Karibow was formed in 1996, starting as an open project, a conglomerate of various musical influences. A number of musicians bringing in different kinds of stylistic backgrounds gathered around songwriter and multi-instrumentalist O.M.Ruesing. Their band experiences ranged from Metal to Jazz, from Prog Rock to Acoustic Music up to Electronic Rock. O.M.Ruesing had formerly worked with bands like Last Turion, The Swell Guys, Counterparts, Chinook, M.C.West, Marquis and others, exploring the music biz of Europe and North America for about 15 years. Furthermore, he continued doing studio jobs as a musician as well as teaching drums besides being involved in several other projects together with international artists.
The Karibow project attracted musicians like Jens Happe, Marcus Muller, Jorg Imhof, Berthold Fehmer, Martin Schroer, Oliver Wolf, Marcus Pukropski, and many more who came to join in with something which had - on the q.t. - already changed into a band. Apart from that, most of the musicians continued their own music projects besides their work with Karibow, such
as i.e. Moshcircus, Sore Plexus, Junk Farm, The Ben
Wild Band, Comalounge and Green Water Project. However, Karibow could bear not to be an only child and the band succeeded in shaping their own sound.
In 1997 O.M.Ruesing released the The Midi Years and The Echo Sessions under the name of O.M.R.Works as well as Shush together with the Green Water Project. Karibow released their first album Supernatural Foe Vocalized in 1998. With their artistic music concept in mind, the band took this opportunity and caused a sensation by hiding their faces behind extremely colourful mask designs.
During the following years, changing constellations of live and studio musicians came to play and record with the "hard core" of Karibow, songwriter O.M.Ruesing and keyboard prodigy Berthold Fehmer. Permanent studio work and live appearances have been continuing since, while the band kept collecting more and more positive feedback on their recorded productions as well as on their music concept.
As a consequence, Karibow were motivated enough to produce Three Times Deeper in 1999. TTD, including the 13-minutes-Epic Echoes, was effusively celebrated by the Prog Rock community:
"Three Times Deeper has something with the sound of Simple Minds and U2 from the begin '80's, but also a real powerful neo-prog atmosphere", Symfo City Prog Radio commented.
"Hey, did I like the album, goddamit! I think I can definitely give this the thumbs up. There are three good tracks (and one weird tracklet!); Echoes I would go as far as classifying as great, especially the triumphant finale. Certainly, this is something to warm the cockles of the CD player in these dark winter nights! [...] Along with Oliver’s strong vocals, there is some great guitar and keyboard breaks producing a gorgeously full sound. If you are going to leave, leave in style – and the guys have certainly done it here!...", wrote Frank Blades (Alternate View/Progressiveworld.net).
"Echoes goes for 13 minutes and has the charisma of an epic. A heavy wall of guitars and keyboard patterns illuminates the track."
(Carlos Tavares - The Portuguese Marillion Website):
One year later, in 2000, B.Fehmer and O.M.Ruesing released Tribe, a record showing many more East Coast Rock, Jazz and also Blues influences than any other Karibow album. Last but not least, this was due to B.Fehmer's virtuosic piano performance that matched perfectly with the new songs.
Tribal Avenue - recorded in 2001 - was another milestone in the history of Karibow's music. The album was full of catchy songs and the music had become some more mainstream in general.
"... that's a tune with the potential to become a number one chart breaker", Alex Vaughn of Canada's well-known Swell Guys commented on "One Day", listening to it for the first time.
Moreover, Tribal Avenue was the first Karibow release that's dominated by definitely heavier guitar riffs instead of keyboard pads.
During the following five years, Karibow were kept busy writing and recording the Official Soundtrack for the Ayganyan Project One Movie - a complex philosophical art movie project dealing with space, virtuality, spirituality and vacuum fields. Between 2005 and 2007, this work finally bred both The Ayganyan Project One and The Ayganyan Project One 2007. A corresponding Karibow video release entitled Entering Ogh-Doal saw the light of day in 2007, featuring several cutscenes directly taken from the original movie.
In 2005, Karibow also produced a special album in german language besides working on the two soundtracks. This Mini Album called Besser, was remastered in the beginning of 2009. Somehow, the title track developped a strange life of its own every time it was played live, and quite a number of new facets emerged from improvising. Therefore, a live version of the song was put on the album as well.
The Besser video clip was additionally released in 2006. Also in 2006, Karibow produced their first Best Of album entitled Echoes From The Evil Past.
After this excursion to the world of electronic music, particularly to writing and recording soundtracks, O.M.Ruesing first continued acoustically, playing more unplugged live concerts than he had formerly done with Karibow.
Due to this sudden turn "back to the roots", the subsequent records seemed to be much more influenced by acoustic instruments than they were before the Ayganyan Project Years. At the end of 2007, the latest record A History Of Inorganic Talk was released. Actually consisting of one long interdepending music structure, A.H.O.I.T. is divided into 19 songs. This record was the main resource Karibow used for three more mini albums. While being entitled "mini" album", each of them is actually about 30 or 40 minutes long, containing some unreleased songs as well as lots of new remixes.
So, what's happening these days?

Karibow have spent most of 2008 and 2009 in the studio remastering some older records before getting back to working on completely new stuff like the Hollow Be My World II Mini Album.
Actually, Karibow are about to produce three new albums.
The Chosen Ten will still be out sometime in 2009. It will be the second Best of Karibow collection, but the album will also include two fresh songs.
Karibow's second new project Smart, Mean & Hard To Handle is a contribution to all Karibow music of the past, including the O.M.R.Works/Green Water Project releases. This very special studio project will come up with a whole bunch of re-recordings of songs from 1989 to 2001, newly interpreted in a contemporary way.
Thirdly, Addicted, the brand new full length sudio album, will be available in 2010.
And the Karibow Story continues...