Askamaska was a group that was established at the end of the 80's in Caracas, Venezuela. This idea was on Alex Sartini's mind and myself when we attended the Simon Bolivar University. Back then we were "roadies" for a prog rock group called "Antares", but it was not until 1986, when our friend Roberto Rigobón (fellow student at the university and keyboard player for "Antares"), gave us a demostration of a new technology called MIDI that allowed to compose and play music using an Amiga computer connected to sinthesizers and samplers. Roberto was at that time playing keyboards with a rock group named "Post-Data", and had a very good rig (including one of the first Roland samplers an S-50).

The idea of being able to create music using a computer to handle complex arrangements was irresistable and we decided to form a group, together with another two friends, Roberto Alvarado and Giober Mirabal, and soon started to compose our own songs.

After a few months, the group began to develop a very particular sense of humor, specially in some live shows with friends as public.

After these shows, the group decided to acomplish a huge task: writing and performing a pop/rock Opera: La Opera de Askamaska. This work was never finished and the group broke up, until some years later when Alex and myself decided to complete the songs and recorded them (working as a duo).

In its short life the group managed to gain a lot of unconditional "fans" that still asked us about the songs and the group. Besides the opera there is a pirate video of the last show of the band, that includes all the songs before the opera, and that has an unvaluable price in the collector's market.

Gabriel Pérez,
Caracas, november 4, 1997