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SQUARE METER:

Kara Square and Piero Peluche live 4,500 miles apart with the Atlantic Ocean in between. Their individual  desires to collaborate and share with the world broke the physical boundaries and brought their music together. Kara Square is an American ukulele slinging folk-pop singer-songwriter from Columbus, Ohio. Piero Peluche is artistically born from an idea by Claudio Pagani, a multi-instrumentalist musician, composer, and producer living in Tuscany, Italy. 

The two met on the international Creative Commons remix website ccMixter. Piero Peluche created and shared remix after remix of the vocals and ukulele tracks that Kara Square had posted. It soon became apparent that the pair had a solid foundation for an album. Through email, Kara and Piero’s musical connection grew and they developed their Tex-Mex guitar and ukulele fueled surfer pop rock style. Their debut album, Square Meter, has been officially released on January 16, 2014. 

Piero Peluche was inspired to make music by big bands like The Who and Pink Floyd, as well as punk bands like The Stranglers, The Ramones, and Ultravox. In the 80s, Piero started playing music as a drummer in a band called Norman Bates formed with his brother. The two brothers and their Nigerian friend, Teacher Mike, published their first mini album Professy with the ragamuffin band Ruff Selectors in the 90s. Ruff Selectors vocalists were Irene Grandi (acclaimed Italian singer, songwriter, and actress) and Simona Bencini (from the well-known Italian band Dirotta su Cuba).  

Throughout the 2000s, Piero Peluche learned to play many other instruments like bass, keyboards, and guitar while collaborating with numerous local artists and bands including Priscilla Paisley, Lokomotiv Stakanov, Gli Astronomi Delle Stelle Spente, Greyscale, and PpoopP.  In 2012, Piero decided to dedicate the majority of his energy to the production side of music with remixes of international artists. This decision led him to Kara Square’s vocals on ccMixter. 

Kara Square started writing folk songs on the guitar as a teenager. In 2004, she learned the art of recording engineering at the Recording Workshop School of Audio and Music Production. Later that year, she and Rich Ratvasky formed the electro folk-pop duo Team Smile and Nod (Look Both Ways Before You Die [2008], Mourning Time [2011], Dust from the Stars [upcoming release]). In 2010, Kara Square joined ccMixter with the pseudonym Mind Map That as an outlet for her comedic songs. Since joining ccMixter, Kara Square’s songs have been remixed over 470 times. Based on her enthusiastic participation and her choice to embrace Creative Commons, she was invited to be an Admin on ccMixter in August of 2011.  Her music has been released on many compilation albums including:  Free! Music! Sampler Freeloaded [2010], Lawrence Lessig and ccMixter’s Strike the Root [2011], and ccMixter’s double album Season of Gratitude [2013]. Her vocals are featured on acclaimed Turkish musician, Murat Ses’ album Light Cone [2012] (track 2, “Chiral of Past”). Kara Square is currently composing an ongoing instrumental album called Ukulele Duels and a multimedia album featuring comics called Polydactyl Super Cat.

When Piero Peluche joined ccMixter in the summer of 2012, Kara Square was in the midst of sharing the ukulele songs from her first solo album as she recorded it. During the first month of Piero’s participation on ccMixter, he created eight remixes of Kara’s songs. The quality of his production quickly got Kara’s attention. After a few months of these casual collaborations, Piero and Kara started exchanging emails and developing a musical friendship. The idea for their album, Square Meter, was a natural evolution. Square Meter is an exciting, genre-fusing collection of pop rock originals and remixes. Half of the songs were first released on Kara Square’s Love Songs for Everyone but Especially Uke [2013] as simple ukulele folk tunes. Piero Peluche transformed the songs into huge arrangements with full instrumentation and sparkling production. The remaining tracks have never been released on an album until now. 

Square Meter has been worldwide released January 16, 2014.