Valentin Toma is Toma Carnagiu.
He's alive since 1981, and in love with music eversince. In all this time, he tasted bits of every musical genre that reached his ears, from rock'n'roll to death metal, but the idea of sound design discovered with the electronic music is the one that left a mark. His first musical experiments are dated in 1996, and thanks to Saint Common Sense, were left private: only after 3 years he published a few songs under the moniker Qewza (pronounced as Cuza). This happened right after setting the foundation for the TMBase organization alongside UFO & Ummo, Urban Experience, Dump 52, P-Nal, Sneila and Alien Kru - basically, the full lot of electronic music producers in Timişoara back then. He's put effort into organizng the TMBase festival since 2000 - the 3rd edition - when he also had his first live gig (more or less white, for those who remember). At the beginning of 2001, he started a new project called Makunouchi Bento with his old time friend Felix Petrescu aka Waka X, a member of Urban Experience at that time - a project based on IDM and experimental electronic music. With his solo act, he only released a few songs on local compilations, while most of the tracks remained unreleased or only heard during live shows. Around 2003, after exploring most of electronic music's subgenres, from happy hardcore and techno to drum'n'bass and breakbeat, he put and end to his solo "career" as a producer, and focused exclusively on Makunouchi Bento, changing the sound towards a more organic, electroacoustic and cinematic one. And they were serious about it, having released no less than 3 albums, 18 EPs, 11 singles and may other compilation tracks. Also, having lots of live gigs in Romania and abroad, live film rescoring and so on. Qewza is probably remembered by music lovers especially for his "Unu mai" (1st of May) mix series (2 in 2006, 2 in 2007, 3 in 2008), putting together hundreds of Romanian songs of all genres, from electronic to hip-hop, jazz, rock and folklore. And, because this project was worth to be continued, in 2012, Qewza is reborn as Toma Carnagiu (a local pun) to release a new series of mixes on Romania's National Day. No nationalist connotations intended, just a load of humor. On top of that, he plans to promote Romanian music and a general open mindness towards different music genres, through a series of monthly mini-mixes... plus a lot of other surprises.

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