Fomins & Kleins

Fomins & Kleins are a Latvian rock band founded in 2002 by members Ivo Fomins and Tomass Kleins, who were both already established musicians. They are best known outside of Latvia for participating at the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Dziesma par laimi. They failed to make it past the Semi-Final stage. At the end of 2002, the group signed a contract with the largest local record company "Mikrofona Ieraksti" (Microphone Records), which is the representative of EMI in the Baltic states. At the start of 2003, the first song that they recorded together, Sniegs ("Snow"), brought the group success at radio stations, as well as winning 3rd place at the LNT Music Video Competition. The next single Solījums ("Promise") is often played on many Latvian radio stations, and the song's video is frequently shown on television and was nominated for the Best Music Video Award at the Latvian Music Awards. In July, the musicians participated in the international festival "Baltic Song Contest" in Sweden and achieved fourth place. The festival itself is shown on Swedish television as well as Polish television. The group's debut album Muzikants ("Musician") was released in 2003, and the album's title track became a huge hit after the duo successfully performed at the Latvian National Eurovision Competition and gained a convincing second place. That year it was the only song to be performed in Latvian and the public was on its feet during the performance. In 2004, history repeated itself and, after the release of the group's second album, Dzimis Latvijā ("Born in Latvia"), they again found themselves singing the only Latvian-language song in the country's Eurovision pre-selection. This time they won, and the song Dziesma par laimi was duly selected as Latvia's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2004 in Istanbul. The group were largely praised for swiftly dismissing any suggestions of switching to English-language lyrics for their performance in Turkey. Due to the poor result of the previous year's Latvian entry on home soil, Fomins and Kleins had to take part in the novelty of a Eurovision semi-final, in which they failed to achieve the top-ten placing needed to advance to the grand final. Nevertheless, they subsequently remained upbeat about the experience, and about Latvia's future in the contest. The group frequently play sell out concerts. As the musicians themselves say, they play "lyrical rock'n'roll" and they have no competition in this genre in Latvia. Together with Ivo Fomins and Tomass Kleins, the group is rounded out by bass guitarist Egils Mežs, drummer Valery Inutin and keyboardist Jānis Lūsēns Jr., talented Armenian Nellija Bubujance, who skillfully learned drumming with her teacher, legendary drummer Tālis Gžibovskis (Eolika, Sīpoli, and others). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.