karmacoda's two CDs "Reco mended" (2001) and "Evidence" (2003) have garnered international attention and critical acclaim for the group, including use of their songs on radio, television (including MTV), and five films released 2003 and 2004. Karmacoda's contributions to film soundtracks earned them the 2003 IMA Independent Music Award for Best Song in Film & Television and three songs as finalists in the 2004 IMA Music Awards for Best Electronic/Dance track and again for Best Song in Film & Television. The group's technological and video savvy (live performances feature custom video by the band's VJ) earned them the honor of being the first Acid Planet artist to be featured in a combination audio and video remix contest.

In 2004, Karmacoda released "Altered Evidence: Late Night Remixes" a collection of dance remixes of songs on "Evidence" by a collection of world famous Remixers and DJs. As a follow-up, Karmacoda is currently recording their third original CD scheduled for release in 2005.

Karmacoda exclusively uses Sony Creative Software applications for all aspects of writing, recording, mixing and editing their music. Intel's endorsement was to demonstrate the capabilities and power of digital recording. Having previously worked with Sound Forge software, Brett was impressed with its power and ease of use. It was natural for Brett to choose Vegas and ACID software when looking for writing/recording tools to outfit his studio.

On creating their music with Sony Creative Software tools: "Sony Creative Software programs are powerful and intuitive," Brett says. "They're really natural and easy to use — the interface is not cluttered or ugly, which is something that's very important to me — and it's easy to sit in front of them for hours. Vegas is a fantastic program that gives me total creative control and is incredibly reliable. It's also tightly coupled with Sound Forge, and it's easy for me to use them together.

"As far as ACID goes, when I first starting using it, it completely blew my mind. I instantly saw it as an amazingly powerful creative tool. With ACID, the sounds I had always imagined in my mind were finally realizable. All three programs are so easy to use and work so well together. When I'm writing and recording, all three are open and I'm moving between all of them to record, edit, process, loop and manipulate music and audio."

Brett continues: "Nearly all of Karmacoda's music begins as ideas created using ACID. If it weren't for ACID I don't think either of the records would have been created, really. When it's time to get serious about overdubbing and recording instruments and vocals, I transfer all the loops I create and hand transfer the mixes that I have up to that point over to Vegas. All the overdubs and serious recording are all done in Vegas, using Sound Forge as the editor. Both of Karmacoda's records were mixed on Vegas using all native plug-ins. All of Karmacoda's records were mixed on Vegas using a combination of native and powered plug-ins in the DirectX and VST format. I love using plug-ins because there are so many out there, from top of the line pro-quality ones to really cool, weird ones that someone's written for fun. I have a favorite plug-in that I use all the time — it's really distinctive and cool and people always ask me about the sounds I get out of it — and the best thing is that was free. I also love having complete recall of mixes with Acid and Vegas and the absolute control of plugin automation."

And commenting on the sonic quality of the tools Brett adds: "Until recently, I've been focused as a producer and mixer solely for Karmacoda's music. However, because of the music I've created with Karmacoda, more people from all over the world are asking me to produce and/or mix tracks for them. I think that a large part of that is because of the amazing sounds I am able to get using the tools."

Karmacoda's live performances are true experiences. The band incorporates custom, real-time, computer generated videos, controlled by their VJ, that respond to the music being played and can be projected using one or more LCD projectors. It's a happening in the truest San Francisco based definition of the word.

Experience Karmacoda for yourself. Visit www.karmacoda.com, and see them live!