April 27, 2007: Chromelodeon’s Final Show.

I was not in attendance for this show. Heck, I’m not even sure I had even heard of the band at this point. It wasn’t until the Pause re-release of The Final Recordings that I got to experience what I now regard one as one of my favorite albums of all time.  Listening to The Final Recordings for the first time set in motion a chain of events that has led not only to a new appreciation of a branch of music that I hadn’t really explored before, but also to meeting a whole group of people I’m happy to count as friends.  So, despite not even having seen a live Chromelodeon show, I can think of no other band which has had such a profound effect on my life.

Perhaps it’s because I missed out on Chromelodeon’s heyday that I started seeking out live recordings and video clips, looking for glimpses of the “viceral” performances I had only read about. This was the beginning of my own personal archive. It wasn’t until a handful of years later that the idea of putting together an online archive such as this set in.

 

And now, five years to the date of Chromelodeon’s last show, I’m happy to reveal this ‘labor of love’: the Chromelodeon Archive.

 

Part of my intent with this website is to have a means to share my endless appreciation of this band with others. In the past, I’ve passed links to the Final Recordings album to friends to be greeted with enthusiastic responses… and then having to guide people through an endless array of broken mediafire links to Chromelodeon’s other, out of print material. This site serves as a central location to grab the past releases.

For those who already have all of the usual stuff and looking to complete their Chromelodeon collections, I wanted to gather up whatever live recordings and rarities I could find. In a lot of cases this was challenging: a LOT of time was spent scrounging through old message board posts only to find long dead links to individual MP3s. Luckily, I’m not the only dedicated fan out there, and a few kind individuals dove into their collections and shared what they had.

As well, I’ve put effort into procuring the highest quality encodings available. Where possible, I’ve included lossless FLAC downloads in addition to the regular MP3s. In cases where no lossless source was available, transcoded sources were avoided. (Yes, I fully admit to being an audiophile douche bag. I’m sure someone out there appreciates my effort.)

Lastly, I intend for this site to become not only a central location for Chromelodeon’s audiovisual output, but to host editorials, reviews, and first-hand accounts of live shows. I’m not really much of a writer so I open up the floor to anyone willing to contribute: shoot me an email!

This website and it’s content would have not have been possible without the contributions and permissions of many, including (but not limited to) the following (in alphabetical order):

Brendan Becker
Chris Berdoz
Dino Lionetti
Edward Tsang
Johnny Rogers
Kyle Crouse
Mikhail Ivanov
Patrick Todd
Pierre Capillon
Ryan Soloby
Shawn Phase

 

Enjoy.